Coming in 2012

Netbooks sink without trace

Asus stumbled into a huge, untapped market when it launched its first Eee PC 900-series back in 2008. With a small SSD, 8.9in screen and a Linux install, it offered a portable computer that provided respectable web access for just £329. Suddenly laptops were affordable to almost anyone in the UK, and everyone else clamoured for a part of the new market, adding full versions of Windows, Intel Atom CPUs and larger screens.

However, those glory days are now seemingly over. In fact, in November this year, research group Gartner revealed figures showing that the netbook market had collapsed by 40 per cent in the third quarter of this year, referring to year-on-year figures.

What's more, a supposedly leaked memo from Samsung to its hardware partners, which was published by French site Blogee, showed that the company was planning to phase out its 10.1in netbooks, so that it could instead focus on ultra-portable laptops and Ultrabooks.

As full-sized laptops can now be bought for less than £400, and an overabundance of tablets offer easy and more portable web access, it looks as though the netbook's days are now seriously numbered.

Analogue TV gets switched off

It's the end of an era, folks but, to be fair, it's also an era that we're amazed is still going in the UK. The Beeb launched its first analogue TV channel, BBC 1, back in 1936, and 75 years later, you can still tune an analogue set into the country's prestigious channel.

This is all about to come to an end in 2012, though, when the remaining analogue TV signals will be finally disabled on various dates across the country.

In some ways, it's sad to see it go. There's something undeniably cool about being able to see the leftover radiation of the Big Bang when you're turning a dial between channels, but we won't miss the dot-ridden, often unstable picture, sporadic stereo audio and the intermittent Channel 5 signal (although perhaps the last is a blessing in disguise).

You can find out when and where the remaining switchovers will take place in 2012 at www.digitaltelevision.gov.uk.