The Surface Pro's thin stand or the iPad's Smart Keyboard?
Horses for courses. :)
For the needs you have outlined, there are plenty of machines to choose from in the 'mobile workstation' or 'gaming laptop' categories - so happy days! And hey, better stuff is yet to come, with the promise of external GPUs and fast interconnects that blur the line between internal and external storage (if one's data is valuable, then having it stuck on one device is not the greatest idea anyway).
However, you are a roving tech blogger or journalist and don't need the power, you might be glad for a lighter 'ultrabook' machine.
I like that there are a few approaches being explored at the moment. Lenovo, MS, Apple, ASUS and others are all trying various form factors. Some people might want one device to do everything and perhaps accept some compromises, others might be happier to carry a couple.
This was an interesting article because it was assessing a device against tasks which weren't its main focus.