{"id":2554,"date":"2014-03-22T20:27:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-23T03:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brainlitter.com\/?p=2554"},"modified":"2014-03-22T20:27:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-23T03:27:53","slug":"7-reasons-i-love-windows-8-1-and-my-surface-pro-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regroove.ca\/brainlitter\/2014\/03\/22\/7-reasons-i-love-windows-8-1-and-my-surface-pro-2\/","title":{"rendered":"7 Reasons I love Windows 8.1 and my Surface Pro 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love my Surface Pro 2 and Windows 8.1<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Windows XP End of Service\/Life is upon us (April 8th specifically)<\/a> and it got me thinking about what I love most about my current platform (Surface Pro 2<\/a> and Windows 8.1).\u00a0 Windows XP was good, Windows 7 was great, Windows 8 is something I love.\u00a0 Touch is king<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"surface\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For me, here’s why\u2026<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Full Desktop Replacement<\/strong>: I have a killer rig these days for when I need power and peripherals.\u00a0 I have my Surface Pro tablet in its docking station. While there, I have everything I could ever want\/need.\u00a0 2 external displays (meaning I have 3 screens total!). One of them is a 30″ LCD that needs a video card that can power its mega resolution and the Surface Pro 2 now supports that.\u00a0 Awesome.\u00a0 Further, I have a full wireless keyboard, mouse, speakers, external USB devices including Scanner (for scanning documents into SharePoint of course).\u00a0 This is a full desktop PC, but the size of a couple slices of pizza when portability is required.<\/li>\n
  2. It Doubles as my Mobile\/Consumer Device<\/strong>: But I also have that exact same system, (data and all) that I can pluck out of my docking station and carry over to the couch and continue working away, with touch screen or pen.\u00a0 It\u2019s a beauty, eh?\u00a0 I have an iPad and I love how it feels.\u00a0 It is great for “consuming” information and games, but when I need to do “real work” it doesn\u2019t cut it and goodness I’ve tried (I probably hare $1000 invested in apps, all cute).<\/li>\n
  3. OneNote and the OneNote App<\/strong>: Can’t live without it. Nothing more to say about that!<\/li>\n
  4. 10 Point Capacitive Touchscreen and Digital Pen<\/strong>: I’ve got a touch screen Lenovo Yoga as well.\u00a0 It’s cool and all, but the Surface Pro has a true capacitive touchscreen (10 point).\u00a0 This means I can draw and write and apply pressure (soft\/hard).\u00a0 Don’t be fooled, many touchscreen devices treat every gesture the same, the Surface Pro offers much more than that.\u00a0 I’ve also got the handwriting of a doctor.\u00a0 Brutal.\u00a0 But the Surface Pro and Windows 8.1 “gets me”. \ud83d\ude09<\/li>\n
  5. My data is Safe and Accessible<\/strong>:\u00a0\u00a0 OneDrive<\/a> (formerly SkyDrive) stores and syncs all my personal stuff across all 3 of my devices.\u00a0 Meanwhile, OneDrive for Business (formerly SkyDrive Pro) keeps all my business content synched across my devices and across our team.<\/li>\n
  6. Virtual Machines on the Go<\/strong>: My Surface Pro 2 has 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM.\u00a0 That means I have enough juice and jam to run a virtual machine while I’m working away.\u00a0 As a SharePoint Consultant, I’m always VPN’ing into customer environments and I don’t like to get my chocolate mixed in with their peanut butter.\u00a0 So I keep the various VPN software running inside a dedicated virtual machine so that my main Windows experience is untarnished by 3rd party VPN software that likes to go rogue and own my desktop experience<\/li>\n
  7. Remote Desktop App<\/strong>: I’m a consultant and I’m a business man.\u00a0 That means I have accounting crap to do and my accounting software is QuickBooks (don’t ask me for an endorsement, it’s just what we’ve always used\u2026).\u00a0 Now that we have a Windows 2012 Server configured to publish the whacky apps we don’t want to manage everywhere else, I can still do QuickBooks without muddying up my local experience. And I can connect to it from my other devices as well.\u00a0 More on that here…<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Everything I need. At my desk, on my couch, at work, at lunch and at play.<\/p>\n

    Leave a comment below and let me know what you think is the single most important reason to upgrade from Windows XP, or your favourite new feature of Windows 8.1 and you will be entered to a random draw for a $100 Microsoft Store Gift Card. Winners will be selected on Monday, April 14th.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I love my Surface Pro 2 and Windows 8.1 Windows XP End of Service\/Life is upon us (April 8th specifically) and it got me thinking about what I love most about my current platform (Surface Pro 2 and Windows 8.1).\u00a0 Windows XP was good, Windows 7 was great, Windows 8 is something I love.\u00a0 Touch … <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2555,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[11,188,157,350],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n7 Reasons I love Windows 8.1 and my Surface Pro 2 - Brainlitter - Inside the mind of Sean Wallbridge<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/regroove.ca\/brainlitter\/2014\/03\/22\/7-reasons-i-love-windows-8-1-and-my-surface-pro-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"7 Reasons I love Windows 8.1 and my Surface Pro 2 - 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