If you asked a child in the 1960s and 70s to draw a computer, they’d most likely have scribbled out a large box with blink-able lights and tape reels on the front of it. A child of the 80s would most likely have drawn something that looked like a PC, with a CRT, keyboard and mouse. More recently, the PC has shrunk into what we today recognize as a laptop. I hardly noticed that it’s over ten years since I owned a mouse with a ball, I remember my first mouse because all my computers up to that point didn’t have one; the closest thing to a pointing device was the four arrow keys. Conversely our children may remember their last mouse, because as touch technology improves the need for an independent pointing device will drift away, and inputs are more likely to be accepted from multiple sources. It’s also several years since I waved goodbye to my last CRT, and around that time I also removed the redundant floppy drive from my machine. Technologies advance constantly, and over the last 30 years or so the form of desktop and laptop machines has been changing slowly and almost imperceptibly. Now, it looks as though the days of the mechanical keyboard are numbered and when that happens, the form factor of the computer as we know it will be changed for ever. Continue reading →