Why is there a photo of an external monitor with 3840x2160 and nothing is mentioned about it? Is it because it's just a hypothetical display that could be connected via the Mini DisplayPort, had it existed?
Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
51–60 of 255 posts
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#52As it happens I bought a second hand Surface Pro from ebay and it arrived today. Moving to it from a laptop thats a couple of years old, the Surface Pro is absolutely blowing me away. Faster than my old laptop, also acts as a tablet, using desktop applications via touch actually works, the pen is brilliant. The 128gb will be fine for me, because I've got used to living within about 120Gb.
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#53I like the Pro, but the non-Pro Surface doesn't strike me as any more competitive than last year's model. It's heavier than it's main competitor with lower resolution and orders of magnitude fewer apps. And it does nothing to address the wave of great mini tablets. Maybe I'm alone here, but I don't want to hold anything heavier than a pound for more than a few minutes.
Also, with iOS 7 rolling out, MS is going to have a lot harder time playing the "fresh new interface" card.
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still use windows but most of my day is spent in putty shells, git bash, phpstorm, pycharm, and and dbForge. It's not so bad. I'll probably move to a surface pro 2 with 256 or 512 from my ~3 year old Dell Latitude.
I forgot to mention vagrant as well. Map some directories and spend most of the work day in vagrant.
Yeah, Vagrant seems like one of the best options. But buying a computer that will require me to run everything inside of a VM feels a little messy. Although maybe it'll force me to compartmentalise my projects properly...
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#55> Another cover that's totally out of left field is the "Surface Music Kit," a Touch Cover with a mixing deck instead of a keyboard. All the new Touch Covers are pressure sensitive, so for the Music kit, the harder you hit the Touch Cover, the louder the sound plays.
I'm not a music person but pressure-sensitive controls seems like the next frontier for touch devices (that, and Kinect-type cam interfaces)...I was going to say, "the iPad will likely fall behind here"...but it looks like third-party vendors are adding pressure-capability via Bluetooth: http://www.tuaw.com/2013/08/20/wacom-unveils-pressure-sensit...
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#56It looks better than the original Surface, and seems to address the main issues. The better battery will be a huge advantage. Not a fan of the thinner keyboard though, the travel isn't too great anyway with the S Pro 1. Also, who the fuck cares about back-lighting?
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#57Dear Microsoft: Out of ARM and x86, choose one. Just choose one. For the love of god, choose ONE. Can you imagine Apple, or anyone else, deliberately releasing two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software? It is inconceivable, and for good reason. MS cannot make decisions. That's what will kill them, long term. Just choose one!!
I used to agree with you, however their strategy makes a lot of sense when you realize that the desktop is just going to disappear from Windows all together. I think that in the future it'll literally just be treated like any other app, and you'll be able to download 'nix desktop apps alongside the Windows desktop app. Honestly with what they're doing with Hyper-V, this is becoming more and more plausible.
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#58Better performance might help this sell, but the second I saw the "Surface Music Kit," I got excited. As a DJ, I need to carry around an expensive laptop to perform. The iPad does not have any impressive apps to DJ (at least not professionally), so I'd be VERY interested if they focused on the niche music market here. Surface 2 + Kinect/Leap + superb DJing app + Spotify-esque music supply = very happy musicians. Unfo…
I'm pretty sure all the best dj apps are available for windows pc...
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#59Dear Microsoft: Out of ARM and x86, choose one. Just choose one. For the love of god, choose ONE. Can you imagine Apple, or anyone else, deliberately releasing two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software? It is inconceivable, and for good reason. MS cannot make decisions. That's what will kill them, long term. Just choose one!!
Or better yet, they could stay the course and realize that architectures are going to have to be abstracted over in the decades to come.
Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2
#60Surface Pro with 512gb of space and 8gb ram, if I decide to move country again next year I'm replacing my desktop with a Surface.
I'm a college student studying engineering. I can say that replacing my laptop with my Surface Pro has been amazing. I'm virtually 100% paperless, with all my notes being taken with OneNote (seriously amazing!) and textbooks saved as PDFs. It's also awesome that the Pro has enough power for me to do real dev work on it. So make the switch! You won't be disappointed!
I'm a student also, but I've been using the iPad for this. I don't take any notes on the iPad itself because the courses I need to take notes on are mathematical, so I simply write on paper and then when I come back home I scan it and append the scans to an evergrowing PDF file that is synced to my iPad.
I'm looking for a replacement for my iPad 2, but I can't settle on anything because all the non-iPad tablets have a widescreen, which I believe is poor choice when it comes to reading PDF textbooks.
Right now I read my PDF textbooks in landscape mode, and I use GoodReader to crop the margins, and everything looks fabulous. I'm worried that if I move to a widescreen tablet, I will end up with less vertical space and wasted horizontal space ("black bars" due to incompatible aspect ratios of the page and the screen).
How's your experience when it comes to reading these kind of textbooks? Any chance you could provide screenshots of how these textbooks look like when you read them in landscape mode?