>>>for me, a very broad trend is that the "personal" device is shifting from i86/i64 to smartphones as least denominator.
>>>I carry most of my reading stuff on my phone and synch it with the PC available or read on the small screen.
>>>Similar for app access: more and more info needs to be checked with the "personal device",
>>>even if high profile work is done much better with keyboard or large screen.
>>>
>.....
>>Yes, I think you're right about headset and foldable keyboards. But this is basically the laptop paradigm. Just more portable perhaps.
>
>But the "wintel" mold is lost. These laptops eat up part of the M$ ecosphere -
>even if the "client" is a smartphone accessing via VPN and MSTSC protocol a TS instance there is less turnover for M$.
>
>>All these devices are coming and all will find a market. But I still think we are talking about supplemental technology. Its like the "gesture" thing and those great Vanilla Sky screens in the air where you reach up and wave your hands around. It is great for CSI and newsroom graphics and probably a lot of other stuff. I don't see millions and millions of cubicle rats working that ways all day long. Ergonomics are very task related.
>
>For those having to go to a cubicle with a given PC you are right. But more and more work offline -
>those in power forcing the smartphone access down the throat of development.
>
>>I don't mean to sound like a Luddite. I embrace all this stuff enthusiastically. I am just trying for perspective.
>
>No worry - I did not put you in such a mental drawer...

Unfortunately those in power are, if anything, doing their best to keep the cubicle rats in the cubicle. Telecommuting makes all the sense in the world and is still extremely rare. Big bosses want a lot of toys, but they definitely like to see butts in the seats in when they pass through the offices on the lower floors. And a department still running 1000 windows XP / Pentium boxes isn't going mobile any time soon.

As I said in my reply to Tracy, if I were marketing "mobility" I'd market a combo smartphone / netbook-laptop-touchscreen-padwithakeyboard that used the same subscription with unlimited talking to each other. Leave it back in your hotel and be able to access from your smartphone and at night have it to read reports, talk to the office network, web-email, watch movies, whatever. go to a meeting the next day, take it along and be connected 4g. Neither device does th whole job but between them you have it all. (and when the virtual screen comes along, it is just a supplemental display device for either one)