UKC

Time I buy myself a new laptop mainly for internet, photos, social media, MS Office etc.

Interested in the Tablet/Laptop combinations such as the Microsoft Surface Pro or the ASUS Transformer Book etc.

Anyone got any experience of them or similar?

In reply to Alan M:

aye, bought a surface, the worst thing is you cant disable the windows updates, also, it doesn't seem to like going back a page in IE, quicker to close it and open a new browser. Only use it for browsing, but not sure if i'll get another when it packs in.

In reply to Seocan:


Thanks, will bear that in mind when I decide. Do you know if the issues you describe are common across all the Surface pros?

In reply to Alan M:

I have a Transformer TF300. Its an excellent bit of kit, especially now that I have rooted it. ASUS stopped doing updates for it last year and their last update did more harm than good by draining the battery however Rooting and installing a custom operating system fixed all this.

As a piece of kit my elderly transformer still performs well and shows no signs of flagging with anything that I install from Google.play

And the best part of all, is the removable keyboard which doubles as an extra battery. My tablet is now obsolete and no longer available.

Would I buy another piece of ASUS kit?

To be honest, I would have to think long and hard about ASUS after-care and support. When I first got my tablet, ASUS were excellent throwing out updates and as the product was as near Vanilla Android as possible I was usually at the front of the que up to Ice Cream 4.2. But as I say, the last update screwed things up and left thousands of people a bit miffed especially when ASUS went quiet and refused to fix the problem.

ASUS seem great at keeping kit one or two generations old but beyond that they seem to cut you off in the hope that you will buy new kit. The hardware is bombproof and provided you are willing to get under the hood when ASUS no longer provide updates you will find a wealth of advice on how to update the device yourself.

But don't make the same mistake that I did thinking that my tablet would replace my laptop. A tablet is excellent for simple stuff like surfing the web, listening to music, watching movies or even beaming those movies onto your TV but you try and do more complex stuff and you soon find their limitations.

Try getting a tablet or smart phone to print a document created on it and you will see what I mean. Apple may have this nailed, but sadly Android does not.

I love my tablets (nexus 7 and ASUS TF300) and use them more than the laptop but the laptop is superior in every way except for weight and portability.

In reply to Alan M:

As much as it pains me to say it, Surface Pros are well regarded. But not cheap. Oddly Microsoft often make really good hardware when they do make it. The keyboard is as poor as you might expect, very little travel. But I'd admit I'm a keyboard weirdo.

Also they're not laptops, they're powerful tablets with good keyboards.

In reply to The Lemming:

Good post and a lot to consider.

Currently I have a laptop (old and on its last legs)and a Tablet (Nexus 1st Generation).

I find that apart from needing MS Office (Word and Excel) 95% of my day to day use is on the phone or tablet internet browsing, youtube, music, social media, browsing photos etc.

The laptop is now only used for downloading photos from the camera and phone and then they are saved on a personal cloud (WD My Cloud) so that they can be accessed easily anywhere. The second major use of the Laptop is MS Office for word processing and excel etc again everything gets saved on the My Cloud. I don't do anything technical like photo editing or run complex programmes etc. Booking a flight with Ryanair is about as complex as I get on the Laptop

I was thinking that the Surface Pro or similar would offer everything I need. Should be easily capable of doing everything I want 99% of the time in regards to what I use the current Laptop and Tablet for?!

In reply to Alan M:

I've put Linux onto 11 year old laptops, giving them a new lease of life.



Have you considered alternatives to MS Office?

Libra Office
http://www.libreoffice.org/

Kingsoft
http://www.kingsoftstore.co.uk/

I use Libra Office on my desktop and laptop and use kingsoft on my phone and tablet.


I have something similar, in that I use an Iomega NAS box to store everything. It too can have access to the internet so that I could hook up to it from anywhere however I choose to just keep it for home use.



Just looked at the price of a Surface and my first reaction was "fook, how much?"

Why not buy a tablet and laptop for the same price as a Surface?

In reply to The Lemming:


Its on its last legs in that you can't guarantee that it will turn on, or if it does decide to load up it may just switch off at any point etc. The battery is also destroyed in that the laptop has to be plugged in to be used....so its not really a laptop anymore!!







Yes I have Kingsoft (or something similar) already on the Nexus that I use a Bluetooth keyboard with works fine. Though even if saved in the compatibility mode if I email it in to work the works firewall etc picks it up meaning I have to get the IT department to allow access. Don't have any of those issues with MS Office etc.





I could do, but if I can get rid of a few gadgets and only have the one I am all for that

In reply to Alan M:

It sounds like you use a home computer much in the same way as I do. I recently brought a Google Chromebook "HP Chromebook 11". It is light, has a decent battery life and a keyboard. The only thing that it doesn't do is have the screen disconnect from the keyboard, more like a traditional laptop.

For document editing you can use the Google Drive which can handle word and excel documents reasonably well.

In reply to Alan M:

Have been using a Surface Pro for over a year now. I think it's a great bit of kit but the external keyboard is rubbish and the onscreen keyboard uses up too much screen space. If you're going to use it as a laptop replacement you might find it frustrating.

On the other hand, the pen entry is really nice - I use mine for taking notes in meetings and keeping up to date with emails when it gets boring. It runs all the applications I use for work which makes the iPad users in the office envious, but not enough to make them switch... yet.

I don't use a lot of 'Apps', just news, weather and financial stuff. Most of what I need can be done in the browser or using traditional Windows applications. The browser is good - swiping backwards and forwards is easy, easier to use than Chrome on my Nexus 7.

If you can, try before you buy. If you haven't used Windows 8 before, the learning curve is steep in the beginning, but if you give it a chance you will get used to it.

In reply to Alan M:

Keyboard is rubbish. If I want to type, I want a proper laptop with a proper keyboard. Whereas I prefer a smaller tablet for reading Kindle books and browsing on the train.

Neil

In reply to The Lemming:


Doing that isn't exactly unique to ASUS - many other companies do the same.

The company I work for only officially supports the last 2 full software releases. It becomes cost/time prohibitive to go back further than that - the more versions we support, the more development and testing we have to do for each patch/service pack.

In reply to Alan M:

i've no idea, i think mine is just a surface, it doesn't have the external keyboard.