2011: Looking back, looking forward

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Jennifer Scott, assistant news editor

High of 2010

For me, the high of 2010 was the launch of the HTC Desire. I had been flailing around with sub-standard Nokias for a really long time until I got my hands on one of these gorgeous devices on the day it launched.

As well as the handset looking sleek and beautiful, it was my first introduction to the joy that is Google’s Android mobile operating system.

I have played with a lot of my phones over the past year at IT PRO but, for me, Android is miles ahead of the others. Shipping with version 2.1 and speeding up with 2.2 a few months later, I found it to be the best when it comes to usability whilst still having a great open source philosophy.

Although I look longingly at updated versions of my device, I still feel I got my heart’s desire with this purchase.

Low of 2010

My biggest low of this year came right at the start when the acquisition of Sun Microsystems to Oracle went through.

Despite campaigners fighting against it and regulators kicking up a fuss, Larry Ellison managed to get his mitts on a company I really did adore. In fact, I am still a little uneasy about what will happen to it in the future.

As well as the great philosophy it had with Java, Sun Microsystems had fantastic hardware. Yes, the company was failing to bring in the bucks but I was hoping for a more suitable candidate with a similar way of thinking rather than Oracle which seemed to have a one track mind to take out its competitor – MySQL.

To give Oracle credit, it has put more effort into the hardware than many imagined and the name of Sun still holds some clout. But a lot of the Java godfathers have jumped ship – most notably James Gosling – and I worry Sun’s achievements may just get lost in the corporate beast that is Oracle.

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