How will it look like?

Apr 12, 2005 11:39 GMT  ·  By

Initially regarded as gadgets reserved to the businessman, the notebooks have become in the last years serious competitors for the PCs. Starting with 2002, the figures of the IT market analyzes have pointed out that notebook sales are continuously raising and that several times they represented the main factor for the growth of the IT market, especially in the western areas where the PC has become a mass consumer good.

How will the notebook of the future look like?

From technological and design point of view, the notebook has never ceased to be a source of surprises. From futuristic colors to ultra high tech designs and ultra shock resistant cases the notebook has tried them all.

In the last time, it looks like the searches have stopped and that there are two trends that dominate the notebook industry.

The first one considers the notebook the replacement of the desktop and consequently the producers fit their computers with the latest 3D graphic chipsets and a lot of multimedia options at the expense of battery life and weight.

The followers of the second trend consider that mobility has to be the key feature of the notebooks, and therefore a weight bigger than 1.5 kilograms is regarded as blasphemy. It doesn?t matter that such a notebook is starting to look like a keyboard that has a LCD attached to it and that producers are giving up on every component that can add to the weight of the notebook: optical devices, supplementary batteries, or high capacity hard disks; the components are still available but only in the form of docks.

But the producers are not the ones behind these trends; they only comply with the preferences expressed by users. Hence, none of these trends will be given up in the near future, but the new technologies implemented in the following years could lead to a compromise: state of the art notebooks which are light and slim.

So, what does the future hold for notebooks?

Processors Smaller, but more powerful

When the PC was in the centre of attention, the mobile processors were the poorer relatives of the desktop ones. Lately, because of the technological breakthroughs, the situation has changed dramatically. Pentium M is capable of 533 MHz FSB and the 90 nanometer technology means smaller power consumption. Intel has recently announced price cutoffs for the mobile processors, which can only boost the notebook market.

AMD doesn?t give up the fight, and once the Turion processor has been launched, the 64 bit technology is making its way to the notebooks. The MT version of Turion has a power consumption of at most 25 W.

And since the launching of the 64 bit version of Windows XP Professional is expected this month, it won?t be long until a new class of 64 bit applications will start to run on notebooks.

LCDs Bigger and better

Until recently, producers were asking themselves ?Who would buy a notebook with a 17 inch display?? They got the answer pretty quickly and now, for the notebooks which are designed as PC replacements this dimension has become a standard. So the next step will be 19 inch, and widescreen of course, because movies are much better viewed on such displays and soon resolutions like 1048x1536 QXGA will also be available on notebooks. The segment of the most portable notebooks is dominated by the 12 inch displays and, although a few years ago analysts predicted their disappearance, these displays are still used and are considered ideal for models where every 100 grams count.

Moreover, the quality of the LCD image has increased and technologies like BrightView from Hewlett-Packard or XBRITE LCD from Sony allowed the notebooks? screen to display an image as clear as the one of their relatives, the LCD monitors.

However, the power consumption necessary for such a notebook display is still significant, but Toshiba presented a 14.1 inch display which required only 2.7 W, which is a lot less than 3.5 or 4.4 W currently required by a notebook display.

The next technology notebook producers are putting their greatest hopes into is OLED which will replace the current displays of the portable systems. OLEDS will allow not only a better image quality, but also a smaller power consumption. Currently, the OLED screens are not reliable and cheap enough to be implemented into anything else than cell phones or gaming consoles. The introduction of OLEDs will also lead to a weight decrease and in this way, even the thin and ultralight notebooks will benefit from large displays,

Optical storage From DVD-RW to Blu-Ray

The war between the future optical storage formats also affects notebooks, even if in a smaller proportion. The end of the DVD+R and DVD-R dispute meant the including of DVD-RW optical units into notebooks, the combo DVD-ROM + CD-RW unit being a standard until then. As the Blu-Ray vs. HD-DV dispute seems to be heading towards a peaceful solving, the next generation of optical devices incorporated into notebooks will be able to hold at least 25 GB of data. Regardless of the result of the confrontation, considering that major laptop producers like: Dell, Sony and HP have declared their support for Blu-Ray, it is obvious that this is the winning format for notebooks.

Hard disks Perpendicular storage is the future

The notebook hard disks are slower than the desktop ones whose standard rotation speed is by now 7200 rpm. For notebooks, only towards the end of 2005, the 5400 speed will be acknowledged as standard speed.

Obviously, there are notebook hard disks that rotate at 7200 rpm and that don?t consume more power than the 5400 hard disks, like the ones produced by Hitachi, but these are aimed at the high-end segment.

Regarding storage capacity, 120 GB is all the longitudinal storage can offer. Considering that until 2007 the producers will migrate to the perpendicular storage , it?s obvious that the main beneficiaries of the migration will be notebooks, so in maximum 4 years, 200 GB or 230 GB capacities will be seen on portable system too.

If for desktops, the Serial ATA interface has already started to quickly replace the old Ultra ATA interface, not the same can be said about notebooks. The majority of producers didn?t rush to integrate the new interface, but this thing will change during the next year of technological development.

Graphic solutions 3D becomes a standard for notebooks

As consumers begun to use notebooks for gaming, the producers decided it?s time to include more powerful 3D chips into the systems. Even if a solution like ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 or GeForce FX Go5700 determines a price increase, those who wish to use it as a desktop replacement are willing to pay the price. Therefore, current graphic chips are advanced enough to support the most demanding 3D games.

Graphic chips are not only for playing and once they will be adopted at a greater scale, regardless of the cooling problems and high power consumption, we will witness a transition of HDTV applications and 3D simulation programs towards the notebook.

Moreover, the appearance of notebooks that support docks which incorporate a video card is also a successful trend. The fierce competition between ATI and Nvidia will lead to cheaper and more advanced models.

Memory More, and faster

Generally, increasing the memory quantity on a notebook is the simplest and most accessible upgrade. But memory is not all about quantity, the quality being equally important. The majority of notebooks are fitted with RAM DDR memory, but by the end of 2005, DDR2 will become a standard. The advantages of the DDR2 memory are not only related to speed, but also to smaller power consumption. DDR2 requires 1.8 volts, while the DDR requires 2.5 volts. The next step will be the implementing of dual-channel memories into notebooks, so that the graphic chip will work on a channel and the processor on another.

This implementation together with 64 bit processors will lead to the increase of memory that can be installed on a laptop.

Batteries Nanotechnology is stepping in

The battery life, the power consumption of components, and the recharge cycles are all vital aspects of batteries.

Recently, Toshiba has introduced a new type of Li Ion battery that is recharged in a proportion of 80% once connected to power source.

It?s obvious that this trend will be followed by other producers, so future notebook batteries will have a better lifespan and won?t be influenced by charge-recharge cycles.

PCI Express Fast like a train

The PCI bus which connects different peripherals to the notebook will be replaced by the PCI Express with performances 128 times greater. Intel?s Sonoma platform is already including PCI Express as standard.

Wireless A necessary feature

The evolution of the wireless technology is strongly related to the evolution of the notebook to which it owes a part of the success. Producers have included wireless technology into notebooks, even if the spreading of wireless access points was not very large at that time.

That is why current notebooks include the 802.11g Wi-Fi, which is compatible with the 802.11b. But the speeds provided by the 802.11 g are no longer sufficient and starting with the Sonoma platform, Intel imposed the PRO/Wireless 2915ABG, which not only offers greater speeds, but it requires less power, and is compatible with 802.11g and 802.11b.

There are two new technologies which will become wireless: wireless USB and wireless firewire. The main advantage of the wireless USB is that it will allow the notebook to be connected to different equipments without any cables; the wireless firewire will be oriented towards home video applications.

Materials and design The space shuttle notebook

Current cases will be replaced by alloys and soft materials. The new trend is magnesium based alloy which offers the steel?s resistance, but is lighter than plastic. Another option could be carbon fibers, Asus already having a few models using this material. For its ThinkPad X31, IBM used a titanium case. The category of light and thin notebooks will be the one to decide the material of the future, like for example the combination between carbon fibers and nickel-carbon used by Sony in the VAIO line.

The new materials will allow some design changes among which the most tempting is transforming the notebook into a graphics tablet.

Still, how will it look like?

There are some new technologies which await their implementation into the notebooks of the future. Some of them are still being researched, but others have already started to be widely used. Each of them provides new perspectives into the world of notebooks and broadens their usage.

We know for sure that tomorrow?s laptop will look nothing like the one from today, but also that many of the technologies presented above won?t make it to the mainstream level until 2007. Moreover, in the years to come extensions of current technologies will also appear. In conclusion, until the appearance of a model that will include all of these wonders, many notebook generations will pass.

Anyway, the future is bright!

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