The future of laptops

[pagansoul]

I see us going more into the Twilight Zone type of future where people will be plugged into a massive internet via a bluetooth ear-jack type of thing or an implant that projects visuals directly to the brain. Of course we would all turn into a collective hive mind. Only the poor will have a clunky computer at home or laptops but they will be free to think outside the box. Maybe I should write a Scifi short story about it.

 

[mrgreen4242]

It's all about dockability. If I could push my iPod touch/iPhone into a little 10" netbook shell (with the touch screen doubling as a really really nice trackpad) it would completely satisfy my needs for a laptop. The only thing that you would likely need to add to the device is a more powerful video chip to drive a higher res display in addition to its own built in one, but that's not a big deal I'm guessing. Some more RAM to help multitasking would be good, I suppose, but on a little 10" netbook there's only so many tasks you can do at once anyways.

An extended battery and speakers in the case, maybe a port replicator with some USB and headphone/mic/network connectors. And BT in the touch.

Anyways, I think phones/portable media devices will replace the subnote soon via a docking solution, but not laptops in general.

 

[John Jacob]

Laptop's in 2020 will still be recognizably laptops. Much more advanced than my unibody Macbook, but still recognizably a laptop. Booooring.

Let's move on to 2040. Laptops will not look like laptops anymore. Instead, they'll look like a section of human cranium. People buying the computer will have operations in the hospital to remove a section of their cranium, and the laptop will be implanted there in its place. After that, wifi directly to the brain. Just think Google and your search term, and the results will be visible in your mind's eye. And you can talk to anyone else in the world, telepathically, using your cranium laptop. Best of all, virtual reality pr0n! The battery will last for a year, and once it runs out you can recharge it while you sleep by plugging your head into the wall socket.

Of course, if you make the make the mistake of buying a Windows laptop, a blue screen could knock you unconscious in the middle of whatever you are doing.

 

[gfish31]

if you think about it, many people use their smartphones as a laptop already. The actual laptops stay on the desk, and when people travel they bring their smartphone, because it can get email, browse the internet, play music, edit word documents, etc. There's really only a few drawbacks to using ur smartphone as a laptop. The biggest concern is screen size. Other than that its a FULL office suite, and connectivity issues (printers, peripherals, etc). But this will definitely happen, and probably sooner than we all think.

 

[No1451]

The idea someone had of mini-projectors inside of phones is an interesting one, and could very easily come to pass in the future. However I really do believe that there will always be a place for a more powerful home-bound computer. Gaming isn't going anywhere soon, its been growing for years and likely will continue to, and those sorts of things CANNOT run on a phone, not on any technology that we will be developing in the near future.

I would enjoy something akin to Mile Villas' World, small portable computers connected to a wide network, constant connectivity.

 

[wankey]

Wow, I find it funny some of you guys took this post SO LITERALLY.

Rewind to 1998, Windows 98 just came out (first edition mind you). Would you have ever expected OS X's aqua interface? It's alpha blending? Or expected CPUs to have two cores on one CPU.

I had 64mbs of ram (that was high end), would you have imagined that I'd be running 4096mbs of ram now? How about harddrive space? I had 6.4gigs of harddrive space... now I have 3000gigs of harddrive space.

Would you have imagined games to become so photo realistic?

Can you honestly tell me what will and will not happen? 32 cores? in TEN years? in 2 years quad core would be the norm for mobile processors (if Apple really pushes the snow leopard... well, we'd be talking about 10.7 already if you forget)

 

[Tosser]

Wow, I find it funny some of you guys took this post SO LITERALLY.

Rewind to 1998, Windows 98 just came out (first edition mind you). Would you have ever expected OS X's aqua interface? It's alpha blending? Or expected CPUs to have two cores on one CPU.

I had 64mbs of ram (that was high end), would you have imagined that I'd be running 4096mbs of ram now? How about harddrive space? I had 6.4gigs of harddrive space... now I have 3000gigs of harddrive space.

Would you have imagined games to become so photo realistic? Would you have

Can you honestly tell me what will and will not happen? 32 cores? in TEN years? in 2 years quad core would be the norm for mobile processors (if Apple really pushes the snow leopard... well, we'd be talking about 10.7 already if you forget)

There are some things that although they can be imagined will not be possible ever. It's called physics.

Another thing is "reality". You can imagine a world wide satellite network for internet going at 100mbps. However, things like that will NOT happen within "the near future". It won't even be happening in the next thirty years. That's a safe bet, knowing about the realities and physics of satellites, price to go to space, and the associated technology.

 

[mknawabi]

Highly doubtful any company would ever want to implement RAMBUS again.

 

[RedTomato]

Highly doubtful any company would ever want to implement RAMBUS again.

One thing about the computer world - what goes round comes round. Unix was the darling of the 70's, and now it's trendy again. VSLI was trendy, went away then it came back, now it's gone again. Ditto RISC, in inverse.

Mainframe cpu timetabling methods which everyone used in the 60's then dismissed as old hat in the 80s are now the foundation of multicore scheduling in your laptop.

Atari / Sinclair / NES game programming which was popular in the 80s was seen as a useless skill in the late 90s / early 2000s, and is now a goldmine - if you had these skills to a high level in the 80's you're now in huge demand as a mobile phone programmer, as modern phones have systems and constraints similar to these consoles.

I wouldn't be suprised if something similar to RAMBUS comes back in the future - as computing bottlenecks shift from one area to another, old solutions gain new currency.

The idea someone had of mini-projectors inside of phones is an interesting one, and could very easily come to pass in the future.

Already have and already hit mass market (but not quite near you yet). Google 'projector phone'.

However I really do believe that there will always be a place for a more powerful home-bound computer. Gaming isn't going anywhere soon, its been growing for years and likely will continue to, and those sorts of things CANNOT run on a phone, not on any technology that we will be developing in the near future.

The iphone has more power than the NES, already has motion detection and will probably become more powerful than the xbox or wii in few years time. Millions already play games on their phones.

There are some things that although they can be imagined will not be possible ever. It's called physics.

Another thing is "reality". You can imagine a world wide satellite network for internet going at 100mbps. However, things like that will NOT happen within "the near future". It won't even be happening in the next thirty years.

Already have. I'm pretty sure communications satellites already talk to each other at well over 100mps. Places like Japan and Finland have fibre to the home at over 100mps for about the same price as a standard USA home cable modem.

 

[Tosser]

Already have. I'm pretty sure communications satellites already talk to each other at well over 100mps.

Really? Show me a subscription or pay-as-you-go satellite connection that can even do 2 mbps with data. I'd love to see that as one of my friends is going sailing in the pacific. Hell, it makes one wonder how come the Beeb's satelitte phones have such crappy connections.

It doesn't matter if they talk to "each other" at any rate. When we talk about having a 100mbps internet connection, we're talking about us as end-users. Not how much bandwidth the (as an example) ISP has.

Places like Japan and Finland have fibre to the home at over 100mps for about the same price as a standard USA home cable modem.

Do you think fibre is satellite or what are you suggesting?

You propably missed it, but I said "world wide". That includes places like Africa, South America, Svalbard, Germany, Russia and so on. And when we speak of satellites it also includes the poles, the middle of Sahara, the pacific and so on.

 

[RedTomato]

As you noticed, we were talking about different things.

About satellite bandwidth, you didn't specify in the first place that it had to be satellite-to-individual.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/bandwidth.htm is a bit hard to read, but seems to imply that in 2003, the US military had 3.2 Gbps of satellite bandwidth to the ground in Iraq.

http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm#satellite-vsat-africa is another hard to read page, but it seems to show many providers of subscription satellite broadband offering 2 to 60 Mbps downlink to Africa.

The 2Mbps service is with a 1.2m dish which might or might not work with a marine satellite antenna with stabilized platform. You have to admit, tethering a dish on a boat is a rather specialised application.

 

[Tosser]

As you noticed, we were talking about different things.

About satellite bandwidth, you didn't specify in the first place that it had to be satellite-to-individual.

Really? In a thread where we talk of laptops and the future of "computing", not "technology", and I post this:

Another thing is "reality". You can imagine a world wide satellite network for internet going at 100mbps.

That is at least ought to infer end-user internet connection speeds.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/space/systems/bandwidth.htm is a bit hard to read, but seems to imply that in 2003, the US military had 3.2 Gbps of satellite bandwidth to the ground in Iraq.

Military. And since when was that even close to being "world wide"? Oh, and a single user certainly did not have anything close to that bandwidth, nor anywhere close to 100mbps.

http://www.satsig.net/ivsat-africa.htm#satellite-vsat-africa is another hard to read page, but it seems to show many providers of subscription satellite broadband offering 2 to 60 Mbps downlink to Africa.

Apparently, the larger of the two connection speeds are the speed of the backbone connectivity.

The 2Mbps service is with a 1.2m dish which might or might not work with a marine satellite antenna with stabilized platform. You have to admit, tethering a dish on a boat is a rather specialised application.

People actually do that for satellite telly, believe it or not. Mostly on gin palaces, but still.

No, what's worse is this:

Installations requiring high volume connections of >1MB will find cost savings by installing the larger 3.8m or 4.5m antennas. Although these antennas cost more to purchase and ship, there will be savings on the re-occurring monthly bandwidth cost that will compensate for the higher initial cost.

Anyway, using a couple of satellites for 2mbps internet connection is far fetched from a global network giving you 100Mbps.

Edit: Oh, and this, for "business users" – my emphasis:

Downlink: up to 60 Mbit/s download speed. Uplink: up to 4 Mbit/s.
Entry level is just 96kbit/s download and 32kbit/s uplink. Please remember this is all dedicated service - you are not sharing the satellite with other terminal users.

In other words, yes, you can get a connection over your very own satellite (for the time you pay for it), but that would mean that with 30 satellites up (had they had that and not just the single one they have), at a maximum 30 people would be able to be connected at those speeds simultaneously. Oh, and they had to be spread out across the globe in order to achieve those speeds over satellite. That's really not even close to what was suggested.