Ask Paul: May 14 (Premium)

Happy Friday! Because I’m traveling yet again today, I had to get this done a bit early, but we still have a great set of reader questions to tackle.
Chromebook tablets
hrlngrv asks:

Have you used or have any plans to review Chrome OS tablets like HP's Chromebook x2? Maybe not as an alternative to iPads, but how they stack up against Android tablets.

No, but I’m open to trying one, of course. In the meantime, there are two related items that might be of interest.

First, I’ve been trying to catch up on my hardware reviews and the next devices in line for review (chronologically) are both Chromebooks. And not just Chromebooks, but Chromebook convertibles, meaning that they can be used like (large/heavy) tablets. They are the HP Elite c1030 Chromebook Enterprise and the Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook Enterprise. I’ve been thinking about the right way to write these up, and instead of doing a normal and separate review of each, I will probably do a single write-up (maybe “A tale of two premium Chromebooks” or whatever) with an eye towards the next item…

Which is that I’m getting geared up to write a new “Living with…” series based around web apps. This one will be different from previous “Living with…” series in that it will probably be called “Living on the web” and will be structured differently. Here’s a cut and paste from the beginning of the first post:

“Rather than dropping (almost) everything to more accurately experience what it’s like to use a different platform, I’ll be examining many different aspects of the web app experience from a variety of angles over a longer period of time. And this won’t require me to “switch” from my normal ways of doing things normally, which has its appeal.”

In other words, it will likely be a longer series of shorter articles that examine specific things related to web apps and making the transition from native apps to web apps. Using touch- and pen-based web platforms like Chrome OS will definitely be part of this. I hope to get this going soon.

(Also, I’ll probably have another PC review before I do that Chromebook write-up.)
Military tech
j5 asks:

This might seems like a strange question. But have you ever covered military tech? I remember coming across some articles awhile back when Samsung was experimenting with bendable screens. And maybe I came across them in just Googling bendable screens but I read about some experimental military suits with screens like that in the forearms, sensors that could detect wounds and inject pain killers, GPS tracking to see where all the soldiers are on the battlefield, stuff like that. And there’s those creepy but really cool DARPA dog type robots that we have now. Just curious what you think about military tech or if it comes across your screen in doing your work.

No, nothing directly. Obviously, there are the odd moments where Microsoft or some other company is in the news for ...