"If a hybrid Intel Ivybridge CPU-based PC can deliver the battery life, the startup time, and the touch-screen mobile applications that make Android and iOS attractive, while also being my primary workhorse PC, what place do mobile OS tablets have in my life or in the enterprise?"

Obviously, if those conditions were to be met, it would knock the socks off current mobile offerings. But the likelihood of any two of those items (battery life, startup time, apps that use the WDCIMA (We-Don't-Call-It-Metro-Anymore) interface) to satisfy any but the most tech-centric of pc users is slim to none. For the next year to 18 months, I doubt any significant change will come to the tablet market, save more growth and maturity. The idea of a hybrid is fantastic, but the reality of delivering a truly good mobile OS that works well as a desktop OS is going to have to be much more robust than regular Windows with the interface formerly known as Metro tacked on as window dressing. You've got to be able to do "real work" in your mobile device, as you can with iOS. (Don't believe you can do real work with an iPad? Spend an hour in an Apple store and watch the staff at work. They are handling a huge number of scheduling tasks, point of sale processing, inventory management, customer relationship management, and I can't think of how many other tasks, just like any other business - all on iPads and three-generation-old iPod touches! True, they're not writing a huge number of words like tech reporters, or configuring servers and routers like IT professionals, but they are doing what most folks in the 21st century call "work" and there's not a traditional desktop computer on the floor. Well, there may be one, back at the Genius Bar. But it's only used occasionally.)