Surface Pro 4 Review
After some debate, I bought a Surface Pro 4 over the holidays. This was a bit of a gamble since I haven’t used Windows in many many years, but the time was ripe to try something new. I’ve had about a month with it now and I’m really enjoying it. Herewith some thoughts:
Why?
I had two overlapping motivations for the Surface Pro experiment:
First, despite several attempts to get my iPad to work as a general purpose device I just couldn’t pull it off: both physical keyboards I tried for the iPad were meh for different reasons; and further, even with iOS’s vast adoption, there are still many things I want to do for which I need a “desktop OS”.
Second, I was changing jobs and wanted cleaner work/personal device separation. Since the beloved iPad couldn’t fit the bill … time for something new!
At the same time, I was mourning the tantalizing promise of a laptop/tablet hybrid potential. I was on the fence about what to get, but Apple’s anemic MacBook announcements of October 2016 dried up any hope of an answer from One Infinite Loop.
I took the plunge.
User Experience
I really wondered how I would end up using a device with a full keyboard and full touch screen. I’ve seen stories that suggest people either use the keyboard, full stop, or they use a touch screen full stop, but that no one would ever use a touch screen on a keyboarded device. Quoth Steve Jobs himself: “touch screens want to be horizontal, hence pads”.
I love it. I switch back and forth freely. If I’m doing something that’s largely keyboard driven, well, yeah, I’m using the keyboard. And if my hands are on the keyboard, I still like keyboard shortcuts as much as ever.
But for things that I would have done mostly with a mouse, e.g. navigating some web site, or browsing online news etc — after a brief transitional period, I’ve found that touching the screen is so much more natural than fishing around for the mouse or touchpad. (I’ve even caught myself reaching up to the dual monitors I have at work to scroll with a touch. If only.)
And even for classic hybrid keyboard / mouse, e.g. development in a graphical IDE, when I run out of keyboard shortcuts, I find I’m reaching up to the screen with a touch, not down to my touchpad. It’s been an interesting transition.
Basically, touch screen on a laptop has just about obsoleted my use of a mouse. I’d be happy if all my screens were touch screen.
Windows, oh my
Over the years I have bounced between the major OS families: started out with an Apple II, moved on to Macs for most of the 90s, used Windows at work for a half dozen years (with a healthy dose of cygwin), then switched to Linux on the desktop (home and work) for a number of years. And then the last 4 years or so, I’d been all Mac.
So my impressions of Windows were a bit rusty (and frankly, negative): I’m coming around though. I still have Unix in my finger tips, but realistically modern Windows is entirely usable, both for casual purposes, and for developer purposes. I still have a lot to learn about PowerShell before I’m anywhere near as proficient in it as I am in zsh or the like, but I have to say: everything is there, and it’s cathedral-like consistency is a contrast to the bazaar of Unix tools. On top of that, next-gen Windows tools make a developer’s life super pleasant: between Chocolatey, Docker for Win, and IntelliJ, I’m good to go.
Also, let’s talk about stability. Zero crashes in the last month. No chance to make ‘blue screen of death’ jokes at all. During that same time my work Mac has either locked up or tangled itself up in beachballs three or four times, requiring reboots. Windows 10 has been very stable for me.
Microsoft Ecosystem
On the other hand, the Microsoft ecosystem has a lot of catching up to do: it feels like sourceforge to Apple’s github. A couple irritants:
- By buying online, I got subscribed to numerous emails. That’s expected these days, but the unsubscribe process is heinous: multiple clicks and then it takes weeks to process. Actually I’m not totally sure if it did process, as I just started tagging them as spam. It’s 2017, Microsoft, I expect single-click unsubscribe, and zero messages after that click.
- Windows 10 comes festooned with plugs, pre-installed crap and advertisements. I’ve come to expect the pre-installs these days, but the myriad ways they’re trying to plug their wares … sigh. I started turning things off ad hoc, but realized I just need to take an hour and sweep through everything, with a little help from the internet.
Small Things
Some miscellaneous good and bad things:
- Face recognition: I actually really like the feature of unlocking based on facial recognition. It’s both a cool gee-whizzy feature, and while it’s probably not going to pass muster for corporate InfoSec, it’s enough security for me (albeit for a device that rarely leaves the house).
- The folding back: the Surface Pro has a detachable keyboard and no sturdy hinge like a laptop to set the screen angle. Instead the back of the screen has a hinged back so you can select the angle. This works really well actually, and with the light weight of the Surface Pro, it’s nice for couch computing, etc.
- I almost never use the Surface Pro as a tablet, i.e. with keyboard detached. It’s just a little big for my tablet use (primarily in bed browsing / viewing) for which I still use the iPad. When the iPad eventually dies, though, I’ll certainly be open to tablet-sized devices in this family.
- It’s 2017: what laptop vendor has magnetic-attach power plugs? Microsoft. (Yes, I’m in the camp which is utterly mystified by Apple’s march into the world of dongles. And I likewise lament the passing of MagSafe.)
That’s all I’ve got. If you’re curious, consider trying one out. It’s worked for me.
