Everyone's trying to reinvent the PC, but why?

CALL me old-fashioned, but the idea of a foldable laptop holds little appeal for me. At CES, we saw all sorts of creative ideas from companies trying to package traditional laptops and desktop PCs into newfangled form factors. This was true for both gaming devices and more staid productivity machines - Dell experimented with both the Concept UFO portable gaming PC and the Duet and Ori laptops, while Lenovo released a retail-ready foldable device with the ThinkPad X1 Fold.

Then there was the Horseshoe Bend prototype from Intel, which was basically a compact, foldable laptop that opens up to become a 17.3-inch display. This is not even Intel's first foray into experimental form factors - back in 2018, it trotted out Tiger Rapids, which had both an LCD display and an e-Ink one, and the dual LCD Copper Harbor. Horseshoe Bend has a built-in kickstand and a wireless keyboard too, not unlike the ThinkPad X1 Fold. It incorporates a bunch of cool design tricks to accommodate the fold more seamlessly as well, such as having two parallel hinges and a sliding leather cover.

But I have to ask if having an extra-large screen is really the thing that is going to improve the experience in a meaningful way for the average person? Is it really that much of a game-changer that we can now read on one screen and take notes on the other? Or drag and drop stuff between two screens? Certain creative professionals might benefit from some variant of this concept, such as ASUS' ZenBook Pro Duo machines, which have two distinct screens, but that doesn't exactly seem to be what everyone else needs.