| OQO were one firm looking at this market. They folded in 2009: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO> (VA Linux's Larry Augustine was associated with this, probably through Azure Ventures, if I recall.) With the advent of very-small-form-factor computers, mobile displays, bluetooth, battery packs, and solid-state storage, you'd think that such a thing might be reasonably viable, though it would all but certainly be fussy. Neither a smartphone/PDA, nor a laptop, nor a desktop, nor a tablet. That tends to be a pretty ugly duckling. That said, the thought of a cluster of devices which could pair / peer with larger and smaller interfaces and provide utility across a wide range of circumstances does seem to have some level of attraction. For now, laptops or ultra-notebooks are sufficiently portable to cover much of the need, and smartphones / tablets too constrained mostly by OS, power, and input limitations to provide a true desktop experience. (This written by someone who has a large e-ink tablet with Termux installed which comes close to providing a very useful on-the-move computing platform.) I've heard that there may be such devices forthcoming. I can only keep an eye out. |