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Comment by mrbill | Hacker News Reader

Am I the only person who doesn't want a "convertible" with a touchscreen? If I want a tablet, I have a tablet. For laptop work, I have a laptop.

I had the 2015 Chromebook Pixel and loved it, but never used the touchscreen (and ended up selling it).

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I got a convertible Yoga ThinkPad and I'm quite happy with it. If you're just reading stuff (e.g. I do this on the bus but same applies for flights etc) folding it over into a fat tablet works great. I also tent it up when I use an external keyboard which is another bonus... I don't touch the screen at all when I use in its laptop form or in "tent" mode but I do when I use it as a tablet...

I use a T100HA for exactly these reasons, but it's got a detachable screen. Older models had extra batteries and HDDs in the keyboard section, which is a great addition imho.

I'm quite happy with a similar Asus model. I have a rather odd combination of needs: Touch screen, occasional keyboard use, and ability to run Jupyter/Python. So far this can only be done with a Windows tablet. Websites describing the installation of Linux on Bay Trail tablets all end in despair.

I'd be interested in a Chrome tablet if it would install Linux with touch screen support and let me run Jupyter/Python on it.

The whole point of the new generation of touchscreens that wrap around to tablet format if wanted is that they let you use android apps with a touchscreen. If you don't want a touchscreen, buy one of the many existing chromebooks that don't have touchscreens. I have the 2015 pixel and it's awesome, and almost every day i use the touchscreen with a few android apps.

Surprisingly, different people have different needs.

> Am I the only person who doesn't want a "convertible" with a touchscreen? If I want a tablet, I have a tablet. For laptop work, I have a laptop.

No, certainly lots of people share that preference. OTOH, lots of people prefer one multirole good-enough device to a variety of specialized devices.

I have a Vaio "convertible" and I've been pretty disappointing about the convertible functionality for two main reasons:

a) It weighs too much too use as a tablet

b) It didn't come with a stylus for drawing diagrams

So, I've certainly been disappointed by this trend, but I think it can work and the Surface line is a good example of this; many people are quite happy with theirs.

I don't think this particular chromebook makes a compelling case for the "as a tablet" use case, which seems odd given the Android app focus.

This one comes with a style, weight 2.x pounds, so maybe it works for you? What is the weight limit?

My Vaio weighs 2.9 pounds, this weighs 2.4. My wife's iPad Pro weighs 1.6, and I think that's probably close to the upper limit of what I would want a tablet to weigh.

I don't know if weight distribution is also an important factor since I can tell my vaio is definitely not evenly weighted.

I don't think this chromebook is for me, I just wanted to say that I don't think convertibles as a category are doomed, they are just harder to get right than other categories.

No. I really like the Chrome Flip but would like it equally without the flip component. The convertible arrangement just always feels a bit awkward and ends up with me hitting keys I don't mean to. I'm not opposed to it--and tend to believe that tablet and laptop form factors will reconverge--but at the moment I tend to use tablets and laptops differently.

I have an Acer R11. I didn't think I would use the touchscreen / tablet mode - but I am finding it is really handy for browsing / reading, netflix, and android games.

No, you're not.

Having the ability to draw on on the screen for content creation purposes is nice, though. Microsoft's Surface products come to mind.

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