It’s no longer enough just to be constantly connected to the cloud. These days you must also be constantly connected to a slew of different devices. When I’m using my laptop, I’m also monitoring my phone. When I’m on my phone, I still like to view websites on my laptop. Websites are more full-featured on a PC, but many apps are more full-featured on a phone.
Samsung thinks it has a solution for my conundrum: Buy a laptop built by a company best known for making phones. Samsung’s Ativ Book 9 Lite is essentially a laptop for your phone. Let me explain. The Ativ Book 9 Lite is a thin-and-light laptop with a custom-designed quad-core AMD CPU, a solid-state drive, 4GB of DDR3/1600 memory, and a glossy touchscreen. But its real draw is its ability to connect (somewhat) seamlessly with your Samsung Galaxy device. The Ativ Book 9 Lite comes with Samsung’s SideSync and HomeSync built in, so you can be constantly connected to both your laptop and your phone.
ROBERT CARDINIf you don't own one of Samsung's Galaxy products, there's no strong reason to recommend the Ativ Book 9 Lite over other, less-expensive notebooks. The Ativ Book 9 Lite is far from the shiniest, sexiest, most powerful ultrathin laptop on the market, but if you own a Samsung smartphone or tablet, it does offer one advantage over its competitors: Samsung’s SideSync phone-syncing program.
SideSync lets you connect your Samsung Galaxy–branded phone to your laptop in some pretty impressive ways. With SideSync, you can use your phone as a miniature second screen and control the phone using the laptop’s mouse and keyboard. You can compose text messages, open apps, and search Web pages in a mobile browser without ever picking up your phone.
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