[stonetools]

In time, things may change and this tablet utopia may come into being. We could stick to desktops and laptops. To be sure, some people will. The thing is, most people will want tablets because of the convenience (and trendiness). So, until that tablet utopia arrives, we are going to need tablets along the lines of the Surface.

i think a lot of debate here goes back to the question " What's a tablet for?". Power users tend to think of current tablets as "crippled PCs" They want tablets to become more powerful , more open, more versatile, more complex- more PC-like. The average consumer doesn't want that, though. They want a simple , reliable, secure device that they can use to consume media, connect to the Internet, and do simple creative stuff . They want a post PC experience, not a PC experience.
Apple in designing the iPad, made a decision not to go with SD cards and USB slots- to much techie disgust. We don't know why Apple did so, and it doesn't matter at this point-because consumers have clearly embraced the iPad. Apple's preferred file transfer solution is iCloud, which it is still implementing. From a consumer POV, it's a great solution-snap a photo on the iPhone, and its automagically pushed to all your devices. No need to fiddle with possibly incompatible dongles, or to remember on which storage device you put what photo. There are still problems to be worked out but eventually you'll create a presentation on your PC ,open it on your iPad and take it to your conference without bothering with the intermediate step of saving it to your flash drive etc.
There are boundary situations, of course, but they'll be fewer and fewer, as Internet connectivity becomes ubiquitous.

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.

I think a lot of consumers may just be happy with tablets and might forego PCs altogether. Tell me again why Grandma will want a PC with USB, SD, and HDMI capability, a high end graphics card, and the horsepower to run Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Access applications?