TECHNOLOGIES TO LOOK FORWARD TO IN 2009 - part 1

Goodbye 2008 and welcome 2009! The past year has seen a slew of products being launched and new technology replacing the old. The New Year too promises us better technology for faster and more efficient functioning. We think this is the right time to get you started with what upcoming technologies you can expect this year. We shall cover a few areas which we think will be important and will make a difference in most people's lives. So buckle up as we take you for a quick tour.

Windows 7 :

Windows Vista has been a failure and that is no secret. But Microsoft has been working on its successor since the past few years. Slated to be released in 2009, the new operating system known as Windows 7, will try to succeed where its predecessor failed, or at least that is what the plan is. If we go by the beta versions, and if that is any indication of what the final thing would be like, then we see light at the end of the tunnel.

While it looks a lot like Vista, at least cosmetically, Windows 7 has certain things that will delight you. It will support native reading and writing Blu-ray discs. A new platform for interacting with removable devices - Device Stage will be featured. It will have support for Virtual Hard Drive images and have improved backup and restore mechanisms. Seamless audio transfers to Bluetooth 2.1 audio devices will be there. Since Microsoft no longer talks about DirectX 10.1, this will come with DirectX 11 and have improved tessellation, shading, and multithreaded rendering support. Speeds and accuracy of pen input devices will be much better.

There will be inbuilt support for many GPS positioning sensors, so you may probably roam around with your ultraportable lappy with GPS and get to know where you are heading to using Google Earth. Remote computing is another area where there will be improvement, thanks to DirectAccess tool, which will let you access your Windows 7 desktop from anywhere in the world. Those who have used Vista will probably agree that the UAC has proved to be a nightmare at times. Windows 7 will have UAC with simpler, clearer and fewer messages. In addition to a few additional accessibility tools, the bootup and shutdown times will be much faster.

Monitors :

There are going to be a lot of changes in the display technology and if you are about to buy an LCD monitor, we suggest you hang on a bit. We are already seeing LCD monitors moving from 16:10 aspect ratio to 16:9, which is the proper wide-screen ratio accepted by motion pictures. There are only a few such monitors available today, but 2009 will see them completely occupy the market and the new aspect ratio will result in monitors with weird sizes such as 15.6, 18.5, or 21.6 inches. As their prices drop, bigger LCDs with better viewing angles, higher resolution, faster response times (as low as 2 ms) and high contrast ratios due to technical enhancements will become the norm.

As an example of how new technology can improve displays, Viewsonic had demonstrated a 22-inch monitor at NVISION 08 earlier in 2008 and this featured a 120 Hz desktop with a 3 ms response time that makes motion artifacts and ghosting, a thing of the past.

LCDs and TVs with inbuilt digital media players will also start coming into the market this year. You will therefore not need to boot up your computer to watch your favorite movie or listen to your favorite track. All you need to do is simply copy it to your USB drive, plug it in the monitor's USB port and watch it on the monitor, which will play it.

The 22-inch AOC 2230Fm is one such monitor.

Multi-touch has been seen to appeal a lot to people and though there are no concrete plans to introduce any of these in the form of PC monitors, things may change suddenly, because Windows 7 has support for multi-touch and it is going to launch this year. There are other technologies such as OLED, LED and 3D display, but we do not expect to see them come into the market, or at least the Indian market, this year.