Consumer Technology

Many consumer technologies have advanced in the last hundred or so years.
Virtual reality technologies have exploded, the Net is vast and fast, and cybernetics have become commonplace.
This document will outline some of the more striking changes.

Computing

Storage

Magnetic Storage

Spinning rust is dead, only some ancient legacy machines and collectors systems still use magnetic media. It's considered unreliable and painfully slow in a world driven by instant gratification (and load times).

Flash Storage/Solid State

Solid State media has reached it's theoretical limit, it's fast, really fast with little difference in access times between it and conventional RAM.
Portable devices will often use this as primary storage, and large machines will run software that has to be fast off of them.
They have been blown out the water for storage density, however, by the Crystal Data Diskette.

Crystal Data Diskette

The CDD is an example of one step back and a hundred steps forward.
As flash media reached it's theoretical storage limit one company decided to go back to the concept of a spinning platter in a metal casing. The platter itself is made out of an advanced crystaline polymer material. The data density on one of these disks is immense, however access times are slow compared to flash media.
Often used for archival, cold storage and anything that doesn't need the rapid access of flash media. These 50x50x2mm diskettes have replaced all non-flash media and have a theoretical shelf life of a thousand years.
They can only be inserted into a drive one way, however and are keyed. The small size of the disk and general symmetry of its design mean that users attempting to insert one blind will often get it wrong and have to flip the disk and try again.
Advanced cyborgs often have a CDD reader built into their implants, whilst those with lighter levels of augmentation will rely on an external drive connected to their neural interface.

Computers

Terminals

The Net is vast and infinite, or so they say. The amount of cumulative processing power made available by all the devices (and cyborgs) connected at any one time is immense and most terminals are capable of sharing in this power although they are capable of running in standalone mode. Found in either tower, desktop or portable format they are pretty much identical to the "personal computer" of old.

PDA

The Personal Digital Assistant made a roaring comeback as battery technology improved and the desire to have actual telephone calls dropped. They can still make calls, but people prefer to use the array of messaging services out there to communicate by text, image and animated graphics loops.

Workstation

Like a terminal, but beefier. Expensive devices favoured by power users and developers. Whilst they can tap into the processing potential of The Net, they are used when latency and security matter most. They can be run totally airgapped and run very quickly.

Server

Specialist hardware designed for processing the requests of other machines without user intervention. They can be quite simplistic, simply providing a central location to store files. Or incredibly advanced, such as the massive server farms used by mega corporations to perform research and development.

Integrated

Advanced cyborgs that have little organic body left often use their internal space for expanded on board computing hardware.
Can reach workstation levels of processing power with adequate cooling and space for hardware.
Often regarded as the ultimate in "power user".

Interfaces

The Keyboard and Mouse

Why change perfection?

Touchscreens

Used where a Keyboard and Mouse is impractical.

Neural Interfaces and Data Jacks

Any cyborg will tell you of the rush they get when connecting their neural interface to either a data jack or a terminal, the vast Net entierly indexed and accessible with a single thought.
A risky proposition in some cases on insecure networks (or when illicitly exploring incredibly secure networks). The abuse or misuse of a Neural Interface can cause damage to the interface itself, or the user in question.