For those who know a bit of my history, I wrote for Digital Life, The Straits Times from early 2002 to 2008 reviewing products from mobile phones such as Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola and Sony-Ericsson, laptops, security products, hard disk back up systems and of course video cams and digital cameras just to name a few. Thanks to Mr Alfred Siew, I got to think I have lived a high life, changing my mobile phones and other gadgets every now and then, testing them to my hearts content and then write an article to show people what they will be missing out (or won’t be missed at all if they buy it). Through this part of my life, I got to know brands like Le Mon (no…not lemon but Le Mon and say it with some french flair). I also got to know a lot of things that an IT/Business Graduate like me won’t get to see if I am just a sales guy trying to sell IT stuff and peripherals.
It is due to this chapter of life too, that I have come to realised that IT stuff can really be mis-sold. One can never have enough megabytes of RAM or multiple cores of processing power but what’s most important is to ask oneself this question, “Is the gadget I have in my hands, able to do the things well at a fair price?”. In all product life cycle, there will always be a plateau where majority of the gadgets’ will be and that’s where the telco and IT industry supports the consumer best.
For example. 4G or what we call LTE is a very new technology that iPad3 has it. Problem is this: One pays a lot of money to get new technology and pays even more through subscription but the value proposition it got from the purchase is just that wee bit of speed and power that will be superceded within months (not even a year). For example I got people who buy a super duper quad core i7 intel chipped PC with 8GB of RAM that hooks up to 4 monitors only to find in a matter of months, a more efficient and faster chip will be introduced, thereby slashing the price of that rig by couple of hundreds of dollars easily. And to what end? That wee bit of performance improvement. I just don’t understand why people would be complaining about a slow start up, spoiling one’s mood while banging the table and then spend hundreds of dollars just to see Windows start up be done in under a minute? What’s the problem of switching on the PC and let it load up while one takes a shower or make a cup of coffee and then when one’s business is finished and return to the desk, the PC is ready for you to do work on.
Or the very fact that the latest CS6 do not need the super duper rig just to do some picture editing. Heck even a Photoshop 7 (yes that is CS ZERO by the way) can do over 90% of the things I need to do for photo editing with a NETBOOK. So why do we need CS6? It seems Adobe knows that and bring about Lightroom which is a good thing BTW :).
Ranting aside, the fact is that technology will move on and sooner or later the content will dictate the device one needs to use. I for one am glad that Android/iOS has taken over the mobile computing arena as it is always on and I can access stuff very fast. One that end I am not very keen on Windows 8. Mobile computing meant to be accessed quickly and waiting for Windows 8 to start up (or even from sleep) is not very helpful. If the current trends continue, very soon Chrome books will merge with Android phones to be the mobile computing powerhouse IF the mobile broadband performance matches our expectation a wee bit (yes nearly all the telco in Singapore is not doing a good job at the moment. I wonder what would happened if WiMax as supported by Creative gets its way). Now that’s the thing we all want to know. What would be the future of mobile computing and communications? That’s the reason why Unwired conference series was born.
Held over last Thursday, Unwired 2012, the third of the series, strives to make known the future trends of mobile computing, including back haul networking developments to consumer electronics. Amongst those who attended were Mr Leong Mun Yuen CTO of IDA, Mr Mock Pak Lum CTO of Starhub, Mr Christian Cadeo of Google, Jonathan Wong of Microsoft, Mr Jason Tan of HP, Mr Winston Goh of Samsung and other distinguished guests who gave their candid views on topics such as Cloud Computing apps and services, Back Haul management of Mobile Computing and User Interface for consumer products.
Although I was there as the official photographer, it was also a treat for me since I am also into all things gadget (plus I am into networking and security too). Good to know what to expect before buying my tablet this coming Thursday before Travel Thru’ The Lens: Bangkok Dangerous trip. Below are some of the shots taken by me and Jasmine Wang.
Dr Tan Guan Hong, Mr Leong Mun Yuen & Mr Alfred Siew
Mr Leong providing the opening speech
Mr Colin Miles doing what we all do best, updating our status using our phones.
Mr Cadeo sharing a light moment.
Mr Mock passing the baton..err… mic.
Mr Aled Tein sharing his view on using Wi-Fi to offload Mobile traffic.
A lot to absorb.
Q&A Session
Showing off their phones: Mr Ngair Teow Hin, Mr Aaron Tan, Mr Winston Goh (with Samsung Galaxy SIII), Mr Jonathan Wong (With Nokia Lumia) and Mr Danny Adamopoulous (Motorola)
Chilling out after work!
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