Don’t buy an iPad: Buy this instead
Meet your new tablet workstation
I’ve been an iPad owner since 2012. From the iPad Mini through the first two generations of iPad Air and then almost all of the 10.5 and 11 inch iPad Pro models: I’ve owned them all. I had a short-lived love affair with the new iPad Pro, before returning it wondering: ‘who is this £1000+ device for’?
The iPad makes you work a certain way and it demands that you buy into (literally) the Apple ecosystem. Operating outside of that ecosystem when you own an iPad is challenging. This led me to start dabbling with Linux and wondering if an old Microsoft Surface running Ubuntu could replace my iPad: offering me most of the functionality for less than a third of the price. Not only has this device proved a fun little project, I’m convinced that it can offer a more ‘pro’ computing experience for more people than the iPad and iPad Pro. Let me explain.
Using Ubuntu on the Surface revitalises what are fairly lacklustre internals. Unlike when Windows is installed on this machine, running Ubuntu makes it feel snappy: Linux is far less resource hungry than Windows. Moreover, Ubuntu is so customisable that I was able to tailor…
