I'm always thinking ahead about what I want for my next computer, primarily because I find it entertaining to read about the new and upcoming technogies involved. At the moment, I'm probably looking to purchace a new laptop sometime in mid 2011, and the following is my best guess regarding what I will find available at that time.

Processor: Probably something based on Intel's (as of writing still upcoming) Sandy Bridge architecture / Huron River platform.

• Core i7-2820QM - 4 cores/8 threads, 2.3 GHz, 8MB cache, 45w, 32nm, integrated GPU, DDR3-1333

Sandy Bridge essentially fixes all the issues I had been concerned about previously, specifically the lack of integrated GPU and (seemingly) power issues on all existing 4 core mobile processors.

Previously, my wish had been: Intel Core 2 Duo -> mobile Intel i5 / i7 (kinda confusing at this point because of Intel's absurdly confusing naming scheme. I'd really like to get something quad core, but with Core 2 Duo thermal and battery characteristics.)

• Core i5-520M - 2 cores / 2400 MHz / 3MB cache (Arrandale, integrated GPU, DDR3-1066, 32nm, hyperthreading, Core 2 level power consumption. My current Core 2 Duo T8300 is 2 cores at 2.4 without hyperthreading. Reviews seem to show about 20% improvement from that, on average.)
• Core i7-620M - 2 cores / 2667 MHz / 4MB cache (I expect this to be the most common)
• Core i7-720QM - 4 cores /1600 MHz / 6MB cache (a bit older, Clarksfield, no integrated GPU, high power consumption, 45nm, questionable reviews)

Memory: 8GB 1333 MHz (2gb would be fine for pretty much everything EXCEPT for video editing, which is my newest, and very annoying, problem.)

Hard Drive: Ideally, one large 256gb+ SSD (good 256GB one is currently $600ish - eak. 512GB ones are 1.4k). If this is financially stupid, then 2 hard drives. One 30-64GB SSD for OS and programs, one 1TB+ 7200 RPM for data. This requires a laptop with two drive bays, one may be interchangable with optical drive. Seriously limits laptops, and requires slightly funky partitioning. I actually might like this solution more. Larger SSDs tend to be faster though, so it's a bit of a tradeoff. I expect the SSD to be, by far, the largest performance improvement in this generation - I see more disk waits than processor waits (probably only video/music encoding is CPU bounded for me). My current, relatively fast 320gb drive does about 80MB/s reads, and a decent SSD does about 220MB/s. Latency is also signigicantly reduced. All in all, I'd expect this to drop Eclipse's load time from 10-15 seconds to 3-5, and GIMP's from 5 seconds to 2. I also expect this to massively improve photo thumbnail generation speeds - one of my largest annoyances - (good point, my photos are going to need to reside on this drive - probably want 64GB)).

UPDATE: Again with video editing woes. I need at least 16gb of SSD space for video that I'm currently dealing with... I'm thinking 128gb would now be a lower bound for a boot drive. ($275 as of Aug 2010)

Monitor: 15"-16" Widescreen LED Backlit LCD @ 1680x1050 / 1920x1080 / 1920x1200 (really important to be bright, and is ideally matte rather than glossy)

Video: Nvidia mobile something (performance specs here don't matter, but compatibility with linux does. If the CPU has an integrated linux compatible GPU, that will be fine for me. Not sure if the Arrandale mobile's have Linux compatibility at this point)

UPDATE: I'm doing video editing now, and some video cards seem to be able to help with hardware accelerated encoding/rendering. Unfortunately, none of those cards seem to be available for laptops yet.

Platform: ideally Calpella (Centrino - 6th gen)

Network (Wireless): Intel Wireless N (Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 AGN - prolly) (maybe WiMax? maybe 3g card?)

Network (Wired): Gigabit

Keyboard: Not shitty, and ideally backlit.

Touchpad: Large and multitouch would be awesome.

Optical Device: DVD-RW (don't much care about Blue-Ray, and could easily be persuaded to drop the optical drive completely)

Video Output Ports: DVI, HDMI, or preferably DisplayPort

Other Ports: USB (3.0 prefered), e-SATA (if at all available), Firewire (just in case?), Microphone output, Headphone output, Digital Audio Output

Extras: Webcam, Bluetooth, Card Reader