Desktops? They're so last year

By 2011, research firm IDC expects portable computers to constitute 66% of all corporate PCs sold, up from 40% in 2006, and 71% of all consumer PCs sold, up from 44%.

Mother's helper

Vicki Halphide, a mother of two in Laguna Niguel, bought her first laptop, an Apple Inc. MacBook, in November. As she moves around her house, she carries the Mac under one arm and her 10-month-old, Danielle, under another. It lets her perform many of the tasks that the Dell desktop sitting in a bedroom does, but in new places: She does her Christmas shopping while standing in the kitchen and checks family finances in the living room.

"It's easier to find more stolen moments," she said.

The computing industry has buzzed about a laptop revolution for decades. But portable computers were slow to gain popularity because they weren't very portable. One of the first on the market, in 1982, weighed in at 23.5 pounds, nearly three times the average weight of today's laptop. They also didn't perform well compared with the desktop yet cost more.

The computer and semiconductor industries typically put better components in desktop PCs, then scaled them down for laptops. By about 2002, however, laptops began to hit a design wall -- the faster chips and bigger hard drives were burning up too much energy.

Internal fans could not keep laptop components cool enough. Despite its name, the laptop got so hot it couldn't be used on users' laps.

But that all began to change in 2003 when Intel Corp. introduced its Centrino technology: a microprocessor and multi-function chips built specifically for the portable computer.

Although not as fast as desktop PC processors initially, Centrino's claim to fame was that it came with a wireless Internet connection in the core hardware, making laptops better able to jump on the Internet anywhere there is a hot spot. The number of hot spots, many free, has exploded in the last few years.

With users liberated from having to plug their laptops into phone jacks, the promise of mobile computing finally was realized. Computer manufacturers began to pressure component makers to make products that used less power, and they responded with technological breakthroughs that let laptops run programs quickly without burning too hot.