New Technology Talk

An increasing number of businesses, municipalities, and individuals are seeing the benefits of wireless Internet access. It's really no wonder that this type of technology is growing increasingly popular because of its flexibility and the fact that it offers an economical way to put a lot of different devices and their users onto the Internet or a Local Area Network.

There's been a lot of press recently about the role that America's energy consumption plays in climate change and in America's energy insecurity. As part of an effort to alleviate both problems Congress passed the Energy Policy Act of 2005. While this is all well and good, one of the provisions of that law will probably serve to give a lot of headaches to users of various computerized electronic devices all over the country. That's because, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for a lengthening of Daylight Savings Time.

Anyone who's used a computer for any length of time can relate to the problem of the computer not having enough power to do what you tell it to do. This generally results in long delays between the click of the mouse and the a pull down menu appearing, or trying to open a program and then sitting there staring at the hourglass icon turning over and over again for the next five minutes. This becomes even more frustrating when you think back to when you bought a new computer ten years ago and remember how you took it out of the box, hooked everything up, and it was lightning fast. Even though it a twentieth of the processor speed and memory, and less than a hundredth of the hard drive space, of the computer that's giving you problems right now!

Broadband access to the Internet is becoming more and more of a necessity all the time in order to be effective in business and our personal lives. However, getting access- and maintaining that access wherever you go- isn't always the easiest thing in the world to do. In some places getting on the Internet at a high speed is easy to do. For example, your office probably has a T1 connection, or if it's a small business it may have a cable based high speed Internet connection or maybe even some form of DSL. If you take your work on the road with you; bookstores, coffee shops, hotel rooms, airports, libraries, and even some fast food restaurants can all offer wireless hot spots. But sometimes you need to connect to the Internet from other places like your car, a client's home, or even the beach.

An all too common experience in dealing with computer printers is to go out and buy an inkjet printer for forty or fifty bucks, thinking that you're getting a great deal. Then when you get the printer home and install it on your computer, it still seems like a great deal. You can print in color, print in black and white, and even print photos. Life is good for a month or two. Then one of the ink cartridges runs out and when you go to the store to buy a new one, you find out that you're going to have to pay thirty dollars just for a black ink cartridge. Then you start to think that if the color cartridge, which costs thirty five to forty dollars is about to run out too, it would be cheaper to just buy a new printer! Besides being wasteful and expensive, this experience is just frustrating!

Although the recent release of Microsoft's Widows Vista operating system has gotten a lot of attention recently, the huge software company has also recently released the newest version of its productivity software: Office 2007. Office 2007 has actually been out since November of 2007 for business customers. Microsoft's proprietary suite of office software features big name programs like Word, Outlook, Excel, Front Page, and Power Point to name a few, and is used by an estimated five hundred million people, worldwide. (Just for the sake of perspective, the population of the United States is estimated to be about three hundred million.)

In the recent past, technology has largely come to be equated with advancement. In reality though, technology is simply a way to get things accomplished. It's a tool if you will, that can be used to make work more efficient and life more enjoyable. Unfortunately we've lost sight of the fact that just because something is more technologically complex, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's more advanced in the sense that it's a better tool or provides more enjoyable recreation.

On thing that's been a major concern of small camera shops, and the photography industry in general, ever since the digital camera was invented, has been how to make up the losses in profit that have occurred because of the decreased demand for developing film. On the consumer side of the situation, there are a lot of people out there with a lot of photographs taken with old fashioned film based cameras who don't want to abandon their old photographs, but want the convenience of having them in digital form.

One type of technology that definitely brings people a lot of entertainment, enjoyment, and even social bonding is video gaming platforms. Ever since Atari and other primitive video game platforms first came out about thirty years ago, the video gaming industry has tried to make better and better devices to keep people interested in all the have to offer.

Anyone who loves to make home videos is in luck thanks to the versatility and quality of new camcorder technology that makes recording videos easy, clear, and affordable. There's one product in particular that would be a good choice for the casual home cinematographer who wants high quality without having a high price tag attached to it. This particular device is a camcorder called the DC-100 and it's made by Canon.

With the long awaited arrival of Microsoft's new operating system- Windows Vista- finally upon us, many people are wondering if it's really a good time to upgrade. Vista boasts a number of features that would indicate that and upgrade is indicated. For example, previous versions of the Windows operating system have been famously bad about security. Windows XP has been especially bad, but that may be due largely to the fact that it was the dominant operating system for at least half a decade which gave hackers the right combination of time and motivation to find its weak spots.

One way that people are always trying to push new technology forward is by packing more and more useful features into smaller and smaller packages. This has been achieved yet again with the introduction of a new portable computer called the S-XGen Ultra Mobile Personal Computer and Communications Device.

One of the great benefits of a lot of the new technologies coming out these days is the fact that so many devices are so versatile when it comes to what they do. Consider for a moment what the well connected traveler would have needed twenty years ago in order to communicate with the outside world during a trip and stay entertained in a variety of mediums. For music, they would have needed a portable cassette player like a walk man. For photographs, they probably would have had some kind of an old fashioned thirty five millimeter film camera. For video, they would have needed one of those huge camcorders that recorded on VHS. While a mobile phone of some sort probably would have been useful, such technology didn't really exist at that time, and the same thing would have been true for the Internet. In any case, that translates into a lot of luggage.