The idea of "Convergence"

The way we compute have come a long way. Even for me, who didn't get his first computer until I was in the mid 90's when I had 486 or 586 computer. I forget which kind. To give you an idea of this powerhouse of computer. It had a whopping 40 megabyte hard drive and I think I had like 4 megs of ram. So, no it couldn't play Crysis.

Fast forward to today, where most of us carry phones that have more computing power then the NASA Shuttle program had when they started in the 80's. Even my phone, A Samsung Galaxy S2, which is now considered low to mid-grade by today's standards has a 1.2 dual core processor with 1GB of Ram, with 8GB on board storage.

Modern phones, or "Smart Phones" do meet a lot of peoples computing needs and it has been thrown around and even proof of concepts have come out about merging the phone and computer. A term, which is being called "convergence". Mark Shuttleworth of Canonical is really pushing this idea, so much Canonical has setup a IndiGoGO campaign to raise a whopping 32 million dollars to fund this effort with Canonical's "Ubuntu Edge". Canonical is also the company behind the Linux Ubuntu Desktop Operating system

Its a promising idea and a great concept. A merge between phone and computer. Literally your computer in your pocket and when you need to use it a "computer" you dock the phone in the docking station and now can use your keyboard, mouse, monitor, ect.

According to the video from IndiGoGo, Mark Shuttleworth stated that this will only be for the backers to the fund and they might come out every new with a new model. That is, partly his reasoning for having the entire project funded by "crowd funding". Mark Shuttleworth did not go into if those future models will be crowd funded though.

Though, I think its great idea and something that should be looked into and is probably the future of main stream computing, but for me, I like my phone as my "phone" and my desktop/laptop for my "computer". If you lose your phone, like it tends to happen with smaller devices that fit in your pocket, your computer and phone is now gone. I know a lot of people have insurance on their phone, but if you use your new phone/computer as your phone and regular computer, you are now SOL and all your non cloud data is gone. Not to mention the fact that since people usually do not encrypt their devices, let alone put a pass code to access your phone, all that personal/business data is now available. I guess I am old codger when it comes to this, but this is something that people have to think about if they are going to go full bore into this "convergence".

I would say that this would a great way as an additional device. Like how people use a tablet to complement their laptop or desktop computer. But i would not, for me anyways, use this as my only device for all of my computing and phone needs. If you only use this, your are literally putting all your eggs in one basket.