2012 technology trends

[Pacu]

I see netbooks finally going away..ultrabooks making a small splash then going away and maybe a half way serious contender to the upcoming iPad 3. Maybe a quad core tablet able to push ICS when it is finally rolled out across the board.

windows 8 on tablets creep up on Androids tablet market share.

SSDs becoming the norm pushing higher gig capacity.

what do you see coming up?

[ryan1835]

Within the next 5 years I see apple hitting a peak and then crashing back down again.

And that's coming from an apple fan!

[Sazabi]

I have to agree with Pacu.  I see more Ultrabooks and relatively few netbooks or CULV laptops being pushed, sadly.  I'm a massive fan of my Acer Aspire One 1410 CULV, personally, but I digress.

The iPad 3 is going to be released as what the iPad 2 should've been, cloud computing will be bigger (unfortunately), and digital media becoming more and more popular yet. :/

[mvyrmnd]

I'm a big apple fan, and a certified apple engineer, but I'm quite excited about the possibilities brought by windows 8.

If the hardware can stand up to the iPad 3, then feasibly you could have a tablet and a good mobile interface, that can instantly transform into a fully-fledged PC interface by sticking it into a keyboard dock.

As long as they spec the hardware like they did with windows mobile 7, so that you can guarantee the performance of the device, and spec it high enough so that it's not a slug (read: like vista), they could be onto a winner, especially in enterprise.

[Grant Lamontagne]

Vista was the best thing to ever happen to Apple! 

I ran Vista for a few years on my laptop before upgrading to 7 and I never had any real problems with it.  I don't think it was nearly as bad as it was made out to be, but that's just me.

Def

[jzmtl]

I agree on netbook going away, I have one from HP and what a piece of crap. Damn thing is slow as hell and if you try to multitask it crashes, then you'll HAVE to do a system restore to get it working again.

Last year I was using it as GPS (12" screen GPS, cool, right?) on my way to NA meet up, and guess what it did? So there I was driving down totally unfamiliar roads with one hand, and trying to do system restore with the other, all while google routing sent me down some side country roads instead of the direct highway. 

Don't see tablets taking over though, I need a keyboard and the softwares that comes with only mainstream OS.

[Pacu]

people keep trying to say the desktop is dead.....BS!

i gotta have my full tower filled with swappable goodies from tiger direct and newegg

and i'm not alone. Tablets may be nice but try pushing graphics heavy games or typing a huge form on a touch screen.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I like my netbook.  I am on my second one, plus my wife has one.  The keyboard is a bit small but you get used to it, plus the battery life is phenomenal.  I get about 6-8 hours of use out of it, watching movies, surfing etc.

My laptop is a bit more comfortable to use and the larger screen size is better for most things, but away from a plug I get less than an hour on my laptop.  I may replace it this year as it's getting a bit long in the tooth.  It maxed out at 2g RAM and that's pretty limiting these days.

Tablet?  I may get one, but it's not really my thing.  My phone works well enough for that and what my phone can't do my netbook will.

Def

[dks]

Netbooks are great for flying. Easier to carry, open for inspection, fit on the tray in the airplane easily. Also fit on trays in seminar rooms. In a meeting you can have the netbook open in front of you without appearing hidden like with a laptop. Also fits in the safe in your hotel room.
mostly I use mine when watching tv. and they are cheap. I had mine for 3 years and it is good to see they remained the same.

typed from my bed on a phone

[enki_ck]

I still love my 10'' Asus eeePC, great netbook with integrated 3g/umts modem I bought over 3 years ago. Crazy battery times, small and lightweight but strong enough for most of the stuff I need in my life. It would be a shame to let this great concept disappear. Tablets I never liked. :/

[Syph007]

My Asus netbook is probably my most loved tech device Ive bought in the last 5 yrs.  I put a 500 gb drive in there and its loaded with goodies. 8 hr runtime with swappable batteries means I can be on the go for a long long time.  It fits perfectly in the pocket of my edc maxpedition bag and it's so light I barely notice it.  I have a pile of different tablets on my desk at work for development and I have yet to ever find a reason to carry one out of the office.  I have no use for a talet OS when my netbook has a full desktop OS.

[Whoey]

Really eager for the hybrid hard drives to take off... platters with a ssd built in... so you have your ssd for speed, and platters for massive storage... win-win without escalating prices to oblivion.

Since I run Ubuntu primarily (which may change to some other distro soon since I cannot stand the new interface) I don't really care what Microsoft throws out next, I will probably use it if I have to, but minimally... I reckon my windows install on this machine gets about 0.1% of the uptime, maybe half a day use every couple months... and this machine is now 3 years old!

Looking forward to new android stuff, my tablet is running 2.3, my phone 2.2 (and no official upgrade options that I'm aware of yet) my Tablet is nothing fancy, a cheap generic tablet for those sofa surfing moments, and even that is minimal. I see no reason to throw out 5x the money for a tablet that is basically a PC with no added storage options. I tried an Ipad2 over the holidays, admit it's nice kit, but see no reason for me to waste so much money on something like that.

Otherwise I've been pretty oblivious of what's on the horizon hardware tech wise... Ultrabooks look neat, but I have a 15.6" laptop I already barely use...