[bobsy]

Just wondering what scenarios you foresee you using the desktop feature in?

If your travelling there won't be a screen available unless you lug one around. In which case you might as well carry a laptop.

At home and work you probably have a computer.

I think it is an interesting concept but I don't quite see the practical use. Unless it had like a stand and a projector or something.

[whiskers]

I'd rather not need a computer at home and work (and all the syncing issues that entails).

Currently I work from two fixed locations and also from home. If I can just have a fixed screen, keyboard and mouse there and take this around with all my current working stack ready to go that'd be ace!

[pionar]

Hmm, why not look into laptop docks?

That's how we do it at my company. Each workstation is just a dock, screens, and mouse and keyboard. You can move around anywhere really easily.

[socceroos]

You would not believe how many of my managers complain to us about how heavy and uncouth their laptop is to carry around. We actually had one guy apply for workplace compensation after his back caused him problems - he blamed it on carrying around a laptop + case.

I think you'd be surprised at the uptake of this kind of device in the corporate world if it was marketed correctly.

[ekianjo]

Yeah, and this is especially the case with the cheapest laptops the companies usually buy: bulky, slow, not ergonomic and noisy.

[vidarh]

You're never somewhere where there's a TV screen with HDMI?

A bluetooth keyboard + HDMI cable can fit in my pocket.

EDIT: And part of the point is for this to eventually replace your desktops too, so you don't need to have everything spread out over multiple computers.

[jamii]

> ... there won't be a screen available unless you lug one around

Interface with google glass or use a pico laser projector. MYO or one of the myriad one-handed keyboards (eg Twiddler, Kee4, CyKey) for input. It's not going to be easy at first but I'm not keen on spending the rest of my life sitting down in a stuffy office.

[dice]

>At home and work you probably have a computer.

I have docking stations for my Thinkpad. I also have my Nexus phone in my pocket.

What I want is a pocket-sized device which has multiple docking stations for various purposes:

0. Baseline phone for being a phone or small computing tasks. 1. Tablet for couch-surfing or communal content sharing. 2. Laptop for on the go larger computing tasks. 3. Desktop for long work sessions.

It would be great if stages 2 and 3 could also include additional computing, graphics and memory resources.

[DanBC]

I have screens at home, and I have computers at home, but I'd be happy to get one of these so I can do stuff in the garden, or at a coffee shop, and then carry on at home.

Some people just want a tiny computer for a bit of email, a bit of social media and some cat videos, with the occasional office document creation and reading.

BYOD could really use something like this.

[dwild]

Personnaly I would use it at school, that way I can avoid to bring my laptop at school. I don't like to use school computers for any development because it's not my environment (configurations, git, etc..). That way I already have screen/keyboard/mouse but I also have my own environment which will never change.

[griffordson]

I wonder the same thing. But I would be really interested in trying a small Mac Air sized screen/keyboard shell that had a port that I could slide such a phone in to. Sort of a portable docking station.

[jkimmel]

Reminds me of my old Motorola Atrix [1]. It had a laptop docking shell that booted a restricted version of Ubuntu alongside an instance of Android. It was totally cool, and everyone that saw it was amazed. However, actual usage was another story. Tegra2 just wasn't powerful enough to drive Ubuntu and Android concurrently in a usable manner.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G

[achiang]

We've come a long, long way since WebTop.

Our code runs fairly well on the Nexus 4 today, and through much dogfooding, we've learned that RAM is the biggest limiting factor in performance. So when (if?!) Edge ships with 4GB of RAM, the desktop mode will fly.

[singlow]

Asus has a TabFone product that is a tablet shell for a phone. It has an auxiliary battery but no keyboard.

[weisser]

So the shell would only work with the phone inside it? That doesn't seem very practical.

[lh7777]

Why not? Right now, I basically always have my iPhone with me. Often, I also have an 11" Air with me. But there's a lot of redundancy between the two, I have to keep them in sync, and tether the phone to the Air when off WiFi. This sounds like a credible solution to eliminate that redundancy and it wouldn't mean carrying an extra device.

Honestly, I'd probably fund this project right now if they had a tablet or notebook docking accessory in the plan.

[stonemetal]

So you don't go places where there might be a display already? No hotels with a TV already in the room, never go to a friends or relatives who might have a screen that you could borrow?

[ZoF]

Still need peripherals though.

[vidarh]

Keyboards with touchpads are available in sizes ranging from no larger than the phone. And if this type of device takes off, you might see hotels etc. provide keyboards and mice in the rooms at least in places catering to business travellers.

[kazagistar]

I hear there is a cool device called the Oculus Rift...

[ciferkey]

Current Rift dev kit owner here, the device isn't really what you would expect. The screen connects to a box that then does either DVI or HDMI out as well as USB for the head tracking. This box also needs separate power from an outlet. So its not really ready for a mobile experience.

Additionally resolution just isn't there yet. They're currently testing better screens for the consumer version but its all a matter of what they can source (as with the dev kit they had to move from a 5in to 7in screen due to sourcing problems).

Finally, before I received mine I had thought about using it similarly to how you are. However I've come to realize that strapping a TV to you face changes up the interaction enough that you sometime have to rethink fundamental design concepts about the UI.

Random Rift tidbit: The people behind the [Minecrift](https://github.com/mabrowning/minecrift) are doing some awesome work and its development is a great example of people learning how to adapt a game to VR. Plus the ascetics of minecraft makes the pixelation of the Rift less noticeable.

[kazagistar]

Thanks for the feedback. I guess the Edge/Rift might have to wait, oh well.

[mayneack]

If you build it, they will come