It strikes me as odd that in the year 2009 we are still using Pitot / Static sensing for Airspeed / Altitude / Vertical speed.
Along with the potential for disaster after repainting, leaving Pitot covers on and so forth..there are other pitfalls like operating in cold weather, 'high to low, look out below' flying an approach with an innacurate altimeter setting etc.
Why not use an input immune from the above errors, GPS ? It can display all of the above.
We could keep all of the standby instrumentation as pure Pitot / Static driven.
I think the idea has merit.