Laptop of 2010: Wild Predictions

How slow and old can a laptop be to still be usable today? Well, an ancient Pentium II laptop running Windows 98 will be enough for internet browsing, Word and Excel, music and movies – and that is pretty much all that most of us ever need.

Yet, we don’t see Pentium II laptops anymore, even though they are cheaper than a lightbulb. People prefer new, expensive laptops with built in things like fingerprint security or webcams, even though they keep the laptop at home and still work with the same old Excel sheets, and never turn the webcam on.

And this is the only way it can be in our consumerism-obsessed society, and cheap laptops that we use today will similarly look old and cost nothing in two years from now. What, then, will new laptops of 2010 be like? We came up with a list of 5 new features that we think will become standard in each laptop very soon.

1. Solid state harddrive, or SSD: It is already happening now, with new Apple Macbook Air laptop being sold with a choice of traditional HDD or new SSD harddrive. It is smaller, harder to damage, it takes less energy as there are no movable parts and it should also be cheaper to produce, once the market is saturated..


2. Wireless USB: Also already a reality, with Dell already selling its new XPS M1330 laptop with an option of wireless USB being built in. This means fewer cables, and fewer cables can only be a good thing.


3. 3G/HSDPA wireless broadband card: Internet anywhere, anytime? Oh yes, please. Understandably, it becomes more and more popular as the prices of mobile broadband fall each month. Most major laptop manufacturers are including them with new laptops already.



4. External CD/DVD drive: This one is not as straightforward as the previous three, since people still use CDs and watch DVD movies. Yet, CDs are big, subject to scratches and they need to be spinned, which needs energy and produces heat. There are two things that can kill a CD- the continuing rise of online downloads and the price of flash memory falling below the price of a blank CD. If this happens, nothing will save a CD from a place on a museum shelf, right next to the tape cassette.


5. New body shape: With solid state harddrive and no CD drive, new laptops can afford to become much thinner. There will be no movable parts, and together with new low energy processors this will help consume less energy and produce less heat, reducing the need and size of cooling pipes and fans. Laptop shape will change forever to a slimmer, lighter one, and old laptops will suddenly become as elegant as 19th century typewriters.



This is of course just a wild prediction and, like all predictions, will most likely differ from the real thing. You are welcome to disagree, any feedback on the list will be greatly appreciated.