>>>I agree that in many cases running splashtop on your Android 21" desktop would be fine. I do it with my ASUS now and with the Hi Res screen I see my 24" monitor exactly the same on the tablet (albeit on a 10" screen) Works really well.
>>>
>>>Just didn't want anyone to be confused that you could actually run Windows apps on an Android.
>>>
>>>That said, I'd like to see what Android as an OS could do on a box with 8-16gb of ram, really fast processors and killer video cards. I don't really know much about what the OS is capable of on a larger platform.
>>>
>>>BTW this ASUS 700 transformer with the docking keyboard is really really nice. Still find it slower than I'd like but as a netbook it is very nice and a lot of fun to work on.
>>
>>Android is based on Linux, which runs on everything from the Raspberry Pi to supercomputers. While there are currently significant differences ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29#Linux ), apparently there is a roadmap to merge them.
>
>That sounds like a much greater existential threat to MS than good ol' geeky Linux. Android has consumer standing. Create a desktop that works just like your phone or tablet - only bigger faster better but is truly integrated. MS trying to come the other way from big old bloaty Windows to the phone.
>
>I would love to have a big powerful laptop or "grandpa box" that ran Android on steroids with 16gb of ram and serious windowed multi--processing maybe addressing multiple multicore processors.

My understanding is one of the strengths and weaknesses of Linux is a plethora of GUIs that can be used with it. OK, "Linux" has a geeky connotation but slap one of them fancy UIs on it and call it something else - like Ubuntu, Mint etc.

Android's current niche is in low-power battery-dependent settings. To save juice you're starting to get trends like using flat 2D icons rather than 3D, Aero Glass etc. just so the hardware doesn't have to fire up the graphics core. That's not to say it can't run on high-powered hardware, just that the compromises it makes in its current niche may not be a good fit for strong hardware.

If you want a multisocket+multicore machine with gobs of RAM you can order any number of them right now, pretty much any multisocket server will give you that. There aren't a lot of workstation workloads that can use that much power. If you could actually use that kind of power I'd be interested in hearing your plans for it :)

Myself, most of what I do is pushing text around. If I were to run Task Manager all day, it would rarely show over 5% CPU utilization.