INBOX:It's little unfair of me to talk about a product that has yet to be unveiled. However, there is so much chatter online about a product Apple is rumoured to have developed that it's worth raising the subject.
Portable computing is not a new field. We all know how useful laptops can be, and they are getting smaller and more powerful by the day.
One of the leaders in the field is the Sony Vaio TZ Series Notebook, which has a small but workable 11.1in screen, WiFi, built-in camera, a good battery life, a hard drive of up to 200GB and a DVD drive.
Then there is the Dialogue Flybook, which has a much smaller 8.9in widescreen display and weighs 1.23kg. This makes the Flybook an attractive proposition for anyone who needs a laptop with them all day, every day.
The screen is touch- sensitive, turning it into a quasi-tablet, but because the device is so small, the keyboard is also small, meaning many people may find it difficult to use.
What Apple is prepping, however, is a shift in what we perceive to be a laptop. Interestingly, it's not the first time around for Apple. In the early 1990s it produced the PowerBook 2400, a small light notebook that could lock into a base station back at the office. The new product, though, rumoured to be launching in January, has been dubbed the "ultra- portable Mac" by online rumour websites.
Here's what is being said about the machine. The 13in portable computer is supposed to be 50 per cent lighter and a great deal slimmer than Apple's 15in professional MacBook Pro.
To achieve this svelte design, Apple has had to go down a fairly radical path, something that is not alien to its famously perfectionist chief executive, Steve Jobs.
The idea is to replace the hard drive with something called an "onboard Nand flash". In plain English this is similar to the technology contained in the SC memory cards you slot into your digital camera or mobile phone. It is plastic and metal with no moving parts.
Such a device is much thinner than a hard drive and it would be much faster to boot up - it would be almost instantaneous in fact.
The laptop is also rumoured to use 13in LCD display panels which, like those used in the current 15in MacBook Pro, feature LED backlights that consume less power and extend battery life.
The first whispers about this ultra-portable laptop appeared early last year but have reached such a crescendo that it is expected that Apple will unveil the product at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco on January 15th.
Several Wall Street analysts have spoken about their certainty of Apple's next move, but we'll have to wait for Jobs to tell us what Apple's next big thing will be.
