Patterns start to Surface
Back in October I bought the Microsoft Surface RT and popped the iPad on ebay. 7 months later I thought it might be good to look back to see if it was the right choice for me.
Work
Microsoft Surface is touted as a work device in part, easy to see as it has Office installed, but does that really become a reality?. I used my iPad a fair bit for surfing at home and it's a great device for doing just that, but I soon discovered that after a few attempts I didn't bother taking it into work, the same cannot be said for the Surface. First of all, I used it as part of a BYOD trial at work in combination with 'Citrix Receiver' and for a few days I actually managed to get away without taking my laptop out of my bag. The combination of great battery life, Microsoft Office, USB slots (to copy colleagues presentations etc) and something simple as the ability to plug in a mouse and keyboard made it possible to almost rely on it as my only device. Since then, I have started to use it as a note taking device (using OneNote of course) and in this again it excels. It seem natural moving from a computer to Surface and back several times a day that I simply don't think of it as a tablet anymore, its just a smaller PC.
As a work device, I think the Surface RT delivers on most of my requirements throughout the day and on a number of occasions it has been the only device I have needed for the day. If it was a Surface Pro and domain joined then I would imagine it could then replace my laptop. If it had 'proper' Outlook then it would be perfect. This simply was never and option with my iPad so I think it's one point to Surface for this one.
Rest and Play
Being able to do Excel and PowerPoint is great for work but it's not the sort of thing you do at home, not if you're normal at least. So does the Microsoft Surface work at home?
As a surfing device, there really isn't much to go wrong. On occasion I have to restart the Surface but I can says the same for the iPad to be honest, it's when you start to look beyond surfing that again the Surface RT comes into its own.
As a 'power user' of technology, I tend to switch my home PC most days for photo editing, garmin data uploading or similar activities. For this reason, I can't see Microsoft Surface RT replacing my PC entirely but it certainly performs admirably for all consumption tasks and a number of 'creation' tasks but doesn't do everything I need it to. The most interesting 'average user' is perhaps Ilona though.
As an 'average user', Ilona says she uses the home pc 'once maybe twice' a week and that's to either find older emails or to edit documents as she hasn't got used to the keyboard on the Surface RT quite yet. Listening to that, I could see that with a bit of practice and some changing of settings she could almost entirely stop using the home PC, she could edit her work documents on the Surface RT, upload cake pictures using the USB port and print using any standard printer. Food for thought indeed as we move to an era where upgrading the traditional home PC is not a given.
Any regrets? What's next?
Almost everyone I speak to asks me if I like the Surface RT and if I regret selling the iPad. There are many ways I could explain why I think its better for me but I tend to always revert to the same phrase which sums up the experience very well, that is "What the Surface lacks in finesse compared to the iPad it makes up for actually being useful". For all the quirks it might have at time, they are outweighed by the fact I can use it for a lot more things than my iPad ever was used for .... typing this 'long' blog post is but one example.
In my future I can see a Surface Pro (or similar full Windows 8 tablet device) replacing the home pc/laptop. As the home laptop is working perfectly at the minute I cant really sell to myself the idea of replacing it. However when it breaks, I am 100% sure it would be replaced with a full Windows 8 tablet which not only can sit in the home office for 'content creation' but equally move around the house for general use.
Anyone fancy lending me a Surface Pro?