2006 was a really major year in terms of PC technology. 2007 on the other hand was more of an incremental year in terms of advancements. There weren't any earth shattering break throughs that really changed the market as a whole. Still, there were some significant technology items that were released. Here are some of the PC technologies released during 2007 that I feel are noteworthy.
There has been lots of talk about low cost portable computers that can be easy to use and accessible. This has been the goal of the OLPC, but it has a number of issues around it. ASUS has finally delivered a product that seems to meet those goals. The Eee PC is an ultraportable notebook with solid state storage and very low cost that allows for general computing that is very easy to use. They do this with a variant of the Linux operating system, but the system can also be used with Windows XP if the user cares to go about buying and installing it. This is a great portable system for those who need to stay connected when traveling or just need a simple system for basic computing tasks but don't want a larger more expensive PC.
3. LED Backlighting
Flat panel displays are ubiquitous for a personal computer now. They of course were developed for portable computers but have migrated into the desktop market. Now portable flat panels are getting a boost with a new form of lighting. Previous florescent lighting was used behind the LCD panel. This is general low power but it has harmful chemicals and a limited lifespan. LED lighting is now being implemented and providing a greater life span and larger power savings than even the florescent backlit displays. The displays can also be thinner thus taking up less space. Some forms of LED backlighting can even create greater color depth than before. It is now widely used in many laptops and even starting to make its way into desktop displays.Intel's Core processor architecture has been a huge success and regained much of the market share they lost to AMD over the years. The P35 desktop chipset made a huge impact in the mainstream desktop market this year. The chipset offered a great level of performance and flexibility for Intel's processor lineup that was widely implemented by manufacturers. In fact, the performance from this chipset is so good, that it really overshadowed the X38 enthusiast chipset market. After all, why purchase a motherboard with a chipset that costs roughly twice as much for only a few additional features. About the only drawback to the P35 chipset is the lack of SLI support for NVIDIA graphics cards, but that only affects a small group of people.
When the first DirectX 10 graphics cards hit the market, consumers either had to choose from extremely expensive high end cards that rendered graphics at an extremely fast rate or a set of low end cards that supported the new graphics standard but with very limited performance. This left a large gap in the market. Thankfully both ATI and NVIDIA delivered superb graphics cards that filled in that large gap. The GeForce 8800 GT and the Radeon HD 3870 both offered a large amount of performance that wasn't as expensive or more than buying a desktop PC in the first place. Performance is so good on some of the new parts that they provide performance nearly on par with those costing almost twice as much.
