When the Motorola Atrix smartphone was first unveiled at CES, savvy tech pundits took note: the phone offers something brand new and could lead to a paradigm shift in computing. The idea is that you can store all of your media, documents, and contacts on one device and, potentially, say goodbye to your PC. But is that realistic? The phone provides two distinct operating systems: Android 2.2.1 for the smartphone and a Linux kernel that runs on any desktop display or an HDTV and works with a keyboard and mouse. The Linux kernel is fairly limited and only runs the Firefox browser, similar to the Chrome OS in that it is really a webtop and not a desktop. Yet, Motorola has also released several peripherals for the Atrix, including a Lapdock where you snap the phone into a compartment and can use a full QWERTY keyboard and LCD screen. There's also a docking station that connects to an HD display, and Bluetooth keyboard and mouse kit. Although in our review we found the Atrix to be too underpowered for any real computing tasks, it is certainly a sign of things to come – a day when a smartphone functions more like a laptop. In the next few years, it might be possible to bring a smartphone on business trips or for a gaming night at a friend's house, connect up to an HD display, and do real computing without bringing along any other silicon. "The desktop PC made sense because I can leave the peripherals at home or connect at locations where spare peripherals exist," says Ken Dulaney, a vice president and analyst at Gartner
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