These companies will undoubtedly change the way we use our computers and devices.

These companies will undoubtedly change the way we use our computers and devices.

Making a prediction is a tricky affair. You take the best information you have, weigh it against your gut feelings, and compare every shred of data you have about the past to get an idea of where things are headed. A year ago, CHIP made five predictions for 2009. It’s the right time to refresh those, but before moving ahead we’re going to measure our own past performance.  Just for perspective, the world was very different in December last year: no one really understood how the global economy would melt down, the world was generally in good spirits, and things looked very bright indeed. That said, on to our results!

First off, we said the Windows 7 launch would be a major event. The only possible hitch would have been a postponement like Vista launch, but things played out very smoothly. Excitement ran high this entire year, and the launch was greeted with universal cheering. Users seem to love it, hardware makers are shouting about it to anyone who will listen, and Microsoft must be very pleased with itself indeed. Whether all this was a triumph of technology or PR, our prediction came true. We’ll give ourselves this point.

Second, we said home networking would take off. While media streaming isn’t too hot just yet, pretty much everyone with a laptop has installed Wi-Fi at home and is sharing files and broadband access between multiple PCs. TVs and multimedia hard drives with Ethernet connections became commonly known this year but photo frames are still novelties. We’ll say this prediction came true too.

Third, we said LCDs would become ubiquitous in 2009, and there’s no way this was wrong! They’re everywhere! Barely any CRTs are available in the market, and even then they have zero price advantage. We got everything right except pricing, which we said would remain flat. Today, even full HD 22-inch monitors cost less than Rs 10,000. That aside, we’ll mark this one as a success as well.

We hit a rough patch with the fourth prediction: 3G. Had the government cleared all the hurdles lying in operators’ ways, we might have been able to say this came true. But we also said that mobile operators would finally usher in good broadband at decent prices, which has come true in the form of high-speed dongles, if not 3G on cellphones. Today, laptop users with broadband dongles provided by cellular operators are a common sight, and fixed-wire ISPs have responded by offering better speeds. This leaves us scraping half a point, though not because the technology didn’t come through.

Our last prediction was that solid-state drives would become economically viable for mainstream users, and storage would move beyond the PC and into the personal network or cloud. Ouch, that first part just never happened! But the second part is quite true. External storage is booming like never before, and online cloud storage is not an alien concept at all. This gives us another half point.

And so we score 80 percent in total. Not perfect, but not too shabby at all! This year we put a slightly different spin on our peek into the future by focusing on six blockbuster technology companies. Each one has an arsenal ready to unleash upon the world in 2010, and will undoubtedly be responsible for massive shakeups in the way we use our computers and devices. From cloud computing to supercharged Web browsers; incredible graphics power to hybrid CPUs, the year ahead already looks like it will give us plenty to get excited about!