Liking my new Microsoft Surface
I managed to get a new Microsoft Surface on the weekend and it’s an amazing little piece of kit. I like that it still has all the regular capabilities of Windows as you’d expect but with a reimagined UI. I especially like that you can still have account switching. This is great that then the family can share the machine and they are not messing up my stuff and for the kids I can just put on the apps that I want them to have under their profile.
I do a lot of typing so I like the feel of the Type Cover and have a few plane trips coming up so I’m looking forward to have that on the plane. Which leads me to another great thing I had music that I’d ripped from my CD’s over the years in WMV so I didn’t want to take any sort of conversion to MP3 or other formats so this all comes together. I have a Zune HD which is a great little device and at home Media Center runs our living room TV and XBOX in the games room so for me the Surface really complete the my at home and mobile experience. Oh and I do have a Windows phone so yes my music I can use on this but because I normally fly with my Zune mostly my music I listen on the Zune. The Surface I picked up has 64gb which is plenty. So I noticed after setting up a few profiles for different family members and a work account I’m left with about ~45Gb. But I like that the Surface has a microSDXC card which is great as we have Nook tablets which also has microSD cards so movies I had on cards which I can also use in the Surface. My movies I had as MP4 so that works fine across the devices as they live on a Windows Home Server and so can access them from the XBOX and the Media Center. I did upgrade are home computer with Windows 8 on the weekend and got the Free download for the Media Center you can get it here till Jan 31, 2013. https://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/feature-packs
One thing I’ve seen on report on the Surface is that it’s only Wi-Fi I don’t think this is too much of a limitation because with the Windows Phone you can do internet sharing so can connect the table to the phone for data when not near Wi-Fi. So when I travel I think this will come in handy.
I do like that it has Office 2013 preview especially OneNote. I use OneNote every minute of the day and because I have a few different computers my OneNotes are synced on SkyDrive so for me opening up OneNote one Surface a few minutes out of the box and having all my work notes there was awesome experience. I also like that there is a Remote Desktop app in Windows 8 and for Windows 8 RT so that is going to come in handy for work use as well. I haven’t tested the external screen yet at the HD cables had all sold out when I purchased my Surface so I’ll pick up when of those when I can. Also the Lync and Skype apps are there so they seem to work well. I haven’t tested with a headset plugged into the USB port on the Surface so I’ll give that a go in the next couple of days.
Anyway this isn’t really anything Dynamics related which is usually what I blog about but this was the first time I was excited about getting a new computer for a very, very long time. And it gave me an excuse to test out Windows Live Write on Windows 8 so now I no excuse to get back to blogging.
Cheers
Lachlan