Looking
Backwards
by
Alan Zisman (c) 2006 First published in
Business
in Vancouver December 26, 2006- Januiary 2, 2007 issue
#896
High Tech Office column
Already, it’s the end of 2006, time to look back at another year
in the High Tech Office. When the year started, I was predicting that
2006 would be the year when online software took off. By mid-year, I
was entrusting my e-mail, calendar, and contact list to online
services, and by the end of the year, if online word processing and
spreadsheets were not yet serious challengers to
Microsoft Office, these online
services were at least beginning to look like useable adjuncts to
the software mainstays.
I noted that in 2005,
Intel
had fallen behind challenger
AMD;
in 2006 Intel fought back, coming up with a series of more efficient
processor designs that helped regain mind-share and market-share for
the CPU champ.
With notebook computers now accounting for over half of sales, a number
of mobile computing trends were noteworthy in 2006. This column noted
how laptop theft was resulting in increasing amounts of customer and
employee data going missing. By the end of 2006, it was estimated that
over 100 million Americans were affected by personal data stored on
lost laptops. In addition, I noted the spread between laptop and
desktop reliability. Maybe it’s time to stop toting that laptop
around; increasingly cheap and common USB Flash Memory drives and
so-called portable applications make it easier than ever to travel
without a laptop, keeping all your really necessary data and even key
applications in your pocket. (And you probably don’t need a copy
of that customer database on your laptop’s hard drive anyway).
New high speed data networks such as
Rogers
and
Fido’s Edge and
Bell Mobility and
Telus’s
EvDO made it more possible to stay in touch with your data on the road
using a smartphone, at least if you’re prepared to pay high data
charges.
If laptop theft wasn’t bad enough, other security issues remained
concerns throughout the year. Badware: spyware, adware, and more
continued to annoy users as it remained profitable to spread them
around. Late in the year, virus-writers for hire accounted for much of
the increase in spam emails as they rented out networks of infected
computers. And if users didn’t have enough to worry about, there
was also a spate of bogus anti-spyware software. And despite trying to
be careful, I had to admit to falling prey to a password-stealing
phishing scam.
In 2006, spyware, adware, and the viruses and worms that turn personal
computers into email spam-bots remained problems only for users of
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and Windows operating
system. As a result, over the year interest in alternatives including
Mozilla Firefox web browser,
Apple’s
Macintosh hardware and software, and various versions of the open
source Linux operating system increased. Apple was able to come on
strong in 2006 with new models using Intel’s new energy-efficient
CPUs and able to boot Windows XP (Windows not included). By the end of
the year, Microsoft responded, releasing long-delayed Internet Explorer
7 and (finally) Windows Vista, building in at least some of the more
secure features of the alternatives.
At the same time, in 2006 Microsoft dropped support for older Windows
versions including (finally) Windows 98. While Windows 2000, still
widely used in business remains officially supported, new Microsoft
releases such as IE 7 and anti-spyware Windows Defender are not
available to Win2000 users. And even users of Windows XP and the new
Vista may find themselves shut out of updates due to the
company’s increasingly rigorous ‘Genuine Advantage’
program’s anti-piracy checks.
Finally, with
Google buying
online video host
YouTube
for US$1.6 billion, it seemed like we might be back into another era of
high-flying Web startups. As always, the High Tech Office urges that
readers beware of technology trends that are long on hype and short of
content or recognizable business models. For 2006, that had to include
most claims that used ‘podcast’, ‘blog’ or
‘Web 2.0’.