It's only been a couple of weeks, but 2010 is already shaping up to be an eventful year, where developments in IT are concerned. For one, if reports are true, we should be seeing the revision of at least one wireless power standard before the year is up. In fact, the Wireless Power Consortium is confident that this can be achieved within the next six months. Not bad for an idea that would have elicited laughs for its sheer absurdity just a few years ago.

Of course, it will be some time yet before the power efficiency of wires can even approach that of wired chargers. Yet there is little doubt that the convenience of simply tossing one's laptop, mobile phone and a couple of other mobile gadgets on top of a special mat for charging holds special appeal for many of us.

Speaking of power efficiency, Qualcomm's low-powered Snapdragon platform should finally be seeing a broader roll-out on the computing scene this year, with at least one major computer maker demonstrating "smartbooks" based on the ARM-based architecture. Of course, various Snapdragon processors are already being used by smartphones, the most notable of which must be the Nexus One released last week.

I'm certainly looking forward to the release of smartbooks running on the latest QSD8672 chip later this year though, which packs two CPU cores running at up to 1.5 GHz. While it remains to be seen whether genuine "full day" computing would finally be possible, smartbooks, with their integrated plethora of wireless technologies, probably stand the best chance of making this dream a reality.

A smartbook would not be able to compete with a full-fledged laptop or desktop where computing performance is concerned. The argument though, is that most folks will not require more than just a few instances of their web browser and perhaps a word processor to be active simultaneously. Using this line of reasoning, a smartbook becomes the perfect computing platform.

Unfortunately, I would be first to admit that this argument didn't quite work out for me. My attempt at using a low-powered, CULV-based laptop with a long battery life (seven to nine hours) caused me to switch to a laptop which packs more oomph a year later. I am curious to hear if any readers went through a process similar to this. For those with netbooks though, what would you consider more important: Battery stamina, or performance?

I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. - Paul