The Cloud hears you, Charles! It's listening! ;-)

I just heard from my older daughter wanting money, making it two for two already today. Children truly are God's cosmic joke.

>Yes and I have an app on my tablet that lets me log in to my desktop. That has potential. And I get what your saying about a front end to the cloud, though am suspicious that leaning on a cloud solution is only going to work in some scenarios.
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>I like the tablet and i'm sure they are only going to become more powerful and useful ... until they are touchpad netbooks with detachable screens that can operate independantly from the more powerful keyboard/base - which is essentially what I have here in this ASUS but lacking about 7gb of RAM, 500 gb of local storage ( though i can usb into a HD and do have both microSD and SD slots ) and a serious multi-tasking OS ( not the simulated multitask of Android ICS )
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>I do look forward to being able to wave my arms around and rant and have people believe I am communicating with the Cloud and not the Voices.
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>>I think more and more "serious computing" will happen on sessions in private or public clouds. Tablets or smartphones could act as front ends to those sessions, given adequate UI capabilities and bandwidth. If you're talking VR/Kinect headsets, then from the user's POV they could be running a Minority Report-style interface and waving their arms around madly... add some indistinct mumbling, and their behaviour will be indistinguishable from the clinically insane :)
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>>Didn't you once say you used LogMeIn to remote in to a workstation in the next room?
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>>>Exactly. the exec who uses his laptop for those purposes would have everything he ever needed with this thing and a docking station. I get that. But as I say, he never needed a real computer to begin with, just a jumped up pda. And between a phone and a cool slick netbook he has that now. Tablet with a docking station is just a touch screen version of that with detachable components and that probably makes more sense. Big screen is nice and he'll plug into that ( or use a Vr headset or whatever ) . The ASUS with the docking station looks like a very very cool netbook. I'm sure in another year SSD will be standard there.
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>>>My point is just these things are consumer devices, not personal computers as we know them now. and for a majority of the consumer population that will do the trick, and there will be, as there is now , a wide variety of sizes and styles. the gamers will scoop up vr headsets which will also be popular for video phone and VR travel. Travelers will have a hundred ways to use them and they will be tools that will interact with all kinds of commercial offering.
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>>>They are a new category of thing. But now that I really am seeing what the software for them does and the needs they fill I realize the only way I want to write software for them is if it is to extend custom business apps to perform some of their functions on a tablet or phone. But I don't think the demand for that ( beyond what web apps already do ) will be a big money maker for software architects, just another feature on enterprise apps.
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>>>But I have to say I'm not even mildly excited about writing the kind of apps that consumers would buy for phones or tablets - anymore than I'd want to write copy for magazine they read on airplanes.
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>>>>Think about the executive who spends all day in email, excel, word and browses the web. Add a wireless keyboard and you may have a great replacement for their laptop/desktop.
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>>>>For a developer, I don't see a tablet replacing a good dev machine anytime soon.
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>>>>>Ok I have had my ASUS 700 for a week and love it. Docking station hasn't arrived yet but the tablet itself is fun.
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>>>>>That said:
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>>>>>What a tablet does, it does very very well. Reading PDF books ( or others ), various music apps for transposing etc, games, web browsing, Pluralsight tutorials, HBO GO, Netflx. All wonderful.
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>>>>>But it's not a computer, it is a bumped up cell phone ( albeit without the ability to make phone calls :-) This is not something you own *instead of* a real PC unless you really never needed a real PC to begin with. This is a consumer toy which can be adapted to certain very specialized productivity uses.
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>>>>>I could easily picture a hybrid where the docking station was big and powerful enough to do real work ( 8 gb, genuine multitask operating system, multi gig storage that does't require a cloud with up/down speeds you'd never tolerate in a HD ) and a touch-screen detachable as tablet with its own mobile OS, mem and storage so you could use it either way. Lots of possibilities there.
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>>>>>But any nonsense about how these tablets that are considered state of the art today - iPad 3 and this thing - threaten laptops or desktops ( though undoubtedly they will outstrip in sales ) is silly. As to writing software for that market - not creating extensions of real business apps for clients but consumer products that sell for $1 to $5 - if that is your idea of fun you're welcome to it, but I don't think it is a good way to get rich - or even move out of your parents' basement.