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ILLUSTRATION BY TRAY BUTLER

Many people judge laptops by the speed of their processors, size of their hard drives and sticker price. Although all of these are still major considerations, now even rock-bottom machines have tons of memory and adequate speeds.

As a result, manufacturers are increasingly offering new innovations to lure buyers. Today's laptop features may be more evolutionary than revolutionary, but they provide a road map for where mobile computing is going.

One such feature: exterior looks. In the late '90s, Mac declared that desktops could look cool, but - for the most part - they haven't really strayed far from the bland, boxy look. Again, Mac has led the pack with laptops using sleek aluminum unibody enclosures that make for a seamless case.

Now other manufacturers are using carbon fiber and other high-strength alloys for lighter, more durable machines. HP, for example, features a spill-resistant keyboard (to protect against that leaky latte) and claims that its DuraKeys look newer longer with 50 times more scratch resistance than standard keyboards.

Just as the look is changing, so too is the sound. It may be reassuring to hear a purring hard drive, but new solid-state drives (SSD) do away with memory's moving parts. Jostle a record player and bad things happen-but no one thinks twice about strapping on an MP3 player when they go running. SSDs are a boon for devices that are meant to be picked up and moved. Best of all: SSD prices are dropping rapidly.

And if laptops are changing their stripes and their sound, there's no reason why users shouldn't change how they interact with them. Just as cell phones are making greater use of limited real estate with intuitive touch screens, so, too, are laptops. Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds, for example, has a built-in Wacom graphics tablet with a stylus as well as a slide-out second screen. It's not a true dual monitor, but it does increase the viewable workspace by 40%.

On the performance front, a number of manufacturers are introducing machines with rapid start-up times. They quickly load core functions such as web browsing and email while the rest of the operating system boots, so there's less need to kill time around the water cooler before getting to work.

And if you're up and running with no hankering to quit, HP's EliteBook 6930p promises up to 24 hours of continuous operation off the grid on a single battery charge. With all these recent advances in technology, there's no telling what they'll think of next.

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