So I rearranged my computers and hooked up my Win7 Ultrabook to the big screen in my office, and ran the sound system through my vintage Pioneer amp and the Mighty Stacked Advents – you don’t get computers that make sound like that.

I can do pretty much anything I want to do with a portable machine by using my Surface RT, albeit with a hack or two here and there. And if I want to go barebones light, I have my Galaxy II phablet.

That still left one hole – I need a computer for when I’m sitting at the kitchen table in the morning, slurping down coffee and cursing at the morning news. So I resurrected my Lenovo X61 running Linux, updated the Ubuntu install, and hooked it up to the wall in the kitchen.

Works great for everything I need to do in that location. And it’s still as fast, once I get it booted, as anything I’m running.