~~ Gadgets - Performance, Looks, Apps, Hottest Models ~~

[littlemaster1982]

Thanks for the update It doesn't take much time to get used. I'm able to type msgs with a speed almost like in a pc.

[Sid_316]

Planning to get an iphone.. black friday or christmas time la apple reduce panna vaipu iruka? any idea?

[Benny Lava]

budget pathi lam illa.......... veetula 4 perukku laptop, desktop, 6 mobile (incl the latest motorola android mobile), ipod lam irukku....ithula what value add is a tablet going to provide? (other than probably the attraction it provides through entertainment value) athukku en nirayya spend pannanum nu oru ninaippu than

I still haven't gotten over the feeling that Tablet is a gadget no one would ever need, particularly with all that can be done on smartphones today. But having said that, things could change if some dedicated touch optimized software come out for the tablets, which can contribute to productivity.

[Benny Lava]

Ok Tehcno Gurus! One more suggestion / reekost.
I am tempted to buy a Macbook Pro - Windows Person all my life, but would not take long to learn a new OS / System
At the same time, also tempted by Android Tablets and Smart Phones. But cannot buy both Macbook and Android Tablet / SmartPhone Combo at the same time.
Requirements - Movie Watching, Reading News, Hub (Default ), Chat and Mail, Songs. I am not a gaming person. Sumaal interest in Audio / Video / Photo editing with basic tools
When I return to India, not inclined to go for pricey data plans, just GPRS would do while travelling to office.
Which one do you suggest in this case?

Sathya, go for a Macbook Air. Mine is almost half year old, and I still haven't stopped loving it! Such an amazing ultrabook to use and handle. With SSD storage and Sandy bridge chips, this laptop is as snappy as you would ever need! OTOH, if you want some gaming experience or bulk video editing jobs, go for a Macbook Pro, it was recently upgraded to Sandy bridge (again if Gaming is a concern, one shouldn't go for a Mac in the first place. For the same budget you can get much better gaming machines).

The OS boots up within 8 seconds, every application launches in a snap... even PS CS 5 loads within 5 seconds thanks to the incredible speed of SSD.

Pros: Cheaper than a MBP but still faster than what most common tasks demand. It's price is the same as what I paid for a HP Pavillion 3 years back, so you can see how well it has come under the reach.
Instant power on & power off. Beautiful backlit keyboard, second only to Lenovo Thinkpad's keyboard among the ones I have tried. The screen is brilliant! (literally!)
Wide touchpad, good accurate response to all the gestures. Trust me once you get used to it, you cant live without it!
No need to mention the build, lightness etc., Very quiet and chill for most operations unless you ask it to fight it out with flash videos where it can get flustered a bit. But still miles better than my old lapstove dv 2601. Battery life is good at 5 hrs solid! But there are other jaw-droppers also in the market for this criteria, only A+.
I agree it is a matter of taste, but it really does feel amazing to use!

Cons:
You will find it tough to live without an optical drive. So far I didn't get chance to test any compatible USB CD drive. But I heard it doesn't support Blue ray at all! A major bummer!
The single hinge buttonless touchpad can get a bit unnerving at times, behaves like a lady. Sometimes you will not be able to convince it to click no matter how much force you employ. Apparently you need to touch it only at appropriate areas.
For a person brought up on windows family of right-clicks and context menus, I still cannot come to terms with lack of a button, leave alone right click button on the track pad. A magic mouse or a normal mouse might solve that problem, but to me mouse itself is an annoyance rather than a relief.
The onboard SSD storage is one of the major advantages, it makes most of the difference in the snappiness of access. But @128 GB for a decent budget model, it is very limited. An additional 128 GB will set you back by 250 USD minimum. Very expensive! You can offset this disadvantage by going for cheap external drives, there are so many out there. just keep the software and critical stuff on SSD, rest on external drive.
If you have an existing external drives with lot of content, beware. You might not be able to write to that using your Mac OS. This is because, it is likely that they are already formatted on NTFS and Mac OS doesn't support writing to NTFS volumes. You can use it as read-only drive. The only way to use external drive as read-write device would be to reformat it as HFS or make the switch to windows OS.

On the whole I am very satisfied with my MBA 13" experience so far, I will recommend it to anyone! Of course you need to have the stomach to digest some of its limitations.

[sathya_1979]

Thanks TV, just checked the price, MBA with 256 GB SSD comes to $1500. MBP with 500 GB SATA comes to 1700. I can get a Seagate Goflex 1.5 TB Drive (Portable) which works with both PC and MAC without reformatting. Add in another 150 bucks for Parallels or VMWare Virtual Machine and Windows 7.
$2000 - Windows and Mac laptop with lots of space. Sounds good

[sakaLAKALAKAlaa Vallavar]

Sathya, a Laptop as polished as a Macbook shud not be compared with Android Tablets(how shiny they may look) becos Android, that too for Tablets, the Ecosystem is just beginning to get matured. It will surely take few years. If you ask me to chose one out of both, i will reject both or plan to buy both(one after another)

Btw, Macbook is the only laptop where Windows, Mac OS, and linux can co-exist peacefully. Its any day a dream machine! You will never dislike it Try to find an apple employee, propably in iStores or thru ur friends. You can buy Macbook 20% cheaper, thru them!

If u prefer Android Tablet for now, let me know, we shall discuss possible options

[sathya_1979]

Sure Sakala. I will buy both, but after some gap between them, as Tablet is not an immediate requirement for me. I just have my office lappy and severly handicapped without personal lappy. Hence, macbook first and then Tablet.

As you mentioned, I will wait for the Quad Core Tablets and then will go for it.

One basic Question: Most 10 inch Tablets come with an USB Port. Can I use Tata Photon / Relience / Airtel USB Broadband Stick for browsing by plugging them into that USB Port? Given the relatively poor Wi Fi Reach in India, this would help us to avoid continuous network searches (Say when I travel to office / to my hometown).

[sakaLAKALAKAlaa Vallavar]

Sathya, Some tablets have drivers and some doesn't. If you root the device it is possible, but rooting violates warranty. That too this will work for select 3g Dongles which are from Huawei. Generally this is one of the company whose dongles are sold by Airtel Reliance etc. ZTE is another company. So it depends on the Dongle's model.

But if you have an Android Phone u can browse in ur tablet, by connecting to phone via WiFi.

[sathya_1979]

Thanks. Going through few android tablet forums to gather info. Let's see.

[Benny Lava]

Thanks TV, just checked the price, MBA with 256 GB SSD comes to $1500. MBP with 500 GB SATA comes to 1700. I can get a Seagate Goflex 1.5 TB Drive (Portable) which works with both PC and MAC without reformatting. Add in another 150 bucks for Parallels or VMWare Virtual Machine and Windows 7.
$2000 - Windows and Mac laptop with lots of space. Sounds good

Sathya, I don't see how you can share the drive as write-enabled across both OS. There are some Windows application which lets to write to a Mac OS HFS partition, but vice versa seems not to be possible. I haven't personally tested it yet.
Another option is to have a NAS drive, which serves content over CIFS. I didn't buy a specific NAS drive, but I connected my existing NTFS formatted HDD to my wireless router (flashed with tomatousb firmware) and let it host a NAS drive.

Or you can have dual partition of each filesystem. See this example:
http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=110070

As for on-board SSD storage, I found 128 Gb to be sufficient for my use. The addtional 128 GB is a bit of stretch. You will have to regularly monitor the disk usage though. I still download movies and stuff, I just move them out to my external HDD on a regular basis.