I
can remember my father bringing home one of the
world's first commercial calculators - it was a
steel cylinder about the size of bread bin, with
a handle on one side. You clicked pegs on drums
to make up the numbers, wound
the handle and hey presto, another set of drums
moved to give you the answer. We thought it was
absolutely awesome, but today something the size
of a wristwatch is a million times more powerful.
The same goes for early SLR cameras, portable
radios, and microwaves. Nowadays, everything
is much more compact, yet actually higher in
performance. The first mobile phones resembled a house brick and had a separate
battery pack the size of Wales. Imagine the 'yoof
of today' lugging one of those around!
Yes, things
have certainly moved on, but hang on a moment, those
massive early mobile phones first surfaced around
15 years ago - isn't that when you bought your
last Hi-Fi? For many people the answer to this question
is 'yes' and they have now decided to downsize. They no longer want to clutter
their lounges with a collection of dust-catching
boxes that look like they were designed by a
blind welder - they want something compact and modern,
but with outstanding performance. We are currently
experiencing a huge demand for small,
high quality Hi-Fi. The reason for this
is as plain as a chav's girlfriend - these units
boast facilities that could have only been dreamed
of 15 years ago (digital radio, iPod connectivity, USB input
etc) yet they occupy a fraction of the space
of the old multi-box systems. And they sound GREAT too!
