I'm in the market for a laptop. I pretty much know what I want. I was going to get it in preparation for a work trip that was coming up. I say was because that trip has been thankfully put off. February is another story *SIGH*.

Anyway, I don't reaaaaally need a laptop, but I wants one. I even pretty much know what I want. Still seeing if there is something else that might sway me....oh yea, & I don't have the money to get one. But I do have my phone, which in a lot of way is a little computer. Web capable, QWERTY keyboard, GPS, too if I can get the damned thing working(stupid ass Verizon for locking shit down). I can pretty much do what I need to do on this thing that I would do on a laptop. Well except a laptop is fullsized, faster, better suited to watching porn movies, and in cases come with a webcam built in for video conferencing( should you need that sort of thing).


My phone

I came across something that might marry my smartphone to a laptop in a sense. It's called the Celio Redfly Mobile Companion.



What it does is turns your cellphone into a laptop. The Redfly is basically a screen & a keyboard with touchpad that has USB ports and Bluetooth. You connect your smartphone to the Redfly by either Bluetooth or USB, then use your phone's programs on a bigger screen like it's a laptop. It's a neat concept for those who are always mobile and don't want to always carry a laptop. Okay, there are those I've heard use this and still have a laptop. That's besides the point. I can see myself using this. Sometimes it's nice to have a bigger screen to bat out an email or check Google Maps out on. Then again, when I have to do this, I'm in a place where I can do this in a proper setting(ie: home).

To make it even sweeter, I just came across an offer that knocks half of the price off of this thing. It will be regularly $399, but up until Oct 31st, the price is $199. Personally, I think that's the price it should be for it. I mean it's basically a screen, keyboard, & some ports. No Operating system, no CPU, no memory. It's a dumb terminal that uses a smartphone as it's "brains". Still it's an appealing gadget.

Pros:

• Bigger screen and keyboard than your average smartphone
• Don't have to carry a full laptop
• You can charge your smartphone off of the the Redfly's battery

Cons:

• No CPU, storage, or memory. Can't dump stuff to this if wanted
• For around it's regular price, I can get one of these mini laptops (AKA Netbooks) like the Asus EEE PC
• I'd probably still want a laptop.

I'm sure there are other things I'm missing, but I can't think of them right now. I've got until Halloween to make the decision to jump on this or not. Still mullling it over. If you yourself would be interested in this, go check it out here. There's even a 3 minute tour at the bottom and you can check out whether your phone is supported here. It's all Windows Mobile based phones, but I'd be willing to bet that they are working on supporting Android based phones like the HTC Dream (AKA the G1) in the future. That's just my guess, though.

Here is a video from the mobile blog Jkontherun talking about the Redfly.