The world is telling me to buy a tablet – how can I resist?
itchy. Actually, it’s my whole arm. And, extending the metaphor to include items of clothing that aren’t normally associated with itchiness, the pocket that contains my wallet. They keep on whispering into my ear that I need a tablet. “With a pen, Tim. With a pen. So you can write on the screen. Go on, you know you want to.”
It doesn’t help that I have Barry Collins telling me, every few seconds or so, how marvellous his ThinkPad Yoga is. How he no longer needs to print pages to check them; he just writes on-screen with his magic stylus.
As if to hammer this all home, I spent the weekend in the company of a friend who bought a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 last year. When I whipped out my Dell XPS 13 to write an article, he too extolled the virtues of his stylus/ touchscreen combo.
Still don’t believe the universe is telling me something? Then how about this. Immediately on my return home, I sat down to read this month’s reviews (and it’s a bumper crop, including Microsoft’s first ever laptop on p50).
What’s the first page off the printer? A glowing review of the iPad Pro 10.5in ( see p56). Once I finished that, it was on to the new Microsoft Surface Pro ( p54). While our verdict on that isn’t quite so glowing, I was seriously tempted to buy the darn thing there and then.
It doesn’t help that Windows keeps popping up messages saying “Your computer’s running low on storage space. Just buy the Surface Pro, Tim.”
Admittedly, the second sentence isn’t explicit in the pop-up, but it might as well be. It’s either that or spend a couple of hundred pounds on one of the M.2 SSDs we review in our group test this month, along with the palaver of migrating my Windows installation. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for at least a year.
What’s likely to push me in that direction is that, when it comes to misguided tablet buys, I’ve been bitten twice. First, as the extended PC Pro team wastes no time in mocking me, when I bought the Surface RT at its New York launch. This is still in use… if not by me.
The second time was even worse. I bought an iPad about four years ago, and it’s no exaggeration when I say it’s been sitting in my sock drawer for at least half of that time. It turns out that me and the iPad never really got on. I’d rather consume on my phone and create on my computer. The tablet sits there as a pointless halfway house.
So I sit here, my cards exposed, still unsure what to do. Least likely is the iPad Pro: yes, it has a gorgeous screen; yes, it’s powerful; yes, the forthcoming iOS 11 update will bring something much more akin to the multitasking I’m used to. But can a 10.5in device really be anything other than a travel or sofa companion? I’m not convinced.
The Surface Pro would have stood a greater chance, but in truth I want a laptop first and a tablet a distant second; I’m more willing to put up with the greater girth of a machine like the HP EliteBook 360 ( see p62) in return for its tablet mode when I need it.
And that leaves the SSD upgrade that I keep on putting off. The upside: price. The downsides: it takes time and I
still wouldn’t get a touchscreen with stylus. So what am I going to do? Right now, I simply don’t know. All I can tell you for sure is that the itch keeps getting itchier.