2002

2002 was an interesting year for computing. The internet bubble had definitely burst and companies died and merged all over the place. IT changed most severely, dropping from the favored ones all the way down to overhead, and expensive overhead at that.

Corporate belt tightening - During 2002, virtually all corporations decided to curtail their IT spending, to cut back on virtually everything. IT hiring remained frozen or even retreated, projects were delayed or canceled, and salespeople became extremely desperate. The good news: those corporations that did have money to spend found, to their delight, that it was definitely a buyers market.

Hiring Freeze - For years it was common knowledge that the best, most highly paid career was in IT. And for years IT people lived the dream, and received huge raises, constant job offers, massive benefits and insane stock options. That had already stopped by the time 2002 arrived, and this year found IT people in massive oversupply. For the first time in years, computer programmers found themselves out of favor and looking for work. 

Cheap PCs - I believe that one of the most important events of 2002 was the tremendous drop in price of computing power, combined with a huge increase in performance and space. I've seen very nice PCs selling for under $500, and even Linux boxes for the home selling for under $300. This allows more people to have the ability to access the internet.

Disk space explosion - Ten years ago, I could never have imagined owning almost a terabyte of disk storage in my apartment! At work, our disk space on our servers is approaching 20 terabytes! Not only was the space dirt cheap, but with the new networked disk drives (just plug them into the Ethernet and you've got instant storage) it's so incredibly simple.

Wireless starts coming of age - I've been looking at wireless technology for years, waiting for it to become cost effective, error free and actually useful. This year, in my mind, it started to take off. I now have a Blackberry which I use to read email (receives them immediately, several hundred messages a day), a wireless mouse and keyboard, and we have installed a secure wireless network in all of our stores. Wireless is still not mature (lots of security issues), but it has moved from the arena of geeks and computer nerds and has actually become useful.

Windows grows up - I spent much of the year 2002 upgrading my office network to Windows 2000 server and Windows XP desktop, and I have upgraded all of my home computers as well. Combined with active directory, I find myself very happy, for the first time, with the Windows operating system, network and the associated products (Office 2000, Biztalk and so on). The stability, performance and return-on-investment is now excellent, although I, like everyone else, was terribly annoyed with Microsoft new licensing strategy.

USB becomes useful - In 2002, I have finally started to see the old, legacy connectors (parallel and serial) begin to become useless appendages. Before this year, I always found it necessary (at home and work) to ensure that each computer had a com port and a parallel port. This is no longer necessary - just about everything is USB these days, and I love it. My wife has a dozen devices attached to her computer, from two printers to a scanner to a graphics tablet. With XP's excellent plug-and-play capabilities, adding new devices has moved from a chore to a simple task.

The death of free services - This year I've watched free service after free service die or become trimmed to uselessness. In my mind, this is a very good evolution, as these free services were all paid for by advertising, which has tended to warp the internet into a vast marketing machine. As the free services disappear, it has actually become easier to find useful services at a good price, with excellent customer service.

The growth of broadband - I cannot imagine working on the internet using a modem anymore. I have grown spoiled by a 6megabit DSL connection. Throughout the year, I've seen more and more people sign up for cable or DSL access to the internet, and each person's life has changed as a result. I believe this will result in some incredible changes over the coming decade as it becomes trivial for people to communicate with anyone on the planet at any time.

And some of the more hyped, least important events of the year:

MSN and AOL wars - Probably the most overhyped, least important non-event of 2002 was the release of the next version of these two systems. These services remind me of the constant flow of new Office releases: the products already do what people want, so why are the new versions necessary? More and more features, more (and smaller) buttons and the kitchen sink do not necessarily mean the products are more desirable.

New browser wars - I don't know about most people, but I have found that Internet Explorer suits my needs just fine. It works, it's fast and it supports virtually all web sites without error. I've tried Netscape 7 and Opera, and to tell you the truth, I am just not impressed. Give these two a couple of years and they may be up to where IE is today...

Linux on the desktop - Every year it seems someone announces that Linux is going to take over the desktop, and 2002 was no exception. With the advent of $200 and $300 home computers running Linux, this is finally within reach. It didn't happen in 2002, but perhaps in 2003 or 2004? Time will tell.

Microsoft's legal woes - This circus brought back memories of the OJ Simpson trials: it was just a big media circus, more of a joke than anything else. We, the public, were left wondering: was Microsoft guilty or not? Oen thing that we all knew for certain, it was definitely entertaining. Personally, I believe that Microsoft received billions of dollars of free advertising from this fiasco, and emerged far stronger after the trials than before.

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