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But what has happened to so many of those promising advances?

Hands up all those who remember broadband over power lines (BPL)?

Yes, it was going to provide a wonderful way to get around Telecom's ownership of the local loop and allow power companies to compete head-on with the telco's dominance of the hi-speed internet market.

Promising trials were even carried out in parts of the country -- but that was years go and since then -- not a sausage.

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In fact, BPL has been trialed all round the world and virtually every report seems, at least initially, to be very positive. Speeds in excess of 1Mbps are usually reported with few problems.

Maybe it's the radio-frequency noise that such systems emit which have seen them fail to transition into a practical product - or maybe there's some other problem. The thing is that we're not told are we?

Other "cool tech" include the holographic memory cube. This amazing breakthrough was supposed to deliver multi-terrabyte storage in a cube the size of a Leggo block.

Hmm... I don't see any inside my computer.

For that matter, and despite announcements that they're now being manufactured, I don't see any of those vertically magnetised hard drives that offer 10 times the storage at virtually no extra cost.

Electronic paper anyone? Well quite a few manufacturers have announced that they've made the stuff and that commercial production is imminent, but I'm still stuck with a bulky LCD or CRT display on all my computing devices.

Maybe *you* have got one of those cool fuel-cell powered laptops that seem to appear regularly in the "what's new" section of the media. Yes, run your computer for eight hours on a nip of Vodka, well that's the theory. Unfortunately I can't find any of these in the shops either.

I could go on - but the list of "breakthroughs" that we may never really see just gets longer every week.

How long will we really have to wait for that fusion-powered postage stamp-sized quantum supercomputer with direct neural interface, trillobyte of non-volatile memory, squillion hertz processor and morphic resonance kerfuffilator?

What are the most memorable bits of never-were technology that you can remember?

What bit of "breakthrough" technology would you most like to see become a commercial product?

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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