Earlier this week I got in an older computer a Dell Latitude 6400 with Windows 10 on it through a great deal on eBay.

Now it is not super powerful, the screen is not super great, it is heavy and it even has a disc drive. In other words it is state of the art 10 years ago. However, it does everything that my wife wants from a computer and she can:

• play our library of movies without having to stream them from the Internet
• surf the web and visit sites that she needs to
• receive and send emails
• type miscellaneous stuff when she needs to
• play games
• doesn’t have to have the Internet to be an effective computer

Pretty basic computing needs, but if you stop and look at things what more do most people use a computer for?

So while the Dell 6400 isn’t really for me, I have been setting it up and playing around with it since it came in. It is still a Windows machine and even with Windows 10, there is still a certain amount of setting up to still do.

Now that I have been using it for a while, I remembered what I liked about a real laptop and some of the things that I have done with my blog this week, I would still be working on if I hadn’t used it.

The biggest things I do like is the keyboard and the extra screen real estate. I have gotten so used to the crappy keyboards that I have used with the iPad Pro, that I had forgotten how good the older laptop keyboards actually are. Getting used to using a mouse again was a little comical though…I kept reaching up to touch the screen to do stuff and nothing happened.

About the only things that I really miss about the iPad Pro compared to this old Dell is the screen resolution and speed where everything is bang…there. I do like the having the disc drive and Firefox does allow me to do things that I can’t in the IOS version.

It is surprising the little, but significant differences that are in the Windows version compared to IOS, which allow you to do some things, that I didn’t realize I missed them until I was able to use them again. Oh yeah, the battery is kind of weak, so it will only last about an hour, before having to be plugged in.

Although I wouldn’t want to carry the damn thing around very far, it is a beast. For any kind of traveling no comparison to my iPad Pro.

I have a feeling that for writing blog posts, PC gaming or doing more productivity type stuff I will use my wife’s Dell 6400 Laptop and for traveling, consumption type stuff, checking social media or light creative stuff my iPad will do just fine.

A nice combination, who knows maybe I will go ahead and get myself a 13″ Dell or Lenovo with a Disc Drive sometime this summer if I can find one for a decent price or trade.