The move from PC to mobile is kind of like the move from hotels to those tube-sleepers in Japan. We'll be fully "there" when a lot of people, for (relatively) low cost, at least in good climate areas, have a tube for night, mobile computing for the day, perhaps telecommuting with office on park benches, crowding into Starbucks when it rains (which it does in Southern California, as I experienced my only trip to LA), and it's a TV for evening too. The neo-homeless. Still, I figure most will have a house and...a pc, with mobile being a "second" computer, or computer for the kids or whatever

I actually invented one at my workplace, for puzzle solving rather than programming---"piano": I had been stewing over the problem a while, then decided to take a break and go down the hall to get a cup of coffee, and while pouring the coffee, the solution just dropped on me like a cartoon piano would on Sylvester---sprung into my mind fully formed when I wasn't even thinking about it. After telling this to others, using the metaphor to explain what it felt like to me, suddenly the workplace is full of people having piano moments when they solve problems like that. Not to be confused with "viola", where the solution is really simple--you solve it as soon as you see the problem, and using bad French, you announce, "Viola!"

The Great MP3 Bitrate Experiment may be worth doing with classical music---the results of reproducing a 100-piece natural-instrument orchestra (especially if live, not postprocessed/edited significantly) may be more striking than a small band with much of the sound electronic (or electronically post-processed). Another poster was right---cymbals are a way of distinguishing quality. Is it live or is it Memorex? You can tell with cymbals.

ebooks are pretty good---especially with the development of e-ink which is easier to read for long periods of time than LCD---though we could use improvements in resolution and speed, and some user interface improvements (e.g. once we get the speed issue licked, a page-turn *knob* -- an analog control: roll it fast to skip way ahead, slow for one page at a time. Maybe a touch bar to go immediately to 3/4 of the way through the book, etc.) Until then, while I use e-books if I want to travel with more than I want to carry, for normal bedtime reading at home, for ex., I stick with books having lots of atoms that don't need recharging and won't evaporate if the provider decides they shouldn't have sold the book after all.

I think this is the "second" post PC era. The first was after the fad with cheap home computers---the Vic 20, the Apple II, the PCjr, ah the days! They went away "when people got tired of boxes that go 'bing'". The second PC era began with web/multimedia/etc. Perhaps there will be a third PC era---I don't know, because of in-home manufacturing through the follow-on to 3d printing? Telepresence that doesn't have the problems of teleconferencing today? Will we all lock ourselves in our homes Asimov-style?