Well, after a week of very heavy usage, I decided to return the surface pro to best buy today. If anyone recalls, I'm a long time Mac user who purchased an SP128. I didn't expect it to be a replacement for my MBP retina, nor for my iPad mini which stays by my bed for quick email answering and web browsing. I wanted a device for traveling, which I do quite a bit, that was thin, light, full featured in terms of productivity and fun and easy to use.
Unfortunately, after a week, I found the SP to be too much of a compromise in each of those categories. My frustrations started with Windows 8 and the google account "bug". Yes, I understand google stopping the use of EAS, but the entire setup of invoking permissions on my outlook.com account and trying to get calendar and email and contacts synced was kludgy at best. Emails were delayed upwards of thirty to forty minutes and for someone who runs a business using gmail, it was a major challenge. But one I was ready to forgive if the functions of the SP outweighed this issue.
I knew the gmail issue would be fixed eventually, so I focused on how best to use the surface on a day to day basis. As a replacement for my work machine at home it did ok. Extending the desktop to a 27" monitor worked, and the machine was very speedy. But having a little secondary display was really silly. And, the beauty of the tablet was severely tarnished by the three cables that came out of the thing. With a monitor cable, USB hub and power hooked up, the little machine, so svelt and gorgeous, looked like something dr. Frankenstein was working on with all these wires and gizmos.
Speaking of wires, someone please tell me that the guy who invented the power cable is now working somewhere other than MSoft. What a horrible design! I would have honestly preferred a non-magnetic old school cable to the thing they tried to pass off. It took 5-6 seconds to plug in every time, and forget it if you have anything less than a 10,000 lumen spotlight to try and see what you're doing.
And why do we need the power cable at all times? Well, because the battery on this machine rivals two hamsters running on a wheel, one of which has a heart condition. Honestly, on plane flights longer than 4 hours, of which I had four this past week, I was constantly saving and turning off wifi and otherwise managing the SP so as not to be left without power. Because my airport time plus flight time was always more than my battery could handle.
Finally, the type cover. Something that everyone I spoke to raves about, felt like it was designed by nerf. It felt plasticky and the touchpad was pathetically unresponsive. Try clicking and dragging, or trying to copy and paste, and you're talking about multiple frustrations.
Where the surface shined was in its productivity functions. Using office and a full web browser in a small form factor was incredible. But, for me, that wasn't enough. I truly don't want a laptop to travel with anymore, and I really had high hopes for the surface. But at the end of the day version 1.0 really didn't do it for me.
Unfortunately, after a week, I found the SP to be too much of a compromise in each of those categories. My frustrations started with Windows 8 and the google account "bug". Yes, I understand google stopping the use of EAS, but the entire setup of invoking permissions on my outlook.com account and trying to get calendar and email and contacts synced was kludgy at best. Emails were delayed upwards of thirty to forty minutes and for someone who runs a business using gmail, it was a major challenge. But one I was ready to forgive if the functions of the SP outweighed this issue.
I knew the gmail issue would be fixed eventually, so I focused on how best to use the surface on a day to day basis. As a replacement for my work machine at home it did ok. Extending the desktop to a 27" monitor worked, and the machine was very speedy. But having a little secondary display was really silly. And, the beauty of the tablet was severely tarnished by the three cables that came out of the thing. With a monitor cable, USB hub and power hooked up, the little machine, so svelt and gorgeous, looked like something dr. Frankenstein was working on with all these wires and gizmos.
Speaking of wires, someone please tell me that the guy who invented the power cable is now working somewhere other than MSoft. What a horrible design! I would have honestly preferred a non-magnetic old school cable to the thing they tried to pass off. It took 5-6 seconds to plug in every time, and forget it if you have anything less than a 10,000 lumen spotlight to try and see what you're doing.
And why do we need the power cable at all times? Well, because the battery on this machine rivals two hamsters running on a wheel, one of which has a heart condition. Honestly, on plane flights longer than 4 hours, of which I had four this past week, I was constantly saving and turning off wifi and otherwise managing the SP so as not to be left without power. Because my airport time plus flight time was always more than my battery could handle.
Finally, the type cover. Something that everyone I spoke to raves about, felt like it was designed by nerf. It felt plasticky and the touchpad was pathetically unresponsive. Try clicking and dragging, or trying to copy and paste, and you're talking about multiple frustrations.
Where the surface shined was in its productivity functions. Using office and a full web browser in a small form factor was incredible. But, for me, that wasn't enough. I truly don't want a laptop to travel with anymore, and I really had high hopes for the surface. But at the end of the day version 1.0 really didn't do it for me.
