A year of expansion rather than breakthroughs

A year of expansion rather than breakthroughs

Zatni Arbi
Contributor/Jakarta

Almost 30 years after the birth of the Altaire and 23 years after
IBM came up with the world's first PC, have computer scientists
and standard organizations hit a brick wall?

At any rate, computer components such as modems, scanners,
printers, Web cameras, speakers, 200 GB hard disks and DVD+RW
drives are now taken for granted.

Cordless peripherals such as the cordless mouse and keyboards
accompany today's mainstream PCs. Even flat-panel TFT monitors in
sizes exceeding 20 inches very rarely make the headlines --
except that they cost a lot of money to buy.

It's all the same with MP3 players, even though we have seen
the birth of market leading MP3 players such as the Apple's iPod.
We call them market leaders not only because they sell like
hotcakes but because, after a short while, many other gadget
makers come up with similar products.

Multifunction devices, Wi-Fi

Similarly, printers no longer cause ripples. More recently,
single-purpose printers began to be gradually replaced by all-in-
one devices that can print, scan, copy and fax documents. More
and more printer makers have come up with their AIO models.

And, what about a PC with a built-in TV tuner and floor-
shaking sound? Well, for a long time it has no longer created
excitement.

Meanwhile, you must have noticed that Bluetooth has become a
common feature in more new digital devices. Its widespread use
has added a new term to the computing lingo: Personal Area
Network (PAN).

Wi-Fi is also built into new notebooks today, as Intel keeps
pushing the Centrino specifications. As more and more people buy
Centrino notebooks, hot spots are sprouting everywhere like
mushrooms in the rainy season (or Carrefour stores inside
Jakarta).

With the help of their high bandwidth, VoIP could become
available to us at faster rates -- and let us save a lot on long
distance and international calls -- if only the authorities were
on the consumers' side.

Unfortunately, some governments -- including ours -- have
still not grasped the beauty of deregulation.

What was new in computing?

So, has 2004 been a boring year for computer aficionados? In
general, it has -- except for some new but barely important
trends. For instance, we now have multimedia notebooks with wide
screens and a new resolution standard, WXGA.

Meanwhile, however, Tablet PCs are still struggling to gain a
foothold as "must-have" portable computers, while more and more
people wonder if they are actually still-born babies.

What about CPUs? Are we still hungry for more speed? Today,
only serious gamers and professionals in desktop publishing and
graphics artists want to upgrade their computers. The rest of us
seem to have wised up.

My work PC, for example, still runs on a Pentium III 755 MHz,
which I overclocked to 812 MHz. So far, I have no justification
to replace it with the latest and the greatest.

By the way, each time we talk about speed, we talk about the
processor chips that serve as the brain in the entire computer
systems. The processors no longer compete in terms of GHz but
more on true performance.

Intel's recent move to change the way it labels its processors
underscores the shift. GHz will no longer be part of Intel's
Pentium processor. So, for instance, what we used to know as the
Pentium 4 running at 3.2 GHz will be labeled Pentium 4 540. The
Celeron processors, which most of us shun, will be labeled the
Pentium 300 series.

Cell phones and PDAs

Throughout the year, attention has basically shifted toward
mobility. Not surprisingly, stylish and feature-rich cell phones
as well as PDAs that are easier to use have been gaining the
spotlight.

Yes, the PDAs based on Symbian, Palm and Microsoft Pocket PC
platforms are now so user-friendly that we do not really need to
read PDAs for Dummies to use these devices. More and more of
today's PDAs can connect to the Internet using high bandwidth
connection, including EDGE and Wi-Fi.

The cell phones have also been adopting new -- albeit
marginally useful -- functions. Among others, subject to the
availability of the service, some models can now function as
walkie-talkies.

Their Push-to-Talk (PTT) feature will automatically connect us
with a number of other users -- whom we have included in our
group -- and communicate with them as if we were using CB-radio.

A six-month mobile TV trial took place in Berlin, Germany,
with Nokia leading the way. The format they were using is called
DVB-H, which stands for Digital Video Broadcast for Handhelds.

This is different from the standards used in other countries
such as Japan and South Korea, which have been available since
last year's World Cup.

"Why would one bother to have TV on one's cell phone?" you may
ask. With mobile TV, we can watch the latest news while on the go
-- without having to tote an extra gadget such as one of those
Casio TVs.

Internet and bloggers

Meanwhile, popups, spam, spyware, phishing and identity theft
continue to make our Internet life dangerous, especially if we
fail to update our system and install the patches. There have
been suggestions for combating these digital threats, including
the introduction of sender identification -- akin to the Caller
ID in telephony.

However, in the digital world, it's never too difficult to
find an antidote to an existing antidote. We are fighting uphill
battles.

Talking about the Internet, blogs were perhaps the biggest
trend in 2004. The word presumably came from "Web log", and it
allowed people to publish their personal thoughts on the Web. If
you are repeatedly made unhappy by the customer service of your
local hypermarket, you can check blogger.com and check what other
people have experienced.

Looking Ahead

What about next year? For one thing, a lot of activities are
under way in bringing broadband to our homes -- wired or
wireless.

The good news is that these are happening in Indonesia even as
you read this. 3G will become available in more countries, even
in Indonesia in a limited scope. The issue is, as it has always
been -- the chicken or the egg?

Without the assurance that there will be sufficient market
demand, operators will be hesitant in making the necessary
infrastructure investment. Without the availability of the
infrastructure, the public have no idea of what they can do with
the new technology. Patience, patience!

WiMAX, which some have touted as the 3G killer, is unlikely to
become available next year. However, it will be interesting to
see whether it will indeed become a disruptive technology, given
its 70 Mbps data transfer capability and 45 kilometer range.

Also, it remains to be seen whether our government will once
again intervene as the high bandwidth makes VoIP a very
attractive option.

Perhaps a hope rather than a projection, research in fuel
cells should make more progress next year as environmental
concern grows. Japanese companies such as Toshiba, NEC and
Hitachi are working hard to come up with practical solutions, and
they have made advances with small gizmos such as cell phones,
PDAs and notebooks.

Next year, for example, visitors at World Expo in Aichi
Prefecture, Japan, will be able to rent cell phones that use
Hitachi's fuel cells and Li-Ion batteries.

Users can have 13 hours of talk time with these cell phones.
Hitachi, as reported by Jiji Press English News Service, is
targeting 2007 for the commercial availability of their fuel
cells.

Another category of product that we can expect to become more
widely available next year is the network media player. Using
these computer-based systems, we can distribute different kinds
of media-again, with or without the wire-to networked TV sets,
speakers and other output devices around our houses.

There will be a wide variety of product features, but the
basic idea is to use the PC to store and share multimedia
materials.

The Digital Video Player (DVP) is another obscure category of
computer product that may have a more matured definition next
year. More and more cars now come already equipped with the DVP,
with is basically an MPEG player that combines functions such as
video recorder, MP3 player and data storage center.

And, those travelers who always feel helpless each time they
get cut off from the Internet may rejoice as more and more
airlines will provide Internet facilities -- even mobile phones
-- while they are 30,000 feet up in the sky.

And, don't forget the RFID. Already used to simplify supply
chain management, the chips will be attached to the pack of beef
that you buy at the supermarket, the brake shoe that your
mechanic fixes into your car, and the medicine bottles that your
pharmacy disperses.

Sun Microsystems has already seen a big future in the
implementation of billions of Radio Frequency ID tags, and they
are the first major vendor to provide the middleware for RFID,
which they call Java RFID system.

What improvements should be made?

What would I like to see progressing faster? Of course, one of
them is the powerline data transmission. Imagine if people could
plug into their wall outlets and obtain Internet access in
addition to getting the electricity to power their PCs!

This technology will quickly multiply the number of people
with access to the wealth of knowledge that the Internet has.

My other wishes have to do with services rather than the
technology. One of them is the availability of service that
allows motorists to check traffic in real time.

With such a service, each time I head for Jakarta's Soekarno-
Hatta International Airport, I could check -- using my cell phone
or PDA and the digital video broadcast technology -- whether the
airport toll road is congested or not.

You see, the inventory of advanced technology that we now have
is probably more than we need to make our lives more efficient
and more comfortable. More than ever, it is the services using
the existing technologies that we need.

We need these services everywhere, not just urban areas.