Okay, so today's UMPCs are nowhere near being as cool as the ones in this video, but supposedly this is the direction they're heading. You got voice recognition, ultra-thin profiles, touchscreen displays, the works. There's no QWERTY keyboard, but if my UMPC can do everything that these can (and direct me to secret raves), I don't care.
Intel: Future of UMPCs [TechEBlog]
DISCUSSION
Software and silicon may improve fast enough for all this to be possible (OLED displays, multi-touch screen interface, etc.) However, there is still one ingredient that hardly ever improves: battery technology.
I mean, sure there are plenty of developments out there on battery tech (ie. nanotube capacitors), but for some reason we never seem to see its light of day.
More conspiracies, I tell ya...