The day the laptop died

I have had a few conversations recently in which I found myself arguing how we would do without our laptops in the future. To my surprise I found many people just cannot see life without them. They cannot imagine an alternative that works for them. I am not going to try and convince you here. Just leave a few breadcrumbs.

Projected Keyboards are already commercially available.

Virtual displays are available in many forms and projected displays have been around for a very long time. Todays headsets are clumsy but retinal projection fixes that.

Wi-FI and 3G provide network access.

Fuel cells and other technolgoies in development will make battery life a non-issue.

XML and open standards have made data and services platform agnostic.

A full OS and desktop can be booted from a single USB stick.

There are many projects working on how office productivity will be accomplished on devices, such as the XMerge project at OpenOffice.

Many consumer devices support image viewing and hence can be used for presentations. Just dock your ipod photo and you are set.

If you currently keep all your important data locally on your laptop and you don't mind the fact you cannot access any of this information anywhere else. I also assume you also keep all your money under your bed.

I recently was talking with some university students and I was telling them how great it must be to have your own computer that you can take to lectures, the library, work in coffee shops. When I was at university we had to book time in huge computer labs. I was surprised by their reply. They had laptops but left them in their dorms. They could not understand why they would want to take their laptops with them anywhere. They has USB drives and mp3 players with all their data on and there were computers everywhere they went. They valued their data, not their computers.

If you still believe you will not use an alternative to your laptop in the future I totally understand. My grandfather could never get to grips with my cassette player so I know how you must feel.