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While working with Windows 7, I fell in love with an ASUS netbook. Netbooks, which are small laptops, were a popular concept a few years ago, designed to provide the basics people needed from a laptop at an affordable price. Think of them as the precursor to today’s Chromebooks.

But then along came the iPad, and at least 80 percent of the reason for using a netbook disappeared. Sales of netbooks have not fared well, and I don’t see a comeback any time soon. Tablets blow the doors off netbooks, and 2-in-1s just mopped up the remains.

Ultrabooks are a slightly different story. Intel coined (and trademarked) the term Ultrabook and set the specs. For a manufacturer to call its piece of iron an Ultrabook, it must be less than 21mm thick, run for five hours on a battery charge, and resume from hibernation in seven seconds or less. In other words, it must work a lot like an iPad.

Intel threw a $300 million marketing budget at Ultrabooks, but they fizzled. Now the specs seem positively ancient, and the term Ultrabook doesn’t have the wow factor it once enjoyed.

Right now, I’m having a great time with all the new form factors: I mention the XPS-15, Surface Book 3, and Surface Pro earlier in this chapter. I worked with a trapeze-like machine for a bit, but always worried about snapping the carrier off. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Now, depending on the situation, I’m just as likely to grab my iPad Pro as I head out the door, or curl back with a Chromebook to watch Netflix. I use Android smartphones and iPhones, too, all the time.

If you’re in the market for a new machine, drop by your favorite hardware store and just look around. You might find something different that strikes your fancy. Or you may decide that you just want to stick with a boring desktop machine with a mechanical keyboard and a wide monitor the size of football fields.

Guess what I work on.