I got a new laptop a couple of days ago. It's thinner, lighter, and probably 3X the computer that I was using before.

It's better in all ways except one. The built-in stereo speakers are not as good. Like my last laptop, the speakers are mounted on the bottom front. But they had to go with smaller speakers to make a thinner laptop.

It's an understandable compromise. Most consumers - me included - like thinner laptops. And, frankly, I don't expect Bose quality sound out of my laptop speakers. If I want to listen to music or a podcast I plug into my stereo or put on headphones if its at all possible to do so.

Of course I'm not always sitting next to a stereo. The point of a laptop, afterall, is to be mobile. So, imagine the ultimate mobile laptop for, say, end-of-year 2009.

Closed it's impossibly thin - maybe a quarter inch thick. You open it up and the upper half is entirely screen. The lower half is keyboard and touchpad - input/output neatly divided.

It would be considerably thinner than the Toshiba pictured above and the black space around the screen would disappear almost completely. Maybe there would be just a thin black line framing the screen for aesthetic reasons.

That would be a great laptop, but where would you put the speakers?

A failed effort to soften the noise from British military helicopters led to a breakthrough enabling surfaces from mobile telephone screens to car roof liners to be turned into stereo speakers.

The technology was sold to Cambridge-based NXT, which christened it "SurfaceSound" and arranged for it to be crafted into Toyota cars, Gateway computers, Hallmark greeting cards and more.

The screen could be the speakers! Now, just put the webcam behind the screen too so that we can actually look at the person we are video conferencing with.