a new mexpatriate

There is no reason you should have noticed, but Mexpatriate has introduced another blog tool to the cast.

Yesterday's essay (bearding the goat) was tapped out on a new device. When I moved to Mexico, I abandoned the world of desktop computers. I had long been a laptop user, but only as a travel convenience. Desktops had been my mainstay for over two decades.

Since 2009, I have had five laptops. Some have died natural deaths. Two were stolen. The fifth, a nifty, thin-line Samsung suffered a hard drive failure a month ago. I bought a Lenovo (a Chinese up-and-comer) to use on my trip to the highlands at the end of October, but it did not really meet my needs -- for reasons that are a bit too embarrassing to reveal.

Each time I have replaced one of my laptops, I have looked at the possibility of becoming truly mobile by buying a tablet. After all, the reason I want a light device is to make it more convenient during my trips -- around town or around the world.

But I always rejected the idea because tablets had their own limitations. They were either not secure enough for my financial transactions, could not multi-task, or could not run the software I needed.

About two laptops ago, Microsoft released its new tablet -- Surface. It performed like a personal computer. I liked that. But the keyboard was a bit too clunky to produce essays.

Microsoft fixed that problem. The new keyboard is as comfortable as the keyboard on my Samsung ultrabook.

My brother brought this little beauty down with him. And you now have two essays to prove it works just fine. It will accompany me on my trip to Australia and New Zealand this winter, to Copenhagen in October, and to some jaunts through Mexico this summer. My mobility has been restored.

And it is a speed demon with an Intel core i7 processor, 16 gigabytes of RAM, and 512 gigabytes of storage on a solid-state hard drive. It is the Ferrari of tablets.

I suspect Microsoft, or some other manufacturer, will soon produce a computer so mobile it can be lodged in the left side of my head. It will probably be the only way my memory will ever be restored.

Until then, I intend to run this handy, little tablet through its paces.