Microsoft Surface (64GB with Black Touch Cover) For Sale Online
Best Review: Microsoft Surface (64GB with Black Touch Cover) - This is a very well designed and well manufactured tablet that has great looks, some very nice tablet apps (including most of the biggies you could want: Hulu, Netflix, Fruit Ninja!). Where it really shines is when you need to stop playing with a toy and get some real work done. That's when the kickstand and the touch cover(or better yet, the type cover), plus the legacy windows desktop save your bacon.The included version of Office 2013 gets the job done in real office, not some lousy app store wanna-be. That means you get perfect compatibility with work documents, say, on your sharepoint server workflow. You can't run macros/VBA on this version, and there are a few things you can't do in excel on this version, but I am a very VBA/macro-heavy user of Office and a poweruser of excel, and honestly, I don't miss that stuff that much. (If you must have it, get the ultrabook version, the Surface Pro, which will run regular office, in January).There are a lot of self-pleasuring gadget-geek reviews out there who make much of the dichotomy between the legacy desktop and the tile start screen. They seem to think that you and I are idiots, and that we can't pick the right tool for the right job. (I submit that folks whose "work" involves nothing more than writing about gadgets don't have enough real work to understand what a gadget is really good for, but I digress.)The legacy desktop is also very handy for networking and other file-handling jobs, along with computer management via the deeper geek tools like the computer management panel and more. You don't ever have to mess with this stuff if you don't want to, but if you need to, it's there. (For instance, by using the disk management console, you can set up a removable micro SD card to be accessed as if it's a regular part of the music/video/picturs library, meaning you can add 64 gigs of space to those libraries for a mere $50 bucks. You can use the removable storage without adding the location to the library too, but I find it more useful that way.)Because the surface has a full USB hub as well as seemless integration with your home windows network, you can use it as a real tool rather than a gimped toy like other tablets. Got a camera full of raw and jpeg files to review? Stick the card into a reader (or if you want, the Micro SD slot), and an import is automatically initiated by the OS. (Or, you can connect the camera, and because it's windows, and has 18 gazillion drivers, it will simply access the camera. The Surface RT found and communicated with my wierd Fujifilm Finepix x100 with no problem.) Take a peek at the photos, trash the ones you don't want (the metro photos ap only shows jpegs, which is fine, but you can use the desktop side to access the RAW files.) Oh, and you can also install RAW file codecs using windows update on the RT if you want to look at your Canon or other Tiff-based RAW files. Try that with another tablet.Done looking? Send them to your NAS with a simple drag and drop. Or write yourself a batch file to do it if you like. Yeah, you can do those things because it's got the geeky side of windows.As much as I appreciate that side of the OS, I still spend most of the time on the metro side, where there are plenty of decent apps and more every day. On that side, the OS found and installed a working driver for my LOUSY brother network laser printer and I was sending it files in no time. This thing actually finds network devices and installs drivers for them before you even go to look for them. It found my samsung TV in the basement, even. I don't know what it thinks it can do with the TV, but it found it and checked out the possibilities in the background.Integration with stuff like Xbox is amazing. Looking at photos on your surface? Send them to the big TV via Xbox with a quick swipe to the charms.The photo hub is basic but nice, and integrates onboard photos, facebook, skydrive, and flickr. It will even incorporate photos from the libraries of your windows 7 machines if they have the same MSFT login. Again, this was an automatic thing that I found very nice, although I had to shut that off on mine, because my desktop's pictures library is attached to an NAS with a couple hundred thousand images, more than enough to choke the surface's 64 gigs.The people hub is decent but needs improvement to be on par with the Windows phone people hub. Mail is a bit better, but no todos yet, again, behind the same program on windows phone. I expect that stuff will come soon. Xbox music is a great service, and it keeps artists and the collection synced nicely across my phone and windows 7 desktop. There are some other really great windows 8 apps like the weather app, travel (gorgeous images and great first-look info on lots of destinations.) I'm having trouble warming up to the maps application. Again, it feels not quite as polished as the maps app on windows phone. Remote desktop works great, and there's already Teamviewer if you need to hit a machine on another network. (No cisco anyconnect VPN as of now, and Cisco and MSFT are feuding about whether or not it can be done for RT.)The biggest annoyances for me are occasional "stuck key" type errors from the keyboard even when I'm not pressing a key. A quick disconnect takes care of that. There are occasional hiccups with apps as well, usually when I forget to shut down and have a dozen of them running at once. All in all, I'd say apps crash on the surface about as frequently as I crash apps on the iPad 3, well, before that became the 3 year-old's new toy.I'd say ignore most of those tech geek reviews, because they don't really get it. Someone who tells you that the platform is limited because there's no spotify hasn't played with it enough to know that there's a service that's arguably better already included. Ditto those who complain about a lack of facebook app -- it's wrapped into the people hub (along with twitter, linkedin, skype, messenger). Moreover, Microsoft has already sold more than 40 million windows 8 licenses, which means developers are going to be producing a ton more windows 8 apps, because the audience for them is already enormous.I was considering holding out for the Surface Pro to take advantage of full windows 8, the ability to use legacy programs, plus inking via the pen, but I don't think I'm going to go that route now that I have the RT. The pro, which runs a laptop chip, will have a laptop's battery life. The RT goes a whole day of intermittant use for me and never gets below half a charge. It's thinner and lighter than the pro will be, and it does almost everything I need. For the few applications that require more horsepower, I simply remote in to another windows machine and get it done that way.I think this is an underappreciated device that deserves a serious look from anyone who wants the conveniences of a tablet, but the ability to get some real work done when necessary.
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Buying Microsoft Surface (64GB with Black Touch Cover) For Sale Online
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