Now, as storage migrates toward online servers, and media is more likely to be streamed rather than viewed from a DVD or Blu-ray disc, many of those onboard features are shrinking down, or getting nixed altogether.  Consumers are favoring size and portability over a heftier 'do-it-all' type machine.  "Size will most certainly be an important driver when consumers look for their next PC or notebook," especially with tablets at the forefront of consumers' minds todays, says Desiree Davis, Senior Manager with Resolve Market Research.  The skinny: In recent years, we've been seeing ultra-portable notebooks like Apple's MacBook Airs ditch the optical drive so they can achieve a slim silhouette.  The Mac Mini desktop also lost the optical drive in its latest iteration. And now, both MacRumors and TUAW are reporting that Apple is working on ultra-thin 15- and 17-inch notebooks as well, likely to fall under the MacBook Pro umbrella and hit the market around the holiday season.  If this is true (and it definitely seems in line with Apple's current product trends and general philosophy) and they're as thin as the Airs, they likely won't have an optical drive either.  We're also seeing PCs begin to favor flash storage, typically in the form of SSDs that incorporate NAND-based flash memory, rather than thicker, weightier HDDs.  "There are simply fewer devices on the market that consumers want to carry that have room for hard disk drives. Their value to the on-the-go consumer is simply nonexistent," says Davis.  Although SSDs are currently more expensive than comparable capacity HDDs, they offer more benefits than just their smaller form factor: they are quieter, less vulnerable to physical shock, have less latency, and quicker access time. We're probably going to see them become more and more prevalent in notebooks and PCs.
Our notebooks, ultrabooks and desktop PCs are all getting thinner -- thin enough that Kate Moss in her heroin-chic heyday could have sported something like the 13-inch MacBook Air down the runway