- You'll take my dual and triple monitor setup from my home office and work-office over my cold dead body
- But... on the go? Yes, I want the biggest possible screen, but also the best possible keyboard+trackpoint. So the new Surface Neo feels less than ideal.
I am open to possibility that a breakthrough in UI will make this attractive, and/or that brand-new, unimagined-today use-cases will come up; but today, I don't see how / for what I'd use dual screen with soft keyboard:
1. When I'm consuming media, portability is key AND I can only really focus on one screen (book, show) at the time
2. When I'm creating, I need a fast, comfortable, efficient method of inputing data. Today it's keyboard+trackpoint (when on the go), and I cannot imagine a useful way to type on dual screen that doesn't also make one of the screens pointless.
So for me, today, transformable tablets (with hardware detachable keyboard, the way Asus Transformer used to be) is the sweet spot.
But I'm eager to be proven wrong over the course of time. I fear this may be a Catch-22 device, if insufficient software/use-cases are available by the time hardware comes out, and it just fizzles out...
Conversely, what Asus is doing where I can have my cake and eat it too (second screen AND hardware keyboard, though it doesn't look great and no trackpoint), feels like the way to go / immediately useful / good transition device.
I worked in tech consulting, and my colleague actually had a very thin ~23" (IIRC) portable LCD screen he somehow carried with him on planes. It had a foldable kickstand so he could set up a dual-screen on any hotseat desk in seconds. It was brilliant, and I briefly considered the same, but my backpack was already heavy enough. I've heard of folks doing this with the MBP + a iPad Pro, but idk how well that works.
I keep looking at those, though in the 12-14" size. I'm interested and can see use-cases.
But - you can put those to the side of your regular monitor.
It's replacing the keyboard ("underneath" / looking down from my primary screen) completely with a full-size second screen, that I don't see myself doing just yet.
It’s startlingly good, even wirelessly. I spend a lot of time working between different offices, and being able to set the iPad up as a secondary display is very handy.
The iPad display also gets its own touchbar instance, and it makes way more sense as a thin touch control strip at the bottom of the screen than it does as a function key replacement.
- But... on the go? Yes, I want the biggest possible screen, but also the best possible keyboard+trackpoint. So the new Surface Neo feels less than ideal.
I am open to possibility that a breakthrough in UI will make this attractive, and/or that brand-new, unimagined-today use-cases will come up; but today, I don't see how / for what I'd use dual screen with soft keyboard:
1. When I'm consuming media, portability is key AND I can only really focus on one screen (book, show) at the time 2. When I'm creating, I need a fast, comfortable, efficient method of inputing data. Today it's keyboard+trackpoint (when on the go), and I cannot imagine a useful way to type on dual screen that doesn't also make one of the screens pointless. So for me, today, transformable tablets (with hardware detachable keyboard, the way Asus Transformer used to be) is the sweet spot.
But I'm eager to be proven wrong over the course of time. I fear this may be a Catch-22 device, if insufficient software/use-cases are available by the time hardware comes out, and it just fizzles out...
Conversely, what Asus is doing where I can have my cake and eat it too (second screen AND hardware keyboard, though it doesn't look great and no trackpoint), feels like the way to go / immediately useful / good transition device.