[cobblestone]

in terms of having a small display and a really slow CPU

One of those $100 Intel-powered Android tablets with the Z3745 processors has a processor that, core for core, equals a Pentium III or better. But instead of one core, it has four of them. And dramatically higher memory bandwidth. And SIMD. And a GPU. And shockingly fast flash storage.

And it's probably running at least a 1280x720 screen, though some options obviously go dramatically higher.

In ~2000, when these sorts of specs were common, we did all of our office work, software development, etc, on much less power.

[krylon]

Yeah, my tablet has a single core ARM CPU, and a 1024x600 display. Subtract the space taken up by the on-screen keyboard, and working is not much fun any more.

Also, I like having a physical keyboard. With a tablet, I end up using one hand to hold the tablet and one hand for typing. :-|

Like I said, on different devices the situation might be quite different, but my tablet is no good for working.

[spyder]

I can confirm that these quad-core Bay-Trail Atom processors are surprisingly fast and since it's an x86-64 CPU it is available with Windows 8.1 too and can handle Microsoft Office without a problem. The ASUS Transformer Book T100 even comes with an Office license and has detachable keyboard.