I think it's great. I will have my iPhone as a mobile device, the normal big and classy iPad for coffee shops and to impress girls, and the medium size iPhone/iPad variant for things while iPhone isn't enough, but when iPad is too big. I can already think hundreds of different situations where it will fit perfectly.

I remember the same softballs being tossed at the iPod and again at the iPhone when they were released. There were just overpriced, overhyped pieces of hardware that would only appeal to Apple fanboys. Only people who got caught in the Jobs reality distortion field would ever be interested in buying them.

How did that work out for you? I heard the same arguments against the iPad as well. They are still selling like hot cakes meanwhile the predictions of it's demise are looking just as laughable as that of the iPod and iPhone.

You may be too stupid to get the appeal of a smaller, less expensive iPad because it doesn't smell like Richard Stallman and run Linux. The rest of us, however, who are intrigued about the device but put off by it's price point just might be willing to try a smaller version of it at a less expensive price point to see if we like the concept before committing a larger sum to buy the bigger model. You know, just like the Mac Mini, low end iPods and the entry level $99 dollar iPhone.

1997 called. They want their functionality over ease of use mentality back. What is so hard to grasp about the concept that consumers want convenience first, functionality second? Time and time again in the tech industry we've seen superior technology beaten by convenience.

That's great that your $150.00 tablet can run 7 Linux distros and just about every piece of open source software that has ever been written. The $400.00 tablet from Apple that doesn't require a CS degree to run out of the box will outsell it 100 to 1.

Yeah, it's interesting isn't it. I think it's because it's become clear that the kind of big-ticket software that Microsoft has built itself on just isn't where the real money's going to be in a few years. It's reached a peak complexity-wise, features-wise, and usefulness-wise. Instead, collaborative service software (i.e. Google) will be the way a lot of businesses go, and consumers will go with small, cheap, and cheerful (i.e. the Apple App Store), and social network type stuff (Facebook and its successors). Portability is where it's at, and Microsoft has missed so many beats it can't catch up, especially because it means essentially cannibalising they big-ticket software business.

I think you're spot on in your analysis of where the consumer market is heading but when it comes to the business side of things office life is still dominated by standard desktop / laptop computing using big ticket software for most workers. I don't come across many businesses in my line of work where users don't have a desktop or laptop running Windows and Office in addition to one or more big ticket industry specific software applications with the one large noticable exception being the health-care industry where more and more providers are moving to tablets, which for doctors and nurses who aren't stationary makes perfect sense.

If the government or any other employer provides you with a device, such as a PC or cellphone, you should assume that anything and everything you do on that device can be and is being monitored. It's their property not yours.

Which is why, if you want a real smart phone that you can actually upgrade without trouble, you do the smart thing and get an iPhone.

The idea that competition between Microsoft and Google in both the OS and search engine markets will end up hurting consumers in the end is completely and utterly laughable. It's the exact opposite of how the real world works. In the real world, when there is no competition, there is no incentive for a company to improve things for the consumer and that is what will hurt the consumer in the end. If the consumer wants what the company has got there aren't any real alternatives.

Now along comes another company who wants to compete with them and suddenly there is an incentive to either improve the quality of the product, lower the price of the product, or both. If one company doesn't, and both companies are genuinely battling for market share, then the other company eventually will and that forces a cycle of response and counter response that is ultimately very good for the consumer.

So when someone leans against your door and they happen to find it open then they're free to do whatever they like? Post your address. I'm sure there are some takers.

Instead of blaming the policy makers, let's blame the semi-retarded population. They can't name the vice president, but they can name the tot mom. Fucking worthless.

Dear Mr. Kaspersky, What you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul.

Word isn't just used to print documents, it's used to create, format and revise them. The author is correct that now instead of printing documents users tend to e-mail them or transfer them to their recipient by some other electronic means, but that doesn't negate the need for a program like Word that allows you to put the document together, format it and revise it later as necessary.

I use Word at the office to put documents together every day. Ultimately they go to clients as protected PDF files so their contents can't be easily modified, but we do use Word to initially create them or to go back and edit them if we need to send a revised PDF to the client.

OpenOffice has progressed to the point where we could probably phase out Microsoft Office internally, but since we send and receive files in other Microsoft Office formats frequently with both clients and vendors and since we're a small technology company with a Microsoft Action Pack subscription the software and licenses costs us next to nothing.