I had read a bit about the original surface pro and it was in the back of mind that I should be looking towards these devices. My job entails examining buildings for electrical wear and tear, all very boring in the grand scheme of things I am sure. But my daily work life involves a lot of site work at client premises. Laptops have provided the foundation of most of what I do over the years. But this usually involved collecting data on paper or more lately an app on my phone. Then sitting down to enter this data into my laptop application for distribution back into the business and our clients.
What the Microsoft Surface Pro 2 has enabled me to do is gather all this information cutting out the paper or phone part. It is light weight and portable enough to collect the data directly into my application whilst conducting site audits. As it runs full blooded windows and has the performance to match or exceed most laptops my daily work life has got a whole lot easier. I simply engage into tablet mode and directly input all the data via the touch screen.
The screen is really responsive and I was surprised how pleasant it was to use after earlier poor experiences with windows tablet systems. I find myself wanting to use the pen even when I am at my desk with the tablet docked into desk top mode.
Performance is really sharp which is great considering the fairly high price point for this system. I have to tell myself that when I bought the surface pro 2 it wasn't a laptop, tablet or desk top purchase but all rolled into one device. When you stack up all 3 devices you begin to see what great value the surface pro 2 actually has. Yeah its my desktop when I hook it up to my home made rig. You can buy dedicated docking stations but my mini video to monitor hook up and speaker system is easily connected. I also use a wireless keyboard and mouse via the usb port on the surface pro 2. So when I am at my desk I get the full windows desktop experience with monitor and a range of connected devices.
When I am out in the field I can use my wireless keyboard and setup a laptop system in seconds. I can also use it in tablet mode for data collection and Internet browsing on the sofa at home after work. It really is the ultimate device for both productivity and media consumption. I now couldn't imagine going back to not using it. I know I managed before but things are so much easier now.
Whilst the range of apps is still a long way behind what we are all used to with apple and android some of the big hitters are slowly finding there way over to windows. But it matters little when you have the full blown desktop environment of windows to fall back on. You don't need apps or quick games to pass the time as you can simply load up Halo or another game of choice from Steam.
It is my everything device plain and simple, I haven't used my iPad in weeks and find myself spending less and less time on my phone. I love it.
From the i5 processor and 4 Gb of RAM to the super sharp screen and incredible battery life (8+ hours!) it really is the complete package for those of us who both work in the office and out at client sites or meetings. I can highly recommend it to anyone.
The support from Microsoft is 1st class and the ability to link up to my Xbox One via the glass app is great. I can control movies and even games directly from the surface pro 2. Screen shots are quick and intuitive to collect which is a must for me. Videos and movies are sharp and the sound of a surprisingly good quality.
I will be posting more about some of the specific features I like best about this device in the coming days. But for the minute I hope you found this outline useful.
MW
What audit program do you use?
ReplyDeleteIt is an internal program we call OpenTime 4000. I guess it will be based upon something mainstream but it is packaged and provided to my employer as a company owned product. Hence no one else has exactly the same thing/program, it is a custom build purely for us.
ReplyDelete