Laptop or mobile?

New York venture capitalist and blogger, Fred Wilson, asked this morning, laptop or mobile?.

I took a two day trip Thursday and Friday of this past week. When packing for the trip I debated about bringing my laptop (an 11″ macbook air) with me. In the end, I decided to bring it. I didn’t use the laptop on the trip except to write yesterday’s blog post. I do a lot of cutting and pasting of links, quotes, etc when I blog and I find that it is still pretty inconvenient to do that on a mobile. But other than that, I used my android phone for everything else over the course of two days and I was fairly productive.

I’m finding the same thing. I brought my 13″ Macbook Air to Dallas for the LMA Conference a few weeks ago and to the ABA TechShow last week. I could’t imagine traveling without my laptop, which like for most folks serves as my machine in the office and at home. But on both trips, I used my laptop minimally, if at all. I used my iPad. On the plane (wifi), in conference sessions, in meetings, for reading/sharing, for email, and for blogging, I used my iPad. This morning I picked up a bluetooth Apple keyboard and the Origami WorkStation for the iPad and wireless keyboard. I’m writing this blog post on it (with my iPad) and it’s working great.

Per Fred:

It would be interesting to think about the things that are still inconvenient to do on mobile (like long form blogging) and figure out if there were ways to make it more convenient to do that on a mobile device. It seems like there could be some interesting startup opportunities in solving these remaining hurdles to ditching the laptop entirely.

I’m not a coder, nor do I use a lot of apps or software for editing, text or video. I use the net and my iPad to read (Mr. Reader, Flipboard, NYT, WSJ, FT, USA Today), to share (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn), to connect, to email, and to blog. I’m getting all I need with my iPad, and now this workstation and wireless keyboard. I’ll confess I do love my 30″ Apple Cinema Display my Mac Air powers in the office — and I’d be a bit scared by using an iPad, alone, for presentations in front of large audiences. Bottom line, we’re going mobile. And it’s adapting mobile to what we’ve historically liked, not making what we’ve historically liked more mobile.