I was shopping for a memory card the other day and got the chance to speak to a guy who was looking for a laptop. His requirements were pretty simple: Watch high definition movies and surf internet. He was not going to do any coding or development apart from creating couple of excel or word documents or may be edit some images and videos.
It pointed me to think about the question of whether to buy a smartphone or a laptop for his requirement. This is because whatever he was trying to do with a laptop can easily be done with a smartphone too.
Today's smartphones are smart and are giving tough competition to laptops in the survival race.
Most laptops are trading in the range of $500 to $1000 (INR 20k to 50K in India) these days and if you compare the price with any of the good smartphone like iPhone 4S or Samasung Galaxy S2 Or Nexus, you won't be able to make any differentiation.
Off course, laptops carry a better and faster processor with the likes of intel i5 or i7 for doing things at a faster rate; your smartphones are not far away with dual core processors already selling at $500 mark.
All other features are almost same for a common user. You have memory, HD video recording, Image capture, video conferecing, internet access over mobile or Wi-Fi, messaging and much more in a smartphone. The world is slowly shrinking into a smaller space called mobile.
The other big advantage that i see in favor of a smartphone is its size and attachment to you. They are easy to carry and always find a place in your pocket.
On the other hand, laptops have a con when compared wuth mobiles. I have never seen a laptop which has a SIM card in it for making calls over mobile network. If it exists, do let me know and forgive me for my general knowledge!
Hence, keeping in mind the above points and his requirements, I suggested him to buy a good smartphone like iPhone or Galaxy S2. He was convinced but only had one inhibition about the screen size difference of laptop and the phone. He wanted to watch movies on it and would have loved to watch them on big screen.
My answer to this was technology. All modern smartphones today can easily be connected to TV or a big screen to project what you have on your mobile too. So, you will never miss the HD movie magic on big screen. So, his issue of big screen player was also solved and he finally decided in favor of buying a phone instead of spending money on a laptop.
If you also have the same requirements, you can also think of buying a SmartPhone or a tablet and avoid making an expense on a laptop. This will not only save money but also serve a dual purpose of a mobile and a laptop for you.
Let me know if this idea works for you or you think otherwise in the comments. As a matter of fact, I use my Samsung Galaxy S more than my laptop to do my daily tasks these days. My laptop is slowly loosing its relevance for me and i don;t carry it with everywhere now.
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