What's in store for everybody's go-to computer?

     For those of you who want the world at your fingertips, the wait is almost over. The future PC promises to put nearly everything you could need or want right in your palm.

       Think of a souped-up version of today's smartphone, with a monitor that unrolls into a larger screen and a biometric security system that lets you access everything in your professional and personal life from anywhere, with all the data residing in the cloud. Order and pay for your morning coffee with a touch of a button. Book a weekend getaway with just a few clicks.


      "PCs are going from engines or tolls to portals and enablers. The vision of what they'll be in the future is a partner. They'll be participating in the higher cognitive tasks of what people do to get their jobs done," says Andrew Chien, director of research at Intel Corp.

      The personal computer has been a corporate workhorse for decades. While it was evolved, becoming slimmer and more mobile, in many ways it still resembles those old terminals  tethered to the mainframe. But the next decades will bring dramatic changes, as the PC evolves past the standard desktop and laptop units to amalgamations of computing devices and their peripherals.


      The future PC will be smarter, too. It could discreetly remind you of the name of an acquaintance and alert you when it's time to take your medicine. It will be your colleague, your butler -- and possibly your friend.

      We talked and corresponded with a dozen or so experts in R&D, IT management and academia to get a feel for what they're expecting the PC to look like a decade from now.