In today’s growing world of computer technology we are starting to see many new uses of digital computer technology being applied to existent products, and creating new better products. Those products in fact get combined and integrated into still other products. Just think of the telephone. Once, the earpiece and the microphone piece were separate. Today they come in a variety of flavors. All the telephones have the ear and mouth piece attached together, most telephones have a digital dial pad instead of the old spinning disk thingy that one had to spin around and watch it slowly spin back for every number dialed. Answering machines, which are completely different devices sometimes come built into the telephone. Also, the radio technology is implemented to bring us a new and convenient way to walk around our house with the cordless phone. All these things make our lifestyle more convenient and efficient. Bill Howard talks about his visions for new products in the near future due to convergence of current computer technology and other electronic multimedia devices in this article.
Bill concentrates on applying the DVD and hard drive technology in the year 2000. He talks about putting the DVD into home entertainment systems, game consoles, and of course the existing computer systems, linking all those things up to the Internet and let the information superhighway supply all those devices. Also, he wants to put a high capacity hard disk into the home entertainment systems. I am a little bit skeptical about this technology merging in the next year since the hard disks aren’t large enough to hold a large amount of multimedia. Even the new IBM 72GB 10k RPM drive wouldn’t live up to the standards when some video junkie decides to store his collection of The Simpsons on it. Lets not forget that some day we will want to experience movies in 3D with many different angels of viewing with interactive scenes, multiple plots, languages, soundtracks and other options that would make a “movie” viewing more entertaining. So a good idea would be to make this device very scalable.
Bill envisions that “Your computer, your stereo gear, you cell phone, your PDA, and your t
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