Arthur C. Clarke once write “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” and I believe that applies more today than it ever has. It has been proven by the massive explosion of great new technologies released lately and it can be hard to tell if this is the panacea, or if there are still a few surprises ahead of us.

What seemed like a far fetched idea just a few years ago in the arena of consumer electronics, we are now using in our living rooms without giving it a second thought. Personal Digital Assistants were small devices that once handled our schedules, address books and took notes. Then they progressed to featuring touch screens, advanced operating systems and allowed wireless internet access for email and web browsing. They continued further to allowing portable music playing and
movie watching. Now we only have to look at recent developments in tablet PC technology, such as the Eee PC T91, the concept of which was pushed again to the Apple iPad.

Storage devices which, once upon a time, were the size of a washing machine holding mere megabytes (to give you an idea, they may have been able to hold one, yes one, small PowerPoint presentation, word processor document or only a handful of high resolution digital images). Now storage devices the size of the knuckle on your pinky finger can hold an entire library of books, hundreds of music files, thousands of digital images, several home movies with space left over to save a copy of important emails if you wanted to. Wouldn’t that have seemed like magic a mere 10-15 years ago?

However, that trip down memory lane has another purpose besides helping us to appreciate how far we have come on our digital journey. It is to tell you that all those years of progress have brought us some amazing devices, and that if you aren’t taking advantage of a few of these, you may well be losing money, time or both.

Take advantage of the new hard drives that will keep working even if they are accidentally bumped, use very little power and are impossible to “crash”. Use a tablet PC for computing on the run and working remotely or to occupy you for those long journeys. New network technologies allow full computing and internet access without wires, and some even allow completely free calls to anyone in the world. Contact family and friends with cheap video conferencing abilities and enjoy the full
benefits of modern personal computing.

Ready to see a magic show? Take a look at what technology can do for you and stop slaving away with obsolete, costly and slow devices. The future is here, right now and the show has just started. Enjoy.