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Looking Forward to the New Millennium

Toronto Star Fast Forward column for January 4, 2001

Copyright ©, Myles White, 2001

As you've no doubt heard several thousand times already, the correct greeting for this column should be, "Welcome to the 21st Century."

The seer dons his funny hat, stares into his crystal monitor and predicts:

Both Intel and AMD will reach processor speeds of over 2 GHz before the end of this year. Within two to three years, speeds will surpass 10 GHz and Moore's Law, the adage that predicts a doubling of processor transistor counts and internal speeds every year, will continue to be valid. In the meantime, computers will continue to shrink and by not much later than 2005, the biggest problem computer users will face will be finding it if it's dropped on the carpet.

There won't be any cables by 2004. Everything will be wireless.

The last cathode ray tube monitor will roll off the assembly line in 2006. All screens will be about an eighth of an inch thick, flexible "skins" that you hang on the wall. That is, except for those of us who have the images projected on the lenses of our glasses.

The last keyboard is produced in 2007 when voice and speech recognition finally reaches a point where it's useful. A growing number of people, however, have neural implants that allow them to interface with their computers directly. But Microsoft isn't around to provide the software. The company implodes when the first version of its Windows TP (the telepathic operating system) arrives with bugs that cause users to lapse into coma. Bill Gates' personal fortune, plus all of the company's assets, are consumed paying for their perpetual care. Gates doesn't mind, however - at least we don't think he does - because he was among the first victims.

In mid-2001, Intel will capitulate to pressure from manufacturers and customers, producing a chipset for its Pentium III and 4 processors that will use either SDRAM or DDR (double data-rate) SDRAM. The price of SDRAM will rise toward the end of 2001 and stay there as it becomes less in demand. DDR SDRAM will win this little war.

More companies will jump on the bandwagon in 2001 with the (to them) nifty idea that they'll make more money renting software over the Internet than they possibly could by selling licenses for shrink-wrapped products. Around about the middle of 2002, a lot of them will be gone as consumers either select competing products that come in boxes, or simply decide not to upgrade. Companies aren't the only ones smart enough to figure out that renting is a never-ending cash grab.

A version of the DVD (Digital Video Disc) drive will arrive in 2001 that allows users to write and re-write DVD discs and play the discs back on any other DVD drive. As a result, the last CD-RW drives will be found only at "inventory close-out" sales by mid-2003.

USB-2 (Universal Serial Bus, version 2) will arrive in a big way in 2001, offering 12 times the speed (144 Mbps) of the first version. It - along with FireWire - will last until the first wireless external connection solutions begin to appear. Speaking of FireWire, also known as IEEE 1394, it will become increasingly common to find it offered in a new PC and once it becomes as wide-spread as USB has become, more devices will arrive that want to use it. It's probably time to start asking for it.

The Home Networking boomlet will have some settling out to do in this decade, although the major flurries of activity will die down by 2003. Phone-line networking, although it looked like a good, renovation-free solution in 2000, will take the first hit as consumers realize it doesn't work and play well with other network schemes. D-Link, for example, which is already beginning to downplay its product by the end of 2000 will probably abandon it early in 2001.

Consumers will have a brief fling with wireless home networking in 2001. The buzz, however, will start up again later this year or early next when some of the "Home Plug Association" companies start introducing networking that uses ordinary house wiring as the transport medium. It looks from the description like it could be a winner unless the companies follow the pattern already established in the wireless world where a solution that's marginally fast enough (11 Mbps, so-called Wi-Fi or IEEE 802.11b) is hideously over-priced for the corporate market and a barely adequate 1.2 Mbps solution, called Home RF, is trotted out for home use (these guys just don't get it).

Sales of 15-inch monitors will drop so low that major analysts will stop tracking them. Entry level $300 monitors will all be 17-inch models, with 19-inch models becoming the mid-range size of choice.

The collapse of fly-by-night "dot.com" companies will continue, which is just as well. I'm old enough to remember when one of the main selling points of cable television from the corporate perspective was the Home Shopping Channels and it seems as though the same tired old ideas of using everything as a sales medium have been ruining ideas about the power of the Internet and what it's for. Instead, you're going to see more evidence of the "distributed computing" model exemplified by SETI At Home and Napster. And it will be driven by what Internet users want and feel they need, not by the hucksters in suits. (Well, we can dream, can't we?).

As broadband (i.e., high speed) Internet connections become more pervasive, the idea of making a video call through the Net to your granny won't become so strange or unlikely after all.

Colour lasers will continue to cost over $3,000 Canadian in 2001, but will dip below $2,000 by early 2003. About the only thing that might upset the applecart will be if Xerox finally figures out what it has in its recently acquired Tektronix division and starts producing solid-ink "Phaser" printers at consumer-affordable prices. If the company can do this, it will own the colour printing market.

And here's one last prediction you can count on: I'll continue to use the honorific title, "my lady" when I refer to my wife in print. This despite the letter I received after my Christmas gift column from a man who suggested it was passé, that I should refer to her as "my partner" or "my woman," and that I should do this because I wouldn't want to be called "lad." In this context, my definition of "lady" refers to a woman of elegance and class and is appropriate. I can also report to you that she both delights in the title and encourages me in its use. It is not a diminutive slur. Sigh.

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