Re: Follow the money
>This is what the PC market is turning into - super-expensive high-margin performance hardware for content creators, leaving toy-comp tablets to the proles.
>Not an entirely good thing, IMO.
What do us proles need a PC for, beyond some spreadsheets, email, web-browsing, and the odd bit of video encoding? The last I checked, all that can be achieved on a cheap n cheerful laptop, Small Form Factor PC, or even an ARM based device. As a benefit, these things can be done on passively-cooled hardware - blissful silence!
The causal use of productivity applications (video editing, CAD) that require a little more grunt can be powered by some gaming-grade hardware. If one really needs the stability and accuracy of the professional kit - certified workstations, pro drivers, ECC RAM - then there will be a business case for stumping up the money for it, and probably tax-deductions, too.
Don't get me wrong, TheOtherHobbes, I'm not dismissing your concern, but I feel I don't exactly understand what it is without you expanding upon it.
My personal concern - perhaps parallel to yours - is that 16:10 laptops like hens teeth these days (other than Macbooks, that is)... 'widescreen' displays require the user to do more scrolling up and down. Also, I would like higher-res PC screens, but by all accounts 3rd party applications for the desktop side of Windows don't behave as sensibly as they could - Photoshop, for example, has ridiculously small toolbar icons on high res screens.
It amazes that some niche software, such as Solidworks, has a more civilised UI than many 'mainstream' productivity applications - for example, it offers the option of large toolbar icons, so it can be used comfortably on very high res monitors.