Yes, it’s that time again! Time to source a replacement for my now-ancient ‘Lenovo Ideapad 305‘ Laptop. It’s served me well for well over four years, accompanying me around the world helping me to keep in touch with the mother ship! It’s going to a good home – a TA friend of mine becomes its new keeper!

As you might expect, me being me, choosing the Lenovo’s replacement wasn’t a quick decision! After a few intensive weeks narrowing down the options (more of that later!) I chose an HP device – which wasn’t how I thought things would play out.

So, say hello to my (deep breath!)…

“HP Spectre x360 15-eb0001na 4K OLED
Convertible Laptop with Pen (2020 Edition)”

Phew! Quite a mouthful! And quite a wallet-buster too, at £1949.99!! (best price).

The Shortlist

Well, there nearly wasn’t a shortlist at all – I thought I knew what I wanted – the rather clever and just launched Samsung Galaxy Book 360 Pro. was the front-runner. But, as they say, ‘the devil is in the detail’. I’ve already got a Samsung mobile phone, so what could possibly go wrong?

On closer inspection of the laptop specs, the storage was a bit small for me at (just) 512Gb and more crucially, the display was ‘only’ HD. For the money I planned on spending, I was really looking for a 4K display.

Further reading online by those ahead of me in the buying queue for the Samsung flagship, revealed a disappointing webcam and a distinct lack of sockets (not even a USB3 port!). In fact, the more I read, the more disappointed I became. OK, it had the latest 11th gen Intel chip, the device was super-light to carry and it had a gorgeous AMOLED screen, but there seemed to be some confusion in the marketing materials about its storage expansion capability.

I posted a question to Samsung Support who confirmed that I couldn’t add an additional SSD (even though the online marketing blurb suggested this was possible). When I challenged Support’s reply, I got a vague response – that just added to my confusion!

Enough already! Time to go looking elsewhere. There were only two others that came close to the spec I was after…

The ASUS Zenbook Flip S (but it only came with a 13-inch screen and I wanted a 15-incher at least!! !and the aforementioned HP.

In the end, the screen size was the deal-breaker for me and I plumped for the HP.

The Winner

What’s so special about the Spectre? If you want a detailed specification, take a look here, but for now, here are the headlines…

A gorgeous 4k screen
OLED screen technology
Touch screen technology
A stylus
1Tb of M2 SSD storage
plus
16Gb of RAM
Gorilla glass screen
(Almost) the latest Intel chip

It’s also a ‘2-in-1’, which means it can function as a Tablet too (albeit a very large tablet!). Best of all though is that it sports a special hinge mechanism which allows it to be set up in a tent fashion (as in the photo above) which combined with the touch screen and stylus, makes it easy to use creatively.

Now, all I needed to do was to transfer over all my data! That’s always the boring bit – but it’s necessary!

Steve Palmer

I got into blogging quite late in life, not publishing my first post until 2004 – well into my 40s! My lifelong love of technology and communication (in all its forms), together with a fondness for the art of writing seemed to be the perfect combination to contribute a few words to the online community. But I’m no Samuel Pepys! If you’re looking for deep and meaningful comments on a variety of subjects, then you’ve arrived at the wrong site! I only pen for pleasure! On average, my posts appear about twice per month, covering family & friends, cinema visits, eating out, holiday experiences and techy stuff. Oh, and as this is my hobby, there are no sponsored links nor adverts here – it’s all done with love!

I hope you find it enjoyable, interesting and occasionally, even helpful!

StevePalmerTheBlogger.com

The post HP Source appeared first on Steve's Blog.

An early start this morning, as it was over to Mags’ to sort out her PC, helping her to switch email providers from Virgin to Microsoft. She was also waving goodbye to the ageing Windows Live Mail and moving to the sparkly new Windows 10 Mail.

Luckily, Mags had been able to do quite a bit of the preparation beforehand by pruning her existing data, so it was more of a case of me ensuring all the right files were in all the right places! A great start in that all the account data behaved itself and it synced first time with its cloud equivalent.

It was all going pretty smoothly until I tried to import Mags’ ‘old’ address book – the exported file, when imported into the People App refused to ‘see’ any of her email addresses, even though all the other people details were clearly visible. A bit of head-scratching and a bit experimenting resulted in me renaming the offending Excel csv header and we were sorted!

In just inside three hours, everything was up and running! I think that’s a personal best!
 

Steve Palmer

I got into blogging quite late in life, not publishing my first post until 2004 – well into my 40s! My lifelong love of technology and communication (in all its forms), together with a fondness for the art of writing seemed to be the perfect combination to contribute a few words to the online community. But I’m no Samuel Pepys! If you’re looking for deep and meaningful comments on a variety of subjects, then you’ve arrived at the wrong site! I only pen for pleasure! On average, my posts appear about twice per month, covering family & friends, cinema visits, eating out, holiday experiences and techy stuff. Oh, and as this is my hobby, there are no sponsored links nor adverts here – it’s all done with love!

I hope you find it enjoyable, interesting and occasionally, even helpful!

StevePalmerTheBlogger.com

The post Mail Chauvinist appeared first on Steve's Blog.