Fieldmouse

This is not for the reason most would conclude from this article (maybe).

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/...ne/?test=faces

Fact is, the last thing added to the piece of the pie that enabled civil society to exploded into wealth, was communication. We have had for hundreds of years, financial, property rights, separation of church and government. We have added effective transportation over a hundred years ago and greatly improved it in just the last half century. In the same amount of time almost, we put in place communication. However, only in the last 10 years has it been hyper drive.

I'm afraid, we're in jeopardy of breezing right past that mile stone for social life. Granted, I love texting and email, They have become and added tool to my sales kit. However, research and ideas? You can replace the full PC. Those who take advantage of what is right at their finger tips will find their avenue for wealth greatly increased.

Venator2

Well the older set of course will have to have larger and bigger for the obvious reasons. I like Linux because it's free, and wealth of software and no problems during time spent on line or using . I can make DVR's, media centers and security software and such for my home free. People give me perfectly good computers for nothing because of The business changing parameters, creating a new market. What the PC of future will look like I don't know . Probably a "talky" of sorts.
But for now:
Take a Pentium 3 or 4 add a stick of ram and walla as good as any new computer.

Alsatian

I would respectfully differ. I would point the finger at semiconductors and Moore's law. Moore's law states that the number of transistors you can place on a semiconductor of fixed physical size doubles every two years. The take-away from that is that the power of the logic doubles every two years --that is an exponential increase.

This intelligence is everywhere, including communications of course. It is in the fuel injection control system of your automobile that enhances the fuel efficiency of your car dramatically and promotes adapting combustion for different temperatures, different altitudes, different acceleration regimes. It is most particularly in business systems of all kinds and contributes mightily to increased productivity.

By the way, with reference to replacing laptops with ***********, I'm not seeing it. I read about the guy who types 55 words per minute. I'm callin' BS on that. Let me give you the last 10 pages of the patent application I have just been writing and see how fast that guy can thumb-type those words and formatting commands. Even if you can manage a voice recognition interface that replaces the keyboard, you won't be able to do that kind of work with open cubicles, as the din of everyone talking for their voice recognition interfaces would be mighty distracting. Further, you need to get the feedback of seeing what you are "typing" in, and frankly a littly-bitty smartphone display has limitations in that department. I work in a law firm making various patent documents. We have recently upgraded our monitors. You could either get two regular sized monitors or one big monitor. The rationale is to be able to fit two open documents on your screen at one time, rather than having to minimize, maximize, shift, documents around on the screen -- something we do a lot of. A smart phone is going to be hard to work in that application.

Anyway, semiconductors and Moore's law get my vote for the big economic driver over the last 10-15 years and maybe for the next several years to come. I'm not speaking of the money and business generated by building and selling semiconductors, I'm talking about the increasing efficiencies provided by these improved semiconductors (and the software that executes thereon) as well as the entirely new applications these improved devices make possible.