Maybe around 2010.

near end of life for the PS3...

Towards the end of the lifecycle, when its feasable to invest in the design, and much cheaper to produce it due to lower costs of current generation technology.

In other words, too late to matter for what you guys want to see it for, lol.

I predict 2010.Sometime that year,for sure.

SONY will do an internal redesign first...

External re-designs will wait untill SONY believe's it'll boost sales ... the case for PS3 can't cost that much to manufacture...

So not until 2017?

Does anyone noticed that the PS3 slim mock-up is a bad Photoshop job on a Wii??

its not only the case, it would also reduce costs for the packaging. smaller consoles would also cost less to ship..., but its true for now the internal redesigns will gain them more cost reduction.  but if they do a complete internal overhaul they might as well do the external at same time if its possible so if they can shrink cell, rsx, cooling & mianboard at same time then it would mkae sense to make a compleet redesign.

It's not a good indication to go by really , the PS2's situation is entirley different from the PS3's , i'm sure Sony could have managed a slim PS2 in 2.5 years or less if it was needed.

PS3s currently use a 2.5" HDD slot, right? If they move to a 1.5" HDD (think iPod mini, when they still existed), they could potentially save a lot of space, but it would add to the cost significantly (which, if they are aiming to cut costs, wouldn't be ideal).

They could probably rip out the power supply and give it an external power brick, and depending on how corporate power dynamics have changed in the last year and a half, this article may no longer hold water, although we'll see. That's only displaced size, though, not really eliminated per se. The Wii does fine with its external brick, but it also only draws like 20W, so who knows.

All told, if all they have to change is a 33% reduction in mobo size (which actually wasn't said, but it's an overestimate based on the heat sink shrinkage) I wouldn't expect a full slimline. If they change their minds about the power brick, then yes, but it will still be limited by the large HDD. If they switch to a smaller form factor HDD, then *maybe* they'd be looking at a significantly smaller machine.

All told, I don't think it's viable enough at this point to expect a full slimline PS3. One more process shrink might do it, as might being able to replace the HDD with NAND memory after a few more process shrinks and price drops there.