Laptops are mobile devices, too.
Something I've been wondering about is why laptops aren't really
treated as mobile devices, in any interesting way. Laptop manufacturers
tend to treat them as portable desktops, and people interested in
“mobile device design” focus on PDAs, cell phones, and the like.
Now that laptops outsell desktops,
it's worth treating them as interesting and distinct entities that
warrant special consideration as a mobile device. What, say, are the
tools for the working-at-coffeehouse types? For the airplane commuters,
the road warriors, the college students, etc.? What makes sense for a
laptop to have that would have never made sense in a desktop? Why don't
we have location-awareness built into laptops?
Anyway, something to ponder. I would wager that the folks thinking
about “mobile device design” would get a lot more traction if they
considered the laptop as a platform, not the PDA or cell phone. [peterme.com]