In Pictures: 2011, A Year In Review
In Pictures: 2011, A Year In Review
By
A Look Back At The Year In Tech
We've seen quite a bit over the past 12 months: skyrocketing hard drive prices, the passing of several technology greats, and of course a slew of new products, from processors and graphics to kick-ass games.
Not everything that hit our labs was as great as we had hoped. While technology always marches forward, we had our share of disappointments, too. Even still, we're hoping for even more exciting news in 2012. But before we ring in the New Year, let's take a look back at some of the major events, people, and products that affected the technology world in 2011.
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We also appreciate the removal/blocking/banning of the stupid adds in the comments. Bravo to the tech team on that one!
Looking forward to 2012! Keep up the good work!
(its a clock, a very cool one
We also appreciate the removal/blocking/banning of the stupid adds in the comments. Bravo to the tech team on that one!
Looking forward to 2012! Keep up the good work!
If I were to boil it down to what impacted the tech industry the most, I'd bring it down to these points:
- Memory prices way down, HDD prices way up. While the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami was likewise a very tragic disaster and more costly, (in both lives and dollars) it's the Thai floods that really punched tech in the gut, spiking our HDD prices, and eating up all the savings we got from unprecedented DRAM price drops.
- Intel finally makes Nehalem worthwhile with the 2500K. In all honesty, the Nehalem i5s and i7s just weren't appealing enough, given all the drawbacks and controversy with them originally, to have made them a solid choice. The 2500K, (and 2600K to a lesser extent) changed that, by giving both excellent overclocking capability, as well as perhaps the best higher-end price-for-performance ratio since Intel's Wolfdale-core E8400... From four years ago.
- Bulldozer finally releases; isn't a bust, but many disappointed. For such hype, it did fail to deliver: the next "Athlon64 vs. Preshot" was what most wound up trumpeting it as. With a slight apparent decrease in per-clock power, it was leapt upon and torn to shreds. Still, given all considerations, it perhaps shows a lot of promise... Let's just hope AMD can scale it quickly, including getting out the 3.9 GHz 8170 soon. (and possibly a 4.2 GHz 8190 might not be too much to ask for, given 5.0 GHz isn't out of the question for 8150s with decent air)
- Dennis Ritchie Dies. Oh, and a number of other pioneers, particularly Daniel McCracken and John McCarthy, also died... If Steve Jobs' death meant anything to the tech industry, it was more perhaps as a sign that Apple would, in all likelihood, start contracting and eventually return to their obscurity during the non-Jobs era of the 1990s.
- Android (and iOS) devices set fire. Smartphones and tablets have gone, at first, from niche devices, and just until last year, were still more "premium." Now, smartphones are practically considered "standard," even for the non-technically inclined.
Click the "View comments on the forums" link that appears at the top of the comments section. There, you'll be able to edit your comments. Of course, it may feel a little cumbersome, but you shouldn't need to edit repeatedly. The only real downside is that it only works for Tom's Hardware: on Tom's Guide, (which a lot of article links on the front page go to) you can't edit your posts there for some reason.
*respect*
El psy congroo.
Ha. You'd be surprised by the amount of editing that goes into an article. You can thank our grand pooba and Editor in Chief, Chris Angelini for doing a great job on that end. Be sure to follow him on twitter if you want an active role in shaping our future articles or need one on one PC advice (@chris_angelini).
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
Well I certainly wouldn't fault Apple for the focus on Steve. That's really the media's problem. For all of Apple's problems, it's still an interesting company producing excellent products. I'd actually point to Steve's interview with Gates, and Mossberg, which was pretty darn insightful. Jobs admitted that Apple was a software company! Some of us in the lab are programmers or video editors, so we use Macs and PCs. There's certainly room for both in this world.
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
Yup it's a Nixie clock counting down to midnight.
Cheers,
Andrew Ku
TomsHardware.com
I also am glad to be a part to the Tom's Hardware community. Looking forward to an exciting 2012!
What, Tom's Guide has comments? Or just in the forums? I've never really seen anything when scrolling down, if it's really just forum, please make a comments section like this one.
Or Modern Warfare 3.
i specially hate the read more/read less button.