KORG M3 - Review Part 1

OK, a complete review on the M3 (in progress):

The first synth I ever bought, was a Korg X5D, a great synth for starters. This was back in 1996... Many years has passed, during this years, I owned a Korg I30, a Korg SGProX, a NX5R... and finally I ended up with no Korg at all... I did and still own some Yamaha gear (MU100R,Motif Rack, 01X, I88, AN1X, QY700, all bought second hand)

I've been using mainly my DAW as sequencer, until Kara told me that I should forget my PC and start to focus on music instead, so I started experimenting with a sequencer (a Yamaha QY700 which I found on ebay). This triggered my interest for a real workstation. Many months passed. I couldn't found the workstation that I wanted.. well... I did found one... the workstation that I did found was great, but I couldn't afford it (you guessed it: the Korg Oasys). But than came the Korg M3 and it was love at first sight.

I still hesitated to buy the Korg M3, I didn't have any doubts on this instrument, but the pricetag held me back. At this moment Kara made a comparison for me: he said, compare the price of this device over 10 years with the price you pay for a pc, soundcard, softwares, etc... because, if you buy a workstation like this, this is the time you'll use it.
You'll find in this comparison that an M3 isn't more expensive than a daw solution.

So now I have the M3-73 with Radias board. At this stage, the extra sample memory and the FW-board is out of stock. I'll get these later...

Now the big questions: how does the M3 compare to a DAW solution? Does the M3 sounds better than my VST' plugins? Does the sequencer rival my PC sequencer? Does Karma rivals my music making software? Do I still turn my DAW on, or will my Korg M3 become a very expensive master keyboard...?

To be continued in part 2...