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Why not take a laptop of honour? ; The rise (and rise) in tablet popularity must have terrorised the balance sheets of laptop manufacturers - but... [Liverpool Echo (England)](Liverpool Echo (England) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Why not take a laptop of honour? ; The rise (and rise) in tablet popularity must have terrorised the balance sheets of laptop manufacturers - but they're not ready to surrender. In fact, they've all significantly upped their game. PETER JENKINSON rounds up six of the winners ANYTIME, ANYWHERE Microsoft Surface Pro 2 (128GB) - Pounds 715, from amazon.co.uk MORE impressive than the touchscreen devices that purport to be tablets and laptops, this one actually manages to retain the robustness of the latter yet the ultra-portability of the former. It isn't any slouch under the bonnet either; processing speeds are slick, memory size impressive and free cloud data space comes with purchases. You can also convert this to a desktop style device with speakers, full-sized keyboard and more. ANOTHER WAY Sony Vaio Multi-flip - from Pounds 709, from sony.co.uk FOR anyone looking for something a little different, this new breed of machine from Sony will make you smile - even if you're only a small percentage geek. A perfectly engineered motion will take this from slick looking laptop to touchscreen tablet, and it is, of course, pretty impressive in other performance areas (like HD graphics) too. BIG BITE APPLE MacBook Pro With Retina 15-inch - Pounds 1,699, from store.apple.com/uk THERE is one thing near-guaranteed when you open this miracle in front of you; owners of any Apple product will slip you the cursory approval (and perhaps envious) glance. The intense pixel display (5.1 million of them) is an utter joy, while inside the model is a top-class 2GHz quad-core i7 processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage. It's slim, svelte and undoubtedly the one to beat. SMALL SCREEN HP Chromebook 11 - Pounds 249.99, from amazon.co.uk THIS budget-end notebook trades under a slightly different moniker since its lowly internal memory of just 16GB lends it to more of a note-taker style. You can, though, take to the various number of cloud networks to expand your memory over WiFi, which to be honest might be more suitable and safe for valuable data anyway. Also available in a 14-inch screen version. LUXURY LAPTOP Acer S3-391 Ultrabook - Pounds 859.98, from amazon.co.uk SCREEN SAVED Samsung ATIV Book 9 - Pounds 579.95, from johnlewis.com THIS Windows 8 loaded laptop offers ease of access using regular routes, but the touchscreen enables you to move around at hyper speed - well, with some practice at least. An extraordinarily thin and lightweight machine with a seven hour(ish) battery life, processing speeds of note and 128GB of memory. A very decent everyday machine. THIS highly crafted aluminium outer-shelled computing device aims to set its stall out against the Apple offering, but the screen resolution just doesn't quite match up. What does tick a very big box though, is how this uber-slim laptop has a whopping 500GB of memory somehow shoehorned in it, alongside a decent stereo speaker set. (c) 2014 ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved. |