And now it's time for....
Khatru's Education Corner
When the all knowing, all seeing, all bullshitting, Khatru explains....stuff.
Today's...that is, today in this post, not today, as in the modern day...convertible cars are still out there, but not today...you get the idea, let's move on.
One of the biggest segments of the computer industry is 2-in-1s. Now, for anyone who does not know, a 2-in-1 is a lightweight PC that can be used as both a tablet and a laptop. Every Microsoft Surface sold since the beginning of time is a 2-in-1.
No wait, that's not true either, because now you can buy the Surface Studio...and soon, the Surface laptop...but before that...
Wow, confusing isn't it? But, I don't mind, so you shouldn't either.
Starting with the original Surface and Surface RT, and moving forward thru the Surface Book, they were all 2-in-1s. In case you haven't seen a Surface or Surface Pro, they are tablets, but with a very thin keyboard that can be detached or folded around to the back of the keyboard.
Now, today that is one of the two types of 2-in-1s, what I would call a detachable. They come with a keyboard that can be detached, so that you can use the screen as a tablet. These tend to range from 10" to 13"
The other 2-in-1 cannot be detached, but the keyboard can be folded back behind the screen. The Lenovo Yoga was one of the first, but Lenovo has muddied that water by using the Yoga name for a rather large series of devices running both Windows and Android.
A little over a year ago, I bought a detachable, an ASUS Transformer Book T200A.
I have been living with it for a year, and it is not too bad. I can use the keyboard, which is always a problem on smaller devices. I is a big Khatru, and the hands is big. But the Asus does pretty well in that department and I can write on the Asus without any real problems.
It is only 64GB, with only about half that remaining at the moment with very little other than Windows and Office installed, but the Transformer Book has a surprise. The keyboard unit has a slot for a 7mm hard drive, so at the moment, I have 500GB in the keyboard, and plenty of space for videos, etc. This is really one of the big selling points for the T200A.
On the downside, the whole thing is plastic-ky and feels a bit cheap. The keyboard unit has a fair amount of flex, though nothing has broken in a year. Also, it is bit heavy, especially with a hard drive in it.
The tablet unit has a microUSB port, a miniHDMI port, and an SD slot, and the base has a network card, and a USB slot on each side.
Overall, I've been pretty happy with it.
A month or two back, my wife bought a Dell Inspiron 11 (3168).
It will connect to any WiFi network, except the one in our house. Every other device I own works on the network, but not this Inspiron. So, for now it is powering my TV.
The Inspiron 11 is a contortionist, in that the screen folds back and will lie flat along the back of the screen. In this mode it makes for a rather heavy large tablet. I tried it out for a few days, and already found several problems, albeit minor ones.
The Inspiron 11 is hard to open, and virtually impossible to open one handed. The keyboard base part of the unit is longer than the screen, so there is nothing to slip a finger under to get purchase to pry the sides apart. It is a fairly sleek unit when closed, but each time you open it...annoyance.
The unit is very lightweight, which is good, but the keyboard base is light enough that any tap on the screen causes the whole unit to rock, which again is a small annoyance, but noticeable.
By comparison, my Asus, which is the same size, but a bit heavier is rock solid when I tap on the screen, and even more so since I added the hard drive in the base.
I have not tried out many ultraportables, so I am not sure if this is a problem with all very light laptops or 2-in-1s, so it is possible that the Asus is better than average, rather than the Inspiron being worse.
Immediately upon receiving it, my wife discovered the at the power button is in a very inconvenient place. It is on the right side of the keyboard, just at the front corner. Invariably, when you pick it up, you turn it on as well. I have a similar problem with the placement of the power button on my Samsung S7 Edge smartphone, and I feel like neither Samsung nor Microsoft did enough testing before finalizing the design.
The only other problem with the Dell is that the blue plastic makes it look a little childish, sort of like it was a PC designed for 1st graders. It isn't quite that bad, but I feel like they rather missed the mark if they were trying to make it hip and exciting.
So, there you have it, two 11.5" 2-in-1s. Very different in design and execution, but that just shows off the diversity in the segment.
