Can Longhorn improve laptops?

“To address the power issue, Microsoft is pushing laptop makers to add features such as flash memory-equipped drives, reducing the number of times a computer must spin a power-hungry hard drive.

Other planned changes include the addition of a “mobility center” that will serve as a single control panel for all manner of laptop-related settings. The concept is similar to the Security Center Microsoft added to Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Microsoft showed off its ideas for the mobility center last year, but Mitchell said the idea has advanced much farther.”

I think the main thing to realize is, that you will need a 64Bit laptop to even use Longhorn, unless they release a special version. Read about it here.