It's all about thin

While cleaning out my basement last weekend, I found my first laptop.  It was a Thinkpad 750Cs with a passive matrix screen, and a 170MB hard drive, I believe.  Yes, that's MB.

I was working for Andersen Consulting at the time, and working 16-18 hour days on top of an hour and a  half commute, so working on the train was absolutely critical.  This could barely run the ParcPlace Smalltalk distribution we were developing our architecture on at the time, but it was still useful.

I haven't touched this machine in years, but besides it being really really heavy (I can't even find a google search that will reveal what it weighs) the first thing I noticed about it was that it has almost the exact same footprint as my 11" MacBook Air.

I've used smaller and bigger laptops, but I find this size is about right for what I need.  The utility of that dimension hasn't changed.   But the thinness is what has and makes the MacBook Air such a useful too, especially for travelling.   Apple really got this right.

I find it's the same thing with phones.  Thinner the better.   They can be a little bigger on the height and width, but the depth has to be as thin as possible.  That's probably why I'm enjoying the Galaxy Nexus right now.  Huge screen, great for email and reading books on the Kindle application, and thin enough to be unobtrusive in the pocket.