Though we got surplus amount of primary memory, and big HDD when comapared to 20 or 30 years back, and cloud computing...
What other technology advancement you still need ?
Note: Feel free to add more options to this poll.
Decent eyeglass displays have been a "just around the corner" tech for going on 20 years, and they're one of the few barriers to making computers much smaller yet. You can only make a laptop as small as its screen and keyboard, after all...
Plenty of prototypes, but nobody's made a computer-resolution production model that sells; they keep making overpriced personal-TV-viewing versions, wondering why they don't sell(which is obvious enough to me -- the use of a tiny TV is limited, while the use of a tiny computer...), and abandoning the market again. With OLED technology they might be a lot more practical now, if anyone was willing to try hard enough to make it sell..
Wireless power supply's a real good one, as in, very badly needed, but I'm not sure I'd call it an advancement of existing technology. Right now we don't know where to begin; beams of energy powerful enough would burn people, too, and fields diminish rapidly with distance, and the power-line-cancer-fearmongers would foam at the mouth. There was an article many moons ago of a potential system utilizing magnetic rather than electromagnetic transmission, over long distances, via resonators tuned to be very inefficient radiators; they seemed to connect via some other electromagnetic effect. But there's been little to nothing about that since, so it may have been another cold fusion.
Wireless power (or rather, a subset of it) is already deployed in South Korea (Reference), where a bus is constantly recharged through coils in the pavement. The next step IMO would be pads that could be embedded into walls and desks to power TV sets/monitors/PCs/mobiles/...
6 months mobile battery, I think
Oh there are several things I would like to see :
personally:
- a solar powered notbook that loads with artificial light too
- a wireless chip that connects my brain to the internet wherever I am and whatever I need to lookup or do in the web right now - no display required
- expandable days with the option to add more hours if required to have finally the time to use all the wonderful technical enhancements that do already exist
- a self adjusting bank account where always a dollar is remaining after I have bought all the gadgets that do exist and I would like to have but simply cannot afford to buy
professionally:
- OS enhancements and upgrades that do not need a reboot
- expandable memory to be implemented into userbrains - optionally with a replay function that allows them to replay explanations I gave them already a couple of times before - until they understand what I am saying
- security software that doesn't make any kind of work on the box impossible after implementing it - and that gives each user exactly the amount of permissions he needs to have to do the work he is supposed to do - not what had been configured
What about a way to fast travel long distances?
You know, instead of driving to the office, or walking 1/2 mile to a restaurant or spending a whole day at the airport if you want to travel to the other side of the globe, it would be nice to have "something" that let us travel instantly, or at least faster.
People that want to do harm to others would benefit from that technology too - you sure you still want that? 
Also humans would degenerate even more not moving their limbs 
---------- Post updated 11-03-10 at 01:02 PM ---------- Previous update was 11-02-10 at 04:59 PM ----------
Not a solar powered notebook but at least a keyboard - Logitech will bring such a device on the market in the middle of November:
2 Likes
Well, many technologies that were once thought they would be helpful to humanity are nowadays used to do harm as well. 
PS: And I'd love to have a Jetpack.
By wireless power I don't mean glorified train tracks. It should have an efficient range of at least feet, not inches... This is essentially an open-air transformer, which fundamentally limits the range and/or power because the majority of the field won't be going through your receiver. Huge amounts of waste and dropoff would be involved unless you were actually right next to the coil (preferably right flat up against it, holding something ferrous between you and it). Most energy would go into polarizing the walls and air instead.
We are in perennial need of lots of RAM. No more I/O latency to disk, just enough for all our databases to be in memory, and our swap space too.
Swap space in RAM? What's the point of that?
Any file which is not needed can be stored in a readily available section of memory instead of the disk. Perhaps I meant cache. These are statements one makes when not as well informed in computer architecture matters.
Or any technology advancement that gives a step up in performance.
I thought the fast travel thing was a cool. But now that you brought up the kind of harm it can do. I started thinking of WTF moments. Eg you were meant to go to destination A but instead land in destination B. Or worse you were "accidentally" left on some mountain, building, 500 feet off the ground...
(This reminds me of Star Trek.)
Wow, that keyboard is pretty interesting...
Would love to combine that with that new AIR MX mouse i've seen someone post up on this site.
Logitech - MX Air Rechargeable Cordless Air Mouse
That would be awesome 
Also something I'm liking at the moment are all the xbox360 kinect hacks going around, some really exciting stuff there!
I would normally brush that off as silliness.
But I've already read about it in two exciting novels: Oath of Fealty by Niven and Pournelle, and Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge.
Microchips have grown smaller but more powerful while capacities have grown a lot bigger but the server and PC casing remains much the same size so why hasn't anybody tried to put a UPS into it? A UPS is pretty low tech. I've have pondering on this since the 90's.
I need a heads up display with lens-shape-altering zooming capabilities connected to a computer with object tracking and identification, velocity tracking radar, laser distance measuring. That makes me think about Ironman, I could also use a miniaturized arc reactor (hydrogen cold fusion anyone??)
I would like a fusion reactor in the one terawatt per year range. I figure that 10 or 15 of these should be enough to supply the world with all the power we need. (Alternate technologies that can pump out this much juice would also be acceptable.) And wireless delivery is not required. Don't dilly dally though, I'd like the first one to go on line by the end of the decade.
Interesting idea.
But lots and lots of people have PCs with a UPS built in. It's a laptop.
I've always found it kind of kookie to use a laptop as a desktop, even though a great many people do. But maybe the "UPS" issue plays a greater role than I've given it credit for.
Would solar powered notebooks qualify as wireless power supply? Count me in, irrespective.