How Many Devices?

Tim Bray:

Does it make sense to carry two, three, or more portable com­put­ing de­vices around? Se­lect from:

  1. Reg­u­lar-size lap­top; say 15"-screen or higher.

  2. Skinny lap­top i.e. Air at 13" or even 11".

  3. Big tablet at ~10" as in cur­rent iPads.

  4. One-han­der tablet, typ­i­cally at 7".

  5. Hand­set, 3½"-5".

This iPad Mini stuff has me thinking the same thoughts. Me, I’m an 11-inch MacBook Air man. But I’ll admit it feels a bit silly to pack a bag with both an 11-inch Air and an iPad. Two devices of nearly the same size. But, when traveling, I really do wind up using both of them. (Insert the argument for the Microsoft Surface here.) And I never go anywhere without my iPhone.

So if I’m going to pack an 11-inch Air and an iPhone, and one more device, I can definitely see the case that a smaller tablet makes more sense as the device in the middle. But, an 11-inch Air and a 9.7-inch iPad (3) combined still weigh only 3.82 pounds. The new MacBook Pro with Retina Display — by far the lightest 15-inch notebook Apple has ever made — weighs 4.46 pounds. So maybe it’s the people who carry a big notebook who’ll be most tempted to get a smaller iPad, since they’re already carrying more weight. Decisions, decisions.

★ Tuesday, 10 July 2012