Hitting the hi-tech wall

WHAT HAPPENS when you've got an overabundance of tech wizardry to do the job?

The digital photo space is foreshadowing the coming ugliness in the PC world. On the other hand, the PC world is pretty ugly right now as a stand-alone model.

Kodak's new inkjet printers underline how home print technology has hit an apex. Kodak executives aren't getting dragged into a p*ssing contest about dots per inch or pixels per byte or number of colours of ink fetishism, it's all about "photo print quality," period. Kodak feels eminently comfortable that a five-colour ink cartridge is more than sufficient to deliver 4 x 6 photos that are, in the words of Kodak CEO Antonio M. Perez, as good or better than what you can get from a dedicated professional shop. So now they're going to get into an ink price war that's likely to rattle everyone's teeth and make print-happy consumers print-happier.

On the camera side, cramming in more megapixels into a camera looks like a losing proposition in the consumer space (CONSUMER, not professional, CONSUMER). Over at the New York Times, David Pogue has taken on the "megapixel myth" of more pixels means a better camera while also plugging the debut of his TV series.

Pogue conducted two different tests with pictures taken at three different resolutions and blown up to 16 by 24 enlargements. In the second test, with photos taken at 7, 10, and 16.7 megapixels by a professional photographer with a professional camera (A 16.7 MP Canon EOS) only three out of 50 test subjects could identify which photos were the "best" resolution. (Regrettably, Pogue didn't provide data on the age, eyesight, or professions of said test subjects; I'm betting the three who did correctly match photos to resolutions were young, had good eyes, and/or were in the graphics arts business).

The PC, be it laptop or desktop, is coming up to the same dead-end of "More ain't better" in the consumer space. Dual-core is here and quad-core processors will be available by the end of the year, but exploitable by current OS and software? No. Windows Vista is an upgrade of force, not of choice for buyers. Nobody's knocking themselves over to upgrade out of Windows XP. Will virgin copies of XP become hot commodities on EBay this autumn?

Ironically, laptop manufacturers are trying to squeeze profits out of "big" and "small" machines as their middle-of-the-road models continue to fall in price. Big laptops mean 17-and 19-inch monitors, dual hard drives, HD-DVD support, and other whistles to pump up the sticker. Small machines end up being handcrafted, under four-pound wonders with screens that are 14 inches or less.

The smaller the screen, the larger the price tag, so it seems. Look at the baseline oqo version 2 computer. It's got a 30GB drive, Windows XP, a VIA 1.2GHz low-power CPU, a five-inch display and 512MB of RAM in a tiny little case 5.6 inches(W) x 3.3in(H) x 1.0in(D). Buying one will set you back $1500 and you have to wait anywhere from six to ten weeks to get it. Interesting, yes?

About the only significant innovations you'll hear manufacturers brag about over the next twelve months is how much more "green" their machines are, as they work on cutting back how many watts the things suck down in operation and on stand-by mode. Look for at least one or two of them to rip off (or license) design features from the "One Laptop Per Child" effort. µ