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Comment by ljoshua | Hacker News Reader

The killer feature to me would be the following:

You may recall that certain Ubuntu phones will become full Ubuntu PCs when docked with a monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

The idea of being able to carry around just one small, main device instead of two separate (though well-integrated) ones, a la iOS/OS X, would probably be just enough to tip the scales and get me to use it, provided the experience was good enough.

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When I first heard about this I was really excited, but then I realized that if I dropped or lost my phone, my entire environment would be gone. What do you think about that issue?

I think I'd still do it, but I'd really like to have some sort of automatic sync to another hard disk. Maybe when I plug it into my desktop docking station, it would automatically sync everything to the hard disk I have there. That would really be the best of both worlds. (I seem to recall some Ubuntu feature like that, but I don't remember the details.)

What if I lost my laptop? My laptop might be more expensive, but cos isn't the factor in why I'm more careful with it (as it's insured); I just really don't want to lose my setup. If you're phone becomes more important through elevated use aren't you naturally going to become more protective?

I think a phone has a higher risk of being lost than a laptop because it's smaller. People (at least the ones I know) carry their phones more places than their laptops. And it's much more likely that a phone will drop out of a pocket than that a laptop will drop out of your backpack or briefcase.

But that doesn't change the fact that I would do it; it just makes good backups even more important.

The same will be true for any device of real use which stores data. Either you are going to depend heavily on backups, or you are going to require a constant internet connection to a centralized service (in effect the same thing).

My laptop is currently backed up all the time (Crashplan), and many of my important documents, contacts, etc., are either in Dropbox, iCloud, Git, etc. So I really view it as the same difference.

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