Five years of CNET Australia: Computer retrospective

By Craig Simms on 05 August 2009

Five years is a long time in the realm of technology.

We've witnessed technology evolve, categories and companies born and die, massive fails and amazing hail Marys shift and change the shape of the industry.

In just five years, laptops have overtaken desktops in terms of the preferred computing device, and it looks like smartphones will eventually do the same in the near future.

We have moved from the idea that more performance is better at the local level, to accepting less performance at the user end and relying on internet services and servers to fill the gap, paving the way for netbooks and lower performance, but thinner laptops.

Australia even managed to get itself sorted out and onto ADSL2+ in selected regions, and get itself in line for a new, fibre-based broadband network, which is planned to bring high speed internet to the majority of the nation — although it could be some time before this is met, and it remains to be seen if it's up to scratch.

Join us as we stroll through our archives, bringing up the highlights and lowlights of the computer industry of the last five years...

The year is 2004. Centrino did not yet exist. Dell's Inspiron wasn't a desktop, but a laptop. The Inspiron 700m cost AU$2098 for a Pentium M 1.8GHz, 512MB RAM, a 60GB hard drive and the small luxury of a DVD burner.

While performance has gone up massively since then, by and large ultraportables are still between one and two kilograms in weight. Thin and light laptops at the time were considered between two and three kilograms though, with Apple's MacBook Air, Lenovo's X301 and MSI's X-Slim X340 decimating that figure to under 1.5kg in 2008-2009.

Sony had also put out its first desktop dual-layer DVD burner in 2004, at an affordable AU$299. In the coming years it would eventually outsource its business to Taiwanese vendor LiteOn, and as of today a DVD burner can be picked up for as little as AU$40.

(Credit: Dell/Sony)

Topics: retrospective, cnet, five years, feats and failures, 5th birthday, credit, years, apple, laptop, 2009

Related Articles

Comments (1)

  • Laimo commented on 07/08/2009 11:03 Report abuse

    Happy 5th Birthday CNET Au :)

    Thanks for the many independent reviews that have helped a lot of us buy tech gear without the added pressures of a salesman.

    Best wishes for the next 5 years and beyond!

Post your own comment

You must read and type the 6 chars within 0..9 and A..F

You must read and type the 6 chars within 0..9 & A..F

Submit

Enter your personal information to the left, or sign in with your Facebook account by clicking the button below.

Connect

The Explain Series

Must read