DEAR Santa - I have been good all year, I have worked hard, travelled the planet, hit all my targets and created lots of new business, and many of my predictions have come true, so I really would like a full stocking this year. You know I spend a lot of time thinking about and working in the far future, but there are a few niggling things that you could fix right now.

When you drop by my house could you please leave me a mobile phone with a voice recording facility so I don't have to scrabble for a pen and paper? An integral torch, laser pointer and screwdriver would also be handy to lessen the number of items hanging on my trouser belt I would also really like my mobile phone to operate in every country in the world without me having to reprogram the band, select the carrier and register.

Could it also be really intelligent and have voice command that adapts to noisy environments, and could you make sure it has an MP3 player so I can carry my favourite music with me all the time? An integral GPS and PDA facility would be really handy too. And could the battery please last at least a week on standby and a full day for continuous conversation?

A holster for spare batteries, and an infrared port that is instantly compatible with everything else would be nice too. Oh, and please ask the manufacturer to stop changing the interface, battery charger and the car kit design for no good reason?

Could I also have a suite of office software that is forward, backward and sideward compatible, reliable and uses storage space efficiently? I have a hard drive that is full of 8Kb text documents that demand over 100Kb each. I could also use an emailer designed for 53-year-old eyes and a thin pipe instead of 20:20 vision and a fat pipe. A bigger screen, more RAM, a faster clock, bigger hard drive and, you know, all the usuals would be great too.

But most of all, can I have applications software that is really stable and not prone to crash at the most embarrassing moments in front of customers? If you can find one, I would like a computer bag designed by someone who travels instead of a designer who deals only with the concept of travel. It needs to be lightweight, durable, and everything should have a place and fit snugly. But most of all, I would like it to be a top loader with an aspect ratio that is portrait-oriented when the carrying handle is at the top. I will then be able to get at my laptop from a cramped airline seat without hitting my knees.

I think it is high time I got rid of the miles of cable in my office and home, so I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a radio LAN that automatically connects everything I own. But please, please do not leave me any more speech-to-text software - I don't think I could stand the disappointment again.

Finally, if you could just grant me one wish, and I know it is impossible, but as the euro is now equal to the US dollar, could we scrap all the European currencies, do the obvious and adopt the dollar? This would really make living, working, travelling and trading so much simpler.

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk