I love the idea of device docks and I would very much like to see things go that way. I think docks have some hurdles to jump in the consumer market, though. T

I love the idea of device docks and I would very much like to see things go that way. I think docks have some hurdles to jump in the consumer market, though. They're unsexy - I think most people associate them with boring enterprise computers and boring enterprise work, and they tend to be big and ugly. They're expensive too, considering that most people view them as nothing but plastic with a few connectors and wires inside. If someone can figure out how to jump those hurdles, though, and make docks sexy to the consumer market, beige-box sales will plummet. Make them smaller, easier, cheaper. Make them less proprietary - at the very least, a Company XYZ consumer dock should be compatible with all/most of of Company XYZ's portable offerings. Make them wireless and automatic (OK, I realize this conflicts with "cheaper")! Let me drop my Win8 tablet on my desk and immediately have it display to my dual monitors and let me use it with my mouse, keyboard, printer, big external drive and wired network connection. Let me press a button and have it display to my TV or play to my big speakers. Have your cake and eat it too. I mention Win8 specifically because the whole idea of it is that it's a tablet and a desktop OS in one. Why on earth is there no Microsoft-produced drop-in docking solution for the Surface so it can actually be both?! The consumer potential is crazy - got a crusty old desktop PC laying around? Toss it, keep the peripherals, buy a Surface+dock and you've got a new tablet/laptop and desktop. You can "dock" a Surface as-is with two cables (a micro HDMI and a USB hub with all your desktop peripherals wired in), but that leaves out wired network (maybe important), certain peripherals like speakers (maybe important), and power (critical), and even two cables is two too many. Most people who say they need a PC don't need a beige box, they need a keyboard, mouse and monitors on a desk where they can work. The form factor of the box that the CPU, disk and memory come in doesn't matter when you're at the desk, so it might as well take the form of something you can take with you and use when you're not at the desk: a laptop, tablet or phone.