WRT the solar panels, there are companies now working on developing conductive polymers which can be turned into an ink and printed through an inkjet printer. A couple applications of this technology are OLED displays and solar cells which can charge off any sort of light and maintain efficiency independent of angle of incidence.

Things get really interesting when you consider combining these two technologies. Embed the solar cell ink in the coating of my computer, or create a 4 section pixels (R G B Solar) and you've got yourself laptops which charge themselves.

The idea is pretty far-fetched today, but for a forecast of technologies in 2015 I'd expect to see these.

I definitely like the concept art above... reminds me of the Mogul/Tilt-family of smartphones.

IMNSHO...the approach taken to these types of articles, and this one in particular is wrong. They tend to take a look at the form and stretch it in all sorts of directions (a blob? A clam shell on its side as an ebook?). But they go conservative on the underlying technology. Why can we only expect 6 cores, and 2Tb of Magnetic disk space/or 250Mb of SSD storage? The technology always outstrips the ability of people to change the way they use it, other than certain disruptive technologies which may make another technology obsolete (cell phones not land lines; wireless not wired LAN, etc.). But for the very personal use, people will not in 8 years switch to a blob, or use a laptop on a steering wheel (though I'd like to try :)). Even with speech input, tablets, etc. - traditional hardware interfaces have not chnaged in 25 years ("here's your keyboard, screen, and main unit...oh it's all in one? Let's call it a laptop, no wait...a notebook"

They will want:

* Lighter Devices
* Better Battery Life/less power used
* Tactile Feedback from a keyboard
* Faster Processing, and ability to never see an hourglass
* Higher amount of storage
* Faster Connections to other devices or resoucres
* More Robust Construction
* Less errors affecting their use

Then they will try to decide between small surface area (small screen and keyboard for portability) compared to large surface area for usability.

For me, just make my Toshiba M400 faster, more reliable, lighter, and better battery life, and able to never see an hourglass and I am there.