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Comment by matt_wulfeck | Hacker News Reader

> Continuum -- the capability that will allow Windows 10 Mobile devices to connect to external displays and keyboards -- is going to be a key for the company

This actually sounds like a very good move by Microsoft. Just issue people a phone and they will do all their work on that. There's really no need for giant workstations anymore, and I think this will be more successful than a Chromebook-type thing.

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> There's really no need for giant workstations anymore, and I think this will be more successful than a Chromebook-type thing.

What you meant to say was: You don't need giant workstations anymore. There are still plenty of people doing demanding work on their computers.

It is reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the worlds computers are over-powered for the current set of users sitting in front of them.

I disagree. Most consumer computers are so slow you want to pull your hairs out whilst waiting forever for something to load.

I think for many that is a hard drive thing combined with dozens of tool bars, though. Phones have solid state memory so that shouldn't be a major problem.

The solid state memory in phones is a far cry from anything in your computer though and we regularly see devices with storage that's noticably slower than even mechanical HDDs.

Think about flash storage on phones to be more in class of a fast SD card, not the SATA3 SSD in your laptop.

I agree. Developers often assume that everyone has the latest flagship laptop. A large majority, particularly in developing countries, only have access to $200-$400 laptops that struggle at running modern applications.

We either have to focus on making our applications more efficient, as we did 10 or so years ago, or make high performance computers more accessible.

But isn't that mainly because the tools they use (Office etc.) are bloated and slow as hell?

By the time this is in place it's likely a high end phone will easily be sufficient for average computing. You won't run VMs on it but it should be comparable in power to an iPad Pro.

Seems about every 2-3 years a company tries this. And every single time my hopes go up like crazy. I SOOOOOOOO want this. and every time I'm disappointed. The ipad pro is close, as is the surface book.

What ends up biting me is the need for a docking station or a laptop form factor thing for use on the go. If display glasses/goggles could ever become usable for long duration it would go a long way towards making a single device usable everywhere.

just get a chromebook, one of the new ones that folds into tablet form. touch screen, does everything.

I think Bluetooth and Miracast are getting us very close to a good "on the go" solution. Even without things like hotel screens picking up Miracast support directly yet, the price of a good Miracast supporting HDMI stick has dropped spectacularly (Amazon's Fire Stick, Microsoft has a Miracast-only "stick" I forget what it is called). Between that stick and a good Bluetooth keyboard/mouse combo you have most of an on-the-go solution.

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