New to SP4

[randy98mtu]

I have been an Apple guy for quite some time now, but the appeal of the Surface has grown with each generation. Recently I bought one for my wife's office. She didn't like it for her purposes and wanted a regular laptop. So in the end it looks like I will finally get a chance to try out the SP4! Assuming she remembers to bring it home, I'll have it tomorrow night.

I would love to see it replace my MacBook Pro 15", but we will see. I am very used to OS X now. My primary uses for my main machine are iTunes library management and Photoshop Lightroom and photo library management. I also have an iPad Air 2. I would love to see the iPad Pro or any kind of crossover product from Apple similar to the Surface running full OS X, but I don't see it happening. So I'm going to try to really embrace the Surface.

I wish I could swap this SP4 for the 512 GB version (in a covert manner ) but it looks like I'm going to just stick to the mid-range model purchased; the i5, 8 GB, 256 GB. I decided I think the best storage expansion option would be an mSATA enclosure with a 1TB Samsung mSATA drive. I'm going back and forth a bit on how to manage this. Currently I keep most of my files on Dropbox and use selective sync to put what will fit on my MacBook (512 GB SSD) I would like to continue to use Dropbox, and my research today seems to indicate I could put my Dropbox folder on the mSATA with a bit of caution to make sure I have Dropbox off except when I want to sync files.

Any thoughts on my use plans or tips for my storage plan would be greatly appreciated. I'm very excited to start trying out the Surface!

 

[Yillbs]

I was basically in the same boat as you. I too decided to move from a mac to the surface, it's not the easiest, in fact, I find myself using the sp4 less and less simply because i know mac quite well. I use this bad boy : http://tldr.ly/rWCB for storage, it's cheap, and it's always done what i needed. However, i tried to partition it to work with the macs time machine, and it's nearly impossible, so good luck!

 

[randy98mtu]

I ordered a small enclosure and an mSATA drive. My first night with the SP4 is not going well. I'm off to research connection issues right now. I'm having a horrible time with my internet connection. I have a dual wifi access point system with 2 Airport Extreme Base Stations, one as router, the other wired to it. My Apple hardware all sees both and switches seamlessly. My Surface can't get any sustained internet traffic. I test with my MacBook and get 13ms ping and 78 meg download. The Surface gets 300ms and 2 meg. Grrrr.