I wouldn't say replace. Just share the space.

Business as usual for some time, hmmm, we'll see. I honestly think mobile is already well on its way to being mainstream.

On a personal note, I am glad that you are speaking to me again. I am not too proud to admit it. Lord knows I have given everyone plenty of reason to give up on me. I have never blamed you or anyone else for my troubles. It just did hurt coming from you. Fini, and thanks for that. We can go back to agreeing about the Browns' or Bears' latest bad draft choices ;-)

>I don't think of tablets as toys, I love them. But I think they are a completely new market, not something to displace the laptop/desktop. ( well maybe the laptop)
>
>I have my eye on the ASUS Trasnsformer that will be coming out around July. Not sure if it will fly for development, but it certainly will replace a laptop for the kind of stuff college students do and pretty much anything a non-developer needs.
>
>I just mean that the new stuff will not replace the old, it will just cause us to refactor the old to be part of the mix and see the new for what it is - new - and do new cool stuff with that.
>
>But business apps and consumer apps have different functions and most business apps - at least at the in-office level - are going to be business as usual for quite some time.
>
>>Well, tablets are not toys. IMO you are deluding yourself into a false sense of security if you think they are. We are probably in general agreement that tablets/smartphones and more traditional devices like desktops will both be important going forward. Would I want to crunch a sales database with millions of records on an iPad? Nope. But would a desktop be appropriate for a grocery shopping assistant app, for example? Nope again. Give me a mobile app for that 100 times out of 100. Developing that kind of app is a day job.
>>
>>>Sure looks that way from where I sit too. There is no clamoring for replacing thousands of Windows (usually XP ) boxes with tablets with no keyboards or iphones. Those definitely have their place but there are awful lot of boxes out there that need to run SQL Server and Oracle apps in Java and .NET and the idea that somehow all those folks are going wake up one morning and say "Hey, I know, let switch all this stuff to mySql, noSql, Postgres and do our work on iPads because then we'll be cool" ...
>>>
>>>I think it is just a new, big market and that's great and I'll probably write apps for it - but I won't quit my day job <g>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Some of the acne set grudingly followed suit, but many didn't.
>>>>
>>>>The retail market and the corporate market occasionally overlap, but not often.
>>>>
>>>>Looking at a balance sheet and looking at your daughter's new dog are really two unrelated functions with differing requirements.
>>>>
>>>>I follow the small to mid-sized corporate market and most of our clients are too busy worrying about a customer or a key supplier who went bankrupt to deal with gadgets.
>>>>Just the other day, I was talking about photography to the owner of a good sized manufacturing company that uses a lot of tech, and he adked:
>>>>"You have a digital camera? - Are they better than film?"
>>>>
>>>>I like Deep Throat's advice:
>>>>"Follow the money!"