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Written by Tony Phelps
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Wednesday, 04 January 2006 |
2006 is upon us. What will we see across the IT landscape this year?
More of the same, with occasional surprises. While destructive viruses appear to be losing ground, spyware and trojans are on the increase. Reportedly 40% of spam is now issued by personal or business computers that have been taken over and recruited to a 'botnet' (ie. a network of robots that do as commanded by the distant controller). So make sure that your computer has effective anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall software that is kept up-to-date at least weekly and preferably daily (those lucky Apple users don't need to worry so much of course).
Google continues to develop and widen its services, to the extent that is fast becoming Microsoft's arch enemy. No longer just a search engine, you can use Google to find particular images (Google Images), view and zoom in on the planet from space (Google Earth), search only in books (Google Books) – and rumour has it that they may even provide online word processing and similar facilities. Keep an eye on Google and try out their services, and expect more in the coming months.
Hardware seems to have plateaued a bit lately, so processor speeds and other computer components no longer seem to be leapfrogging in capacity quite so quickly. But 2006 is expected to see the increasing up-take of multi-core processors, where 2 or more processors are combined onto a single chip. The theory (and proven practice) being that this allows a computer to split its work into multiple tasks for simultaneous work and so get it done significantly faster.
This in turn is expected to lead to the increasing popularity of “64-bit” Windows – we're all happy using 32-bit Windows, the 64-bit version will be able to take full advantage of multi-core processors but comes with all sorts of compatibility problems. And speaking of Windows, watch out for the complete overhaul and revamp – named Vista, it will be a major update and improvement, apparently. But probably not something to rush to the shops for, wait for the first wave of bugs to be found and corrected.
Finally, why bother with Microsoft at all? The Linux operating system is getting easier to use and better at doing stuff every month – try the Ubuntu version, available free (go to ubuntu.org and they'll even send you the CD for free) for one of the best packages. A legal, free replacement for Windows that also includes a wealth of other facilities such as the OpenOffice word processor, spreadsheet, presentation and database set, email, internet browser, music player, etc etc. Watch for developments in the battle of Microsoft vs Open Source. You might even want join the fray yourself.
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