[sabredog]

Regardless of the advances we all see pretty much daily, personal electronic devices have come a looong way thus far.

I recall reading in 1979 about "pocket computers" described in Niven and Pournelle's book "Mote in God's Eye". The description of that device used by Imperial Naval officers was that they could write notes into it, communicate using it and check stored and externally stored information.

At the time, as a young teenager, I marvelled at the idea of such an exciting device. Now fiction is a reality as PDA's and Smartphones do exactly that.

I really do believe that the notebook and the tablet will merge in both functionality and form over the next five years as this was the path of evolution for the smartphone that is replacing the single purpose mobile phone. The iPad is one step on the path but in my opinion (and my Apple mad eighteen year old son), it is simply a large iphone (minus call functionality)

However, the dedicated electronic device such as the MP3 player and ereader will always remain a viable device to market and own. Certainly for me.