&gt;  I mean why bother having a desktop or laptop if you can use your personal device, plug it into different things and get the full experience as if you had a laptop or desktop?<p>Right now, tablet + laptop often replaces what I would do a couple decades ago with books (or notepads) + desktop. Sure, a single (powerful enough) CPU with all the various interface form factors being wirelessly-connected dumb systems could work instead, but then, it seems that basic CPU and storage are fairly cheap, and the interface bits -- particular the high resolution touch screens -- are the expensive bits, so there&#x27;s no real good reason not to put enough brains in the individual devices to let them be standalone rather than relying on a common external brain.<p>With fairly ubiquitous syncing technology, you get much of the advantage of having a single &quot;brain&quot; device with greater flexibility and resilience against a single-device failure.