October marks the 4th quarter of ’09 and that’s not too far away from now. This year more than others we’ve seen a good amount of tech yelled quite loudly in our direction, "THIS IS THE WAY IT’S GONNA BE!" Well.. not really.
Here’s a few examples.
Cloud Computing
This is a concept of computing that has been around for a very long time. Where it happened originally was in enterprise environments several years before what we know now as the internet existed.
The idea is sound with cloud computing. What isn’t sound is nobody knows how to deploy it in a cost effective way that actually works. That’s always been the problem and always will be.
Oddly enough, where the cloud works best is with home internet users. But in enterprise.. not so much.
E-Book Readers
This technology has not exactly caught on like gangbusters. But there were those who said it would earlier this year. It hasn’t.
E-Book tech at present is not mature enough for everybody to have an e-book reader as they would an iPod and/or cell phone, that much is clear.
Also the fact that you need a subscription and batteries just to read something doesn’t exactly fly over well with people.
"Green" I.T. Department
One of the huge buzzwords of ’09 has been green. Green, green and more green. However you simply cannot walk into a production IT environment and say, "Guess what, everybody? We’re ditching the mainframe to save a few kilowatt hours!"
Anybody who would say that would be shown the door in short order.
The idea of a "green" IT environment has about the same chance of working as, say, a paperless environment.
Those who work in IT will get that joke.
Internet TV
We heard earlier in the year that providers like Hulu were going to change television forever. They didn’t. Nobody threw out their television sets. Nobody cancelled their cable or satellite subscriptions.
Like e-books, this technology cannot be shoved down people’s throats. It has to mature for a few years before people are willing to drop the cable company. And that time certainly isn’t now.
What tech do you think is "immature"?
Feel free to weigh in your opinion by posting a comment or two.
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I’ll definitely back you up on the ‘green’ thing. It is WAY too soon to be making the sort of accusations and jumps into this stuff as the world wants to. OH, WE HAVE TO GO GREEN NOW, OR THE WORLD WILL END, OR AT LEAST, IT WILL MAKE US LOOK BAD IF WE DON’T! It does need time to mature (in ALL aspects and situations). Compact Flourescent lightbulbs across America? Great! Not actually reducing greenhouse gases, but getting tax write-offs like you are the ‘greenest’ company in America, because of ‘cap-and-trade tax’? BAD IDEA. This is 5 seconds from becoming a political blog, so let’s move on.
Another “immature” tech is more of a personal gripe in a very niche market. Autodesk REVIT MEP is a horrible program that needs large amounts of computing power, but is underdeveloped and does not utilize multi-core processors. It really sucks that a $6,000 program can’t utilize hardware as well as most $40 games do. So, to get the kind of power you need to run this program effectively, it costs as much for the hardware as it does for the software.
Not ready for prime time:
Home wireless printers. At least the ones I’ve worked with. Configure one to work with the typical home DHCP router, turn off the printer with a surge strip so that no power is available for the printer (we do want to be green, right?), and the next time the printer is powered up for use no computer on the home network can find the printer without running thru the config program again on each PC.
I ditched cable for Internet TV. Sure, it may not be as convenient like pressing three buttons to watch a show, but how much of the shows that are out there do you watch anyway? That is what we asked ourselves. Most of them were on network stations. $99 for an antenna that picks up 25 stations in my area and an HTPC I built. I am off to the races. It is still in its infancy stage, but with apps like Boxee (www.boxee.tv) emerging as well as hulu and other sites streaming their most popular shows on-line, who need to pay the subscription fee for quality entertainment? Unfortunately, by the time Internet TV is mature, Cable companies will have already placed bandwidth caps on your internet services thereby doubling or tripling your internet bill which will make up for the revenue lost by people dropping their cable service.
Consumers need to ban the cap!!!!!!!!!!! I’m off the box now.