When something get’s sufficiently commoditized… it almost reaches a point where you start thinking about that one “thing” as a single, cohesive object rather than the sum of its parts. For many, a car is a thing you sit inside of, press a button or two, and you’re suddenly being propelled down the highway to your eventual destination. For the petrolhead, though, that same car is a symphony of engineering… disparate parts sourced all over the globe coming together to turn fuel, electricity, or both into the sweet sensation of speed.

Much the same can be said for the gadgets, electronics, and (frankly) modern marvels that permeate our daily lives. Most don’t think about their dishwasher as a small computer managing cycles of water, soap, and heat to make one of the more mundane daily chores… disappear. Heck, the average person things about their iPhone as, well, an iPhone.. that is until they send it clattering along the driveway only to find the screen shattered and the literally thousands of internal components… well… exposed.

Those components, then, often become the unsung heroes. An iPod without a hard drive is just a paperweight. A TV without a backlight is a very hard to use eReader. And… well… pretty much anything in our modern world without RAM is, honestly, useless.

RAM, or Random Access Memory, is one of the most ubiquitous pieces of the tech puzzle… microwaves to spacecraft rely on it. So, when the world’s ready supply of this technological lifeblood is suddenly… “spoken for”… what does that do to your next laptop? I hate to say that’s when good old fashioned Economics kicks in and… you may not like the inevitable answer.

This story goes much deeper than the price tag of your next Nintendo Switch, mind you. So grab another cup of tea, this one gets interesting…

Well… there’s no other way to say it… welcome to 2026 everyone! Yes I know, the more things change the more they stay the same and all that. Resolutions made and near-instantly broken. Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace flooded with all the… umm… “stuff” from last year that you need to get rid of to make room for all the… yeah… “stuff” that magically appeared over the holiday shopping season… and, as if that weren’t enough… it’s CES time once again!

That’s right, back to the desert, back to the endless rows of startups, established legends, and global phenomenons allequally trying to convince us that their widget is, in fact, the next big thing…

We’ve actually said for a couple CES’ in a row now that true “gadgets” continue to be on the rise… As the (entirely, at least) App-driven economy becomes even more commoditized, room continues to present itself for new, interesting ways to productize, package, and ship the latest, greatest way to do everything from scrambling eggs to exploring the outer reaches of space…

CES is all that and a bag of micro-chips this year, as much as any other. But, just underneath the surface, there’s also a different vibe just waiting to take the headline… With RAM-pocalypse in full swing, every brand you’ve ever heard of is pivoting prices, adjusting shipping timelines, and honestly re-assessing if certain offerings even make sense considering the environment…

With AI squarely to blame… it’s no less ironic that, at the core of far too many of the gadgets themselves is, well… AI!

Used to be, something was effectively vaporware until it shipped… now I have to wonder if it’s vaporware until it’s been shipped, delivered, and, well… proven to actually do anything?

Let’s see what we can find…

A new year somehow always presents a… certain type of friction.

We’re tempted, all at once, to think back reflectively on our most recent past while at the same time told to be visionaries about our quickly-approaching future (and beyond)…

Well, you’ve likely been listening long enough to know there’s… not a whole lot of what we would call “visionary” happening here at the Solid State Podcast but hey, at least we have fun doing it?

In all seriousness, the life that is tech is far more than a job, a hobby, or even a passion. It is an integral part of who we are, and this show is an expression of that.

So as we look back at 2025, ahead to 2026, and ask ourselves where we see all this going and… if it were up to us… how that trajectory might be a bit different… it should come as know surprise that we had (and still have)… umm, thoughts…

With that there’s no other way to say it… we did it again! Another year basically in the bag and a new one hangs there, just on the other side of the hill.

If RAM prices are any indication it’s… not going to be a cheap yet. But, if nothing else, it’s going to be a lot of fun…

Let’s hit it.