Warning: long post! This is a question on opinions about mobile computing and touches upon and concerns laptops, tablets and mobile phones in some way.
Till about the first few months of 2012 I was content to use just a desktop computer or three for all my needs - a gaming PC, a Browsing PC (sharing one monitor) and a HTPC. My office provided me with a laptop and I would do 'work' stuff on it, as my PCs were sufficient.
I added a media server to take care of my burgeoning storage needs, and my consumption pattern changed slightly so I began boosting my network capabilities. Once back in Calcutta I added an Asus laptop to the arsenal and sold off my browsing machine. Also I started consuming some media on my Android phone and have quite liked it except my phone is quite a dog.
Now I am reaching the point where my laptop is being sold because it is also a dog - actually screen quality is terrible as is the usability (it's a terrible laptop!) and I need to decide on the best strategy to maximise my mobile computing power and flexibility. And at the outset, I've used Macintosh for a long time, and I'm not investing in it. Much more comfortable in the Windows/Android mixed environment (so please spare me the iPleading). I'm trying to figure out what combination of devices best suit my needs.
My usage pattern is mainly content consumption (a little video, but mostly technical documents) and creation (technical documents primarily). I do a lot of audio design work (mostly visual, sometimes circuit design) for which I need a mouse and keyboard, along with a high resolution screen. I don't think I need much CPU grunt at all, but a good GPU for gaming will be a good inclusion. I also write a lot - on forums and otherwise, and laptops are actually quite terrible for that specific task because of the odd posture. However it may be that tablets are worse, I don't know.I'm open to this being either.
Minimum screen resolution is 1600x or 1920x, if possible higher. I do know that this is possible and practical with some larger tablets. I also know that some now come with 2048x screens at less than half the cost of an iPad - and with Indian warranty, which is pretty darn good and pretty darn cheap (unless there are deal-breakers I don't know about). Then there are laptop which do offer good screens - the Dell Inspiron TurboR has a 14" 1600 screen and the 15" a 1920x, both should be quite a good bet. Again, a laptop and tablet are both usable here.
Other things on the wishlist are a backlit keyboard, decent HID behaviour (specially touchpad/touchscreen) and properly usable sound. My Asus laptop has none of these, a shitty screen, a dog-slow hard drive and a network card from the stone age. I did upgrade the last two items but now even they are failing to cover up the machine's glaringly poor design.
Storage is an issue - the phone/tablet/phablet (if any) *needs* to have a card slot. This is non-negotiable. Thus the upcoming HTC One and all Windows Phone options are non-starters. The laptop (if one is recommended) can have no disk for all I care, as my OCZ Vertex4 will be grafted into it immediately.
As far as a phone goes, I'm OK if all I can do is calls/SMS and the very occasional Whatsapp or surfing. I do that from my current phone but if some of the tasks can be repurposed into the phone I wouldn't mind a two-device setup with a phone/phablet and a laptop. Portability is less of an issue than usability. A ginormously bulky laptop is difficult to balance, for example.
I have eliminated the Glexy3 and Glexy4 from my choices as I'm not keen on another plastic phone. This unfortunately leaves me with the Xperia Z as my only choice, and I hear the screen and sound quality on that one is not good enough for its princely price. Hence the confusion.
I have to choose between two high-end devices (phone + laptop OR phone + tablet) and three devices of which only one is high-end (phone + tablet + laptop). My total budget is ~75-80K, and my shortlisted options are:
1. Ainol Spark Retina tablet + Dell HD+/FHD laptop, keeping my Xperia Mini Pro as 'just' a phone.
2. Sony Xperia Z (insert favorite phone here) for phablet + Dell HD+/FHD laptop.
I can't think of anything further than these two and I would appreciate any help out of this hole.
The third option, though extremely radical, is that I go back to a small desktop for all content creation work (which would be a *lot* cheaper than that Dell), and buy a tablet for passive consumption and browsing, or even a really fancy phone/phablet. This saves a ton of money and gives me portability and freedom, without killing the experience as much as shoddy laptops tend to do.
Till about the first few months of 2012 I was content to use just a desktop computer or three for all my needs - a gaming PC, a Browsing PC (sharing one monitor) and a HTPC. My office provided me with a laptop and I would do 'work' stuff on it, as my PCs were sufficient.
I added a media server to take care of my burgeoning storage needs, and my consumption pattern changed slightly so I began boosting my network capabilities. Once back in Calcutta I added an Asus laptop to the arsenal and sold off my browsing machine. Also I started consuming some media on my Android phone and have quite liked it except my phone is quite a dog.
Now I am reaching the point where my laptop is being sold because it is also a dog - actually screen quality is terrible as is the usability (it's a terrible laptop!) and I need to decide on the best strategy to maximise my mobile computing power and flexibility. And at the outset, I've used Macintosh for a long time, and I'm not investing in it. Much more comfortable in the Windows/Android mixed environment (so please spare me the iPleading). I'm trying to figure out what combination of devices best suit my needs.
My usage pattern is mainly content consumption (a little video, but mostly technical documents) and creation (technical documents primarily). I do a lot of audio design work (mostly visual, sometimes circuit design) for which I need a mouse and keyboard, along with a high resolution screen. I don't think I need much CPU grunt at all, but a good GPU for gaming will be a good inclusion. I also write a lot - on forums and otherwise, and laptops are actually quite terrible for that specific task because of the odd posture. However it may be that tablets are worse, I don't know.I'm open to this being either.
Minimum screen resolution is 1600x or 1920x, if possible higher. I do know that this is possible and practical with some larger tablets. I also know that some now come with 2048x screens at less than half the cost of an iPad - and with Indian warranty, which is pretty darn good and pretty darn cheap (unless there are deal-breakers I don't know about). Then there are laptop which do offer good screens - the Dell Inspiron TurboR has a 14" 1600 screen and the 15" a 1920x, both should be quite a good bet. Again, a laptop and tablet are both usable here.
Other things on the wishlist are a backlit keyboard, decent HID behaviour (specially touchpad/touchscreen) and properly usable sound. My Asus laptop has none of these, a shitty screen, a dog-slow hard drive and a network card from the stone age. I did upgrade the last two items but now even they are failing to cover up the machine's glaringly poor design.
Storage is an issue - the phone/tablet/phablet (if any) *needs* to have a card slot. This is non-negotiable. Thus the upcoming HTC One and all Windows Phone options are non-starters. The laptop (if one is recommended) can have no disk for all I care, as my OCZ Vertex4 will be grafted into it immediately.
As far as a phone goes, I'm OK if all I can do is calls/SMS and the very occasional Whatsapp or surfing. I do that from my current phone but if some of the tasks can be repurposed into the phone I wouldn't mind a two-device setup with a phone/phablet and a laptop. Portability is less of an issue than usability. A ginormously bulky laptop is difficult to balance, for example.
I have eliminated the Glexy3 and Glexy4 from my choices as I'm not keen on another plastic phone. This unfortunately leaves me with the Xperia Z as my only choice, and I hear the screen and sound quality on that one is not good enough for its princely price. Hence the confusion.
I have to choose between two high-end devices (phone + laptop OR phone + tablet) and three devices of which only one is high-end (phone + tablet + laptop). My total budget is ~75-80K, and my shortlisted options are:
1. Ainol Spark Retina tablet + Dell HD+/FHD laptop, keeping my Xperia Mini Pro as 'just' a phone.
2. Sony Xperia Z (insert favorite phone here) for phablet + Dell HD+/FHD laptop.
I can't think of anything further than these two and I would appreciate any help out of this hole.
The third option, though extremely radical, is that I go back to a small desktop for all content creation work (which would be a *lot* cheaper than that Dell), and buy a tablet for passive consumption and browsing, or even a really fancy phone/phablet. This saves a ton of money and gives me portability and freedom, without killing the experience as much as shoddy laptops tend to do.
