Over the past couple of years, we have paid a great deal of attention to the strides that have been made in mobile computing by graphics technology manufacturers. Heavyweight champions ATI and NVIDIA have delivered high-quality video performance to the mobile computing market. This has not happened overnight; it is an ongoing process of innovation and development.

The release of high-end mobile Graphics Processor Units (GPUs) has made it possible to get high-quality graphics performance on a mobile computer that is close to the quality of desktop graphics performance. Of course, the number of applications that require this type of graphics power is still limited to high-end graphics applications and games. At least currently, computer games continue to be a large part of what is driving the mobile GPU market.

Now that laptops and notebooks have addressed the issue of graphics performance, what about audio performance and audio quality? While there are a variety of audio solutions available for mobile platforms, the quality of most of these audio devices is average, at best. In most cases, the small speakers that are standard in notebooks mask the poor quality of these audio devices. And if you always plug your headphones into your notebook to listen to it, you may not notice the poor sound quality since you aren't using the laptop's audio speakers.

Part of the reason most consumers don't complain about the sub par sound quality from their laptop speakers is because we have become accustomed to poor sound quality from notebook computers. Desktop computer users normally do not use headphones to listen to their desktop computer, as they usually have external desktop speakers that are larger and of far better audio quality than is found in any notebook speaker. If you plug your headphones into a typical desktop computer, and then plug them into your notebook/ laptop running the same application and playing the same audio, the sound quality in the headphones while listening to the desktop is still superior in most cases.

Let's be blunt here: many users can't tell the difference between poor audio quality and good audio quality; thus, a majority of users have no desire or need for improved audio quality. With the advent of new desktop replacement mobile computing platforms, however, a growing number of users are moving toward using their wireless as a true desktop replacement platform - and, as such, for applications such as playing video games or watching DVDs. Video games and DVDs generally have exceptional audio quality built in; thus, there will be a growing need for higher quality audio for laptops as users move away from desktop computers altogether. If and when you decide to use your laptop or notebook as your primary computer, you will likely want audio quality that is as close as possible to that of a desktop. In the past, you were limited to whatever solution the mobile computing manufacturers chose to integrate into their platforms. However, this is about to change with the introduction of "Indigo" from Echo.