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Originally Posted by BWinmill
That approach works for current tablets, may they be iOS or Android, since they are consumption devices. This has a number of consequences. The first is that you have a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux machine that carries the real weight. Thing is, are people going to want to have a real computer and a tablet in the future? Those of us who love gadgets, sure. People who don't want to deal with lots of gadgets, doubtful.
People who actually create content on their computer are going to see things differently though. If you have enough data, you're probably going to want to backup your data. Sure, you can do that on the cloud, but there are a bunch of boundary cases. Are you dealing with confidential data? Your employer (and, in some cases, the law) won't accept that. Are you dealing with a lot of data? You probably aren't going to want to cough up the monthly fees to store your data online. Are you scanning or printing documents on a regular basis? I'm sure that you can get wireless devices to do the job, but there is a high probability that you'll be using a wired device.
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Dell came close with the Inspiron Duo, but it still has some BIOS issues that aren't quite patched in Ubuntu yet. I've heard that a recent kernel release might've fixed it, who knows?
Either way, its a wonderful piece and runs Ubuntu well as long as I remember to shut it down before plugging or unplugging it.
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Reliability is another factor. Wireless works great when you have a handful of devices and live in a spread out community. After that, you're dealing with RF interference. The problems may be infrequent, maybe once or twice a month, but you don't want to deal with those problems when you are working on a deadline.
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I've run into this a lot; GSM is a lot more reliable than wifi because you don't have to try to find a hotspot, but most tablets don't have GSM and those that do usually have it restricted to one of a few providers. The iPad is a notable exception, but is isn't a viable choice because of its lack of a card reader.