iPad Mini coming in October, says tech site

You know Apple, it is all rumour until the official announcement!

I pretty much think they will try and compete with the Nexus 7 which is going for £159, but knowing Apple they will charge £259 for the same size and spec and plenty of people will buy it thinking it is a good deal

to the forum John.

Me I'm ambivalent about Apple products, owned an iPhone 3Gs got rid of it, been using smartphones for a decade and personally always preferred the Windows CE platform, Windows Phone 7 was ok but Windows Phone 8 looks like it will bring back a lot of the power of CE along with a nicer phone User Interface than CE offered.

Windows 8 is specifically designed for Tablet's I've not installed it yet, I was going to try it out on a Virtual Machine first, so I cannot really make any recommendations yet.

I suspect the 'Metro' UI (User Interface) (we're not supposed to call it that anymore ) will be quite good for Tablets my concern is that it will be horrible for people that actually do real work with their desktop machines, we shall see.

I got the RTM (final) version of Windows 8 on the 15th of August along with Visual Studio 2012 (development tools) quite like VS2012 so far but found out that I have to install Windows 8 to actually do any real Windows 8 UI development.

Plenty of people love the iPhone UI and it is certainly polished, it just doesn't do it for me though.

I write business software for a living and business has really been PC based for the last 25 years so that kind of chose my preference for me.

Plus development tools have always a bit restrictive for the Mac, Objective C being the only real option, some good cross platform tools are starting to appear though, the tooling for Delphi's Object Pascal is now cross platform for apps developed using the fire monkey library instead of the old VCL.

In terms of computer hardware I always built my own from parts but these days I prefer Thinkpad laptops (the brand IBM sold to Lenovo) they are just very very nice.

Hi Tom,

The Carbon is certainly a lightweight laptop, I almost qualified my earlier comments with some comments about the legendary keyboards, and now that you have asked a specific question I will.

Up till this years summer models traditional keyboards were available on ThinkPads but now they have switched to chicklet island key keyboards. Now the number one reason people buy a ThinkPad is for the keyboard, they are unrivalled and of course have the traditional layout which is so important to anyone who writes professionally, particularly computer programmers like myself, so when they changed to the island key and more importantly changed the layout of the Insert/Delete/Home/End/PgUp/PgDn block a hell of a lot of people got very upset.

Feedback from those who are not so dependant on the Keyboard layout is generally good, in that they say the new keyboard has exceptionally good feel just as good as the traditional one, so that is encouraging.

The reasons I love the ThinkPad are, number 1 the keyboard, number 2 the build quality, number three the matt screen (no reflections and glare) and fourth the upgradability (does not apply to the Carbon as it's an ultrabook), I am also fond of the plain drab looks, it is very plain but so very functional.

You should be aware that ThnkPads have a soft effect paint on the lid, it feels very nice but it is a fingerprint magnet and the exterior top covers do scratch and mark quite easily, however with moderate care my best one is still in great shape and still looks and feels lovely (all my ThinkPads are second hand).

Anyway to your main question, I had a look at the spec, are you sure that price includes Windows 7 Professional 64 bit? I would recommend professional over 'Home' but double check the spec sheet.

The spec is pretty good it will not be a gaming machine as it won't cope with high end games and 3D work but it aught to be a pretty good performer all round. Screens are not the brightest or best for wide viewing angles but they are still pretty good, it's a shame that every manufacturer supplies 16:9 format screens these days 16:10 and 4:3 format were much better for reading and writing documents in the old days but just about no one provides those any more. Battery life is ok but not great.

If I had the money I would desire one of these, just for the weight alone it's a great choice and it sounds like it is traditional ThinkPad MILSPEC durability, people used to demo ThinkPad durability by throwing them out car windows personally I would not try that

Have a look at this review it seems quite fair.

Remember that I am recommending ThinkPad's as a professional user, I hardly ever use computers for entertainment, I don't play music or watch video's (although my laptops are perfectly capable in this regard) I do though need reliability and ruggedness.

One last thing to note the X1 has no DVD it's too thin and small to take one so you would need an external unit which compromises size and weight just a little.

One last last point I would probably add the 70 quid for next business day onsite warranty too.


Jim

Had a look Peter but most of the laptops are grade B or C and C are spares repairs only, I could not find any Grade A Lenovo's and they are short on the data I would look for on eBay to assure me that the spec was what I was looking for.

I've bought what I would class as grade B+++ on eBay for 150 quid and a grade A top of the range device for 500 quid, but because the Lenovo 7 digit model codes were present I could accurately check the spec so I knew exactly what I was getting.

While the prices on that site are low I think I most folk could get much better on eBay for just a little more money.

Tom's obviously in brand new boxed mode anyway

Quite happy with what I have, and impervious to Apple marketing...........

Not much, or quite a lot, depending on which side of the fence one is sitting............ A wife with a samsung SII...???

I would go with Win 7 Professional 64 bit for any new PC or laptop I would also recommend not to get Windows 8 at this point in time, I don't think it is going to be good on laptops, it will probably be great on tablets but not PC's or laptops, I only say this in case you buy after late October as after then I expect Windows 8 will be shipping as standard on most laptops.

The Carbon X1 would not be a good candidate for CAD work, its only got Intel integrated HD graphics on the same die as the CPU, for CAD you need a discrete graphics card, my Lenovo W500 has discrete graphics and is great for design work. Saying that it's not that it would not work but it would be slow at rendering complex wire-frame models and surfaces.

To be honest for day to day stuff browsing the web doing a bit of word processing and running some spreadsheets then I suspect the Mac would probably be the best option, personally I've never owned or used one but I know they are well designed and built.

I'm a PC guy simply because that has always been where the work is.

Ah just checked your link again that price is lower than the prices I was getting yesterday, I see the correct price when you include Win 7 professional now.

One last point 4GB of RAM would be a bit restrictive for CAD work also.