>>Good question, Charles, and what local peripherals can you plug into the Android Desktop and what control will you have over them?

What peripherals did you have in mind? If there's no value in portability then I agree it reduces the advantage over a static grandpa box with stuff plugged into it- although these new devices do have docking stations and keyboards etc, so who knows.

>>Are the manufacturers supplying Android drivers for things like printers, cameras and scanners? That would be pretty cool if they did.

During a recent hotel stay I noticed a printer in the foyer to which you can print by uploading your document to a url. Now there are Android apps that can be configured to do this automatically, even picking up the details via bluetooth. It's no longer true that you need special drivers on every device that needs to access a peripheral. Another reduction in complexity. It does mean that cheap printers using the Wintel box rather than their own processor are going out of fashion, but that's not a huge loss IMHO.