PCs enjoyed a better year in 2005 than most analysts had predicted. Notebook shipments continued to accelerate, corporations continued to upgrade as IT budgets proved firmer than anticipated, and Microsoft's Media Center PCs started to gain shelf space among receivers and DVD players in the living room.
But in terms of groundbreaking new features, there wasn't much to cheer about last year, and this year probably won't be very different. Leaps in PC technology, seen in previous advances like wireless networking, truly portable notebooks or optical storage technology, will be hard to find in moderately priced PCs in 2006. Dual-core processors will become the norm, but companies such as Microsoft are worried about the leisurely pace at which PC application developers are converting products to take advantage of a new parallel world.
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