living in the cloud - weapon of choice

You can go with this, You can go with that, You can go with this, Or you can go with that, Or you can go with this, Or you can go with that, Or you can go with us.

Once you get Fatboy Slim's 'Weapon of Choice' in your head it will be stuck there all day but the chorus does sum up the choice of hardware and diversity of services availability in the cloud.

In my last Blog I identified the requirements and functionality I was looking for from a cloud end user device and I would like to thank those of you who provided suggestions on hardware via the Blog site and Twitter.

What will be my Weapon of Choice?

Looking past the high-tech facade, bright screens and long spec sheets there are plenty of devices on the market in the notebook, tablet and Smartphone arena. However I need to pick two that meet my requirements.

And the winner in the large format category is the ASUS Transformer Prime. For those of you who might be thinking this might be a 'robot in disguise' you are wrong as its a tablet in disguise. What you get with the transformer is a 10.1" wide-screen tablet running Android OS with an optional keyboard offering up to 18 hours of power and more connectors than you can shake a stick at. Unfortunately according to Android Community website the Prime will not be available in the UK until January 2012 and the 3G version a few months later. Based on this, and to keep the social experiment moving forward, I will be utilising the runner up and default tablet for most people, you guested it the iPad2 3G/WiFi.

expanding your horizons

This leaves the decision on the Smartphone. Drum roll........., the HTC Sensation XE. I think this is a good alternative to the iPhone and allows a comparison on software to the iPad2. This is one on the fastest smartphones on the market with a high res screen.

The great thing with both of these devices is that they can be used as they are with the native apps or connected to a monitor via a cable and with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse along with a thin client through a VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) you have a fully functional desktop.

Do you think I have made the right decision or are there any other options I should have considered based on additional features or functionallity?

Andy
 

Nicolas Jacquey
Andy Shuttlewood

I'm a highly respected telecoms professional with 23 years' experience and I currently manage the UK Consulting team within Orange Business.