The $100 Laptop: A Glimpse of the Future?

Still Ahead

Trend No. 3: The eBook revolution

The Amazon.com Kindle made the world safe for wireless electronic books. As people become increasingly comfortable with reading books, magazines and newspapers on a handheld electronic gadget, they'll want to do so on their laptops, too. The all-screen clamshell functions much like a paper book, with pages on both sides. A simple gesture while in eBook mode, say, swiping your finger from the upper right corner toward the center, "turns the page."

The Kindle comes with a leather cover that lets you hold the one-screen Kindle like an open book, with the Kindle on the right and, well, leather on the left. Before my Kindle arrived, I assumed I would just throw away the leather cover and hold the Kindle by itself. But I, like many Kindle users, have found that holding it like a book with the leather cover is more natural and comfortable. As eBooks go mainstream, people will increasingly become comfortable with an open clamshell form factor for reading, just like a paper book. This is an eBook reader design you can "curl up in bed with."

Trend No. 4: Wireless peripherals

Wireless Bluetooth keyboards and mice have been around for a while, and recent innovations around batteries and charging have made them even more useful. The MPG user interface will make keyboards and mice optional, but not necessarily obsolete. You'll still have real input devices if you want them.

Keyboards and mice are inexpensive and trivial to connect wirelessly via Bluetooth. I think touch typists and tactile keyboard enthusiasts will go out and buy their ultimate physical keyboard and mice, then use them with all their devices. Writers, programmers and graphic designers will use physical input devices, but the masses will do without.

So there it is, the laptop of the future. Poor kids will probably get it before you do, but mark my words, the all-screen clamshell laptop will eventually trickle up to business travelers, road warriors and digital nomads of all stripes.

Mike Elgan writes about technology and global tech culture. He blogs about the technology needs, desires and successes of mobile warriors in his Computerworld blog, The World Is My Office . Contact Mike at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog, The Raw Feed.