Today, as part of my University course, I attended a company fair, with the aim of finding out about possible internships and graduate jobs. There were a number of highly-reputable and famous companies being represented – Microsoft, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and Santander among others. Perhaps one of the most famous was Intel. Intel don’t have the same drawing-power as Microsoft, yet still, like Microsoft, play an integral part in computing, particularly spearheading several technological advances we have seen in recent times.
So it was at this fair where Intel gave each interested student a bag, inside of which was mostly information based on placements, internships and graduation jobs. But also it included several “freebies”, which included several items of high value. Included was the Intel “Power Bank’ – a device which allows portable charging without the use of electricity. This is a device which is sure to grow in popularity in the coming months thanks to the incredibly saturated smart-phone market. Next was some headphones. Rather underwhelming yes, but they were packed in a very nice Intel box, plus my other ones had recently stopped working, meaning this was a real blessing!
There was one other device that came free, the one that led me to write this blog post. It was a 4GB memory stick. I was surprised to see this included in the free merchandise. However, the more I thought about it, the less surprised I was, with the use of memory stick’s rapidly declining in the past few years thanks to the advancement in online and cloud storage. So this made me think about how much technology has changed in the past few years, with the memory stick the perfect example of this.
Ten years ago, the memory stick was heavily-used by millions of people. It was the “must-have” gadget, something that would allow you to move any file from computer to computer, without the use of the Internet. Replacing the less-fashionable “floppy disks”, memory sticks became crucial to own. For many years they remained prominent, with even to this day incredibly 500gb memory sticks available.
But in this moment, memory sticks aren’t anywhere near used as much as they were previously. Thanks to the advancement in online and cloud storage, there is little need for a memory stick. The OneDrive by Microsoft is an example of the replacements for the memory stick. The OneDrive is an incredible program, offering any user the chance to access their documents all around the world, of course provided the computer is capable of running the Internet. Apple also has a well-renowned cloud storage system, with many companies now offering it.
The switch from the memory stick to online storage sums up how technology has changed. Although I will use the memory stick, many of my fellow students won’t even think of using them. But it is testament to how much technology has advanced in such a short space of time, there is no telling what the new trends will be in ten years time in relation to online storage. It is certainly an exciting time to be alive in terms of technological advancements.
Intel are sure to be at the fore-front of technology in the coming years. Their free merchandise is highly generous, after some research into them, it seems that Intel is a very harmonious place to work, I intend to enjoy their free merchandise. In relation to the title of this post, the memory stick obviously doesn’t sell so well at the moment, allowing Intel to use it as one of their “freebies”, without losing much potential revenue. In the coming times, there is no telling what will happen next, but thanks to the brave souls at Intel, along with the highly-creative minds in other technological firms, we can be sure great advancements will take place!
/MF/
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Thanks for reading this post! Feel free to follow this blog for more! Intel provide a wide array of products, their website is http://www.intel.com – this provides information on their latest products and developments.
Millicent Faith 