~ 3 year old bump ~

Some things that are related:
- gaming system requirements stalling thanks to game consoles » gaming may be more viable on laptops
- optical media falling out of popularity » less space needed for a laptop
- most people don't give a sh*t about upgrading / replacing internals » advantage of an easily open-able box loses its advantage

Seems like AMD's external GPU push hasn't gone anywhere, though Intel is now pushing Thunderbolt, so see what happens of that.


On the desktop side, I somewhat wonder why boxes are so big these days.  With optical drives losing popularity, 2.5in SSDs gaining popularity, and APUs being viable to most people, all you really need is some HTPC-sized case to house the APU/fan, RAM, SSD, small motherboard and a bunch of ports.
Sure, it's not for enthusiasts who like changing stuff, but I'd expect this configuration to be the mass-market setup (or at least will be soon).

A thought I had may be that phones could extend to PC uses.  With MHL video output, wireless keyboard/mouse and phones now having dual core CPUs (probably still not as powerful as Intel Atom) and 1GB RAM, maybe in the future, you'll see people using them more as workstations.
Hell, it's something Intel may push for with its Metfield.