Common wisdom will have you believe that bigger is better, but anyone smart enough to compare laptop sales can tell you better. Led by a new wave of netbooks and Apple’s impossibly slender MacBook Air, electronics makers are staging a thintervention on oversized computers. The downsizing doesn’t stop there, however. Below are just a few of the products currently getting the slim-fast treatment by developers.
MP3 Players
If you had told me ten years ago that I could store up to 3500 songs onto a music player the size of a small biscuit, I would have called you crazy. Lo and behold, that’s exactly what Apple is offering in its new iPod Nano deals. The new Nano is not only less than 2 inches wide, it also weighs an airy 21 grams and comes complete with a clip so you can attach it to your sleeve, bag, or jacket. With travel-ready music that inconspicuous, your only worry will be making sure you don’t lose it.
TVs
Each year it seems like the average TV gets bigger, and yet they appear to be taking up less and less space in our living rooms. Why? HD TVs are being manufactured with far less depth than their predecessors. The results are unthinkably thin TVs that can be easily displayed anywhere in your home. The best of the bunch – plasma TVs that be mounted on your wall for the ultimate in space-saving convenience.
Video Game Consoles
With the release of the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 consoles, 2005/06 actually saw a temporary increase in the size of video game consoles, but both Microsoft and Sony have since taken steps to reverse this. The recently released 250 GB slim model of the Xbox 360 followed last year’s PS3 Slim in bringing both the size and price of game systems down. The cheapest PS3 Slim sits at just under £230, and while the new systems have yet to meet the thinness standards set by their predecessors, the ability to pack such power in a relatively small package remains impressive.
