Over at Crunchgear, John Biggs asks, "Are we headed into an era of dumb tech?" I'd like to think we are. He asks the question on the heels of Cisco paying a half-billion dollars for the lowest of the low-end video camera makers, Flip Video.
I was glad to read him saying what I've been preaching for several years now, that computer stuff is good enough now -- hardware, software, and accessories.
After a decade of unparalleled one-upmanship -- the gigahertz race, the megapixel race, the storage race -- we are now hitting a wall. The devices we own are small enough, fast enough, and hold enough data to suit us now until 2012, thank you, so we’ll sit this next iteration of the Intel Xaphod chip out, thank you.
We first got the glimmer of our new Era of Good Enough when Asus shipped the first netbook in late 2007. I chortled over the outrage expressed by ceos of large computer companies when they began to realized the low-cost threat. They responded by producing under-spec'd netbooks, but that's another story.
Another glimmer was a poll that showed that most people want a cell phone that makes calls and stores phone numbers. That's not the kind of cell phone we are being sold.
I was amazed at the abilities of my first digital camera, purchased in 1999. Since then, I have become dismayed with the Race to Maximize the Number of Meaningless Features -- 17 scene modes, three options for shutter sounds, customized background images for the LCD on startup, mega-megapixel sensors. Who needs it; who wants it.
These sorts of meaning features are added, because they are cheap and easy to add. For instance, I am close to buying a new digital camera. Not because I want a new one, but because my 3-megapixel Canon S1is fried its sensor. You'll read in camera reviews about the drawback of 10-megapixel cameras -- they create muddy images because of pixel-packing. My defunct 3-megapixel unit took wonderfully clear photos; I've even enlarged one to 3'x4' for our family room.
As we were being ignored by three salesmen behind the otherwise free-of-customers camera counter at FutureShop last night, I pointed out to my daughter the most important feature on the Canon SX10 I am considering: it has a maximum aperture of f2.8. The similar camera from Fuji maxed out at around f5.6.
(We finally got the attention of the salesmen when I suggested my daughter pick up the Canon DSLR to feel its weight. The action made the theft alarm go off, and made the salesmen now notice us.)
Cameras are not about megapixels anymore. The two primary fields of improvement are in increasing the aperture and the ISO. And those are hard to improve.
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