Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The MS Surface Pro

penny-arcade.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 159 posts

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#11

Post by Bockit »

It's nice to hear this kind of device review from a corner you don't usually hear it from. Rather than the usual kind of review broken up into the usual sections, maybe a storage, space, benchmarks, screen, software kind of thing, we have a guy who has specific use cases for it talking about how he used it for those cases, what worked and what didn't. And then comparing it to how he normally does those kinds of activities.

Even though I don't have the same use cases as him, I feel like I got more out of it this way.

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#12

Post by Tloewald »

gfunk911 wrote: post #5

Interesting. We now have an actual niche/use case where the Surface Pro could be a compelling leader, and not just "totally decent." Artists. Also, doesn't an apple-style commercial where somebody gets an email with a word doc attached, edits it, and emails it back with changes while on the train or something seem obvious....

Pages on ios can edit word docs, even round-tripping change tracking. But yes, I -- a hardened Apple guy -- am interested in the Surface Pro for this exact use case and also 3d modeling/painting/sculpting.

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#13

Post by jmspring »

Bockit wrote: post #11

It's nice to hear this kind of device review from a corner you don't usually hear it from. Rather than the usual kind of review broken up into the usual sections, maybe a storage, space, benchmarks, screen, software kind of thing, we have a guy who has specific use cases for it talking about how he used it for those cases, what worked and what didn't. And then comparing it to how he normally does those kinds of activ…

I think the better summary is -- "great to hear a device review from outside the echo chamber". I'd like to see other non-tech specific reviews of Surface Pro (and similar hardware).

All too often, we focus on what is most relevant to our own particular use cases. Looking at possible Win8 laptops, I'm wanting something comparable to my MBA -- decent SSD storage and ram for development (8gig) -- a few options there, but the options crater when you add the third requirement -- touch.

But I realize, I am not the normal use case and can't judge any particular hardware beyond what my own personal uses may be.

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#14

Post by recoiledsnake »

> I left it at 125% and just like he had suggested my color picker was working again! I finished the strip at 125% magnification with no trouble but then I had to switch it back to 150% when I was finished.

You can disable the DPI scale up in the compatibility tab of the file properties of the exe. In this case he could've set it for Sketchbook's exe and the rest of the OS would continue to be at 150%. Hopefully, this is just a temporary stopgap while application developers start supporting high resolutions.

Image of setting:

http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#15

Post by andrewjshults »

majormajor wrote: post #9
gfunk911 wrote: post #5

Interesting. We now have an actual niche/use case where the Surface Pro could be a compelling leader, and not just "totally decent." Artists. Also, doesn't an apple-style commercial where somebody gets an email with a word doc attached, edits it, and emails it back with changes while on the train or something seem obvious....

Ever since it was first announced I thought it would be an ideal on-the-go photo management/editing program (I could easily get by in Lightroom without a keyboard, and the pen would be tons of fun) so it's cool to see that they hit that mark for that. I'm going to hold off until a cooler/longer battery life revision 2, though. Or possibly a ThinkPad Helix or something, but that's still not really a loss for MS. MS's…

Back in the day, I used the original lightroom on a Toshiba m200 (one of the original XP tablet machines). Even with the greater weight, far more limited battery life and relatively limited processing power (I think I had a 2.0GHz single core - mostly processing 4MP files off the 1DmkI so it was able to keep up decently), the Wacom digitizer in screen was amazing for touchups (it makes masking so much faster than anything else). If someone comes up with a case that makes it more usable on the lap as a laptop, I could see replacing my MBA with it for most uses.

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#18

Post by habosa »

Great review, it's awesome to see gadget reviews from a specific use case instead of just "7/10 on our random everything score scale".

I wish there was a review site for the HN crowd. Someone that would use every device like a software developer would: tinkering with settings, trying to write/run code, integrating with other services, etc. I generally like reviews on Engadget/The Verge but sometimes I feel they care about different things than I care about.

Anyone know of a gadget review site for hackers?

Re: The MS Surface Pro

#19

Post by lnanek2 »

Alterlife wrote: post #10
iomike wrote: post #2

Microsoft shilling

Why would you say that? He likes it, and he's given good reasons for why he does. His wife likes it, I can understand the reasons why she does as well. You disagree with him, but you've given no reasons for it... Mr. Anti Microsoft drone. -- As a developer, I still wouldn't buy the device. Partly because it's on the upper end of my budget, but for the most part because of the downsides: heat, lack of serviceability,…

Gaming community has a lot less MS hate than other communities as well. Since you have to play Halo et. all if you want to have covered all the famous works, and they had the first good online community, etc..
Post reply on HN