I’m about to pass this 4-year-old, 11″ Samsung Tab S8 (complete with original pen and keyboard folio cover) to Twin A as I await my 8.8″Lenovo Y700 Gen 4 2026 tablet from Lenovo China. It has 12GB of RAM and 256GB of ROM.
Why the heck did I buy that?
Well, you can have emulators in it and play Nintendo games…
But wait, the real reason is that it’s small enough to be tucked into my handbag. I still needed to carry another bag when I bring this Samsung tablet to coverages because it won’t fit into most of my bags. If I only want to carry one bag, I would have to lug around the heavy, wine-colored Kate Spade leather tote bag I have in my closet. It’s so heavy that it hurts my shoulders.
The second reason is that I want an e-book reader. I tried reading e-books on this Samsung tablet but it’s still too large for one-hand media consumption. I have tons of e-books in my Kindle app and some more in my archives, still waiting to be read. I realized that buying a Kindle, with only 3GB of RAM, is just waste of money. I’ve read online that if I want a paper-white feel for my e-reader that is actually an AMOLED tablet, then I should just buy a matte screen protector and set my screen to gray/black and white mode. There’s a tutorial somewhere out there that that makes gray/black and white screen turn on automatically when you open your Kindle app or other e-reader apps.
Twin A often commented that I don’t use the pen enough to write down notes or draw on my Samsung S8. She often borrows it to draw and do stuff on it. Actually, she’s right. I’m not maximizing its potential and I think Twin would appreciate it more.
So far, so good. I’m using the folding BT keyboard to type this blog. The leter “T” and “V” are awkward as they were cut smaller than the rest of the keys because they are on the hinges. Otherwise, typing on this is fine. It takes me back to the days when I was still using the first generation netbook — the Asus eeePC — way back in 2007. It had a 7″ screen and cramped keyboard. My orthopedic surgeon blamed that netbook for giving me carpal tunnel syndrome because it was terrible ergonomically. But I loved it for being so handy and I could type stories on the fly while in a cafe, or on the bus or UV Express. I didn’t have to worry about not being able to submit my stories by 3 pm or 5pm, depending on my editor’s mood, because I left my heavy laptop in the press office or at home.
I used to carry a 15.2″ Toshiba laptop that was several kg heavy. My back ached as I wasn’t driving in Metro Manila at that time yet. I took the LRT/MRT or UV Express to get to my beat. It was so heavy that I had to leave it in the locker of the central bank press room.
One time, I was debating whether I should bring the laptop home because Typhoon Milenyo was coming the next day. But we were having dinner with central bank governors that evening so it would be cumbersome to be dragging that machine around.
Big mistake.
It was raining so hard and wind was picking up by the hour the following day. I had asked my then husband to drive me to Netopia at Robinsons Galleria to type my story and beat beat the deadline because I left my effing laptop in my locker at the pressroom. As I was finishing my piece, the roof of the mall was peeled open by the strong winds and rainwater went gushing from the rooftops down to the basement of Galleria. The staff at Netopia begged me to pack up so they can close shop but I yelled, “wait, wait, wait! I need to send this soon or I’ll be dead!”
I don’t want a repeat of that ever. After that, I never left my laptop again in the press room or at home. I got terrible back aches as a result.
I was an avid reader of T3 and Gadgets magazines then so when I learned about netbooks, I immedidately went straight to the mall (can’t remember if it was Greenhills or SM North) to check out these lightweight, underpowered (Intel Atom) word processing machines. I mean, hey, they’re so underpowered that all you can do with them is type documents and surf the internet. It was November 2007 and Asus eeePC 701 was very new to the market. I believe I was the first business journalist who carried that in coverages. That Christmas season, it was a favorite raffle prize in every party we were invited to.
That eeePC was my multi-media machine. It was my e-reader, manga reader, and youtube machine and I almost didn’t finish my thesis for my master’s degree because I was spending too much of my spare time reading manga instead of writing my manuscript. It was with me while I was putting my twins to sleep or when I breastfed them. I had to wake give it up when the hinges broke. I later graduated to a 10″ Gateway netbook. It was still underpowered but it had a faster processor and more RAM.
After that, I was always on the hunt for a portable word processing/internet machine. I was tempted to buy a Chromebook but editing stories on them would be a headache because everything was done with a browser and at that time, wifi was NOT as ubiquitous as it is today.
Nowadays, I bring my tablet if I know I would be very mobile (like attending conferences and expos) and do not expect to be doing heavy editing. I bring my Acer laptop if I know I would be working in an area where I can plug my machine or would be mostly stationary and do not need to carry my backpack around all the time.
Can I write on an 8.8″ tablet? Probably. I’ve done it before on a 7″ screen and smaller keyboard. Can I edit on it? Probably, but not much. I will just carry the Lenovo Y700 for the just-in-case moments that I need to write on the fly. I guess I would mostly be doomscrolling on it or watch YouTube.
My handcarry would also be lighter when I fly and it’s easier to watch movies on it while in the plane. Some seatmates are kinda nosy, you know, and I don’t have to pop up the tray so I can put my 11″ tablet on it to watch ny downloaded movies.
