What is your ideal computing environment? Is it one place, or many? Do you only need your information when you’re sitting at your desk, or do you need it with you, wherever you go?

PDA’s have become somewhat popular to people like me who want to be able to take all of their important information with them wherever they go. But as good as they are, they still suffer from the fact that they are not able to synchronize all of my important data.

With my current combination of laptop computer and PDA, I can be “mobile� in the sense that I can pack up my laptop and lug it around for serious computing, or I can ram my PDA into a pocket on my way out the door and still have most of my data available. But there’s still something missing.

The Tablet PC is very intriguing, because along with the fact that it is smaller and lighter than a traditional laptop, it has added functionality that allows it to be used in new contexts. Until the Tablet came along, it was really not realistic to do any form of computing while standing up, with the exception of PDAs. Now, you can have a fully functional “desktop� operating system available to you while on the move.

I have to admit, I love the idea of this, and can see many new ways that a Tablet PC will enable me to do all the things I currently do, and some new things. The only problem is that the Tablet can’t really replace one particular feature of a PDA: its form factor.

So now we’re back to the original problem. For me it’s all about context – I want to be able to have full access to view and modify all of my data in whichever context makes sense most for me at that time.

I only see two somewhat viable solutions:

1. Software creators become fully aware of PDAs, and include two-way synchronization features with their products. While Microsoft has done this well with some applications (Outlook), it has done a dismal job with other applications like Word and Excel. If Microsoft can’t get it together, who else will

2. A variable-size tablet PC.

Let me explain the second one a bit more, since I believe this is the only truly viable solution. This would essentially be a “modular� PC, where the CPU, memory, and hard drive all exist in a PDA-sized unit which includes a touch-screen, and is in fact a PDA. However it will run a full desktop operating system, with features to make the reduced screen resolution and touch-screen interface bearable, even convenient. This unit will then have the ability to dock into a tablet (slate) PC shell that includes a full-sized display, proper tablet pen digitizer input, and a larger battery. This tablet PC will then also be able to dock at a workstation, much as current tablets do.

Obviously I’m talking about something we won’t see for a few years, but at least it is something that is possible. In the near-term, I believe that Tablet PC functionality could and should become a standard part of any mobile PC. All of the functionality that is included in Windows XP Tablet PC Edition should be standard within all versions of XP, whether the system it is running on has the hardware to take advantage of it or not.

Microsoft, please don’t screw up the Tablet PC. It is arguably the best idea to come out of Redmond in the past 10 years, and from all appearances you’re letting it languish. I want to believe Scoble, but seeing is believing.