Month: May 2015

What do I use these devices for:

• Internet browsing
• e-mail (gmail for private, Lotus Notes for work)
• Programming with
  • Visual Studio
  • LabVIEW
  • Embedded devices (using MicroChip MPLAB, Eclipse)
  • Verilog (Quartus)
• Office suite (Word, Excel, Project, Visio)
• Photo capture and viewing
• Watching movies

So how can I do all this on the Surface versus the 2 devices before.

Before I purchased the Surface pro 3, I was using the following devices:

• Dell Precision M4600 laptop (workstation, mostly used for work)
• Apple iPad (first generation, mostly used for occasional browsing)

So the challenge: will the surface replace both of these. For that, I would have to buy a fairly powerful surface. It came down to the following version:

• i5 processor
• 8GB ram
• 256 GB SSD

The i5 is for most of my use as powerful as the i7 in the M4600. I would rarely use the quad core capabilities. The 8GB ram is sufficient for most tasks (except Virtual machine use). The 256 GB SSD was the biggest issue. But the 512GB version was just too expensive, and would still not suffice. So to compensate, I’m carrying a 2TB USB 3.0 hard drive.

Having used the Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for 6 months now, I wanted to start a blog to share my experience using this tablet/laptop to replace all my other devices for the daily computing needs.