Hot Surface on Surface Action

[magicrobots]

I have a Surface Pro, and a Surface RT.
The RT is at work so I can't test this theory, but I was thinking I could leave the Pro on my desk at work, and carry the RT around with me and use Remote Desktop to the Pro ... which would result in the effect of a Pro with the battery life and weight of an RT! Right? Does this sound like a doable concept?

EDIT:
As a mac user I don't know anything about the Remote Desktop experience or protocol. If the Pro is on one network, and I change the RT from network to network, would that be a problem for the connection?

 

[J515OP]

Totally doable . Do you control the network the Pro is on?

 

[jnjroach]

Yes you could do this, you would lose the Active Digitizer over RDP. Windows 8 RDP is fairly resilient so moving from AP to AP shouldn't prevent the session but switching between non-routed networks would end the session and require a VPN solution or a Public IP Address. If I had both, I would get a bag that would carry both and trade off between them depending on the need. Both devices together weigh less than the competition such as the Samsung ATIV 700T with keyboard or the Fujitsu Q702 with keyboard or even the ASUS Tai Chi or Lenovo ThinkPad Helix.

 

[ArnoldC]

I did this at work, where i left my Acer at another floor, but I need to demonstrate Hyper-V and SQL Server images. I used Remote Desktop and it was fine.

 

[magicrobots]

Awesome! Thanks guys.
The network situation is tricky, but hopefully it'll work out. Here's the situation:

It's at work, where there is a guest network that runs throughout the entire building. A lot of the ports on the guest network are locked down, but that's the network the RT will be roving on. The Pro will be on a subnetwork that I control which is plugged into an ethernet jack which runs a much more open officewide wired network.

I guess we'll see how this goes tomorrow when I get in!

 

[magicrobots]

Gave it a shot early today and ran into roadblocks. Looks like I might need to work with a network administrator at work, but they'll probably not want to work with me to get a personal machine up and running behind their firewall. Hmph.

 

[ArnoldC]

They can open up an RDP port for you in simplest terms, that's all you need. I said this without knowing the network configuration so please take with a bucket of salt.

 

[magicrobots]

Thanks Arnold; I figured it out! Just took a little messing around.

Since I am running a subnetwork off the office hardline, All I had to do was go into my router and forward the RDP Port (3389) to the IP of the host computer, then in Remote Desktop on the Surface, point it to the Public IP of the router. Success!!

The performance, by the way, was fantastic. I could ALMOST play Unreal through the connection (from another network on another floor of the building).

I have only tested this using the Surface Pro as a client and a Desktop machine running Win 8 as the Host. If I ever get the Surface RT back from my wife (she's giving it a test drive) then I'll bring it in and see how it fares as the client. I guess I could just try that tonight from home actually...

 

[ArnoldC]

Glad it worked, I do that everytime but using my Surface RT instead.