Hacker News Reader

I couldn't upvote this hard enough. I've been using my Transformer Prime for 10 months, and it has changed the way I do many things. I still do my consulting work on a laptop, but almost all of my side-project coding is done from my Prime. I can sit on my couch, with my feet up for 6 hours and code - and like you say, still have 10 hours of battery life for gaming or email or web surfing thereafter. I couldn't think of a more comfortable development experience.

The money line of Atwood's post about the future, though, is this one: And I'm beginning to wonder about my desktop a little, because lately I'm starting to I think I wanna touch that, too.

I don't know that individual touch computing on a desktop will ever be a good idea, but I've been thinking a lot lately that a 42in Android tablet would make a ton of sense. Think of everything you use a whiteboard for to the Nth degree. Gathering around a large touchscreen to communicate ideas, allowing others to manipulate parts of the screen with wireless keyboards, and providing office-wide or household announcements and reminders just makes a ton of sense to me.

Personal computing has already gone touch, it's time for group computing to go touch too.

Another vote for the Transformer Prime + keyboard dock. One of the best kept secrets in mobile computing.

You're both forgetting about Leap/Kinect/Minority Report-like functionality.

https://leapmotion.com

That combined with touch and keyboard is the future. These devices will soon accept any part of our body as an input vector. They'll be able to identify multiple users and act accordingly. Look at what google is showcasing what can be done with a person's eye ball alone, if that works the way they've been promoting, we're in for something.

I cant praise the surface for having a touch screen and a keyboard, its been done before. Done by Microsoft, Acer, Apple, Sony, etc.

I just cannot imagine spending my entire day holding or reaching up to touch a device. I work at a desk. I code. I write documentation. I send emails. I don't see how touch fits into my workflow at all.

On a desk, it could be good practice for your arm muscles!

Exactly. This is why I like 10/GUI as a compromise.

http://www.10gui.com/video/

Fascinating...

  10/GUI is a proposed new user interface paradigm. Created 
  in 2009 by R. Clayton Miller, it combines multi-touch 
  input with a new windowing manager.
  
  It splits the touch surface away from the screen, so that 
  user fatigue is reduced and the users' hands don't 
  obstruct the display.[1] Instead of placing windows all 
  over the screen, the windowing manager, Con10uum, uses a 
  linear paradigm, with multi-touch used to navigate between 
  and arrange the windows.[2] An area at the right side of 
  the touch screen brings up a global context menu, and a 
  similar strip at the left side brings up application-
  specific menus.

-- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/10/GUI

"Gorilla arm" is how your arm will feel after reaching up to touch a screen/device. http://catb.org/jargon/html/G/gorilla-arm.html

Touching my desktop screens would involve moving my hands to around eye level. I hold my phone/tablet a lot lower.

My real problem in the new world order is that tablets seem to have topped out at 10 inches. While that may be comfortable for many, my hand span is the same width as the screen and I'd prefer something a lot larger.

Rejoice - a 13" tablet does exist already and will be on the shelves soon: http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/25/toshiba-excite-13-review/

I'd be all over this except for several problems:

* Extremely low resolution

* Old Android version and Toshiba have no history of staying fresh with Android

* Tegra 3 based, and will be released just as Tegra 4 devices come out

I do like that is has an SD card slot, micro USB/HDMI etc. Sadly all they have done is take a mediocre tablet and scaled it up, and then delayed releasing it.

I'm interested in looking at the new Asus Vivo Tab for this very reason. Though I'm likely not going to jump on the first generation and I'll let the MSFT App store fill up a little. I played with my neighbor's T300 that was recently upgraded to Jelly Bean. It was an impressive experience with the keyboard. Still might hop on that bandwagon.

I constantly find myself leaving fingerprints on the screen of my MacBook after I've been using my Transformer for a spell..

I might, just might, ditch my laptop for a transformer prime running Ubuntu Mobile (or whatever it'll be called) if they do a decent job with their mobile OS. I assume it would be better as a tablet OS for a 'computer replacement tablet'.