15 months is a long time

Macarthur said it best "I shall return." And after 2 1/2 grueling years he made good on his promise to the people of the Philippians. You could say I underwent a similar situation after I was told that I was going to Iraq for a 15 month "vacation" of sand, sun and camel spiders. Well I have returned and my how the tech world has changed.

Its funny, you never really notice how fast things change until you remove yourself from something for an extended period of time. Its almost like time travel. When you come back, everything is completely different yet your mind is still stuck on the way it was before. vaguely familiar, yet unrecognizable.

When I left, AMD's socket AM2 and Intel's Core 2 Duo had only been out for a scant 2 months. P965 was the rage of the motherboard scene, and AMD hadn't realized it bit off more than they could chew with the acquisition of ATI. I had a relatively modern system at the time that consisted of a DFI SLI-DR, 2GB DDR 500, Opteron 165 and a 7800GT. At the time I felt that I would only really need a new video card upon my return home. my how wrong i was. apparently Intel and Nvidia had plans to counter my plans.

First came the price drops from Intel which made the Opty 165 i purchased for a little over $300 seem like a horrible mistake. I mean who doesn't like more of something for less money? Then some engineer thought of throwing 2 dual core dies onto a single chip to make quad core (thank you engineer dude ), followed by more price cuts and then the newer 1333mhz fsb on the E6x50 series. Meanwhile Nvidia released G80 into the market which made every high end card released before it seem anemic in comparison.

The one thing that I did see coming before I left was Microsoft's new Windows Vista. I knew it was going to be a dog upon its initial release and that it would take a service pack or two before it laid Windows XP to rest. So far my prediction is holding true.

I guess what it all boils down to is even though 15 months isn't really a lot of time in our daily lives, its an eternity in technology. We went from AMD ruling the roost to them falling faster than the support for the war in Iraq. From dual core to quad core and now octacore on the horizon. DDR2 just being adopted by AMD, to DDR3 ram and motherboards available for purchase (albeit at insane prices) DX9.0c to DX10 and DX10.1 only a few months out. my how ive missed technology and its break neck pace.

I have returned, and its damn good to be here.