Sometime in the near future, we can expect to finally see a completely solid-state laptop.

“Wait, aren’t laptops already solid-state right now?”

Well, almost. As far as the processor, main board, and memory are concerned, your typical laptop would be solid-state indeed. In other words, everything is electronic, with no mechanical or electromechanical parts.

But there’s still one electro-mechanical part in your laptop, and this is the hard drive, which is basically a bunch of high-spinning magnetic discs that are read by a swinging arm. And if you care to nitpick, there’s also the cooling fan, which also involves the use of a spinning motor.

Here’s what’s going to happen. By late 2008, we can expect to see a purely solid-state laptop. And it will be a result of trends that are happening right now among the different components of your laptop.

Two trends in particular will make this happen:

o Flash drives, which are solid-state memory devices, are now improving technologically at a rate that is faster than Moore’s Law (which states that computer technologies double in performance very 18 months). The iPod nano introduced us to the 4GB flash drive. But by late 2008, we can expect to see 32GB flash drives at the least. And when that happens, we will see the first attempts at replacing laptop hard drives with flash drives.

0 Processor manufacturers are now realizing the need for cooler-running mobile chips. To date, the emphasis has always been on faster processors that consume greater amounts of power (and therefore heat up more). But the growing emphasis on mobile computing has been gradually changing the mindset of processor-makers, and we may soon see high-performance chips that can survive on passive cooling solutions (i.e. no fans necessary) alone.

Put these two trends together and what we can envision is that by late 2008, we may be seeing the first true solid-state laptop, offering a powerful, passively-cooled processor, at least 1GB of RAM, and at least 32GB of flash memory. Because there are no moving parts, we can expect this to be a laptop that we can truly manhandle. And since it’s solid-state and with a more power-efficient processor, the battery life can be amazing. Perhaps a twenty-hour battery life may no longer be too far-fetched. What’s more, this is going to be one really light and wafer-thin laptop.

One more thing. There is another emerging development that is bound to radically improve your laptop’s displays as well. But the irony is that, unlike the developments above, we have a solid-state device (your laptop’s LCD screen) transforming into an electromechanical one (!). This development is called MEMS, which is short for micro-electromechanical systems. The premise is that when color-carrying MEMS are used along with thin-film optics, these can create bright reflective displays. And because these are reflective displays, there will no longer be a need for backlighting, which is one of the greatest sappers of battery power in a laptop.

Okay, so call it the near-solid-state laptop. The bottom line is that a couple of years from now, we can look forward to lighter, tougher, and more energy-efficient laptops thanks to these evolving technologies.