After a bit of a delay, here’s my final wrap-up post on my first week experiences with the Microsoft Surface Pro. Over the remainder of the week it was used for:
- More Work / Meeting Tasks
- Travel
- Games
More Work
The work & meeting tasks were what I talked about on Day 3, just more of it. The functionality held up very well over the rest of the week (and into this week) so it’s definitely not just a novelty, but genuinely useful in my day-to-day work life. OneNote is my new best friend (Well, I liked it before and used it, but combining with the pen and SkyDrive syncing elevate the experience to a whole new level). If I could get this on my Mac, OneNote would 100% replace Evernote for me.
Travel
My wife and I made a quick trip back to visit my family in Pennsylvania for the weekend to spend some time with my dad who just recently had hip surgery. I left the laptop at home and only brought the Surface and my iPad with me. The iPad came along just in case the Surface didn’t hold up fully to my traveling needs.
But beyond reading a book on the plane from Texas to Pennsylvania, I didn’t touch the iPad all weekend. It sat in my bag collecting dust (on the flight back I read a real paper book)
One of the BEST things about the Surface as a travel computer is this:
YOU DON’T HAVE TO TAKE IT OUT OF YOUR BAG WHEN GOING THROUGH SECURITY!
Since it’s generally considered a tablet device, it currently falls under those rules with the TSA so I didn’t have to dig anything out of my carry-on when going through security coming or going. It was great. This thing is going to make international travel so much easier.
It was easy to quickly pop up on the kitchen table, close down quickly when I needed to relocate, and weighed so little it barely registered in my bag when schlepping between gates at airports.
The Surface is infinitely better than any laptop I’ve ever had to lug around on trips!
Games
I’ve only done a little bit of gaming on the Surface Pro since i have a beast of a gaming PC at my desk at home, and don’t tend to game on the road much. What I did give a try though was the new SimCity.
First off, this is an Intel 4000 HD Graphics chip in the Surface, so it’s not going to be pushing amazing visuals. Maybe in a future version of the surface we’ll get an NVIDIA or AMD mobile chip in there for some more “oomph”
With that in mind, the Surface Pro actually did a half-decent job of running SimCity. Sure I was playing at a lower resolution with settings turned down, but it was definitely very playable. And what surprised me so much is how much of the game you can play just via touch interactions! The only thing I needed the keyboard for was to pan the camera around. Everything else I could manage by poking at the screen.
Other Misc Thoughts
Beyond the specific tasks I’ve talked about in these posts, I have a few other thoughts on the device as a whole…
- Battery Life is Underwhelming
I generally won’t use this device unplugged unless I’m sticking to light-weight apps. Even 2D Metro-styled games drink the battery like crazy. Thankfully, Office, Skype, Twitter, IE etc all seem to sip at power, which is what I use the most on the device generally. - Weight Makes it a Poor Tablet
This is a convertible ultrabook. I really wish Microsoft would stop touting it as a tablet device. It’s a bad tablet device as it weighs too much and costs WAY more than an iPad, which is the comparison everyone’s going to draw if you try and sell the Surface as a tablet. - Windows 8 Still has some Quirks
Even using the device primarily through Touch, the UI of Windows 8 is still confusing. The Charms Bar just isn’t consistent between apps and seems to be VERY context sensitive, without giving any clue that context matters. This isn’t a deal-breaker for regular users, but it’s annoying to me. - Windows 8 Apps Could Use More Testing
Every day one of the “Metro” apps crashes out on me at least 2-3 times. Twitter, Skype, Mail, IE etc all seem to choke periodically on me. I’ve even had to restart the device a few times in the first week to recover from a generally “stuck” state. My Windows 7 machine hasn’t had a restart in 3 months. And that’s with heavy, brutal usage. - If you buy one, your friends WILL mock you
The Surface is currently a bit of a joke with my techie/gadget friends. It has an undeservedly poor reputation based on some oddly critical media reviews and the unfortunate way Microsoft is trying to pitch and sell the device. I have gotten a LOT of jokes and rolled eyes over this device. But it’s doing GREAT for my needs so I ignore it. Just be prepared for some jokes if you pick one up.
Well, that wraps things up for my “One Week with the Microsoft Surface Pro”. Overall, I’m very happy with my purchase and am willing to accept some of the devices’ oddities as the cost of using a version 1.0 product. If Microsoft can improve on weight, battery life, and Windows 8, I think they’ll have a great selling device on their hands in 2014 for v2.0.