Apple rumours

Only two weeks to go before MacWorld where God announces all the gizmos that us mere mortals will then crave for in 2008. Surely there is bound to be an iPhone upgrade? 3G and GPS capability are the most highly favoured.

But it is the latest rumour of an Apple ultra-lite laptop (even made The Telegraph today) that excited me.

Five years ago I bought a Panasonic Toughbook because it was full function XP but weighed just 1kg and its battery lasted over 6 hours. With its aluminium case and ruggedised design, it bragged that I could drop it from 3 metres and it would still work or, indeed, spill a cup of coffee over its keyboard. I’ve done both and can testify to both claims! I’ve taken it all over world and I literally could not do without it. It has never had a single fault. If I lost it today I would buy exactly the same again – even though it still seems to cost around £1500.

So news of an ultra-lite Macbook really took my interest. Rumours suggest that it will have a detachable CD/DVD drive (like my current Toughbook – the new Toughbook T7 integrates this but weights 1.3kg as a result) My only concern is that the rumours suggest that the Apple will have flash memory rather than a hard disc. That would be a big mistake. I can take all my documents, website, photos etc with me on my Toughbook – even though my model only has a 20gb drive. The latest Toughbook has 80gb.

My only 'problem' in all this is that I STILL travel with a laptop, Blackberry, mobile phone, iPod and digital camera (all of which require different chargers!) Will I ever get to the point where one 'converged' device is convenient and good enough for me?