Surface Pro: A glimpse to the future

As a late Christmas present I was gifted a Surface Pro 128 GB with a blue touch cover. Plagued with a rather suspicious launch, considered by many to be a ploy to drum up excitement, I was forced to wait for my chance to hand Microsoft my money until yesterday, Sunday February 24th – a day I will tell my children about. I whole-heartedly believe the future is in mobile and the mobile workforce. I believe the future workforce AND the future consumer will look towards these all-in-one devices to be their primary systems. Of course there are exceptions but I’ll let you point those out in the comments below. I figured I might as well practice what I preach (to myself) and see what the future is all about. And man, it’s awesome!

This post won’t touch much on Windows 8 and how beautiful it is or how flexible it is. You can find that on my friend’s blog (http://kireetnimmagadda.com/post/35825117284). It also will not be about the device specs or some elaborate testing scenario created to quantify some opinions. This is intended to describe the unquantifiable. I want to describe the feeling you get from using one of these machines. Expect a completely skewed view throughout this post but hopefully I can skew your views a little too.

So, why the Surface Pro? Why not an ultrabook or some other device? Well, I have a few reasons. But the major one is that I, as alluded to before, really do believe this is the future of productivity. In my time in corporate America I’ve had the chance to test out different tablet form factors and use cases. In the end, nothing really stuck with me until the announcement of Windows 8 Pro and the Surface. A blend of both the mobile app economy and the dominated desktop app world, just makes common sense. Why shouldn’t I be able to leverage everything that’s been great about the past 20 plus years of computing and marry it with the ultimate trophy wife of mobile computing? A laptop with a touch screen or a tablet with a huge screen just doesn’t tick all my boxes. They may be the best at what they do: the fastest and lightest laptop, the coolest and hippest tablet. But that’s all they are. There’s no connection between two. In the end I’m stuck monitoring, updating, and switching between two different ecosystems. My travel bag gets that much heavier when I am out the road. The Surface Pro allows me to meld those two distinct worlds into one universe. As of this writing, there’s nothing to my knowledge that can do this yet. And I am willing to live with the tradeoffs of 2mm thicker and .5lbs heavier. The technology to get faster and thinner and lighter is on its way but right now this is the bee’s knees. This is that Asian piano kid from School of Rock and I’m Jack Black. He has the potential to be great but all he needs is a little bit of encourage, support and faith and he’ll turn into a rock star. A really productive rock star with a lot of cool apps and sweet accessories. (Wonder what happened to that kid.)

To answer some general questions about my experience with the device so far:

• Battery life is decent. About 5 hours of use. Whole day-ish if you use it for some light browsing and simple Word docs and sleep it the rest of the time. Nothing ground breaking but you already knew that.
• Pen is really sturdy and attaches nicely to the device for storage. Wish it could be attached to the power brick when the device is charging. Wouldn’t want to lose it then.
• Touch cover just amazes me. I’ve written this whole review on it and the thing just flies. It definitely takes a few hours to get used to and that’s mainly a mental thing. If you set your hands on it as a normal keyboard and type on it as a normal keyboard it will function as a normal keyboard. I tend to put more weight on the D key when my hands are at rest. Just an observation.
• App selection is limited – blah blah blah.

To describe some general plans I have for the device:

• I want to install Steam and use it for some casual gaming. I plan to travel a lot this coming year and would love to kill some plane time by playing an RPG or an FPS of some sort. I’m new to the PC gaming world so any suggestions would be welcomed.
• This became my primary device as of last night. I’ll take all the necessary docs off my old laptop and put them here. I hope to never buy a laptop again. My old laptop will turn into some sort of DVR or in-home server.
• I’m excited because I can manage my phone from here too.

So what should you take away from this blog? Some may say I am Widows fan boy and wouldn’t know up from down but the real reason I have committed to these platforms is because I see growth. I see a break from the big two: Android/Google and iOS/Apple. The more competition the better the consumer fairs. If we all adopt one platform, then innovation dies and our wallets shrink. So really you should thank me for my purchase and buy me lunch with all that saved money I’ve saved you years from now.

Written entirely on a Type Cover (Blue).

Questions/Comments/Concerns? There’s a little comment section, feel free to use it!