The PC becomes a ‘brainier’ magic box of tricks

So you think your PC provides enough “oomph” for you today.

Why would you need extra performance anyway?

Well, look back over time and you’ll have your answer.

Could you wait 30 minutes to load one application?

Would you cope with having to hit four keys just to underline a word or start a new paragraph?

Could you do without video, music and wireless access to the internet?

Many of the things you take for granted today would prove painful or even impossible on a three to four year old PC.

Watching High Definition (HD) internet TV and video with smooth playback or running multiple programmes at the same time might prove to be some of those things you take for granted.

Back in the days in 2006, video streaming and HD did not matter that much.

These days a lot of information we exchange is image-based.

Today’s multi-media computers bring this virtual world to colourful life.

On today’s PCs based on an Intel Core i7 mobile processor HD video is over three times faster than its distant cousins of 2006.

Your life does not move at one constant pace.

If you’re not racing against deadlines at the office, you might be helping the children finish homework or sharing photos and videos from vacation on Facebook and Twitter.

The dramatic changes the PC has undergone in the past four decades are the result of the exponential growth of the computer’s “brains” called the microprocessor.

The PC has transitioned from a complex tool for geeks to a magic box of tricks for everybody.

The future possibilities are endless.

Intel’s researchers are working on a number of ways to advance computing, from technology that cuts the power cord and keeps devices charged wirelessly for continuous power to an immersive and realistic 3-D internet at your fingertips and technology that can literally read your mind.

So look ahead and think where you’d like the next performance improvement to take you.

Take a trip through the decades and see how far we’ve come and also where we are going.

The 1970s

The birth of the personal computer took place in its many wonderful, weird and sometimes immensely impractical forms.

The Intel 4004 computer microprocessor took all of the parts that made a computer think and put them on one chip for the first time ever in 1975.

Dr Martin Cooper developed the first cellular phone on April 3, 1973; the Motorola DynaTAC phone was nine inches long, five inches wide and 1.75 inches thick.

The 1980s

The Apple Mac, a perennial consumer favourite, made its debut in 1984.

It came with built-in audio, a draw and word programme, chess game and a spreadsheet among others.

The 1990s

Tim Berners-Lee develops a new technique for distributing information on the Internet —giving birth to the World Wide Web, or as we know it today, ‘www’ (1990).

The “dot-com bubble”, a speculative bubble from 1995 to 2000, saw the value of stock markets in industrialised nations rise rapidly from growth in the relatively new Internet sector and related fields.

The noughties

Online shopping took off in 2001.

About 2.1 billion people were online worldwide.

YouTube, a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos was launched by three former PayPal employees in 2005.

Face book also surfaced, encouraging the rise of social media to become a huge trend involving millions of users sharing fun and personal information online.

Smart phones, the third generation of mobile technology, enabled additional multimedia features.

Email, internet, and data transfer became a standard feature.

Mr Bajaber is Country Manager, Intel Corporation - Kenya.