2-in-1 tablet investigations

[Leedsbusdriver]

Have you tried this app @srw https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ryanlothian.sheetmusic

 

[srw]

They do have a stylus:
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/thinkpad/x-series/x1-yoga/

Very nice machines, given that a 2 in 1 is what you need/want. And it's a Thinkpad, not merely a Lenovo device. i.e. it's professional quality.

Oh yes, so they do. And dockable and rechargeable is nice - but the price is broadly in line with that of the MS hardware. I'll need to do a side-by-side comparison.

 

[srw]

Have you tried this app @srw https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ryanlothian.sheetmusic

Useful, thanks.

 

[Old jon]

The PC World near the office has an MS Surface Book, which when I went in today was actually powered up and had its pen attached. It's gorgeous. The pen is very intuitive and very responsive, and makes taking notes on other people's documents a breeze.

As for sheet music playing, I reckon I could get two portrait A4 pages side-by-side and play quite comfortably from them. And, of course, having a pen makes it easy to annotate and add the usual sort of musician's or page-turner's marks you need in real life. Sibelius also claims to be able to do handwriting recognition for music - making writing music a piece of cake.

@Old jon - do you use any specific Acrobat viewer? The one on the machine in the shop was almost perfect, except for one thing. The holy grail for any keyboard player would be to be able to choose when to page turn - which means being able to flick one page on at a time. I could work out how to set up to display two pages and go from 1&2 to 3&4 and so on, but not to be able to go from 1&2 to 2&3 to 3&4 and so on.

Hiya @srw . It took me a while to sort out my preferred display to play from, and I tried two portrait A4 pages. I use the common Adobe viewer, and Muse Score to produce the scores. Muse Score will output Acrobat files landscape or portrait directly, annotation is straightforward, probably not up to Sibelius' abilities but I got what I did not have to pay for.
I have just had a quick squint at my Acrobat viewer, you can apparently define custom tools and add them to the toolbar, but I cannot see a way to tie a keyboard shortcut to the tool. I was thinking you could define a tool to flick two pages, PageDown already flicks one.

The Surface Book is amazing indeed.

 

[Leedsbusdriver]

I am currently typing this reply on my Pixel C tablet using Google handwriting input and it works well. Yes It's an expensive tablet @srw but may be one to look at?

 

[srw]

I am currently typing this reply on my Pixel C tablet using Google handwriting input and it works well. Yes It's an expensive tablet @srw but may be one to look at?

Thanks, but no thanks. An Android tab won't run the music composition software I'm interested in. If I wanted a large-scale tablet I gather Apple do one....

 

[GrumpyGregry]

Typing this on a Surface Pro 4. Wonderful bit of kit but funny Microsoft couldn't come up with a power lead that does not keep falling out. STRONGER MAGNETS PLEASE.

Have a Surface Book waiting at home for me to power it up and configure it. Another wonderful bit of kit.

Used in conjunction with an MS Lumia 950XL phone. Nearly seemless. And Continuum is genius but needs too many cables.

 

[srw]

Oh yes, so they do. And dockable and rechargeable is nice - but the price is broadly in line with that of the MS hardware. I'll need to do a side-by-side comparison.

The Lenovo is much better value, and has a slightly bigger, but worse proportioned and less hi-res screen. If I had a prayer of persuading our corporate IT department to offer it as an option I would - but it's far too expensive for them. This is going to sound completely incomprehensible to many, but it looks so much like the work Thinkpad laptops I've been using for the last 10 years (even down to the little nubby red trackbobble thingy - which I like using much more than a trackpad) that I'm rather put off.

Typing this on a Surface Pro 4. Wonderful bit of kit but funny Microsoft couldn't come up with a power lead that does not keep falling out. STRONGER MAGNETS PLEASE.

Have a Surface Book waiting at home for me to power it up and configure it. Another wonderful bit of kit.

Used in conjunction with an MS Lumia 950XL phone. Nearly seemless. And Continuum is genius but needs too many cables.

But if a technology guru is a fan of the Surface range I'm pretty much sold. Now all I need to do is ask my accountant to see if she can come up with a wheeze to work out how much of it I'm using for freelance work purposes and so how much of it can be offset as an aggressive tax avoidance strategy. Not much, I suspect.

 

[srw]

(Oh, and yes, I have changed the thread title. It began sounding faintly perverted to me.)

 

[Wobblers]

It might be worth looking at the Dell Venue 11 Pro - there's an option for a detachable keyboard that can dock to the tablet. I've just picked one up second hand off Fleabay, so I'll let you know what I think of it when (if?) it arrives... There are also Asus Transformer models that come with Windows, T100TAF for one, that'll be much cheaper than a Surface Pro (but probably not as good build quality though).

(Oh, and yes, I have changed the thread title. It began sounding faintly perverted to me.)

Now I'm intrigued: just what did I miss... ?

 

[srw]

It might be worth looking at the Dell Venue 11 Pro - there's an option for a detachable keyboard that can dock to the tablet. I've just picked one up second hand off Fleabay, so I'll let you know what I think of it when (if?) it arrives... There are also Asus Transformer models that come with Windows, T100TAF for one, that'll be much cheaper than a Surface Pro (but probably not as good build quality though).

Only 10.8" screen! I'm after something bigger - middle-aged eyesight, you understand.

Now I'm intrigued: just what did I miss... ?

It was something like "2-in-1 with special requirements."

 

[Wobblers]

Only 10.8" screen! I'm after something bigger - middle-aged eyesight, you understand.

So, what you're saying is that 10.8 inches isn't enough for you?

(Thought I'd get in before @Fnaar. Or @User )

 

[GrumpyGregry]

The Lenovo is much better value, and has a slightly bigger, but worse proportioned and less hi-res screen. If I had a prayer of persuading our corporate IT department to offer it as an option I would - but it's far too expensive for them. This is going to sound completely incomprehensible to many, but it looks so much like the work Thinkpad laptops I've been using for the last 10 years (even down to the little nubby red trackbobble thingy - which I like using much more than a trackpad) that I'm rather put off.


But if a technology guru is a fan of the Surface range I'm pretty much sold. Now all I need to do is ask my accountant to see if she can come up with a wheeze to work out how much of it I'm using for freelance work purposes and so how much of it can be offset as an aggressive tax avoidance strategy. Not much, I suspect.

The better sort of technical architects that I'm working with have all gone BYOD and are using Surface Pro 3 and 4. The BYOD option here comes at a hefty price of inconvenience, as it isn't properly thought through, but we all feel the Surface experience more than makes up for that.

(My only issue being that I would not stand for the end-user architect running around with a Surface when his architecture inflicts a ThinkPad on the real workers - but it isn't my shop so I don't make the rules.)

 

[srw]

At least your BYOD solution isn't vapourware. To be fair to my local colleagues, there are global politics involved - and although they do get shiny new computers suspiciously often they are the same shiny new computers as are available to the rest of us.

Oh, and in the circs I can't exactly complain about them putting DPA compliance and decent information security above user convenience!

 

[marknotgeorge]

Just buy the thing, will you? I'm jealous already!