So, I then started to look at the Apple desktops, the first one that I looked at was the iMac. The one thing that put me off the iMac is the fact that if either the screen or actual computer goes wrong then both and gone. I also have a 20inch monitor and keyboard and mouse, this kind of left one choice, the Mac Mini. There are four choices for the Mac Mini, you can choose the basic model with an integrated graphics card, then a faster model with a AMD graphics chip, an i7 version of the descrete graphics version and finally the server model.

I decided to go down the second model route, the Core i5 with a descrete AMD graphics card. Into this I installed a 128Gb SSD, secondary 500Gb HDD and 8Gb of RAM. I then swapped my Microsoft keyboard and mouse with the Apple wired keyboard with keypad and a Magic Trackpad.

Microsoft have also just released the developer version of Windows 8, which was demo’d on a Samsung Tablet PC. Although the Samsung model was based on traditional PC hardware there were other tablets on display at the Build Conference with Arm chipsets in them. This is obviously Microsoft’s way of trying to expand Windows in to other markets. The interesting part is that the new Start Screen is very similar to the one on Windows Phone 7, which I have used and is a very good system with its live tiles and putting the user in touch with their data first and applications second.

I did have a Windows Phone 7 mobile last year in December, it was the Samsung Omnia 7, apart from definitely being a version 1.0 release it did show a lot of promise. I didn’t keep it long enough to get the NoDo update for it and therefor only experienced the slightly slow user experience. I may, with the release of Mango and new mobiles, actually get a Windows Phone 7 device. But it would have to have a minimum of 16Gb of storage not the 8Gb that the Omnia 7 had, that being said the Super Amoled screen that the Omnia 7 had was very good and didn’t seem to suffer from the bad pixelisation that some Android phones suffer from with the same screen.

Also, with my MacBook Pro committing suicide, I have swapped back to a Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit PC. Although it only has a 2.9Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 6Gb Ram, a Radeon HD graphics card, a SSD boot drive and 5Tb of other storage. This machine is connected to two monitors, one 22inch and one 19inch model. It has let me see that Windows 7 is still a very good machine and still holds its own against Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, in fact I would say that Windows 7 is better. However, Apple hardware is a lot better designed than anything by MS partners.

Anyway, I digress, back to the point. I believe that the future of home computing, by this I mean the standard user, is going towards tablet based machines. They will probably be accompanied by a laptop style dock so that you can sit it on your lap and provide it with an extra power source. Examples of this are already being released, a couple of Android 3.1 based devices by Asus, Acer and Lenovo. I think that the Samsung Galaxy 10.1 has a lap dock as well.

This is definitely a shift in thinking, smaller screens with multitouch are more useful that fixed sized laptop screens. What they miss is a high enough resolution, this would allow you to be able to see a full web page and zoom in with no loss of quality. Obviously hardware would have to catch up in order to power these high resolution screens (in Apple speak that would be a Retina display). In fact I am typing this on an iPad 2, despite the fact that the on screen keyboard lacks any tactile feedback it is still easy to type on.

So this year I sat down and thought about it for a bit. I had enough money for the top of the range version and if I could justify it to myself then that’s the version that I would have bought. So I went through a little check list of points that had to be fulfilled before I would buy the 3G version.

1. Where was I going to be using it? Two or three main places, at home, work and airports. When I go away I never use local phone networks anyway.

2. How often would I use my iPad 2 away from a WiFi connection? I never really use it away from a WiFi connection, work has one (for now) and for when that is gone I will have the hotspot feature of my iPhone. So the answer is maybe once in the time that I will actually use it.

3. What do I want the iPad 2 for? I have a master PC that sits in a little office downstairs, but it is away from my family so I don’t like to sit at it all day. So the answer is in the living room where my WiFi connection works very nicely. I check Facebook, emails, my calendar and some very light document editing. None of which need a 3G connection to do when I am at home, work or airports. Also I am going to use it to watch films and tv shows on, again I don’t need an Internet connection for that.

That was it, that was the three questions that pushed me down the route of buying the WiFi only version. If I do need to check emails whilst I am away I have my iPhone which is also connected to iCloud etc so that I can send documents if needed. At home I have absolutely no need for the 3G element.

The final clincher was the additional £100 for the 3G model as well as the £10-20 a month for the 3G connection. Over a year, assuming that I used it every month on 3G that would cost me an additional £300 for the first year alone. If I use the hotspot feature of my phone, which is £10 a month that only costs me an additional £120 over the first year with the added bonus of being able to connect my laptop to the phone for access to the Internet.

Also, the final point is that there has to be a mobile signal wherever you are to connect to 3G, so if there is not a 3G signal then you are just as disconnected as the WiFi only model.

This brings me back to my experiment, can you actually live your digital life without using a laptop in a daily basis. I have had the iPad 2 for about a week now and so far so good, I have even written a presentation and gave the presentation using my iPad. There is nothing cooler than having an iPad 2 connected to a projector and controlling the slides with your iPhone 4. I’ll keep you all updated.

The current iPad 2 tops out at 64Gb and the iPod Touch at 128Gb, the iPhone is even worse at 32Gb. This is not a lot of storage, I myself for example have a 300Gb iTunes library that is now sat on a PC since my MacBook Pro committed suicide. But if I want to just use my iPad for everything, especially when travelling, I don’t want to have choose what I want to watch or listen to, I want to be able to take something with me that is small and holds my entire library, yet is not a computer of sorts. This got me thinking, why can’t Apple release a small iOS based device that has a massive traditional hard drive attached to it and can sync, either with a cable or wirelessly, to my other iOS devices. I’m sure that the actually engineering wouldn’t be that difficult. They could call it the iSync like on the Mac. It wouldn’t even need a screen, like Apple TV, it could just be a small black box with an external hard drive. When you plug in your iOS device the Music application opens and you see the shared box like you do with Home Sharing, from there you select what you want to keep on your iDevice. It can even double as a Home Sharing device.

However, having just thought about this for a moment, I suppose that a Mac Mini probably fits this bill perfectly. It is small, power efficient and can take external hard drives, run iTunes, has WiFi and can be run as a head less unit. But, the Mac Mini has the advantage of being able to run as a full blown computer.

So, the experiment is, can I run my digital life on an iPad 2 and not have to go back to a computer for anything other than synchronisation of files?

But, this post is about how Apple can improve the iPhone itself. The obvious is that they make it faster, change the design and maybe increase the screen size. But do these things actually make the phone better, a bigger screen means bigger phone and less power efficient. Also, I actually believe that 3.5inches is actually the perfect size for a phone. I’ve used and owned the Omnia 7, Nexus S and Atrix which all have 4 inch screens and I still think that the iPhones screen is better.

So what can Apple really offer here, normal users don’t care about specifications so speed and screen size aren’t an issue. All they care about is the experience and I am currently using the iOS 5 beta 6 release and the phone is better than ever despite being over a year old now.

I know that the new machines are running the newest Core i5 and i7 processors but in real life computing you will very rarely see that big a difference. Ok you may have to wait a fraction of a second longer for a webpage to load or an application but that’s only if you are using a traditional hard drive. I have an SSD installed as my primary drive and a secondary 500Gb drive installed in an MCE Optibay which gives me around about 628Gb of storage, more if I was to sacrifice the SSD for another 500Gb drive, but I won’t do that.

The only issue with this model is that the secondary drive is actually running on a parallel connection not a serial connection which does slow it down a bit. But it is only used for storing my iTunes library and not much else so having to wait for it to spin up does concern me any.