10 Best Services, Products and Technologies 1999-2009

As the year 2009 is drawing to a close, the traditional year-end reviews are starting to appear. PC Magazine has decided to lead off with a review of the past decade on the best services, products and technologies. It set the stage with a rehash of the state-of-the-art in 1999. It’s a quick trip down memory lane and the surprise of how much the technological landscape has changed since.

How’s your memory? The magazine’s review reminds us that the most common means of access to the Internet was via a 54Kbps dial-up modem which very seldom approached 50Kbps. The most popular operating system of the day was Windows 95. How many of us remember switching to Windows 98?

For references and news back then, we still depended on printed hard copies. Many families had a copy of Microsoft’s Encarta on a CD. Fax machines were still hot. As a matter of fact, its proliferation and the popularity of cellphones forced the addition of new area codes and introduced North America to 10-digit dialing.

Of course, cellphones were more or less strictly for making phone calls. Most people still carried a Day Timer. PDAs such as the Palm Pilot were just making their way into our lives. At that time, the general public had no idea what a MP3 file was nor have they heard of file-sharing.

For entertainment, the video tape was still going strong, as DVD players started to march into homes. For most computer users, CDs remained the backup medium of choice.

Here are PC Magazine’s choices of the 10 best services, products, and technologies for the decade between 1999 and 2009:

1. Google
2. Apple iPhone
3. Apple iPod
4. Facebook
5. Wi-Fi
6. Broadband Internet Access
7. TiVo
8. GPS
9. Windows XP
10. Apple iMac

Do you agree with PC Magazine’s selections? What are your selections? Is the e-book a game changer? What about the Netbook? Should the Nintendo Wii be on the list? Could we find room for the multi-core processor? How about the small device that makes all our handholds possible, flash memory?

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Tags: 1999, 1999-2009, 2009, advancement, Apple, Apple Inc., best, broadband, CD, cellphones, changes, choices, computers, consumers, Day Timer, decade, dial-up modem, DVD players, e-book, ebook, Encarta, Facebook, fax, file-sharing, flash memory, Google, GPS, iMac, Internet, iPhone, ipod, Microsoft, mp3, multi-core processor, Netbook, Nintendo Wii, Palm Pilot, PC Magazine, PDA, products, services, technology, TiVo, Top 10, video tape, Wi-Fi, WiFi, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 2:59 am and is filed under Science & Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.