We've been having an excellent little conversation around the Notion Ink tablet - and tablets in general - over at CrunchGear these past few weeks and I thought it might be interesting to address some of the magical thinking that poisons tech, especially hardware, discussion. Because you and I are reading tech blogs and because tech blogs, primarily, cater to early adopters, there is a consistent and constant litany of specs, speeds, feeds, and quite a bit of "wishful" maundering by fans and anti-fans alike describing this future feature or that future devices from certain manufacturers. "The new Motorola tablet will kill all the rest of the tablets," we cry, sure and right! "Android is better than Windows Phone 7 forever," we scream! And then someone replies with an opposing opinion and it's on like Donkey Kong. Case in point: today I was encouraged to take my own life for my admittedly negative opinion of a particular device. Thank god this isn't a political blog or I'd be bashed dead in a ravine somewhere. Let me address my first and most important point: 99% of the earth's population cares not a whit about Android, iOS, OS X, Windows, Honeycomb, Tegra 2, Sand Hill, or SSDs. They want to turn on their computers, tap out an email to a friend, and turn it off. They want to get orders through their Blackberry, email their employees, and go back to their job as florists, carpenters, and bank tellers. To paraphrase Louis CK, they own a landscaping business, they're respectable, why do they need the "hot" device? They sure as heck don't have time to meander through spec sheets let alone give a damn what those spec sheets say. 
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