Face IT

About a week ago I mentioned I completed 10 years here in the US. Ironic that very same day last week my first cousin and his close friend landed here in New Jersey to pursue their masters degree.

Have been busy with them and helping them to settle and understand this new environment. Will catch up with blogs in few days.

Being with them for the past few days I realized some very interesting things that have changed or evolved drastically in the last 10 years. Also at the same time there are somethings that have not changed at all.

Here are few of them -

- The exchange rate - it was 44.00 Rs. for a Dollar when I came here and again this week it is in the same range.

- The excitement, apprehension and anticipation of the student is still the same.

- Bill Gates has been so undecided on what we view from his Window - saw him change from Windows 98 to Windows ME to Windows 2000 to Windows XP and then now to Windows Vista

- Computers were in the 486 version with 256 MB Ram and 14-15" CRT monitors and cost around $4000.00 and now 14-15" LCD laptops with around 2-4 GB ram cost anything between $500-$1000. So computer's "internals" became "bigger" but in reality became smaller and the price became 1/10th.

- Cell phones - they were like brick bats then - heavy and cumbersome. Now the digitally smart phones are the "in-thing". Here too US has moved progressed from TDMA to CDMA to GPRS to GSM technology. Really never bothered to know what they are as long as I could make a simple call. And also met many people struggling with these new phones complaing that it does not work properly - my only question to them is - it is called "SMART PHONE" isn't it? - Are you really that SMART to own one?

- Internet has gone from Dial Up to Wired Cable - DSL - and now the latest Fibre Optic. And also the wireless has progressed from A to B to G to N. It has become faster and better but is also enslaving us everyday.

- Netscape was the browser to be with if you wanted to be cool and not use IE - IE is still around but now you use FireFOX to be cool.

- Prices of everything - fuel - basics like milk - vegetables etc etc is almost up by 10 times but the rents for apartment and fees to colleges havent increased that much.

- Music was bundled in Audio Cassestes on their way out then to Compact Discs and now its all about MP3 on the lill MP3 Player. Same with the movies - moved from VHS to DVDs and also DIVX formats.

These are just some of the observations that I made....and the last but the best one is one of the biggest changes - the way we communicate back home.

Orkut, Facebook, Cellphones, VOIP, Yahoo Chat, Gtalk, Messenger, ICQ, SMS so on and so forth.....there are so many tools that now both the parents/friends back home and students here are living this "new life" simultaneously with constant back and forth of information. Dont know if these two will ever feel that they are really away away from home.

I sometimes wonder how someone who came 10 years before me - felt and realized these differences...if he thought about it when I came.

And lastly here is an interesting video of Facebook in Reality: