Personal computing discussed

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kamikaziechameleon
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Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Fri Mar 02, 2012 1:46 pm

I have a T-mobile HTC Sensation 4G phone. I have no other mobile tech at the moment, lol not even a MP3 player. I used to have a Asus EEE pc 901... its simpler to say it browses web ok and does skype... thats it keyboard is too small and harddrive management is a nightmare. I've given up on is as without installing anything on it there is not enough room on the hard drive to install all the OS updates it needs to run well :P

I'm traveling allot in my free time for my two business's I'm trying to build outside my day job and as such I really need a mobile solution.

I have short term and long term goals for my mobile tech expansion.

I initially need cheap(next 6-12 months), light, small, functional, good battery life(It has to have good touch pad interface and decent keyboard or I'll go insane... oh god please make it look pretty). I kid you not that the best deal I see is an ASUS transformer prime, the OS being the only draw back but perhaps something I can work around, otherwise an ultra book is the next best option and that is a large leap in price, would you say that adds enough functionality without loosing too much battery despite the cost hike? 13" max in size 10" min in size... light and thin I will be taking this everywhere with me I don't want it to become a burden.

My long term goal(1-2 years) is a mobile workstation laptop probably in the 17 inch area as I personally don't find 15 inches any more convenient and their aren't any... appealing 13 inch offerings with discrete GPU's, RAM, QUAD core processors and a nice industrial design. The workstation will have to do everything it will be what makes it so being away from home doesn't detract from productivity, I'll be editing photos, websites, managing bank accounts, editing video, solid modeling... all of it. I want that 17 workstation and a tablet for handily showing presentation to clients in one on one meetings as well as for recreational consumption of media etc.

I was also leaning towards a Transformer prime as it would knock off one half of my long term goals, and I could role into a workstation sooner.

Do you think a transformer has the potential to meaningfully increase my functionality beyond what I do on my phone right now? Or is it just a toy. What brands should I be looking at for Ultra books and or 17" workstation laptops with nice industrial design. Currently I'm only looking at Mac but last I checked their Win7 drivers are junk so the mouse pad really suffers in windows. Please advise.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Fri Mar 02, 2012 4:28 pm

I'm looking at still perplexed as to what my best course is here. I see so many ultrabooks but really they are only a stop gap. I guess what I'm looking to do would be word processing, web surfing, Basically web and office(word/outlook/excell) could I pull this off on an android tablet???
 
druidcent
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Fri Mar 02, 2012 5:02 pm

FWIW, I like my Transformer Prime.. It's got a good mix of productivity and entertainment, though entertainment is winning since I don't have a dock. If you aren't a keyboard/trackpad fanatic, I'd say the Prime with a keyboard dock is a great alternative to an ultrabook. I'm not as productive without the dock (borrowed one to try out), but it was great to get through meetings (check email, web, take notes). I used Splashtop to remote into my PC, and was able to read and navigate through Excel and Powerpoint, but without a mouse and keyboard, editing was a pain. I'd say that a Prime could do anything you'd want with an ultrabook except PC gaming (but there are quite few high quality Android games that could be worth checking out).
 
irvinenomore
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Fri Mar 02, 2012 7:26 pm

kamikaziechameleon wrote:

I initially need cheap(next 6-12 months), light, small, functional, good battery life(It has to have good touch pad interface and decent keyboard or I'll go insane... oh god please make it look pretty)...


How about the DM1 for the short term, it ticks all the boxes and the shine is off netbooks so the industry is not looking for the margins they are on tablets and ultrabooks?

Bought a DM1 recently for C$325 plus tax it does all the basic stuff, web, outlook, excel. Anything based on the E-350 will do this and there are plenty of cheap laptops out there that could work for you but the DM1 has reasonable screen.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Mon Mar 05, 2012 2:19 pm

irvinenomore wrote:
kamikaziechameleon wrote:

I initially need cheap(next 6-12 months), light, small, functional, good battery life(It has to have good touch pad interface and decent keyboard or I'll go insane... oh god please make it look pretty)...


How about the DM1 for the short term, it ticks all the boxes and the shine is off netbooks so the industry is not looking for the margins they are on tablets and ultrabooks?

Bought a DM1 recently for C$325 plus tax it does all the basic stuff, web, outlook, excel. Anything based on the E-350 will do this and there are plenty of cheap laptops out there that could work for you but the DM1 has reasonable screen.


I do like the look of the DM1 and its price is also very nice, fair balance of hardware. I do have apprehension about the specs though, it would definitely become a place holder for me, I feel like I'd buy it and replace it in 6-12 months. Its hard for me to want to get something so similar to the netbook I've already owned. I'm not saying no to it but I'm not sure about it either. I'm probably predisposed to doing the Transformer prime.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Tue Mar 06, 2012 9:59 am

My phone and many of my friends androids have a recurring issue with crashing. Can anyone tell me if this is resolved after 2.3? I would hate to get a transformer prime and have it be a buggy mess.

TR said that the transformer was much more functional as a tool than the ipad... Can anyone else speak to this? I assume it has to do with the dock functionality but I'm not sure.
 
druidcent
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Tue Mar 06, 2012 12:03 pm

I can speak to owning a transformer prime. I can't recall a major crash or problem with the basic functionality. I've had one or two apps crash on me, but they were free apps, and I didn't expect much from them (3 star type apps).

I've been able to use it as a remote desktop, netflix and movie player, book reader, games, email, and word processing.. so basically everything that I use my laptop for. The battery life is great 12-18 hours per charge which was great for my trip to India (15 hour flights), and in India 10-12 hour drives for a week. Working with excel and powerpoint were difficult, but that is because I don't have the dock. With a dock/mouse I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had to work around like I did. (Splashtop is a great remote desktop app). I was able to do what I needed, it just took a lot longer than I would have needed with a mouse.

Does that help?
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Tue Mar 06, 2012 1:13 pm

druidcent wrote:
I can speak to owning a transformer prime. I can't recall a major crash or problem with the basic functionality. I've had one or two apps crash on me, but they were free apps, and I didn't expect much from them (3 star type apps).

I've been able to use it as a remote desktop, netflix and movie player, book reader, games, email, and word processing.. so basically everything that I use my laptop for. The battery life is great 12-18 hours per charge which was great for my trip to India (15 hour flights), and in India 10-12 hour drives for a week. Working with excel and powerpoint were difficult, but that is because I don't have the dock. With a dock/mouse I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have had to work around like I did. (Splashtop is a great remote desktop app). I was able to do what I needed, it just took a lot longer than I would have needed with a mouse.

Does that help?


Amazingly so. Thanks!

I noticed the price of the 64 gb version went from 600 to 750 on amazon overnight. Wonder what's going on there?
 
druidcent
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:32 pm

Does the 64GB come with a dock now? That could explain the jump.. I only ponied up for the 32GB version.. haven't regretted it yet...
 
Washer
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Tue Mar 06, 2012 3:49 pm

kamikaziechameleon wrote:
I do like the look of the DM1 and its price is also very nice, fair balance of hardware. I do have apprehension about the specs though, it would definitely become a place holder for me, I feel like I'd buy it and replace it in 6-12 months. Its hard for me to want to get something so similar to the netbook I've already owned. I'm not saying no to it but I'm not sure about it either. I'm probably predisposed to doing the Transformer prime.


The current HP DM1 is nothing like a netbook. It blows your old Eee out of the water in every possible way, no joke.

You can get it with either a AMD E-450 with Radeon graphics capable of handling games like TF2, WoW, or even more demanding stuff at low settings, the other option is with a Core i3 2367M which is rated for slightly longer battery life and it's CPU is a decent bit faster.

I personally own the Core i3 model. I get about 7 to 8 hours battery life. It's very fast, comes with 4GB of RAM, and overall a pleasure to use. The touchpad is decent but not great. The screen is middle of the road but relatively sharp thanks to being only 11.6" but still having a 1366x768 resolution. The speakers are shockingly good, no bass or anything, better most 15"+ laptops. The keyboard is awesome*. It has a great array of ports minus the lack of USB 3. Decent build quality, a little flex but still feels solid.

My DM1 had a keyboard problem. The left and right arrow keys only responded for extreme force. No good. But, I jumped on HP's chat support, explained the problem, and no questions asked they overnighted me a replacement keyboard. It was a 10 minute swap (the DM1 is incredibly easy to work with, all components are accessible by removing a single panel) and the new keyboard is awesome. That's pretty a pretty good support experience in my book.

So yeah, I like my DM1. It's not perfect but for a $550 laptop it's an incredible value. Easily comparable to the lower speced ultrabooks on the market if you're not in desperate need for pointless thinnness.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:22 am

druidcent wrote:
Does the 64GB come with a dock now? That could explain the jump.. I only ponied up for the 32GB version.. haven't regretted it yet...


Nope, just went up 150 overnight for no reason, from yesterday to today the base 32 gb version went up 60 bucks on amazon. :-?
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:22 am

Washer wrote:
kamikaziechameleon wrote:
I do like the look of the DM1 and its price is also very nice, fair balance of hardware. I do have apprehension about the specs though, it would definitely become a place holder for me, I feel like I'd buy it and replace it in 6-12 months. Its hard for me to want to get something so similar to the netbook I've already owned. I'm not saying no to it but I'm not sure about it either. I'm probably predisposed to doing the Transformer prime.


The current HP DM1 is nothing like a netbook. It blows your old Eee out of the water in every possible way, no joke.

You can get it with either a AMD E-450 with Radeon graphics capable of handling games like TF2, WoW, or even more demanding stuff at low settings, the other option is with a Core i3 2367M which is rated for slightly longer battery life and it's CPU is a decent bit faster.

I personally own the Core i3 model. I get about 7 to 8 hours battery life. It's very fast, comes with 4GB of RAM, and overall a pleasure to use. The touchpad is decent but not great. The screen is middle of the road but relatively sharp thanks to being only 11.6" but still having a 1366x768 resolution. The speakers are shockingly good, no bass or anything, better most 15"+ laptops. The keyboard is awesome*. It has a great array of ports minus the lack of USB 3. Decent build quality, a little flex but still feels solid.

My DM1 had a keyboard problem. The left and right arrow keys only responded for extreme force. No good. But, I jumped on HP's chat support, explained the problem, and no questions asked they overnighted me a replacement keyboard. It was a 10 minute swap (the DM1 is incredibly easy to work with, all components are accessible by removing a single panel) and the new keyboard is awesome. That's pretty a pretty good support experience in my book.

So yeah, I like my DM1. It's not perfect but for a $550 laptop it's an incredible value. Easily comparable to the lower speced ultrabooks on the market if you're not in desperate need for pointless thinnness.


The transformer prime is jumping up in price making the DM1 look better every day.
 
druidcent
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:24 am

Looks like they are listing Amazon Marketplace prices:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B0067PLOCA/ref=sr_1_4_olp?ie=UTF8&qid=1331133810&sr=8-4&condition=new

Amazon still has it for 599, assuming it is in stock...
 
Mr. Bamboo Head
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Wed Mar 07, 2012 9:05 pm

kamikaziechameleon wrote:
My phone and many of my friends androids have a recurring issue with crashing. Can anyone tell me if this is resolved after 2.3? I would hate to get a transformer prime and have it be a buggy mess.

TR said that the transformer was much more functional as a tool than the ipad... Can anyone else speak to this? I assume it has to do with the dock functionality but I'm not sure.

my gf's prime has has had a couple of hard crashes. but one was before the ics upgrade. but still, 2 crashes in almost 2.5 months is pretty darn good.
 
irvinenomore
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Wed Mar 07, 2012 10:04 pm

Washer wrote:
So yeah, I like my DM1. It's not perfect but for a $550 laptop it's an incredible value. Easily comparable to the lower speced ultrabooks on the market if you're not in desperate need for pointless thinnness.


I would bet that you can source the DM1, maybe not to the latest specs, for less than $550 if you look away from the big chains. Mine was $325 from a local mom & pop store that advertised on Flakelist. From what I have seen online you could probably make be able to sell on the DM1 without too much trouble.
 
kamikaziechameleon
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Re: Help me decide!, I need a mobile solution.

Thu Mar 08, 2012 11:22 am

I'm waiting for:

1. money, lol and
2. the high res display to come out for the transformer prime before buying...

Its funny how wonky the supply has been on those though. I suspect that is why prices fluctuate wildly.

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