I would love to be able to ditch my laptop and desktop and only have a single, pocket sized device. If I could carry my Sidekick or ITouch with me and when I set it on my desk, or even walk into a hotel room, it immediately makes a connection with my monitor or HDTV , my full size keyboard and either with a usb cable or wirelessly, lets me connect to a thumbdrive or some external hard drive. If by carrying this little device, a full computing environment could be recreated and I didnt feel like I was giving up something dumping my laptop and desktop, I would be its 1st lifetime customer. My digital and computing world would immediately be revolutionized.
With a 3G or 4G connection, I could dump my home internet connection. There would be no good reason to pay for wired broadband when wireless is doing the trick. No more desktop or laptop other than maybe to act as a fallback or backup to my mobile device. 90 pct of my applications are now web based and/or available to run on my Sidekick or ITouch already, so applications wouldn’t be an issue to me. My digital life would travel with me in my pocket wherever I went, which would be amazing.
Personally, I think this has a very good chance of becoming reality. The question is when.
If this does happen, then it would also raise the interesting question of how our mobile computing environment would change our InHome computing environment. Would people give up their wired broadband connectivity because it was a duplication ? Laptops are already pre empting desktop sales for home use. Would these mobile devices kill the sales of laptops ? What about desktop application software, would it go away other than for vertical or business apps ? Would this pressure the move of applications from desktop to the cloud ?
Will mobile replace laptops in our lives and what changes as a result ?