6 ms·

Tolerating the Surface Pro

42 points by peschkaj 13y ago

rayiner 13y ago
I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic. It defeats the whole purpose of the form factor.
- MatthewPhillips 13y ago
  I don't see battery life being a small problem on a laptop either. Once you've experienced 10 hour battery life it's hard to ever give that up.
  - lmm 13y ago
    I found it pretty easy; I went from an asus transformer (14 hours real-world, and I did use it) to a samsung ultrabook-like (<4 hours). Just get in the habit of plugging it in; how much of the day do you really spend away from a power socket? It might not be for everyone, but it's been fine for me.
    - muyuu 13y ago
      The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels. People who work on the go need their 8h+ battery life, the more the merrier.
      - lmm 13y ago
        >The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels. Surely you don't just carry a tablet in your hand when walking to the office? Once something's too big for pockets I resort to a messenger bag over my shoulder, in which it's just as easy to include the power. Given that tablets don't seem to come with cases, how else would one transport it?
        muyuu 13y ago
        Working in the office is not working on the go. Working on the go is finish up stuff and send it before boarding a plane, or work on that same plane, or during your train commute. If you're going from home to the office and back, I don't see the point in carrying anything other than your smartphone. Talking about the general case, obviously, there are justifications for bringing a medium-sized laptop.
        lmm 13y ago
        I get things done in all those cases on the setup I mentioned. Obviously if you're taking 8-hour flights then you need that much battery, but is that a common case?
        muyuu 13y ago
        It's a very common case that you have a hard time finding a socket in some places. It happens a lot to me that many others are working on their laptops and all sockets are taken, or even that there are no sockets at all in some trains. Introduces an extra dependency.
- Random_Person 13y ago
  My battery life is no where near that terrible. I'm not sure what he has running constantly, but I can GAME on my Surface Pro for 5+ hours without plugging in. It's still bad for a "tablet", but not any worse than my HP Elite Book with the same specs.
  - EvanAnderson 13y ago
    Same here. I just put a Surface Pro in one of my Customers' user's hands last week. I tried it out for a couple days as my primary machine and got 5 hours out if the battery the two times I elected to run w/o AC power.
- BrentOzar 13y ago
  Brent the author here. I agree that battery life isn't a small problem - note that I put (?) next to "small" as a way of noting that the problems aren't nitpicking.
- Samuel_Michon 13y ago
  “3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.” True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life. If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.
  - dangrossman 13y ago
    The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08". It gets the same run time per charge. It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38. The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.
    - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
      > The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3 http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3 > It gets the same run time per charge. No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...
      - dangrossman 13y ago
        For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness? I own an SP; it does not get 3.75 hours of battery life no matter what I do with it, and I could pull out a dozen review links to say that as well. Why are you trying so hard to make it look worse than it is?
- dangrossman 13y ago
  I don't know what he's doing to get that kind of battery life. I've had my SP for a few months now, and it consistently gets 5-6 hours of actual usage, even heavy things like streaming HBO. It's not 12+, but there's a Core i5 behind the glass, and my Core i5 laptop doesn't get half that running time.
  - BrentOzar 13y ago
    Brent the author here. I'm doing basic productivity work while listening to music, doing email, and leaving Twitter & Hipchat open. Engadget and The Verge both noted sub-4-hour battery life in their reviews too. I'm glad you're getting more life though.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
hkmurakami 13y ago
So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience" >I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does. This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.
- Random_Person 13y ago
  Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
  - YeahKIA 13y ago
    I think the point he makes about hanging in to it in a hope that Microsoft is going to improve it is the key. Looks like with windows 8.1 they are making a lot of changes based on the feedback, and giving that release away for free. Microsoft better stick to this fast iterative update process if they want people to bet on the new OS.
    - smacktoward 13y ago
      The problem there is that the changes we're hearing about for 8.1 (bringing back the Start button, letting you boot straight to the desktop, etc.) are all changes that will move 8's center of gravity closer to the traditional Windows experience and farther from the new Metro experience. And from the article it sounds like the new Metro experience is the only one that really feels right on Surface. Making it easier for people to skip Metro will only result in fewer developers writing Metro apps, not more, so it's hard to see 8.1 as a positive for Surface users. They need the Windows world to be more Metro, not less.
nextstep 13y ago
All Surface reviews read like this. "It's pretty good, except for this long list of things that are terrible about it."
PaulHoule 13y ago
My boss uses a Surface Pro like a laptop and is happy with it. Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.
- BrentOzar 13y ago
  That's interesting. How does he work around the high-DPI resolution problems when connecting an external display? I'm assuming he's using one - when you say "a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market", that usually means an external display.
  - PaulHoule 13y ago
    I'll say that if you've been using Windows for years you get used to using Windows on strange screen systems, everything from 640x480 to video wall panels. If you adjust magnification factors, font sizes, and such for the apps you actually use to help out a lot. One thing I found with Windows 8 is that it is even better to use keyboard shortcuts to access the shell. Instead of groping for the 'Start' button, I hit the Windows key and the same thing happens if I am running Win7 or Win8. So Win8 didn't cause me disorientation at all, it just trained me to do the right thing.
    - BrentOzar 13y ago
      Yes, but then you're constantly switching magnification factors, font sizes, and such every time you plug into the desktop dock or unplug to hit the road?
  - bones6 13y ago
    Dual 22 inch monitors vs a 27 inch makes it less annoying.
contextfree 13y ago
I’m not sure what was happening with his MD file extension, but I don’t think it could be what he thought it was. Windows 8 has only one unified set of file type associations – there’s no concept of desktop versus “Metro” there. Probably the app just didn’t register for that extension?
- freehunter 13y ago
  That's a fair point. I know 7Zip has this same problem; no matter which computer I'm using, I have to manually tell Windows that 7Zip is the program to use to open a .7z file. It's possible for a program to not register file extensions.
axus 13y ago
"I end up using the finger very often, and not to touch the screen, either".
robomartin 13y ago
The author needs a laptop, possibly augmented with a Wacom tablet to draw during presentations. With the myriad of amazing laptop/netbooks available in the windows ecosystem a tablet would be my absolute last choice for his use case. The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use. I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow. Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application. I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on. Tablets have their place.
- BrentOzar 13y ago
  Brent the author here. As I stated in the article, I do indeed do have a laptop. However, carrying around a laptop, plus another backup laptop, plus a Wacom tablet is a little beyond what I'd like to travel with. About Excel with your fingers - you'd be surprised. The touch experience is surprisingly compelling once you get used to it. I'm always surprised at how often I reach out to touch the display on my laptop after I've been using my iPad or the Surface, even just for a few minutes. (This is especially true when using the Surface because the Type Cover's trackpad is laughably small.)
  - robomartin 13y ago
    Ultimately we all make the choices that make sense to us. I've travelled extensively in the US, Europe and South America conducting seminars and product demonstrations. I know the pain of carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment with you. Most memorable: picking up my large Pelican cases at Schiphol only to feel they were covered with yellow slime. Anyhow, for business travel I would nearly always buy laptops in pairs. Really easy to clone them just before a trip and have true backup. Two laptops and a Wacom are not going to be a significant departure from one laptop and surface. You can easily fit all of it in a laptop bag with room to spare. For convenience I eventually migrated towards wheeled laptop cases. You don't have to lug them around and they offer lots of room for gear and sometimes even a minimal overnight set of clothes, etc. I am sure that eventually some tools will develop usable parallel touch UI's. I guess my point is that I can do everything I might generally have to do during a typical business trip on a ten year old notebook. Newer notebooks are far cheaper (I paid $3,000 for the Sony ten years ago) and far more capable. A tablet would be my absolute last choice as they are still really cumbersome and inconvenient to use.
mikerg87 13y ago
I switched to the Surface Pro as my primary development box. Surprised that I could get VS2012, SQL Express 2012 and IIS working with decent performance. If you are using an SDXC card to supplement your storage and don't intend to eject it on a whim, you can get better performance by going to the device manager and changing the removal policy and the write caching. Options for 256gb or 512gb SSD would have made this an easier choice for many.
- xradionut 13y ago
  Wow, glutten for punishment. My primary development box is a fully loaded 17" laptop. Tablets are too small screen wise and performance wise when doing real work either in the OSS or Redmond realm. (I deal with tons of Data and run a few VMs as well.)
  - mikerg87 13y ago
    I carried a Lenovo W510 15" that was simply not workable on flights and heavy and clumsy for standing in line at security checkpoints. And "pro" systems like this don't play well with airline power systems. The surface has worked on Qantas, Air Canada and Lufthansa flights where I have had power. At my desk I project to a big monitor and it has worked out pretty well.
ninetenel 13y ago
I've had a surface pro since launch -- and all I can say is that I can't imagine using different portable right now (before that I was using a x230). once I got used to the form factor and what it was designed for it's changed how I compute in subtle ways. Last night for example.. rather then going to my desk .. I watched some lectures on the couch while using the pen to take notes in one note .. then docked it to do some work. that's just one example of many; but for me personally i feel like i'm doing more with my computer then I was before though, I've usually docked my laptops when doing any serious work .. and my mobile work is usually restricted to coffee shops for only 3-4 hours at a time .. battery life I guess could be better .. I usually only get 4hours or so off power when streaming movies off amazon but it's not really bad IMO, but of course I'd like it to be longer .. my main worry when it comes to the battery is that it's not user replaceable honestly
dangrossman 13y ago
My biggest gripe is that you really need DPI scaling to use some desktop apps at 1920x1080 on a 10" screen, but half the apps I use don't scale well or at all (I'm looking at you, Chrome). I still use the SP on a daily basis and it was a worthile purchase for a few things: 1) It's a great tablet when you want a tablet. With no keyboard attached, it's a joy to read reddit and play games on in bed. 2) I throw it in the car with me whenever I leave home. I'm always on-call if a site/server goes down. The SP is a full computer with a hard keyboard, so there won't be any situation I need to drive back home to handle, even if it takes several hours to resolve. 3) It's a suitable desktop replacement for anything but hard gaming. I stick it on my desk, plug in a big monitor, and pair a bluetooth mouse. Now screen size and DPI scaling don't matter, and the Core i5 has all the power I could need for compiling software, photo editing, etc.
kwinzman 13y ago
"On the regional jet I’m on now, even first class doesn’t have a tray big enough for the Surface." "In comparison, when I take my MacBook Pro or my iPad [...]" http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ufht1/ http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ufht1/

42 points by peschkaj 13y ago

I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic. It defeats the whole purpose of the form factor.

MatthewPhillips 13y ago
I don't see battery life being a small problem on a laptop either. Once you've experienced 10 hour battery life it's hard to ever give that up.
- lmm 13y ago
  I found it pretty easy; I went from an asus transformer (14 hours real-world, and I did use it) to a samsung ultrabook-like (<4 hours). Just get in the habit of plugging it in; how much of the day do you really spend away from a power socket? It might not be for everyone, but it's been fine for me.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels. People who work on the go need their 8h+ battery life, the more the merrier.
    - lmm 13y ago
      >The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels. Surely you don't just carry a tablet in your hand when walking to the office? Once something's too big for pockets I resort to a messenger bag over my shoulder, in which it's just as easy to include the power. Given that tablets don't seem to come with cases, how else would one transport it?
      - muyuu 13y ago
        Working in the office is not working on the go. Working on the go is finish up stuff and send it before boarding a plane, or work on that same plane, or during your train commute. If you're going from home to the office and back, I don't see the point in carrying anything other than your smartphone. Talking about the general case, obviously, there are justifications for bringing a medium-sized laptop.
        lmm 13y ago
        I get things done in all those cases on the setup I mentioned. Obviously if you're taking 8-hour flights then you need that much battery, but is that a common case?
        muyuu 13y ago
        It's a very common case that you have a hard time finding a socket in some places. It happens a lot to me that many others are working on their laptops and all sockets are taken, or even that there are no sockets at all in some trains. Introduces an extra dependency.
Random_Person 13y ago
My battery life is no where near that terrible. I'm not sure what he has running constantly, but I can GAME on my Surface Pro for 5+ hours without plugging in. It's still bad for a "tablet", but not any worse than my HP Elite Book with the same specs.
- EvanAnderson 13y ago
  Same here. I just put a Surface Pro in one of my Customers' user's hands last week. I tried it out for a couple days as my primary machine and got 5 hours out if the battery the two times I elected to run w/o AC power.
BrentOzar 13y ago
Brent the author here. I agree that battery life isn't a small problem - note that I put (?) next to "small" as a way of noting that the problems aren't nitpicking.
Samuel_Michon 13y ago
“3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.” True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life. If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.
- dangrossman 13y ago
  The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08". It gets the same run time per charge. It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38. The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.
  - Samuel_Michon 13y ago
    > The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3 http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3 > It gets the same run time per charge. No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-review/ http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...
    - dangrossman 13y ago
      For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness? I own an SP; it does not get 3.75 hours of battery life no matter what I do with it, and I could pull out a dozen review links to say that as well. Why are you trying so hard to make it look worse than it is?
dangrossman 13y ago
I don't know what he's doing to get that kind of battery life. I've had my SP for a few months now, and it consistently gets 5-6 hours of actual usage, even heavy things like streaming HBO. It's not 12+, but there's a Core i5 behind the glass, and my Core i5 laptop doesn't get half that running time.
- BrentOzar 13y ago
  Brent the author here. I'm doing basic productivity work while listening to music, doing email, and leaving Twitter & Hipchat open. Engadget and The Verge both noted sub-4-hour battery life in their reviews too. I'm glad you're getting more life though.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

hkmurakami 13y ago

So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience" >I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does. This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.

Random_Person 13y ago
Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
- YeahKIA 13y ago
  I think the point he makes about hanging in to it in a hope that Microsoft is going to improve it is the key. Looks like with windows 8.1 they are making a lot of changes based on the feedback, and giving that release away for free. Microsoft better stick to this fast iterative update process if they want people to bet on the new OS.
  - smacktoward 13y ago
    The problem there is that the changes we're hearing about for 8.1 (bringing back the Start button, letting you boot straight to the desktop, etc.) are all changes that will move 8's center of gravity closer to the traditional Windows experience and farther from the new Metro experience. And from the article it sounds like the new Metro experience is the only one that really feels right on Surface. Making it easier for people to skip Metro will only result in fewer developers writing Metro apps, not more, so it's hard to see 8.1 as a positive for Surface users. They need the Windows world to be more Metro, not less.

nextstep 13y ago

All Surface reviews read like this. "It's pretty good, except for this long list of things that are terrible about it."

PaulHoule 13y ago

My boss uses a Surface Pro like a laptop and is happy with it. Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.

BrentOzar 13y ago
That's interesting. How does he work around the high-DPI resolution problems when connecting an external display? I'm assuming he's using one - when you say "a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market", that usually means an external display.
- PaulHoule 13y ago
  I'll say that if you've been using Windows for years you get used to using Windows on strange screen systems, everything from 640x480 to video wall panels. If you adjust magnification factors, font sizes, and such for the apps you actually use to help out a lot. One thing I found with Windows 8 is that it is even better to use keyboard shortcuts to access the shell. Instead of groping for the 'Start' button, I hit the Windows key and the same thing happens if I am running Win7 or Win8. So Win8 didn't cause me disorientation at all, it just trained me to do the right thing.
  - BrentOzar 13y ago
    Yes, but then you're constantly switching magnification factors, font sizes, and such every time you plug into the desktop dock or unplug to hit the road?
- bones6 13y ago
  Dual 22 inch monitors vs a 27 inch makes it less annoying.

contextfree 13y ago

I’m not sure what was happening with his MD file extension, but I don’t think it could be what he thought it was. Windows 8 has only one unified set of file type associations – there’s no concept of desktop versus “Metro” there. Probably the app just didn’t register for that extension?

freehunter 13y ago
That's a fair point. I know 7Zip has this same problem; no matter which computer I'm using, I have to manually tell Windows that 7Zip is the program to use to open a .7z file. It's possible for a program to not register file extensions.

axus 13y ago

"I end up using the finger very often, and not to touch the screen, either".

robomartin 13y ago

The author needs a laptop, possibly augmented with a Wacom tablet to draw during presentations. With the myriad of amazing laptop/netbooks available in the windows ecosystem a tablet would be my absolute last choice for his use case. The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use. I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow. Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application. I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on. Tablets have their place.

BrentOzar 13y ago
Brent the author here. As I stated in the article, I do indeed do have a laptop. However, carrying around a laptop, plus another backup laptop, plus a Wacom tablet is a little beyond what I'd like to travel with. About Excel with your fingers - you'd be surprised. The touch experience is surprisingly compelling once you get used to it. I'm always surprised at how often I reach out to touch the display on my laptop after I've been using my iPad or the Surface, even just for a few minutes. (This is especially true when using the Surface because the Type Cover's trackpad is laughably small.)
- robomartin 13y ago
  Ultimately we all make the choices that make sense to us. I've travelled extensively in the US, Europe and South America conducting seminars and product demonstrations. I know the pain of carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment with you. Most memorable: picking up my large Pelican cases at Schiphol only to feel they were covered with yellow slime. Anyhow, for business travel I would nearly always buy laptops in pairs. Really easy to clone them just before a trip and have true backup. Two laptops and a Wacom are not going to be a significant departure from one laptop and surface. You can easily fit all of it in a laptop bag with room to spare. For convenience I eventually migrated towards wheeled laptop cases. You don't have to lug them around and they offer lots of room for gear and sometimes even a minimal overnight set of clothes, etc. I am sure that eventually some tools will develop usable parallel touch UI's. I guess my point is that I can do everything I might generally have to do during a typical business trip on a ten year old notebook. Newer notebooks are far cheaper (I paid $3,000 for the Sony ten years ago) and far more capable. A tablet would be my absolute last choice as they are still really cumbersome and inconvenient to use.

mikerg87 13y ago

I switched to the Surface Pro as my primary development box. Surprised that I could get VS2012, SQL Express 2012 and IIS working with decent performance. If you are using an SDXC card to supplement your storage and don't intend to eject it on a whim, you can get better performance by going to the device manager and changing the removal policy and the write caching. Options for 256gb or 512gb SSD would have made this an easier choice for many.

xradionut 13y ago
Wow, glutten for punishment. My primary development box is a fully loaded 17" laptop. Tablets are too small screen wise and performance wise when doing real work either in the OSS or Redmond realm. (I deal with tons of Data and run a few VMs as well.)
- mikerg87 13y ago
  I carried a Lenovo W510 15" that was simply not workable on flights and heavy and clumsy for standing in line at security checkpoints. And "pro" systems like this don't play well with airline power systems. The surface has worked on Qantas, Air Canada and Lufthansa flights where I have had power. At my desk I project to a big monitor and it has worked out pretty well.

ninetenel 13y ago

I've had a surface pro since launch -- and all I can say is that I can't imagine using different portable right now (before that I was using a x230). once I got used to the form factor and what it was designed for it's changed how I compute in subtle ways. Last night for example.. rather then going to my desk .. I watched some lectures on the couch while using the pen to take notes in one note .. then docked it to do some work. that's just one example of many; but for me personally i feel like i'm doing more with my computer then I was before though, I've usually docked my laptops when doing any serious work .. and my mobile work is usually restricted to coffee shops for only 3-4 hours at a time .. battery life I guess could be better .. I usually only get 4hours or so off power when streaming movies off amazon but it's not really bad IMO, but of course I'd like it to be longer .. my main worry when it comes to the battery is that it's not user replaceable honestly

dangrossman 13y ago

My biggest gripe is that you really need DPI scaling to use some desktop apps at 1920x1080 on a 10" screen, but half the apps I use don't scale well or at all (I'm looking at you, Chrome). I still use the SP on a daily basis and it was a worthile purchase for a few things: 1) It's a great tablet when you want a tablet. With no keyboard attached, it's a joy to read reddit and play games on in bed. 2) I throw it in the car with me whenever I leave home. I'm always on-call if a site/server goes down. The SP is a full computer with a hard keyboard, so there won't be any situation I need to drive back home to handle, even if it takes several hours to resolve. 3) It's a suitable desktop replacement for anything but hard gaming. I stick it on my desk, plug in a big monitor, and pair a bluetooth mouse. Now screen size and DPI scaling don't matter, and the Core i5 has all the power I could need for compiling software, photo editing, etc.

kwinzman 13y ago

"On the regional jet I’m on now, even first class doesn’t have a tray big enough for the Surface." "In comparison, when I take my MacBook Pro or my iPad [...]" http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ufht1/ http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ufht1/