A decade of Computeractive

2006
It’s a good job we’re mainly concerned with technology happenings here or we’d surely run out of room listing 2006’s wider-world rumblings.

To take a few examples, the solar system shrunk as Pluto was elbowed out, Steve Irwin got too close to a stingray and paid with his life and a huge rabbit was terrorising gardeners in Northumberland.

Back in the tech world, 2006 was the year of games consoles, with the Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and Playstation 3 all hoping to damage gamers’ thumbs.

Actually, that statement carries a couple of inaccuracies. The Xbox 360 was in fact launched just before Christmas 2005, while Nintendo had no interest in generating repetitive thumb injuries: the Wii’s novel controllers would allow people to interact by thrashing their arms around instead.

Back then, Sony’s Playstation was market leader by a country mile, prompting many commentators to question the wisdom of Microsoft pumping yet more cash into the lacklustre Xbox brand.

The commercial chances of the Wii, meanwhile, were all but written off, thanks to its silly name and behind-the-times graphics. This goes to show how long two years can be in this game.

Christmas 2007 saw parents throwing punches at one another in a desperate effort to secure the last Wii on shop shelves (surely not the kind of arm-flailing Nintendo had in mind). The Xbox 360 came in second, while unsold Playstation 3 stocks continue to pile up all around.

Fortunately for us, we spotted the Wii’s potential and declared that it offered “pick-up-and-play fun in spades”. The Xbox 360, meanwhile, offered the ability to play PC-based video and music on your television using its Media Center Extender feature.

As for the Playstation, we concluded that it “has a lot of convincing to do”. Two years on, we have no cause to feel differently. We still want one though.

2005
While we’re fond of a tipple at Computeractive HQ (after work, of course) even we lacked the stamina to keep up with the latest change to the UK’s leisure hours with the introduction of 24-hour licensing.

While we were praying for last orders, Prince Charles married Camilla, Pope John Paul II passed away, Doctor Who returned to TV and the whole world became strangely obsessed by a decades-old puzzle game called sudoku.

Video sharing was also a watchword of 2005, with the launch of Youtube. Admittedly, distributing videos via the internet wasn’t exactly a new idea ­ we showed Computeractive readers how to do it back in 1999 ­ but Youtube made it extremely easy and accessible. Just a few months after its launch, tens of millions of people were using Youtube every day.