I have Air Miles that will run out in December, and want to use them up.

I've already decided to get a Nikon Coolpix S700 with some of them, but have about 10,000 more points that will disappear between December and July next year, so ..............

I've been looking at the HP Spectre 12-b017ca x 360 Convertible PC with Bang & Olufsen Audio. It comes with Windows 10

We looked at tablets, notebooks and convertible laptops the other day in a local store, and got some information which let me zero in on this as against a Notebook, but they didn't have the HP Spectre on display.

I want it for use when we travel, the intent to access and respond to email, access the internet for Google and the sites that I visit, and also for some general "word processing". We already have a Toshiba laptop, but it is larger and quite heavy.

Does anyone have any experience with this machine?

Whatever I get will be basically "free", as the points count includes taxes and shipping, although I will have to buy some accessories from a store here, such as an extra battery and larger memory card for the camera, a mouse and possibly a case for the Spectre


I'm not a techie with computers .......... I know which keys to hit and sometimes which buttons to push, so I need simple answers without technical jargon


Please don't suggest using the Air Miles for travel .... that's not on the agenda

That looks far too good for what you want it for. I'm not a techie either but I'd have thought a Chromebook would do the job you want it for...although that would still leave you with airmiles to spend.

Its not a bad price Bristol, it isn't going to set the world on fire but seems to get reasonable reviews. I was going to suggest a Surface Pro 4 but then saw budget was a touch restricted and the HP would happily service Scilly's needs. Never had problems with HP myself

Thank you for your comments ..............

Stinky ............ we've long had HP printers, and no problems.

My desktop was built by my nephew back in 2003, and still has all the whistles and bells I might need. Our computer geek guy says not to make any changes to it until it self destructs!!

We have one laptop, a Toshiba, which we've had for several years, but which is heavy and large and always has to be carried as a separate carry-on item as it never fits into a bag.


Bristol .......... The very helpful young man at the store we went to said he thought Chromebook would not do what we wanted, as well as having a smaller screen.

I liked the idea of the separate keyboard on the Spectre


I found all the reviews, pros and cons .......... but I was hoping someone might have actually used one and could say in simple terms whether it was good, OK or bad!!


I mean .............. free isn't a bad idea, even if I have to pay around $30-40 for a mouse

Okay...when I looked originally I couldn't find the right model. All I could find were those with 13 instead of 12.

All the ones with 13 - which I can now see are 13" - were around the $1800 mark, which I just thought was a bit over the top for something to travel with.

I've now found the right one and I saw $799, which is much better, albeit still too much for me for my main laptop, let alone a secondary one.

My mother in law bought my present lappie for me for under $350 in 2012 and it fairly races along.



Now I have found the right model, yes, there are differences...although Chromebooks can be had with bigger screens. Acer, for example, does a 15.6 one with some specs on a par with the Spectre (except the Spectre processor is about twice as good according to reports ) and it's $399.
It does look very good, especially if you like the Tablet part of it.

Don't be surprised if you end up preferring it to your other one.

Bristol .............

The price range that I have seen is from ca $599 to ~$800, but I will get it basically free by trading in about 9,000 Air Miles points and NO money

No money that is apart from spending about $30-40 for a mouse


I have arthritis in most joints of my body, including fingers and wrists, and using a scroll pad, or touch screen, can be difficult for me, hence buying a mouse. And also the reason why I'm not sure that I will use it very much as the tablet alone.

I have a convertible laptop as my work PC. It's a Lenovo thingy (a Thinkpad Yoga, I think it's called, with around a 13" screen). I wasn't sure I'd like it much, the whole fold-it-in-half-backwards thing seemed a bit gimmicky, but I've found it's surprisingly versatile. When in the office, I plug in a mini-hub that has a proper keyboard and mouse and a large monitor attached to it, and sort of fold the computer up so it stands like this ^ on the desk. When out and about it's pretty good as a laptop for tasks that need actual typing, and when browsing the web I am now finding the tablet mode increasingly intuitive and easier to manage while not sitting at a table.

I'm not familiar with the HP model you cite, but I'm rapidly becoming a convert to the idea of a convertible device. Having used regular laptops, Chromebooks and tablets of various sorts over several years, this idea seems genuinely to have reached a comfortable compromise between the useful features of each form-factor. If it's essentially free (or at least a sunk cost of all the stuff you've bought to accumulate the points!) then I see no reason not to go for it. Hopefully it will give you the flexibility to find the best set-up to enable to you work it with arthritic joints - even if a track pad is difficult and you'd need a mouse for desk-bound word processing tasks, browsing via the touch screen (where you can pick the thing up and hold it at the most comfortable angle) might end up being a reasonable solution with restricted wrist and finger mobility...

I also have arthritis in my hands (and hips, but that's another story) and have found this mouse to be pretty good for comfort and ease of use. I also have a cheap mouse pad with wrist pad which I find helpful. My sister uses a vertical mouse/joystick type as she can't use a normal mouse any longer.

http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/logitech...=richrelevance

http://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/foam-mou.../6000187410321

I've read that the HP Spectre 12-b017ca x360 Convertible PC tends to run a bit on the hot side - but it seems like a fair bit of kit and gets good reviews. I don't know anyone who has one, so can't offer direct experience - sorry!

Oakvillian and Siouxie ..........


thank you both for your input

Oh I understand that If I was offered something free I'd get the best I could. I only mention prices because of the possibility of meeting your need and having some airmiles left over for something else.

I don't know anyone who likes the pads. We all use a mouse here.
I'd have thought the big advantage of the Spectre was that it could be laptop or tablet. So if you don't expect to use touchscreen/tablet features....

If you don't mind me asking, what do you like about the separate keyboard? Perhaps it's that you will use it as a laptop but someone else as a tablet?

Tell you what...it's good to hear people talking about computers without blinding me about technical stuff so good on you

I am so glad you said that. For a variety of reasons I've been looking at laptops over the last few weeks and for the life of me I couldn't see the advantage of this where the keyboard means you can't see the screen and risk pushing it over even if you used it (the keyboard)

or this

where the keyboard is face down.

But I see now that features on a different keyboard - even the number pad rather than just the annoying row - would be beneficial in the way described. What about that second one, though? Another way of doing the same thing or something else that wouldn't occur to me?


Hey that's just like mine. Just a slightly different number but it looks identical.

I used a wotjamacallit, ergonomic one once. Shaped for the hand supposedly.Bloody uncomfortable it was. These logitech ones fit like a glove. I'd just like a warm one for winter.

Even with relatively minor use scilly wants it for?

The Spectre gets a mention here

This was worth a look too.

Interesting that this thread probably has a better response than had it been on The Lab.

Damn computer experts.

In the last two weeks I have heard:

• No point having a good Processor without a similarly good RAM and vice versa

• RAM more important than Processor

• Processor more important than RAM

In relation to one aspect (can't recall what it was) of Processor:

• Higher is best

• Lower is best

In relation to the HP Spectre:

• Processor rated extremely highly

• Processor listed as a con because it's not as good as others

For 99% of the things most people do on a laptop, the processor performance is irrelevant; the only time I see my CPU get to even 50% used is when compressing video, which I only do on it when I can't be arsed to go upstairs and use the desktop machine. Slower is often better, because it's likely to have a longer battery life.

Personally, I'd rather have 8GB of RAM and a slow processor on a laptop than 4GB and a fast one. Though 16GB would be better.

All that said, I had an ASUS Android 'convertible' some years ago and it was a lousy idea because all the heavy stuff was in the tablet, and I had to prop the screen up while using it with the keyboard, or it would topple over. No idea whether the newer ones have fixed that problem.

Edit: oh, looks like this one just folds up and doesn't let you remove the screen, so I guess that's not a problem.

Mine looks like the first one. Takes up less desk space than the second configuration. But my laptop thingy auto-senses which way up it is and turns the screen display the right way round for me - I guess with the second configuration the screen is still the normal way up, so you could do this if your convertible laptop-tablet-whatnot didn't have an autosensing feature. Mind you, I can't imagine that any made today don't rotate the display automatically. I far prefer typing on a proper full-size keyboard, and the number pad is an added bonus.