One of my computers is a Medion Akoya E1210 netbook, which I bought in 2008. When I bought it, it was brilliant: the first low-cost, low-weight laptop that you could still use to get stuff done. But, time has not been nice on it. It’s meagre atom processor and it’s 1gb of memory are ready to be replaced.

What to replace it with?

Tablets are nice to play with on the couch. They are great to watch pictures on, or to follow a social network of your choice. For me however, they will only replace a subset of all features. It’s not replacing any machine. It’s just adding one more machine.

The category of machines that I’ve been looking for in the past few years are the laptop/tablet hybrids. Ideally I’d end up with a proper laptop replacement, but that allows me to use it like a tablet. This type of devices exist, but they always fail on one or multiple items from this list

• Too slow.
• Too little battery. The original Microsoft Surface Pro clocked in at under four hours of usable battery time.
• Too heavy in tablet mode. Any laptop that slides, or flips is just too heavy to hold as a tablet. Being able to remove the keyboard is a key feature for me.

Some machines come close, like the Lenovo Helix or the Acer Iconica W700. But nothing that convinced me into buying it.

Enter Microsoft’s announcement of today: The Surface Pro 2. I like how it addresses some of it’s predecessors’ pain points: improved battery life and kickstand.

Did Microsoft just announce something very nice today?

Maybe.