The Computer Buzz

April 9th, 2009

Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory
 

Convergence: Tomorrow is Today

Tom is ready to head home from work. He calls home on his cell phone. The driveway security camera shows that his wife Ashley's car is in the drive. Panning around Tom sees Junior mowing the front yard and the dog tied at the side of the house. Tom switches to the backyard camera finding his teenage daughter sunning herself on a lounge chair. The kitchen camera shows Ashley unloading a grocery bag on the countertop.

Ashley looks at the camera. "OK James Bond, spying again?” Tom sheepishly hits the VC button on his phone and his face appears on the kitchen monitor. "No, I'm leaving the office and want to know if you need me to pick up anything." "Maybe," she chirped, "I am making a new dish for dinner and I think I might have forgotten something." As she spoke she poked the touch screen. The screen split with Tom on one side and Ashley's menus on the other. "Feta cheese, I forgot the Feta. Would you pick it up on your way home?" "Sure," said Tom, “I'm on my way."

The Greek casserole was a big hit. It was Tom's turn to select the dinner music and both Candy and Junior grumped about the music of Credence Clearwater Revival pulsing through the home theater surround sound system.

After dinner Tom and Ashley adjourned to the living room to watch the episode of "Desperate Housewives" they missed while boating last Sunday. Tom reminisced, "Remember when we had Cable TV?” "Oh yeah," said Ashley. "If you missed a show and failed to record it you were SOL. With everything now on the Internet we can watch any show any time."

"Same with movies," said Tom. "We can watch any movie with the click of a button. Our home theater with five foot screen and surround sound system gives us the stadium theater experience so we don't need to spend $30 for tickets and popcorn plus the gas money it costs to get there."

Ashley nodded "Speaking of money, how about the fact that we don't pay for local or long distance phone calls, telephone lines or cable TV any more, only our broad band Internet hookup."

Tom sighed. "Think of all the space we've saved by dumping the slide projector, carrousels, photo albums, DVD players and TIVO box. Now our slides, home movies, photos and genealogy files are organized and at our fingertips. And don't forget that we also dumped three printers because, with our home network, the really nice color laser printer in the den and everything else is accessible from anywhere in our house."

"The theme music makes our presentations so much more enjoyable." added Ashley "But I think the most important thing is knowing that all of those priceless memories are completely and safely backed up on the Internet. We don't need to ever worry about losing them by theft, flood, fire or earthquake. I really like that."

The technology to accomplish what is described above has been around for quite a while but it has been expensive and complex to install. That is changing rapidly. With the release of Microsoft Windows 7 and the merciful death of Vista this fall, we expect home theater/network installations to explode. You will need a good solid network server with plenty of storage ($800 to $1000) and someone to help you set everything up. We will have both, so get ready.