As part of my ongoing Winchester preparations, I am now coming to you live from a brand-new laptop! It is, in a way, another statement of intent bought with practicality and working in mind. I chose – after a long period of deliberation with the salesman in the shop – an HP Envy, coincidentally the newer version of the laptop Louis had a few years ago. Like many laptops you can buy today, it lacks a disc drive, although I intend to buy a portable one soon. This saves a considerable amount of weight from something that is already very light, and that was key for me when I first considered what to buy, as I need to be able to transfer the laptop from table to bag as easily as possible – preferably with one hand. It has the USB ports and headphone jack I wanted, as well as a more powerful processor that can deal more efficiently with multitasking (perhaps at the expense of some storage space, although Louis says I can save documents to the cloud if I need to).

One of its other, more unexpected features was re-discovered only this morning, just as I had begun this post. Louis had been silently studying the laptop for a little while – particularly its hinges – and he suddenly pointed out that I might have bought a laptop which folds all the way over and doubles as a tablet. We nervously tested his theory and he was right – when it is folded over, the laptop asks you if you want to enter tablet mode, and even in its regular form it features a touch-sensitive screen. I remembered that I had already been shown this in the shop, but had completely forgotten it since. I will probably put it to good use at some point in the future, but seeing as the laptop is brand new, I don’t really want to put fingerprints all over the screen just yet!

This post is the first productive thing I have done with it. The aforementioned portable disc drive will be particularly important when it arrives as it will finally allow the audio notetaking software I have to be downloaded. As I may have said before, I already have the app on my phone and the microphone to plug in – thanks to a test I carried out with Louis, I am pleased to report that it works perfectly. All that’s left is to install the disc, and Microsoft Office at a later date, and this laptop will have everything it needs to serve me well at university. I couldn’t be happier with my choice so far, and I definitely couldn’t be more relieved about how much easier it is to carry!

Mason