SO RATHER THAN HAUL MY MACBOOK BACK AND FORTH, I got a Samsung Chromebook to use when I sit on the sofa in my office. I’ve had it for a few days and it’s pretty good. It’s not as good as the Macbook Air, but it also costs less than a fourth as much. Setup was a little tricky — you have to connect to the Internet and register before it’ll let you launch a browser, but UT uses device registration on its network, which requires that before you can connect with the Internet you complete a form . . . on a browser. I got around that problem by using my iPhone as a hotspot but otherwise it could have been annoying.

Keyboard’s decent, though I keep hitting the ALT button when I mean to hit CTRL, and there’s a “Search” button where the Caps Lock key would normally be. Screen’s fine, browsing and blogging with Chrome is fine. It has an SD slot, which I haven’t used. It’s very cool and quiet. Overall, it’s like a high-end netbook, which is basically what it is.