Quote Originally Posted by dilettante View Post
The little bit most people ever do can be done on a mobile device. Most phones have grown to a size that lets them serve as canoe paddles in a pinch, cannibalizing much of the tablet market as well.

This means desktop computers as we know them will probably become speciality devices, and the same might be true for dedicated non-phone tablets. Laptops will probably really become niche products since they have most of the disadvantages of a desktop with few of the advantages.
I agree with that, but I also think things could be different when a mobile phone has the computing power of a desktop (you know it's coming, it just hasn't gotten here, yet).

We have yet to use a tablet for a canoe paddle, but we do have some tablets that would work fairly well for that, and now that you mention it, it's not a bad idea. We have some iPads in LifeProof cases for use in the field. For some reason, Apple designed the iPad with a crazy-low maximum operating temperature. At 90 degrees (F), it will shut down. That's not an unreasonable temperature to reach even in Idaho, so sometimes we have to dunk the tablets regularly to keep them operating. Using them as paddles would therefore serve double duty.