Thursday, May 23, 2013

In with the old, out with the new

I've been tinkering with Tablet PC's lately.

What's a Tablet PC, you ask? I'm talking about a fully functional laptop computer that has a touch screen interface on top of the traditional keyboard and trackpad, and one that folds or flips flat so the user can write on the screen as if it was a notepad.

My old tablet is an HP Elitebook 2730p. I've been using it for years as my primary computing device. In my office, it spends most of its time docked, so I get a full size keyboard and monitor. But I also regularly used it for writing papers, teaching classes, presenting at conferences, creating mathcasts, and taking notes during meetings. It came home from work in my backpack every evening and returned with me every morning. Once, during the summer, I even left it on top of my car on my way to work. We made it about halfway there before it caught the wind at 45mph, did a tumbling backflip off the roof of my vehicle, and bellyflopped onto the asphalt behind me. I hit the brakes and managed to retrieve it before anyone ran it over -- and would you believe it, the thing booted right up!

Suffice it to say, I love my HP Elitebook. But its getting old and slow. I'll need a new one soon.

So I'm testing out a contender: the Dell XPS 12 Convertible Ultrabook, pictured above. I decided to see how it would compare with my old HP Elitebook for creating Mathcasts.