10. Windows Vista – I’ve written about Windows Vista in the past and expressed both high anticipation and actual slight let down. Several months later, my thoughts have changed little and I find frustration with third parties’ lack of mature support for devices and peripherals. Look for Vista to really take off around this year’s holiday shopping season as vendors catch up.

9. Broadband Internet – A real war has being brewing amongst DSL and Cable TV providers over your internet service which can mean only good things for consumers. Look for prices to drop as the big telephone and cable TV companies scramble to ramp up speeds and bundle added value.

8. VOIP – I’ve wanted to write an article on voice over IP for a while, but I will introduce it here and go in depth in the future. Basic voice telephony services have become a commodity and countless companies can offer you cheap long distance service. But how about totally free calls to anywhere in the country? VOIP promises to revolutionize the way you use a phone, but mass use is still a few years away. Keep an eye out for this one.

7. Solid State Hard Drives – Your next laptop will most likely have one. Expect blazing fast access times when booting your computer and loading applications, along with improved battery life and efficiency. I can’t wait for these to pick up and compete with traditional magnetic hard drives. They are still a few years away, but they will be revolutionary in the mobile computing world.

6. Alternative Fuel – This doesn’t directly relate to the computing world, but awareness of global warming and climate change have sparked a debate over the best way to power our lives. Fossil fuels are very outdated in my opinion and why not improve the way we interact with the environment if we have the technology?

5. Virtualization – Along the lines of energy conservation, virtualization will greatly reduce the amount of energy required to run our business systems. Instead of multiple servers each specializing in a certain task, and being under utilized as processing power exponentially increases, servers can now be consolidated and a single server can theoretically be turned into many.

4. Apple – I’ve had to privilege of working with an Apple MacBook lately and have been very impressed. In the past, I’ve always been anti-Apple and never really gave them a chance to see what they could do. But with the unbelievable success of the iPod, they must be doing something right, and their products really prove it.

3. Fiber Optics – Expect to see more choices in high speed connectivity for your home. Enterprises have been relying on fiber optic technology to provide incredible high speed, ultra reliable connections between locations for many years now, and the home user is finally able to get a taste. The internet runs on fiber optics, so it’s a natural transition over traditional copper lines. The key word will be speed. The way entertainment content enters our homes will be vastly different when fiber finally becomes mainstream.

2. Google – Have you ever thought about how much you rely on Google everyday? I know personally without it, using the internet would be much more difficult. Look for Google to either take off and become the next Microsoft and dominate the computing world, or look for competitors to try to take them out slowly. I would personally like to see more from Google in their software development. They’ve mastered the search engine, but in the future, I see them entering more into the desktop space and offering possibly an operating system and office suite.

1. High Definition – The days of the old tube based television are numbered. Your next television will be based on the latest standard called High Definition which boasts amazing picture quality. Today’s current standard television signal will give you 480 lines of resolution, while HD can display up to 1080 lines. Take a moment to stop into an electronics retailer and check out the HDTV section and you will be amazed. In a few years, the government will force television broadcasters to beam an HD signal into your home, and cable TV and satellite providers have been offering HD programming for a short while already. Look for HD to really take over and change the way you watch television. Also, movies will shift from the current DVD format to HD format. It’s an exciting time in the world of home entertainment and it will only get better.