The $100 Laptop: A Glimpse of the Future?

Trends to Watch

Trend No. 1: Multitouch, physics and gestures, oh my!

I've reported and prognosticated extensively in this space on the next generation or "third generation" of user interface (the first two generations being the command line and the graphical user interface [GUI]).

This new user interface will dominate the operating systems from Microsoft Corp., Apple Inc., the Linux vendors and others. There will be qualitative differences, as always, in the next-gen versions of Windows, the Mac OS and Linux, but all will revolve around the three core elements: multitouch, gestures and physics. That's why I'm now calling this UI type the multitouch, physics and gestures UI, or MPG for short.

We've already seen all three of these elements in the iPhone , in Microsoft Surface , and also in the demo of Windows 7 .

This radical departure will, after several decades, render obsolete today's desktop form factor of a screen, keyboard and mouse on the desk. In fact, it will make the keyboard optional and the mouse obsolete forever.

As I've described, the desktop PC of the future will be used at an angle, like a drafting table (but can pivot to vertical "presentation mode" or horizontal "desk mode") like this . This form factor will be dictated by the software, just as the current mouse-centric form factor was dictated by the GUI.

But what about mobile computers? One thing is clear about MPG user interfaces: Big screens are very desirable, and touch rules. The X0 2.0 concept maximizes screen real estate during use and minimizes size for transport. The X0 2.0 is designed for low cost, and the screens are small. But for business users, the MPG laptops of the future will be much larger. If you can jam a laptop with a 17-inch screen into your carry-on luggage, the all-screen clamshell will fold out to double that for using Windows 7 with your fingers.

The reason you'll want to do this is that you'll become totally accustomed on your Windows 7 desktop to the MPG UI, virtual keyboards and interacting with touch instead of a mouse. And future applications will fully support this mode.

Trend No. 2: Mini-laptops

The ASUS Eee PC mainstreamed tiny notebooks. Because they're so small and so cheap, increasing numbers of people will want two laptops, a big one for full-powered work, and a tiny one for quick-and-dirty on-the-go usage. I think this trend will continue well into the era of MPG operating systems. We can look forward to all-screen clamshell mini-laptops.

One of the limitations of the ASUS Eee PC-sized devices is that the keyboard isn't big enough. But imagine if the keyboard consisted only of letter and number keys, and that "command" keys -- Tab, Caps Lock, Shift, Ctrl, BackSpace, Delete, Enter and so on -- didn't exist?

A Taiwan company called E-Lead showed off a mini-laptop at Computex this week (which it also demonstrated at CES) with an innovative keyboard. The product, called Noahpad EL-460, is designed to compete with the ASUS Eee PC and other sub-notebooks.

The EL-460's keyboard doubles as a touchpad . You run your fingers over the same keys you use to type to send gesture commands to the system. Those gestures replace various command keys, which enable the letter and number keys to be the same size they would be on a full-size laptop.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the Noahpad EL-460 has a prayer of being successful. And I'm always suspicious of anyone who tries to re-invent the QWERTY keyboard. But the design suggests an innovation for the MPG future, where everyone is learning and using gestures anyway. It's easy to imagine a software keyboard on a multi-touch screen doubling as a gesture area that could replace command keys on the keyboard. When you peck on the numbers, they're thrown up on the screen like a keyboard. But when you do gestures over the keys, the commands are received by the system.