Review: The Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 11S

When Lenovo announced the original Yoga 11 many of us thought that it sounded like a fantastic portable notebook. Then they revealed that it would run Windows RT, and interest pretty much faded instantly. Now the company has finally come to its senses and returned with the Yoga 11S and a full blown version of Windows 8. Hmmm, tell us more.

Now, regular readers of the blog will know that I have a love/hate relationship with Windows 8. There are plenty of aspects I enjoy about the new Microsoft OS, but hardware limitations – mainly poor touchscreen and trackpads – have made using the finger focussed new age of Windows less than fun in many, many cases.

The first laptop that really made me take W8 seriously was the excellent Thinkpad X1 Carbon, which I reviewed on this site (here). You must have also liked the device as the review has gone on to the most popular one I’ve ever written.

So how does the new touch enabled, light-weight notebook compare to its bigger brother?

The first thing you notice with the 11S is the colour – Clementine Orange – and just how gorgeous it is. After so many years of either cheap, shiny plastic or dull, grey aluminium, to finally have colour on a laptop that doesn’t look like it belongs in Toys R Us is a joyous thing. It took me about three seconds to fall in love with the drop dead cool look of the X1 Carbon, and the 11S managed the same feat in an even quicker time. I’ve heard many complaints about the Thinkpad and Ideapad line looking a bit boring, but I have absolutely no idea what people are talking about. To me those two lines of laptop are easily the best looking on the market today, yes, even prettier than the ever praised MacBook line, which just looks corporate and, well, boring to me at the moment.

Opening up the case reveals the island style keyboard which is now a standard on the Lenovo notebooks, and no wonder as it’s pretty damn good. Each key is curved at the edges, so this makes them feel slightly small, but I had no problem at all typing on it, in fact its one of the best keyboards I’ve used in a while. The Touchscreen on this device is an 11.6″ display boasting a pretty standard 1366×768 resolution. The colours and brightness are a little muted, possibly because of the touchscreen layer, but it’s more than enough quality for the general day to day uses that a notebook is designed to fulfil. Touch response is very good, which makes the swiping in from the edges gestures that Windows 8 employs easy to pull off. This wasn’t necessarily the case with the previous incarnation of the Yoga series (see my review for the Yoga 13), which proved twitchy at times, so Lenovo have obviously worked to improve the drivers and touch sensitivity in the newer models. Always a good thing.

One area that still needs serious attention though is the trackpad, which became a constant source of annoyance during the test. As a rule I normally turn off the Windows 8 gestures straight away as they only prove an irritant by continually opening the Charms Bar whenever you move your finger in from the right side of the trackpad. This did make the 11S more consistent, but the normal multi-finger gestures that you’d expect to work without a hitch, such as two finger scrolling, proved extremely unreliable. One moment you’d be moving down through a webpage quite happily. The next you’re just moving the cursor around with two fingers. Most notably it was the scrolling up with two fingers that often failed to trigger. I’m hoping that this is a simple case of the driver software needing to be fixed, as the trackpad is otherwise smooth and comfortable to use.

Windows 8 comes as standard of course, and works well on the 11S. Apps loaded speedily, I encountered very few hangups, and generally found the system to be up to the normal browsing, writing, and Youtubing demands that I expect from a notebook. The smaller screen might make using image or audio editing software a bit cramped, but if you want that kind of functionality its probably better to pick up one of the 13″ models Lenovo offer instead. It’s worth noting that this particular review sample reports to be equipped with an i3 CPU, which is not one that you’ll be able to buy. The current roster only features i5 and i7 chips, which should give the Yoga a bit of a speed bump on top of what is already a pretty nippy machine. Sadly the new chips are not Haswell, so you’ll need to wait if you want the crazy all day battery life that Intel’s new progeny offers, but in two weeks of using the 11S I never felt that battery life was an issue, with the machine always seeming to make it through the working day.

As you can probably tell I’m a little smitten with the Yoga 11s. It’s a cracking machine in a very attractive package. The keyboard is great, the touchscreen too, and if Lenovo can sort out the deficiencies with the trackpad then it has quite a tempting proposition for those looking to buy a powerful and portable Windows machine. The only real issue, which sadly is a big one, is that in order to actually buy this laptop you’re going to have to fork out the best part of £1000. It does seem to be the asking price of lightweight machines at the moment, with the Macbook Air occupying a similar position in the market, but it feels hard to spend that much on this device. Yes it’s capable, smart, good to use, and stands out from the crowd. Whether that’s enough to justify this kind of cash though will be the factor that decides how you view the machine. If it was £600 I’d be typing in my credit card details right now, that extra £400 though makes it a far more considerable investment, and stacks it up next to the 13″ Macbook Air which is hard company to keep. Still, if you have the funds available, and want something distinctive, then the Yoga 11S is a very likeable device that will no doubt make an excellent companion on the road.

 

 

Living with the Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch

Since Windows 8 first made its way into my life it’s fair to say that we haven’t always been on the best of terms. My desktop machine, replete with non-touch controllable screen, felt hampered by the OS and took me back to those grand old times when people would swear loudly at their computers with gay abandon. Even after spending time with the Lenovo Yoga 13, a purpose built machine that literally bent over backwards to make Windows 8 work, I was still left cold by the whole experience. Thus, it seemed, I was destined to leave behind the progeny of Redmond and head back to the safer lands of OSX.

But, well, I’m kind of the stubborn sort. You see although Windows 8 does cause me to gouge my eyes and scream out in wild frustration, I do like some of the things that Microsoft are trying. It’s new for starters, which is always interesting, and as we become more attuned to the idea of touch on a laptop, possibly it will actually click into place. I have to admit that these are more idealistic rather than confident ponderings, but maybe it could just came down to a matter of decent hardware in the end.

The Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon Touch carries on the long tradition of utterly dependable, workhorse Thinkpad machines, albeit with styling that looks more like it came from the thoroughbred stables. From the very first moment you set eyes on the matte, rubber-like coating over the carbon shell you know that this is a serious machine. Not in the stuffy, pink shirts with white collars type serious, rather the ‘let’s stop mucking about and get stuff done’ version instead – and that’s something I like. Opening up the case reveals the glorious keyboard, which in short order became probably the favourite surface to type on that I’ve encountered in ages. The keys are spread apart by more than I’m used to on my old MacBook, but they feel chunky and solid under the fingers, almost old school.

One of the Achilles heels of many Windows machines is the trackpad. All too often they drive users to despair with their unresponsive and somewhat random behaviour. Thankfully the generous and smooth offering here just gets on with it, while displaying a good deal of palm cancelling intelligence. The Windows 8 gestures did become a problem though, as far too often I’d move the cursor only to see the Charms bar appear, or the background app leap to the front. Disabling these features in the settings swiftly cured me of these ills, while still retaining two finger scrolling and general pointy duties.

This led me into the previously painful territory of actually having to use the touchscreen. Well, I have to report that the implementation of these features on the X1 is excellent. Navigating via touch felt smooth and far more tempting than anything laptop based that I’d used before. The 14″ screen provided decent sized touch targets, responding quickly and accurately to the majority of hits. Glory be! Finally Windows 8 is beginning to make sense, in no small part due to the X1.

It’s not all roses and unicorns though. The touchpad was very hit and miss when I used the tap function to select anything, usually making me resort to the clickable section of the pad to execute commands, and although the screen is good it’s also not full HD (1600×900 instead), which is something of a surprise when you see the price tag that Lenovo have hung upon the X1.

The model I have here, which boasts an i5 processor, 4GB RAM, and 128GB SSD retails for a wallet trembling £1479 including VAT. That really is quite a price. Compare that with the MacBook Air, which is the dominant player in this part of the market, and for about £100 less you could build a 13″ model to order which would sport an i7 (Haswell chip), 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD, and the remarkable 13 hour battery life that has taken the tech world by storm. That’s not an easy comparison to keep.

Maybe the touchscreen does add quite a bit to the cost? Carbon fibre is also certainly an expensive material for construction. At the end of the day though the price is just too much of a hurdle for most of us to get over. The machine itself is absolutely gorgeous, and I think looks far better than the rather boring ‘any colour as long as its grey’ that Apple currently offer. There is a non-touchscreen version of the X1, which retails on the Lenovo site for £1,119, but it would seem a shame to have the machine that finally solved the Windows 8 conundrum revert back to a standard, albeit very lovely, laptop. Of course a Windows 7 version would be a very tempting alternative.

Do I want one? Absolutely. Can I afford one? Absolutely not, at least not the touch version.

Makes sense really. I find the laptop that can make Windows 8 work for me at last, one that has killer styling, a great keyboard, and is a joy to use. Then it gets undercut by Apple. Still, if the Microsoft path is the one you walk then this laptop is about the best there is.

Living With the… Lenovo Yoga 13

Recently I was tasked with writing an in-depth comparison between Windows 8 and Apple’s Mountain Lion OSX operating systems. To achieve this required the loaning of a machine from each respective camp, which sounds easier than you might think. The Mountain Lion option actually was pretty easy, with the 13″ Macbook Air being a  most flexible and portable platform on which to work – certainly a lot handier than dragging an iMac down to the coffee shop…although that has happened before.

Choosing the Windows machine was far more of a poser. You see I wanted to give the Microsoft creation the best possible chance to show off all its touch based features, but I know from my own experience that traditional Windows users don’t work that way, and therefore needed to show the OS in a more normal setting. So after lots of deliberation between a large touchscreen desktop machine, a tablet/laptop hybrid, or one of the many other form factors manufacturers were seemingly throwing out at random, I ended up plumping for the Lenovo Yoga 13.

Why this one then? Well, Lenovo have obviously thought long and hard about the Windows 8 user experience and divined that tablet and laptop functionality are, of course, rather different. We’ve probably all heard the ‘Gorilla Arm’ arguments about touchscreens by now (if not then it’s the idea that stretching out to interact with your screen all the time will make one of your arms bigger than the other due to the extra exercise it’s receiving – oh yes, and this isn’t regarded as a positive thing), so Lenovo have come up with something just a little bit clever.

At first glance the Yoga 13 looks like a normal laptop, albeit with rather chunky hinges, and in many ways it is exactly that. The specs are what you would expect of  a premium notebook, with an i7 processor, 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, and of course that all important touchscreen. Where the Yoga differs from its less pliable brethren, and gets its name, is those hinges. Open the Yoga 13 up and you can use it as a touchscreen laptop, but if you decide that you want a tablet instead then you can bend it back even more until it looks like an upside down V. Now you can use the tablet functions while the Yoga stands itself up on a table, pretty nifty. Of course this could prove disastrous if you borrow a friends laptop, forget that it isn’t a Yoga, and promptly rip it in half while trying to play Angry Birds.

In use the Yoga 13 is a pretty fast and responsive machine. The touchscreen works most of the time, although there were some occasions where you had to drag a menu in from the side several times before it actually did as you asked.  The matt plastic inner casings were comfortable to lay your wrists on as you typed, but here lay one of the biggest problems I have with the device…the damn keyboard.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of my day typing I’m a bit picky about keyboards. For the most part this one is fine, the keys are well spaced, they feel comfortable, and you know when you’ve pressed one. No, the problem that made this actually a nearly unusable macine for me was the extra row of buttons to the right of the enter key. As a touch typist, although an admittedly scruffy one, I have quite a rapid rate of finger speed. So it became something of a problem when I’d automatically hit the furthest right key expecting a new line only to find myself half way back up the page…especially if I didn’t notice straight away and then started adding sentences randomly into previous paragraphs. I know Lenovo are not the only ones to use a different layout like this, but I found it a real problem. Add to that the confusion of Windows 8 and it becomes a potent mixture for tearing out hair, shouting quite obscene language in the middle of Costa, and thinking just how much nicer that 13″ Macbook Air really was.

Dispensing with the keyboard and going all tablet didn’t really improve things. The Yoga can obviously cope with any of the Modern UI apps that you throw at it, but having a laptop standing on it’s head doesn’t really feel that elegant. It also negates the advantage of a tablet in that it’s lightweight and can be held in your hands for extended periods, something you most definitely couldn’t do with the Lenovo.

In the end the real litmus test was having the two different devices on loan for around a month, really wanting to like the Lenovo – actually being quite excited before it turned up – but finding that whenever I wanted to get stuff done I immediately, and without any hesitation, reached for the Air. It’s boring and predictable I know, and I didn’t want it to go this way as I really want to find an alternative to Apple hardware so that I’m not trapped into a single vendor scenario, but the Lenovo 13 really isn’t the solution. Much like many elements of Windows 8 the Yoga 13 feels like it’s trying to solve problems that just don’t need to exist, and just causes other ones instead.

If you want to read the comparison piece between Windows 8 and OSX Mountain Lion then please visit the PC Advisor website here.

The Chrome-book Pixel : Is this my next?

Regular readers will know that I’m a fan of Chromebooks.

Some may find the idea of a machine which exists primarily on the internet and can’t install software such as iTunes or Photoshop to be a bit of a non-starter. But for users like me who do nearly everything online, Google’s Chrome OS machines are uncomplicated, reliable, and just very pleasant to use.

When I reviewed the Series 3 Chromebook a few months ago I was immediately smitten by its diminutive build, light weight, snappy performance and excellent keyboard. It instantly became my go to laptop and has remained so up until a couple of weeks ago when I was sent a Macbook Air 13″ for a feature I was writing.

Now with the Macbook departing, and my need for a new machine becoming more pressing, I’m left with the decision of what eco-system to buy into, as you don’t simply get a laptop anymore. Apple have built some excellent machines but you can’t fix them yourselves. When you also include the necessary upgrades that mean you can keep them running well for four to five years the price gets pretty hairy. I’ve been reviewing a Windows 8 laptop for the past week, and I’m looking forward to them taking it away. So no sale there.

If there’s one thing that holds me back on the Chromebook itself as a main machine it’s that the screen is a little underwhelming. Not terrible by any means, but not amazing. Plus I know that the mobile grade CPU will probably struggle to keep up with the ever advancing HD net that we now populate. As a second machine of course, or a family laptop, it’s absolutely perfect. Plus it’s very, very cheap. Nice.

Then Google did something crazy. They announced yesterday the Chromebook Pixel.  This new flagship is a £1000+ premium laptop, sporting a better than retina touchscreen display, and beautiful, industrial styling that stands out from the ever increasing sea of Macbooks I see in coffee shops every day. Plastic has been replaced with brushed metal, frosty screens make way for 3:2 aspect ratio HD displays purpose built for the way websites are laid out, and a stonking 1TB of Google Drive storage means your data can be free from the confines of an internal hard disk.

I’ve long thought that if Google ever made a Macbook Air quality Chromebook and charged a decent price for it that I’d sign up in a heart beat. I like the way Chrome OS functions and have been dithering about committing to a new Mac for several months. So does the new Pixel fit the bill? I’m not so sure.

Having come fresh from my Windows 8 touchscreen experience I’m more convinced than ever that I really don’t want a hybrid device. Maybe Google’s implementation will be different, but when using the Lenovo Yoga 13 recently I found reaching out to select things on a screen to be a rather odd movement. I’d much rather use my iPad or Nexus 7 for such tactile duties. There’s also the annoyance of having to clean your screen constantly, and wiping a laptop up and down on your t-shirt is a bit tricky.

 

Then there’s the cost. One of the huge selling points of the series 3 Chromebook was the £229 price tag. For that you got 100 GB of Google Drive storage, a great little machine, and the assurance that if it started to creak after a couple of years you could replace it with a similarly affordable newer model. The Pixel currently retails for £1049, which isn’t crazy for a retina screen laptop, but last week Apple dropped the cost of their 13″ Macbook Pro Retina by a couple of hundred pounds to £1249, queering the pitch somewhat for a prospective Pixel customer. Then there’s the question of whether Chrome OS is really ready to compete in the premium marketplace. The Chrome store is growing very fast, and there are many great apps available – take note Windows 8 – so you can actually do a decent amount of work related tasks. But when you pay north of a grand for hardware you begin to expect to do everything. Photo-editing is achievable through a few decent apps, and basic video editing facilities are available, but they don’t quite match up to the iLife suite that accompanies every new Mac. Audio creation is also a bit of a challenge, so if you’re the creative type then you might find the Chromebook limited in these areas.  Even writers like myself, whose needs are generally undemanding on machines, lack mainstream apps such as Scrivener or Celtx – although the latter does have a web portal.

In the end it comes down to whether you want an ultra high class screen on your laptop, eschew the Apple or Microsoft eco-systems, and spend most of your life online. Are there many of those people around?

Time will tell, but I must admit that even with all these caveats I still find myself sorely tempted by the Pixel.

Google do online so well that you know it will fly. Plus increasingly my computers have become glorified browsers that run Chrome, Google Drive, Gmail, Google Calendar, and a suite of social networking sites. Is it just a natural evolution to use a computer which is designed with this lifestyle in mind? Maybe…just maybe…

 

Living with the…Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook

Ultrabooks. What are they exactly?

Ah, now there’s a question.

As far as I can make out the initial intention of Intel when they coined the phrase was that ultrabooks should be lightweight, powerful laptops at the premium end of the market. Ultralight even. Hence the name.

Another way of saying this would be – they should be PCs that look like Macbook Airs. Yep, that’s pretty much it.

Strange then that since their formal introduction the term has been used in rather ‘inventive’ ways by manufacturers. Some of the models that parade under the banner of ultrabook are heavy, cheap, and rubbish. In fact what they should be called are ‘laptops’, bad ones at that. Now there’s a novel idea.

A more honest form of Ultrabook though is a different proposition. The allure of a machine that can do serious work, while not giving the bearer a hernia in the process, is a sensible one which I wholly endorse. I don’t really travel as such, but do have quite pansy shoulders which buckle under any substantial, or if I’m honest non-substantial, weight. So a laptop that floats on a cushion of ibuprofen is my ultimate machine fantasy (not including the whole cyborg/Natalie Portman/Xbox thing), but in the meantime I’ll take whatever help I can get. Thankfully not all PC companies mock the ultrabook format in such outrageous fashion. Acer in fact have recently released the Aspire S5 and, even more amazingly, they were willing to let me borrow one. Surely we live in a time of wonder.

The Acer Aspire S5

The S5 is very light, very light indeed, and it’s also as slim as a supermodel’s dietary options. There’s power under the hood too, not to mention USB 3.0 and even a Thunderbolt port for all those hideously overpriced hard drives that nobody uses. So is it the machine that will finally avert my gaze, and subsequent financial ruin, from the Macbook Air?

Well, no.

There are some quite compelling features in the S5. The aforementioned lack of mass is certainly striking, and a hidden motorised compartment that houses all the USB ports is another. The latter actually made me feel like I was part of a Mission:Impossible style crack squad of computer hackers at times, but that probably has more to do with my worrying personality quirks than any intended design feature. The illusion was also compromised by the terrible noise the compartment made when opening, akin to an asthmatic cylon suffering with a severe bout of constipation. Ah, Tom Cruise will never let me back in the team now.

Mercifully the machine runs Windows 7, which gives it a head-start straight away when compared to my recent Windows 8 experiences (although I should note that I will finally get my hands on a touchscreen enabled laptop next week, so this remark may be quietly withdrawn when no-one is looking).

So why no love for the S5?

Two very important reasons. Keyboard and trackpad. To be fair the keyboard on this review model is actually some bizarre European (I’m guessing) version, which also features Z and Y keys that have been swapped around (although they still give the normal letter when pressed, so touch typing became a definite advantage). This means that a standard UK alternative might be a more pleasant experience, but I couldn’t escape the feeling that the keys don’t feel full sized, even though they actually are, which was a little disconcerting. Another issue is that the S5 keyboard also suffers from the unforgivable sin of a split enter key to presumably save space. This seems like a very ill thought out design choice and resulted in the constant miss-hitting of a key that gets a fair bit of use in the normal working day.

What do those do?

The trackpad also became a regular frustration as it detected palm movements randomly, meaning the cursor leapt about just when you didn’t want it to, and the buttons under the pad also lacked any certainty. At times it felt like the machine was waiting for me to utter some kind of secret password that would allow my choices to be registered. Not a game for those in a hurry.

Performance wise the S5 is actually quite impressive, with programs running smoothly and displaying no signs of difficulty while under strain. The display itself though is also a let down. I’ve not been overly impressed with many of the screens on the various ultrabooks I’ve tried, and the S5 just joins the unfortunate pile. Colours are bright but the definition is a little fuzzy, with a frosting appearance on the screen. Not terrible by any means, but it doesn’t draws you in with any great excitement.

It’s not a bad machine, even barring these annoyances, but it’s nothing special. With prices online settling around the £650 mark it certainly offers a fair amount of power and connectivity in an extremely portable form factor for a decent price, but the user experience is definitely lacking polish.

I had high hopes for the S5, as the price and technical specifications seemed very promising, but in the end I soon lost interest in the machine, preferring instead to reach for my cheap and cheerful Chromebook when typing needed to be done.

It’s not me, it’s you…

It wasn’t always this way.

I’d recently emerged from a long term relationship with a sophisticated, but controlling, partner, and was looking for something fresh, different, and exciting. I knew that I’d had my fingers burned in the past, but the allure of change was proving too hard to resist. Then, almost by accident, it happened.

She was gorgeous, came from a wealthy background, and was trying hard to shed the difficulties of her past. It was a dangerous but intoxicating combination. Before long she was installed in the heart of my life and things seemed like they were finally looking up. But little did I know that there were two sides to her personality…two incompatible entities that would war internally to gain control of her…and that their ire would be turned upon me. Alas, Windows 8, you are a complex soul…

Oh you pretty thing…

Microsoft is three years short of it’s fortieth birthday and, as is not uncommon for those approaching this difficult age, seems to be going through a bit of a mid-life crisis. Normally you’d expect them to buy some young startup with cool features and little baggage. They’d be seen around town with their new muse, laughing a little too loudly and lavishing an embarrassing amount of physical affection on them in public spaces. In many ways that would have been preferable. A dalliance with Twitter or Steam would have provided column inches for the gossip sites and made those of us who remember their better days think ‘good on you, if I could pull that off I would too’. Sadly that’s not the case.

The Redmond giant instead decided to make its offspring live out the dreams that it never managed to attain. Each day they drove their sad-faced progeny to Bauhaus design rehearsals or Feng Shui workshops, when all the youngster really wanted to do was play games, instant message her friends, and crash at the weekends. Over time she was moulded into this new, beautiful vision, but inside deep fissures had formed which would become more evident when she left the overbearing clutches of her home and travelled out into the world.

Of course, as is usually the case, someone else has to pay for the sins of our fathers. That, grammatically incorrect, someone is you and I.

When I first installed Windows 8 I was quite taken aback with how visually delicious the layout was. Gone was the reliance on a cool wallpaper, replaced instead with multi-coloured blocks floating in a sea of pleasingly toned blue. Was this truly Windows? Clicking on the blocks, each replete with equally aesthetic icons, resulted in a fluttering box that expanded quickly to fill the screen and beguile the eyes. The design was consistent, different to any I’d encountered, and for the first time in living memory made Microsoft the ones with the coolest looking operating system. I checked my arms several times to ensure that I hadn’t, unbeknownst to myself, injected huge amounts of cocaine directly into my bloodstream, but the absence of any tracking only deepened my confusion. How could this be?

Closing down the app I’d opened proved something of a poser, and when I look back now I can see that it was a warning sign my amorously forgiving heart should have heeded. You see Windows 8 is somewhat coy and requires you to work a bit harder to reveal her charms. She’s an indomitable spirit that will not be tamed by any man…unless you have a touchscreen, then slowly her mysteries are opened to you.

The longer we were together the more it felt like she was using me rather than the other way around. It was as if I was living within a Philip K Dick novel but without the happy endings. I’d go to explore the web with her, only to find that she’d hidden the search bar at the bottom of the screen. Conditioned, as I have been, by nearly twenty years of looking up to the top of a screen to search this seemed a cruel deceit, like a cat freeing a mouse only to catch it again seconds later. Further exploration also revealed more intriguing possibilities that were soon brutally quashed. Contacts would promise an elegant solution to the perennial mess that they have increasingly become over the years, but when I sought to add images of others she flatly denied…hers would be the only face I would be allowed to see.

Frustration mounted, but her coquettish nature drew me back with the hope that things would improve…then it happened. I found her secret. Desktop. It was a simple tile among the many, but by selecting it I found that she wasn’t really a new creation. Here was her heart, and the stripped down, elegant facade gave way to the workhorse that lay under the surface. She had played her cards well, but now I knew how she was wired.

Behind the mask…

It became a subtle game from then on. I’d see her face, marvel at its beauty, then spend the rest of my time with her avoiding its offerings. Soon it faded to nothing more than memory, and while she often fought to drag my eyes into hers, I would not be moved. And that’s how I realised it was over. The thing that had captured me was the thrill of the new, but when the infatuation lost its lustre I discovered that what I really wanted was something that could run a decent email client without making me scream in pain at the screen for the fifth time that morning.

How many times have we heard that old story?