We essentially agree. But in places
you are misinterpreting my position.

I have nothing against smartphones and
will get one when I have a good use for
it -- which so far I do not.

> So maybe I don't take the view you
do that they have to replace the PC

I don't think that smartphones have to
replace PCs; and I believe that for now
they can't replace PCs for all but
a small fraction of heavy PC users.

My beef with the OP was the frequent
comparisons with PCs, thus, suggesting
that smartphones are about to replace
PCs: There were a lot of nice graphs
and nice data, but those didn't establish
the suggestion of replacement.

Beyond
the hints of replacement was the
claim "mobile changes everything".
Well, it won't change PCs for a long
time. Proof: Big screens, mice,
good, full keyboards, printers,
CD/DVD R/W devices, old software.
QED. Dirt simple.

I do differ with you on reading
computer documentation. I really,
really want that documentation on the
same computer I am using to write
the software: For my software
project, I have about 6000 Web
pages, PDF files, etc. of documentation,
in four collections,
Windows, SQL Server and ADO.NET, Visual Basic .NET,
and TCP/IP and ASP.NET.

In each collection I have a simple
flat ASCII file with, for each
such document in that collection,
the title of the document,
an abstract of the document,
often some notes of my own,
often relevant short code samples
from the document,
the original URL of the document
(except for the relatively few
documents I wrote myself),
and the file name, date, size,
etc. of the document on my disk.
My favorite editor is terrific
for searching, reading, revising
those four files. Terrific.

Then, in my code, when I make
important use of such a document,
I include in the file of my
code a comment with the tree name
and title of the document.

Then, when reading such code,
in my editor one keystroke
displays the document for me.
So, maybe I have a homegrown
version of an IDE with Intellisense
or some such. But it works for
me. I document the heck out of
my code. Any code that is not just
trivial has such comments.

Currently the source code for
my project has about 80,000
lines with only about 18,000
programming language statements --
we're talking a lot of documentation,
and a lot of that documentation
is references back to my
collection of 6000 documents.

So, net, I want
the four collections, the 6000
documents, my favorite text editor
with my 200 or so macros, and
the code I'm developing all on
the same computer -- call it a
network effect.

For screen
area, I'm short on that, but
I have a little code I wrote
that does a useful screen
rearrangement -- moves the
windows, preserving the Z-order,
so that the UL corners of the
visible windows are equally spaced
on a line from roughly the top center
of the screen to the left center
of the screen. That way I can
make good use of about 20 windows
open at once.

So, a lot of those
20 windows are for documentation.
Sure, usually soon I close such windows
and then rearrange the remaining.

For what window has what, I can see
the UL corners of each of the windows,
and also keep in mind the Z-order
and position new windows on the LL
of the screen.

E.g., having such
windows of documentation
open on a tablet
would be a bummer since as I
write code I add documents to the
collection and commonly cut and
paste documentation or code from
the documents into code comments,
notes of my own, etc.

E.g.,
when reading code I really like
that one keystroke to
show me the relevant documentation --
couldn't easily do that if the
documents were on a tablet.

Mobile device? Don't need one.
Can't see how it would help.
I'll get one when I need one.
It won't replace my PC -- for
a long time.