*lol* The Bugatti has the same problem many convertible tablet PCs have had -- disproportionately high price, although not on the same scale as the Bugatti.

That said, there's a lot of interesting experimentation going on -- both from the Android tablet side and on the Windows 8 PC side -- and while I don't think either one has truly found the right formula for convergence yet, in the long run a best of both worlds device is going to be a much better deal than a dedicated tablet at least at the higher-priced/larger end of the tablet market.

Sure, although the better convertibles offer relatively few tradeoffs compared to whichever device they are evolving out of. (The Surface Pro is not one of them, although it's an interesting experiment.)

You confuse peripherals (and in one case software) with the form factor, especially when many of those are available in many laptops, at least optionally.

GPS: Almost every laptop today as a WWAN option; pretty much every WWAN card has GPS. A few laptops have GPS without WWAN.

Virtually every higher-end laptop in the past few years has an 3-access or better accelerometer; while it's normally used just as a free fall sensor, it's available for other purposes if software wanted to use it.

For that matter, Microsoft was selling an orientation-sensor version of the Sidewinder game pad something like a decade ago, and it's quite a great deal less unwieldy to use something like that -- while the screen stays static -- than wail around with a 2-pound tablet and have your viewing angle have to move with the motion sensor.

"Always-on" internet is a misnomer, since tablets/phones have a hard-off state just like computers do; the ability to pick up updates in sleep mode is a software feature, not a matter of hardware, and has been available for about two years on some Windows 7 machines as "Intel Smart Connect" and is now even more common in Windows 8.

Further, not every tablet has every one of those features -- the one I just bought (and am very much enjoying) has no GPS, probably no compass, and no rear-facing camera. Don't miss them for what is in essence a dedicated and very cheap e-reader.

Pretty useless, IMO, except for looking like a right prat using a full-size tablets... narrow AR-type applications like the one you mention aside, and even there, a mobile phone sized device is much less unwieldy.

Immersizeness is necessarily subjective, and as far as I can tell, for a lot of things, having to obscure part of the screen with your hands is more likely to break immersion than make things more immersive.

Further, with the exception of entertainment apps, it's far from clear to me that "immersiveness" is in any way a plus... and meanwhile, touch input is slow and inaccurate for the vast majority of productivity tasks.

Sounds very much like a niche product, but sure. Of course, that would work vastly better with something like Google Glass, and in the absence of that somewhat more comfortably with something mobile phone sized.

For that matter, given a GPS with compass, not too different with a laptop, except you have to look down to use it.

Sounds easier with something mobile-phone sized.

Having flown my share of model aircraft and a few RC helicopters, I'm not sure why that's supposed to be a plus compared to a pair of joysticks.

Yes, the slate form factor is easier to deal with for AR type applications, and as I said, it's a great deal more mobile. None of that in particular addresses my original point:
I've yet to see anything that works better with touch than with a mouse, keyboard, or both (or a graphics tablet) -- not saying they don't exist, but I've yet to see them.

Nor the one you were replying to: tablets are a new form factor with apps that could never exist on a traditional computer.

You said "could never" not "are clumsier."

Yes, but my point is that you can fix it if you need direct access to various things. For the most part Android doesn't limit you in that way, although there are a few exceptions:
*roflol* I believe that you believe that, but it's incredibly limiting to many power users.

...and you're still free to get at the underlying files, and to work with a variety of tools, not just Lightroom. Very different from the iOS model.

Within a very limited range of use cases, perhaps, but it least via Apple's solution, working outside those use cases is quite limiting.

[QUOTE]they look and function the same. the fact that one is bluetooth and the other is direct doesn't matter.

I already gave one difference that matters to some of us on FT (even if it doesn't to you
...and there are some others bluetooth is still more expensive and one more battery to charge just to be rid of a short cable.

In either case, a proper docking solution is better, since it does not require an external case or (in most cases, MS's poor implementation of the surface aside) a kickstand -- the machine becomes, like a laptop, relatively solid and self-supporting, which greatly improves the number of surfaces you can use it on.

The Surface Pro is a relatively high-powered system compared to almost any other tablet out there, a few other i5-based systems aside. By laptop standards, its battery life is already decent... and it is vastly faster than any ARM-based system.

The extended battery also helps the stability of the system, and in the case of the Transformer (and anecdotally, the Latitude 10/XPS 10, although I haven't had a chance to play with either one one with a keyboard dock) extends the battery into a truly all-day device, something not true even for most tablets.

Convertibles as something other than a niche "tablet pc" product are a very new market, and tend to be pricy, but they are being refined rapidly, and in the long run, I think they're where ultramobile computing is going... absorbing both the larger tablets and the subnotebook/ultrabook space.