General Purpose Compact or Dedicated Tool

Sony RX1With my eternal search for the perfect compact I read an article from Ming Thein on his recent thoughts on compacts.  This really made me think about what I want in a compact.

Its true now that the small sensor cheap compact has been replaced by the common smart phone.  So what we want from a compact is far more.  The problem is we want small, high image quality, fast lens and a range from 20mm to 300mm, oh and if it will fit into a office shirt top pocket.

Now all of this is not possible but it leads us to cameras like the Panasonic LX10o, or the Sony RX100, where possibly we should be looking at cameras like the Fuji X100 and the Sony RX1, a scalpel of a camera rather an something that tries to do it all.