by , 2:00 PM EST, December 27th, 2001
CNN's Christmas gift to the propeller-heads among us was a December 25th article detailing their predictions for 2002 and beyond. Among other 'obvious' things, such as the growth of peer-to-peer networking and .NET services with Passport, their outlook includes organically-based LEDs that emit their own light - no backlighting - as well as 500 MHz palmtop devices within the first half of the year, and magnetic RAM that retains its contents after powering down.
Here's their prediction for portable power:
Imagine notebooks that work 20 hours at a stretch or cell phones that never run out of juice. Both may be possible thanks to new developments in fuel cells. The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has built prototype handhelds that use solar panels to recharge a tiny hydrogen fuel cell. New York-based Medis Technologies says it has developed a fuel cell for cell phones and laptops that uses ethanol and water -- a safer and cheaper alternative to hydrogen. Meanwhile, researchers at Motorola and Los Alamos National Labs are developing a methanol fuel cell that's about the size of a postage stamp.
One of the more interesting things, however, is their portrait of typical desktop and notebook systems for 2004: for a desktop user, they'll be running Windows on a machine with a 4-5 GHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, up to 400 GB of hard disk storage using serial ATA, and DVD-RW as standard. Oh yes, and they think the floppy drive will be sticking around.
Don't get too excited - several of these innovations aren't slated for widespread use until some years hence. It's great to know that industry pundits see good things around the corner, though, and we can hopefully rely on Apple to keep its die-hard users steeped in this new technology. That is, with the exception of CNN's idea that desktop users will still be stuck with 1.44MB floppy drives two years from now. Floppy drives? Holy moly, it truly is the silly season.