2008 Tech Preview - Networking
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Networking
We will officially see 802.11N in 2008! Yes I know that we have seen Pre-N and Draft-N, but we are talking official specifications now. It appears that all your Draft-N hardware will work fine with the official specifications. This should throw some gas into the fire already burning for streaming HD content. 802.11G can handle this to an extent, but begins to choke. Presumably 802.11N will solve all our problems. Look for other items, such as video streaming devices, to finally move over to this new technology too.
Monitors
The first transition we will see is the rapid death of 4:3 screen formats in favor of 16:9 widescreen. Widescreen will dominate the market and we will see cheaper prices on widescreen compared to 4:3. VGA is still around, while DVI is trying to become the standard format. And we are already moving on to the next type of connections. We are already seeing video cards with HDMI connectors, which will only gain in popularity in 2008. It will quickly become the standard for PC to TV connections.
We should also see DisplayPort come to monitors. With DisplayPort you will no longer need the internal interface of the monitor; DisplayPort will handle everything for you. This means monitors should become cheaper and a lot thinner, perhaps down to half an inch.
USB
Once again the big number here is “3.” Look for USB 3.0 to make its way to your next motherboard in the second half of 2008. The performance will be around 5Mb/s, about 10 times the speed of USB 2.0. Great news! USB 3.0 will be backwards compatible with existing USB devices. With any luck, perhaps we might even see USB Wireless. Some initial devices have flopped, but I would love to see a standard wireless USB connection become the norm in the future. Say bye-bye to cords when this hits the mainstream. USB 3.0 will have its work cut out for it; eSATA is catching on quickly, is just as easy to connect, and fast too.
Conclusion
So far, 2008 looks like it will be a big year for technology. We should see some exciting changes and new products come out. If all goes well, tomorrow's computers will be exceedingly better than the best you can buy today. Only time will tell if all the products and technology make it to the market on time.
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