Compiling on a quad core linode instance, and long running (but computational expenisve) process does sound compelling anyway.

git pull; make sounds win

Still do a lot of offline dev myself, so this would never really work for me.

And I don’t know how to work with only one screen anymore either.

And NZ 3-G is almost certainly worse then the states, and way to expensive for me, to consider this.

Wouldnt mind a tablet for checking mail thou, but I have aquired a fair bit of mutt bits and pieces to make mail suck even less. Via ssh maybe too?

@ Morghan:

Well… I don’t own an Android tablet. I do own an iPad. So…

@ Garrick:

Very nice. Thank you. I will definitely be checking it out.

@ Eric Daum:

Right, that was my experience too. The thing is, with this setup there is an actual computer on the other end of the line. So the tablet becomes just a touch-screen, and you would be using a Bluetooth keyboard to interact with the shell.

@ AP²:

Yeah, I don’t think I would ever want to do any real work over 3G either. SSH over Wifi though is mostly reliable. Especially on short trips – I can usually ssh my home server, my work and school boxes and my Linode box without much issues (Linode happens to have a data center literally about 15-20 minutes drive away from where I live).

And yeah, I see more and more of these hyper-thin laptops that try to ape MacBook Air form factor. I think what we are seeing here is convergence:

– Tablets become more powerful and versatile to be more like laptops
– Laptops become thinner, lighter and run longer to be more like tablets

Microsoft already seen this, but they over-shot the target a bit by gearing Windows 8 to be all mobile all the time. Then again the Surface Tablet might actually hit the sweet spot and be exactly what people need – a tablet like device that actually runs full blown OS (er, I think). I guess it remains to be seen how well that device will do, and if this trend will catch on.

I’ll give you that typing with the laptop on your lap is not the most wonderful experience. That said, neither is typing on a tablet, unfortunately – particularly if you’re waiting for the SSH connection to transmit your input over 3G.

I’ve toyed with a few tablets, both pre- and post-iPad, but I’ve realized fairly early after getting my first laptop that what I really want is not a tablet, but to use my normal GNU/Linux (as opposed to Android/Linux) environment on a laptop, and then simply detach the screen and use it as a tablet (for say, reading PDFs, watching videos, etc, not Real Work™).

This isn’t anything new, of course; the first tablets were laptops with screens that reversed. But that was cumbersome, bulky and heavy.

Thankfully since the iPad, it has become possible to build something more like what I desired, and hybrids like the XPS 10 began to appear, which is very exciting. I’m hopeful that something decent and within my price range will be available in a couple of months, just in time to replace my aging laptop.

I’ve been doing this with my Asus transformer prime since I bought it in january. The keyboard and battery life are great. I’ve been using terminal IDE for its excellent terminal, and connectbot for its ability to forward ports for androidVNC and 2X client RDP.

Task switching takes some getting used to since some apps minimize to the taskbar while others require you to press the task switch key.

So far I’ve only had one problem: the terminal is UTF-8 only and I had to edit a remote php file which contained german text in ISO-8859 :)

I tried using an Ipad to replace my normal computer. It worked well for casually surfing the net, listening to music, or watching online videos. Trying to do actual work on the thing was a pain in the but.

I’ve played around using my iPhone and iPad tunneled over ssh to my BSD server at home, but I don’t spend nearly as much time in the terminal as you.

I can suggest a great ssh tool for iOS if your are looking for alternatives to iSSH.
Prompt by Panic software:
http://panic.com/prompt/support.html

Very nice, powerful, well designed ssh client. Been using it since it was released and have been very happy, although I had some problems connecting to servers that did not require a password.

Ever tried this? Rooted Android. Cross compile everything you need. Use it like any other Linux system.