i believe it will have a PS3 slim,but probably in 2010 or so

 That picture is essentially worthless for the purposes of this discussion. There is no frame of reference for the size comparisons. They could have shaved off 2 meters. or 2 nanometers. There needs to be a third object to show the difference it makes in a more absolute sense.

I think you should honestly wait for another price cut. the next price cut will be sometime around spring or summer of 2009. It seems highly impossible to fit a cell proccessor, 40gb or 80gb, and bluray on a ps3 slim. If their was a ps3 slim, the developers would most likely have take out all the important features in the system, so there would be space. Everything could fit into the ps3 slim, but it might overheat quick or worse, probably explode.

sony always launches slimmer models on their consoles

I would bet my last dollar on a slim version. Like others have said, they are going to implement smaller cell and graphics chip this fall, which means less electricity needed (smaller power supply) and less heat ommitted (smaller fans). Take out the power supply and make it external and there is less heat that the fans need to remove as well. They have already been using smaller blu ray drives and removed things to take a smaller loss on the system. So pretty much, they can probably easily do it when the graphics chip is 45 nm like the cell and would go great with the release of ff13 in Japan next year. Japanese homes aren't nearly as big as we have in the west and they are quite peculiar about these things.

I doubt it. The parts are compacted enough in the PS3 as it is. I can't imagine how they would make the fit any tighter. :/

I quite agree, it could be bigger than PS2 slim, but smaller than a 15.4" notebook, I tried figuring components layout looking at my NB and cutting a slice from it, not having to house a screen and a keyboard, it should still be fine.

Well if history is anything to go by...

PS3 slim will arrive in 2012 half way through the PS3s 10 year life cycle.