Ubuntu on the Nexus 7

> I know lots of people who have laptops that would probably not notice for weeks if their screen quit working, because they always use them with docking stations or equivalent.
Agreed, but laptops are 'computers'. They do come with a real keyboard and a greedy powerful processor though... and MS Office as standard :-S

> Current tablets are not used with full-size screens and keyboards, but most tablets couldn't run that way, and the common tablet OSs don't support it in any case.
Defined 'current tablets' :-P
A few have HDMI out already some way or other (MHL, mini-HDMI, WiFi-display) but this is a tablet-to-TV connection mostly, which keeps the tablet in its usual use-case (see below.)

> I think that if the OS and hardware supported it, a lot of people would use tablets that way, not all the time, but a surprising amount of the time.
Tablets are used to play, read and show photos. These use-cases do not require a keyboard. Keyboards are more useful to type text (documents/code.)

I understand that developers may want to use a tablet to code (like you and I do, I presume), but we definitely are a minority. And from my experience, it's not easy. I tried to do that with my Galaxy Nexus (MHL to HDMI screen + bluetooth keyboard) but that just does not fly :-(

(typing this from my laptop using my Galaxy S2 as modem!)