What is overlooked in innovative computer hardware?

Transistors are a foundation of modern computers. These transistors play a part in nearly all of the components. They are also swiftly approaching the size of an atom. That alone amazes me.

The Zip drive.

We should be using real live mice tied by the tail, a squeak sounds much better than a click.

Solid State Drives (SSDs). Until recently the big bottleneck in computer speed has been hard drive transfer rates. SSDs are still more expensive and smaller capacity, but they have improved transfer rates from ~15Mb/s to over 400Mb/s in some cases. Seriously, get one, and you’ll never go back.

Optical interconnects will probably be the next thing that speeds computers up noticeably.