It sounds ridiculous, but I'll admit that when you've got something like Dex that lets you dock the phone for usb and hdmi out and gives you close to a full desktop OS I'd imagine it really is enough for the casual user.

I certainly know colleagues in the industry who travel with just a tablet and external keyboard. No, they're not running IDEs etc., but they find it OK for emails, editing docs, taking notes, etc. Personally I'll spend the extra few pounds to also carry along a laptop. But I can imagine not needing/wanting a dedicated laptop when I travel at some point.

Is a tablet and keyboard really much lighter than a laptop?

https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/20/21227741/apple-ipad-pro-m...

Suggests a keyboard and large tablet is heavier than a laptop

I'm usually carrying a tablet anyway though for entertainment/reading purposes. So it's usually a choice of tablet + laptop vs. tablet + keyboard. (I admittedly don't really have a weight optimized travel laptop these days either.)

I actually do wish there were good Mac or Chromebook choices for a travel 11" or so laptop but the market seems to have settled on a thin 13" as the floor and, admittedly, the weight/size difference isn't huge.

While I am mostly a Mac person, for travel I often prefer a tiny and cheap Lenovo Chromebook that does everything (a bit poorly): Linux containers for light weight programming and writing, consume media like books, audiobooks, and streaming.

In response to a grandparent comment about weight for tablets: I prefer Apple’s folio old style of cases/keyboards because of weight. I have one for both my small and large iPad Pros. Whenever I travel, I usually just take one of my iPads if I don’t need a dev environment [1].

[1] but with GitHub Codespaces and Google Colab, development on an iPad is sort of OK.

I still don't see the point of tablets. It's just a smartphone with a larger screen, and practically all people already carry phones.

Might as well go for the laptop at that point given that it can actually do far more imo, unless you ditch the phone and go for one of those half phone half tablets I guess.

I'd rather watch movies, read, play certain games, etc. on my tablet than on a phone. (Obviously there are also specific use cases like digital art.) That said, I mostly use my tablet when traveling and it's a distant third in necessity compared to either a laptop or a phone--and only somewhat more useful than a smartwatch.

Watching movies on a tablet is terrible, though. All methods for propping the device up so you can watch the movie are inferior to the way a laptop screen props itself up via hinges and a base.

On a plane I'd rather use the tablet in my lap than have to put the tray table down. And in a hotel room I'm watching on the couch if there is one. (I do also have an attachment for my tablet that will let you prop it up on a table but I mostly don't use it because it adds weight.)

For reading, I'm probably bringing my Kindle along if I don't bring my tablet.

I bought a surface for that reason. I like the portability, and it is just a normal PC with a pretty bad keyboard.

If you do not have one, buy a dock! I have a sp6 and 4 , and having the dock makes it quite the device. Speakers, multiple external monitors, keyboard, mouse -- a full desktop setup, I can grab and either stick a keyboard cover on or just use as a reading device on the couch.

Back to work? Sit on table, one cable and it's back to a desktop and charging up again.

Makes the whole thing make far more sense.

How old are you? Because larger screens become really nice as your eyes go bad. And I don't need the full size of a laptop for things I'd want to do on a tablet.

The obsession with being lighter definitely has diminishing returns. At some point another few ounces doesn't make any difference in a real, practical sense. I think have just started to associate "lightness" == "better" despite there being no actual benefit past a certain threshold.

Right at some point. But at the current point my tablet is too heavy to hold in hand for more than 20 secs perhaps. Phone is ok. Tablet is not (for me). I only use tablet by placing it on table or a stand. Then actually using a laptop is much better than a table.

The killer-tech will be when we have a tablet that is as light as phone.

> A lot of people don't need computers in the general purpose sense. I admit my mind boggles a bit when co-workers tell me their kids don't want a computer to do their school papers because their phone is fine.

I grew up in the 1980s, when handwritten papers were still the norm. I do see the advantages of using a word-processor for writing papers, but don't see why it would be a necessity (at least, until University).

I think the implication is that the kids use a word processor on their phone.