Birth of the true portable

Last month's Cebit got a bad press. The world's biggest computer show is getting smaller, they said. Big players stayed away and it is in danger of splintering into specialist shows.

Nevertheless, Cebit 2006 was the most interesting I have attended ­- and I have been to just about all of them in the past decade. It was the time, as much as the show. March, in my opinion, was the most exciting month in computing since the advent of Mosaic, the first successful graphical browser, marked the start of the web age in 1993.

Many, perhaps most, Mosaic users knew that the browser would change the world and bored everyone they knew trying to explain why. A change just as fundamental is happening again: technology is getting to the point where we can create a computer as portable as a paperback with the power and communications of a desktop.

This has required developments across a range of technologies, including those needed to sustain the ecosystem of a device that will draw many of its resources from the network. Just take a look at what has been happening: 

* Intel announced a new power-efficient core microarchitecture. 

* Next-generation Wifi and data-over-mains are offering local links of the order of 100Mbits/sec. Bluetooth and Certified Wireless USB, using ultra-wideband (UWB) carriers, promise shorter radio links with a data rate of up to 480Mbits/sec.

* The first mobile Wimax product promises roaming wide-area access at up to 9Mbits/sec. Pipex and Intel announce that they are teaming up to provide the infrastructure, initially for fixed Wimax

* Samsung showed a 32GB Flash disk, enabling a solid-state laptop. Panasonic says its HCSD cards will have similar capacity. See here.

* Vendors are trying to 'seed' Europe with  devices capable of receiving broadcast data using mobile-optimised DVB-H or DMB, the multimedia version of the Dab digital radio sdevices capable of receiving broadcast dataignal. This will allow you to receive TV, multimedia newspapers and other content on the move. 

* Network infrastructure across Europe is being upgraded, sometimes from century-old circuit switching, to use the packet-switched Internet Protocol (IP). At the user level, this is reflected in the increase of web calls; VoIP handsets abounded at Cebit.

* BT said 96 per cent of UK exchanges have been upgraded to offer web access at up to 8Mbits/sec. Carphone Warehouse has just started a price war that could bring down the cost of these links.

* The first ultra-mobiles using the Origami version of Microsoft's Tablet PC interface were shown at Cebit and IDF.

Ultra-mobiles are in their infancy and may evolve as much from games consoles as from Microsoft's Origami concept. Early models are likely to be underpowered and all the technologies involved need to mature ­ so does the interface. But they offer some of the most fascinating design challenges of today.

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