We are about to finish out the first decade of the new millennium and the end of a decade is usually a time to look forward to the next. But being a contrarian, TechMan would like to look back.

• The decade began on Jan. 1, 2000, with a fizzle.

The hugely hyped Y2K doomsday scenario failed to play out. Some believed it was because the problem had been efficiently dealt with. Others thought the whole thing was overblown. In any case, many a computer professional spent New Year's Eve and early morning at work.

But a little over two weeks later, something important did happen in the computer world. Bill Gates stepped down as the CEO of Microsoft.

Little over a month later Microsoft released Windows 2000, widely regarded as one of the company's best operating systems. Four months later came Windows ME, considered by almost everyone to be one of the worst operating systems. In the same year, a judge ordered that Microsoft be split into two companies for antitrust violations and Bill Clinton made the first presidential Webcast.

• 2001 started out with Microsoft announcing the end of the road for Windows 95 and the beginning of the road for the Xbox gaming machine. AOL membership exceeded 28 million and Apple introduced OS X, code-named Cheetah and 10.1 code-named Puma. USB 2.0 was made final and then two blockbusters to finish the year -- Apple debuted the iPod and Microsoft released Windows XP. Microsoft also killed Clippy, the annoying on-screen assistant in Microsoft Office. Wikipedia was formally launched.

• The year 2002 was fairly quiet, the country was focused on the aftermath of Sept. 11. Napster filed for bankruptcy and was acquired by Roxio. Apple released OS X 10.2 code-named Jaguar.

• In 2003, the first computer is infected with the Spybot worm. And two moves that would have huge consequences -- MySpace was founded, as was the Mozilla Foundation. Apple released OS X 10.3, Panther and Microsoft debuted Windows XP Media Center Edition.

- In 2004, Comcast bought TechTV and ruined it. Google announced a little ol' thing called Gmail and Firefox 1.0 was released. To finish off the year, IBM sold its personal computing division to multinational company Lenovo.

• As the decade hit its stride in 2005, YouTube was founded, Yahoo bought photo service Flickr and Microsoft announced that its next operating system would be named Vista. EBay bought voice-over-Internet company Skype.

• The year 2006 began with the debut of Blu-ray, followed by HD DVD. Intel introduced its Core 2 Duo processor line and Google bought YouTube. Microsoft debuted its Zune media player and then Windows Vista. Twitter was founded and so was Facebook.

- Apple began 2007 by announcing it would drop the word computer from its name, then debuted the iPhone. It released OS X 10.5, Leopard. Microsoft released Vista to the general public. Amazon birthed the Kindle and Google the Android operating system.

• To begin 2008, HD DVD died. Apple announced its newest line of iMacs. The first phone running the Android operating system, the HTC Dream, was released.

• In 2009, the Wolfram Alpha computation engine went public. Microsoft renamed its search service Bing and released the ZuneHD and Windows 7. Apple released the iPhone 3GS and OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard; Steve Jobs returned to Apple after liver transplant surgery; and the App Store reached more than 2 billion downloads. All clues pointed to the fact that Google would release its own smartphone.

You can see from this sketchy history that a lot happened in the personal computer world in the last 10 years. Just count the number of household technology words and terms that didn't exist 10 years ago -- Twitter, Gmail, Blu-ray. They go on and on.

As the pace of technology continues to accelerate, a lot more will happen in the next 10 years. So hang on for a wild ride.

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