This month I thought I would dedicate some time to looking forward to future new developments. What can we expect to see over the coming months in the arena of technology?
Intel and AMD continue to keep Moores Law1 alive by knocking out even faster and smaller processors, the latest of which, ‘quad core’, actually has 4 whole processors squeezed onto a single chip, thus enabling the computer to perform 4 times as many calculations than it previously was able to do in the same time.
Games players will be pleased that graphics card manufacturers have also been busy starting to ship the latest range in their technology, devices capable of using Microsoft’s DirectX10 standard, only available on Windows Vista of course, Windows XP will remain strictly with DirectX9. The
latest card to utilise this technology is AMD’s ATi Radeon HD 2000, an essential for any serious gamer.
Whilst all of this has been going on Microsoft, not to be left out, have started to announce their latest technological leap forward, Microsoft SurfaceTM its, as Microsoft put it; “the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology”.
The idea behind this new way of using computers is that rather than using a keyboard and a mouse to interact with your computer, you use those ‘handy’ things at the end of your arms – erm, your hands!
This really is a big ‘next step forward’ in technology although it will be some time before we see it in our homes. When we do, however, it will bring computing into line with the fantastic things that we all see on the TV and in films but never really believed possible in real life. Microsoft SurfaceTM enables data to be moved around on the screen by simply touching it.
The technology doesn’t stop there. Microsoft’s vision is that devices like our mobile phones and digital cameras will ‘talk’ to Microsoft SurfaceTM in a way we have never seen before. We will be able to place our camera or phone next to our ‘digital table’ and photo’s will be wirelessly displayed on the screen, from there we will be able to order prints online, edit them or email them in the same way as we do now, but without the incumberance of a mouse or keyboard.
But don’t take my word for it, you can see for yourself, Microsoft have placed a demonstration of this exciting new technology at www.microsoft.com/surface