Best Tech from the Last Decade

Well, lots of gizmos, gadgets, and toys in this article. I don't think I would consider facebook a major milestone.

What about WiFi and Torrent?

Wow. Seriously. These gadgets are the best tech of the decade? I think I'm missing something.

multi core CPU? Li-poly batteries? Seems to me there's been some huge advances in power rectifiers and transformers lately also. And those RFID tags aren't more than ten years old are they?

The iPhone and especially the iPod is a joke. How can you be serious and call them Best Tech from the last decade? Apple was not first with introducing an mp3 player to the market and they are certainly not the best.

I agree with the previous poster that technologies such as WiFi, Torrent, eMule, Kazaa, DC++ better deserve to be on the list.

Great comments, you guys! It is great to see ideas that are less mainstream. In defense of Kate--her assignment was to pick items from the consumer side of gadgets and Web stuff. Naturally, stuff like Kazaa and Torrents weren't going to make it, from that perspective. But Wi-Fi is a good one, and so is Lithium Polymer batteries. Though I do wonder if regular people will be talking about the first time they used a Lithium Polymer battery to their grandkids in 50 years, know what I mean? Even though the iPod/iPhone has problems, it is hard to deny that people will probably still be talking about their first one, 50 years from now.

And btw, it would be much more interesting to read about those power rectifiers and transformers, too. I also agree that multicore CPUs and Li-Poly batteries are great inventions. Developing computer hardware is a tremendous task for sure.

RFID technology has probably been around for quite a while, but their applications are quite new. In the past they consisted of circuit boards and batteries using a rather bulky encapsulation whereas they now (most types of them anyway) are printed directly on metal foil and being used as tags in logistics applications. The major problem of scanning millions of tags everyday, every hour, minute and second is that they generate huge flows of data which require decentralized processing.

Best Tech from the Last Decade is just personal opinion so stop shoving it in our mouths...

no offence... but i thought tomshardware is a professional news and articles website... that's the reason why I love tomshardware... but when there is an article that says a robotic vacuum is considered one of the best tech from last decade... is really embarrassing... even for a professional respected website with over 10 years of being recognized as one of the top PC hardware websites (such as tomshardware).

I really hoped the article was summary about the top PC hardware in the last decade (being an opinion based article is not the problem). That would be some really nice article.

A summary of PC hardware from the last decade would be a great idea for an article on Tom's Hardware! I'll suggest it to the editor. This site is Tom's Guide, where we write about consumer gadgets--like robotic vacuums. Mostly, though, we write about tech products that regular people get excited about, and this article was about the stuff that we think people will remember being MOST excited about from this decade, in the future.

I apologize for rushing in with all the fury but... forgive me for it is a slow news day ~_~ and i didn't notice tomsguide at the top when i clicked a link on tomshardware

whoa! My head just exploaded. I never noticed there was a distinction between toms hardware and toms guide. Now I'm gonna go all over the website looking for more little surprises like that.

this last decade sucked ...every thing was about "copying" soemthing that came before it . and of cours the "millenial" generation had no qualms with telling every one how much beter their generation was at every thing when all thier generation did was copy shit , every thing from music , to roll playing games. the whole decade and it's "generation of youth , hinged soley on denoucing what came before and claiming "mine was better"

thats a waste

World of Warcraft?

This is the best Tech from the last decade and you PUT IN WoW?

You people at Tom's Guide are fucking retarded

The ipod? Why? Why not just put "portable mp3 players"? It's not like the ipod was the first or is the best. Just the most popular.

and WoW... it's a MMORPG, there were others before it and there have been much better ones since. Again, good popularity, not much originality or quality (this ones pretty subjective however.

Facebook? Someone using HTML and Flash to create (yet another) website where ppl can be self-centered, narcissistic, obsessive, and share more information about themselves and their personal lives than any sane person would care to hear... THAT'S "technology"?! WTF. It's a USE of previously-existing technology, a stupid one at that.

I thought this might be a list of technological advancements that drastically changed our every-day lives and made significant steps to bettering them (the Tivo sorta fits the bill, but again, a bit too brand-specific, "digital media recording/distribution" would have included Tivos, and all the similar devices, as well as hulu, netflix, steam, etc)... but this is just a list of things that the mindless, corporate-controlled commercial masses have latched onto over the past 10 years.

Fads =/= good (let alone best) technology.

I also gotta agree with USB flash drives and GPS devices being on the list, those are pretty convenient tech devices from the past decade for sure.

Where's Symbian, Motorola and Nokia phones? Without it your phone is still monochrome and uses polytone ringtones! Facebook isn't a 'technology' anyway... it's, well, I don't know.