I'm pretty sure I now hold the world record for most 2-in-1 Windows 10 PCs owned by a single lunatic individual.
Our story begins where it ended two weeks ago: I'd run into problems with a Lenovo Yoga 3 14 and made arrangements to return it. Then I bought an HP Spectre x360, found it had the same problem (an unnecessary Realtek startup item), solved it on both machines, returned the Yoga, and ended here:
After all these years, though, I'm still not ready to declare the 2-in-1 category ready for prime time. The shotgun marriage of conventional and touch interfaces is still awkwardly consummated -- and drivers struggle to keep up with the evolution of hardware. Maybe the Surface Book will finally show the way. Meanwhile I'll use the Spectre x360 with Windows 10, which, despite flaws, is a sweet combination. But the smug superiority I was planning to unleash on my hipster Mac friends will have to wait.
That was an understatement. A few days after writing that column, the HP's touchscreen became partly unresponsive. I took Spectre No. 1 back to Best Buy and exchanged it for Spectre No. 2. A week later its audio went glitchy. Thus, I exchanged Spectre No. 2 for Spectre No. 3, which works beautifully so far.