David Court

Laptop: Dell Inspiron 1545

Admittedly, I wasn’t breaking any records with my laptop choice in 2009.

The Dell Inspiron 1545 is, and was, about as middle-ofthe-road laptop you can buy. It was a good allrounder with, importantly for me at the time, a built-in DVD player.

I thought nothing of its hefty 2.6kg weight but was instead wooed by the size of its display and hard drive. It took a full two minutes to boot. On a good day.

Today I am using Apple’s new MacBook Air. Comparing the two side-by-side is almost cruel. The 0.61-inch and 1.25kg MacBook is half the weight and size of the Inspiron.

Its 1.6GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB RAM and 128GB SSD are also a total mismatch.

The biggest difference, however, is what the laptop industry has said goodbye to. My Dell Inspiron 1545 featured a DVD player, removable battery, Express Card slot, HDMI, S-Video output, VGA, Ethernet and 4x USB ports.

The new MacBook Air has only three holes. A 3.5mm headphone jack and two Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C) ports.

Births and deaths

It’s been a brutal 10 years for some technologies.

DVD/Blu-ray players have been widely replaced by online streaming. The compact digital camera has been swallowed by smartphones. As have satnavs. Spotify has killed the iPod and other MP3 players. This list goes on.

The next 10 years belongs to the Internet of Things. Connectivity is the future. We’re still at the very early stages of the technology, with the likes of Google Home and Amazon Echo leading the way. ‘‘Google, clean my house’’ or ‘‘Alexa, make my breakfast’’ is where we’re heading.

Which is a good thing, right?