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With the first half of 2016 keeping the Meantime crew quite busy, we thought we’d treat the hardest working development team around to some shiny new hardware.

After considering dozens of options, we finally decided on what to buy - and we’re delighted with our choices.

At Meantime, we don't have uniform or standardised staff equipment, and laptops and hardware have always been bought ad-hoc as and when needed (e.g. a new starter, a machine reaching the end of its useful life). This year we have been monumentally busy, and we wanted a way of rewarding what we believe to be the best and most dedicated development team around. So we thought, "let's buy everyone cutting-edge hardware". And with that decision made, there was just one question: what hardware?

There are tens of thousands of options for the discerning hardware buyer out there, so we drew up a list of 'wants' and 'needs' to see whether we could narrow it down. Obviously we wanted power – an Intel Core i7 at lowest, and RAM – lots and lots of RAM. What about portability? Well, that is always good. And a high-resolution screen? Check. Lastly then, the new 21st century question - if we wanted powerful, high-res and fast, did we want a laptop or a tablet?

Well, how about both! The Microsoft Surface Book is a light, fast and powerful machine that is both tablet and laptop, with a touch screen and pen. It runs full Windows 10 Pro, so there’s no compromise on app availability or features and so far, it has been nothing but stunning. We trialled one machine to start with, coupled with a docking station so that we could have all of our usual desktop kit such as keyboard, mouse, LAN cable and monitor, all connect by the one MagSafe cable. The smiling faces around the office seem to say they have been a huge hit!

There are always those that prefer the ‘Apple’ way of doing things though, and with virtual machines and cloud services, now more than ever the operating system you prefer is becoming irrelevant. For those in the office that preferred their slice of technology to come with that patented Cupertino shine, we opted for the 15” Retina MacBook Pro.

They say you can’t please all of the people all of the time, but we like to think that this time we really have pleased all of our people!