If you see one of those these days, it's quite likely attached to someone who thinks pretty carefully about their tools.

If that doesn't make a lot of sense, consider this: it's a general purpose computing device with a suite of acceptable productivity software (and third party ecosystem) that gets over 24 hours of battery life off of 4 AAs. Very useful for head-down writing/thinking.

That's theVerge offices, not Ford's. Though good eye recognizing the eMate.