Show notes
After almost of year of vocal tech reporting, our panelists sit down with hindsight 20/20 to dissect this past year of tech. Scott starts us off with an overview of the three tech trends he believes have outlined the industry in 2008. In brief, these are the solidification of the "productivity" usage model, the stagnation of graphical requirements for games, and the inevitable collision of CPUs and GPUs.

With these three tech themes serving as an outline, our editors dive into the top news and reviews from their areas of expertise. Geoff discusses the rise of netbooks, 780G and P45 chipsets, Xonar sound cards, and the advancement of solid-state storage technology. Cyril and Scott discuss some of 2008's biggest corporate news, including AMD's early CEO swap and Nvidia's acquisition of Ageia. Finally, Scott does a roundup of the CPU and GPU designs that made this year one of the busiest we've seen in TR's nine-year history.

Before signing off on our last episode of 2008, Jordan asks each of the editors what they're most looking forward to in 2009, and we all pick our favorite 2008 game.

Send in listener mail, and we'll answer it on the podcast. - jdrake@techreport.com

Tech discussion:

The three tech trends of 2008 (00:02:35)

Geoff's 2008 tech overview (0:09:30) - Netbooks - Asus' Xonar - AMD's 780G - Intel's P45 - the rise of SSDs

Top corporate tech news of 2008 (0:32:25) - AMD changes CEOs - AMD spins off fabs - Nvidia buys Ageia - Nvidia goes CUDA-crazy

Scott's roundup for 2008 (0:53:18) - Atom and Nano, GT200 and RV770, Larrabee, Nehalem, and Shanghai

What we're looking forward to in 2009 (1:11:40)

Our favorite games of 2008 (1:18:37)