Throwback: The Right Tool for the Job (Premium)

I was thinking about revisiting this topic given how much has changed in the past 7 years, but this one has aged nicely as-is. And if you didn’t read the original, I think you may enjoy it now, mostly because it reads as true to now as it did then, and maybe even more so.

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The Right Tool for the Job
One device that does everything is one device that does everything poorly 

Like many of you, I've spent a lot of time contorting myself to adapt to the ever-shifting personal technology landscape. And like many of you, I bet, I've pretty much had it.

Roughly a decade ago—honestly, who can remember these things clearly anymore?—I was typing up an editorial for this very column while flying home on a business trip. The device I was using at the time was a Palm PDA, perhaps a Palm TX, connected via a balky folding keyboard on which it precariously rested. I was just finishing up with the article when the plane hit some turbulence and the PDA jostled slightly from its resting place on the keyboard. Disconnected for that one fleeting second, the silly little device froze completely, sending about 1000 words off into the ether, never to be seen again.

This episode would have been instructive had I learned anything from it. But the intervening years have seen me repeat this same basic mistake again and again as part of a fervent but ultimately unsuccessful bid to travel ever-lighter. Over the years, I tried various Tablet PCs (the original generation from 2003ish), netbooks, mini-PCs (remember the Toshiba Libretto?), and, most recently, current-generation tablets. None of them was the solution I wanted, and each added new problems of their own.

Two insurmountable obstacles prevented me from reaching what I always viewed as a form of nerdvana. One, I'm just a big guy. I can barely squeeze into a coach airline seat, and my personal version of hell is an intercontinental flight with the seat in front of me jacked back so far I can lean just slightly forward and touch it with the tip of my nose. This happens more frequently than I care to discuss.

Two, and this is the one I really had the hardest time coming to grips with, I need a real PC. With a real, full-sized keyboard. With a large screen that my ever-aging eyes can actually see.

But sometimes I realize I'll never really give up the dream. This year, in particular, has been a tough one, thanks to the ongoing move away from "real" PCs and to things that are not quite PCs: Hybrid PCs, "transforming" PCs, tablets with clip-on hardware keyboards, full-blown tablets that make no pretense of being a PC, mini-tablets with 7-to-8-inch screens, and even certain "phablets," like the ginormous Nokia Lumia 1520, have all triggered wistful "what if" moments.

So let me provide the one service which we as humans are uniquely suited: The ability to give the advice that we just can't follow ourselves. And it goes like this: Use the right tool for the job. Everything else is...