Advice for buying a Surface

[Deb20]

Hello!
I am currently looking into buying a Surface. I was hoping to have a bit of help on which one I should purchase. I am currently a web designer and need plenty of space for Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, other design programs, also iTunes and music. What size do you think I should get? Thank you so much.

 

[EMINENT]

Hello!
I am currently looking into buying a Surface. I was hoping to have a bit of help on which one I should purchase. I am currently a web designer and need plenty of space for Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, other design programs, also iTunes and music. What size do you think I should get? Thank you so much.

Pro 2 and storage is of no concern if you have less than 200gb as that comes free with Onedrive. If you need the space for programs, then get one accordingly to your must have program needs.

Personally, I have all my music, photos, docs, stored on Onedrive, accessible anywhere there's a connection. I use an external backup of course and videos are on an external too that get served from my desktop through Plex. I only have the Surface 2 because I don't need the grunt and weight of pro with me all the time. For all the minor work I do, I remote into my desktop.

No itunes for me and I will never install it again. I can stream anything through Onedrive and Xbox music scrapes my music folder. Same on my Lumia 920 with Skymusic app.

 

[oion]

Just keep in mind that the Onedrive 200GB deal is only for one year, and after that you have to pay a subscription. Having a portable HDD if you have particularly large and many files may be more efficient and/or cheaper, depending on your needs.

 

[tarrant64]

Just keep in mind that the Onedrive 200GB deal is only for one year, and after that you have to pay a subscription. Having a portable HDD if you have particularly large and many files may be more efficient and/or cheaper, depending on your needs.

Just wanted to correct one thing about that statement - the 200GB OneDrive deal is good for 2 years, not just 1. Also - the subscription costs for OneDrive are amongst the lowest out there, with that same 200GB only costing $100/year (under $10/month - relatively inexpensive).

I would recommend the Pro 2 for your needs, and at least 128GB. If you can manage OneDrive cloud storage and 128GB local storage appropriately you should be able to manage just fine. If you feel you need a bit more local storage opt for the 256GB/8GB ram combo. It's pricey, often out of stock, but I think does provide a lot of bang for the buck in a small form factor. Make no mistake - there are certainly other laptops you can buy that will have similar if not better specs for the same money, but they won't be a Surface, nor have some of the best pen/WACOM support you can get in a tablet.

I just upgraded from a Surface Pro 64GB to Surface Pro 2 128GB, will be selling my Pro 64GB soon. I have to tell you, it's a rock solid machine. Absolutely not the fastest out there, nor the best for gaming, but it does happen to just about everything well which is why I think it's a solid machine.

I personally do Adobe Lightroom (RAM and CPU intensive), Steam Games (Borderlands 2 - OK), iTunes runs OK, just about everything I do runs great.

 

[oion]

Oops, you're right about the 2 years. The main idea to get across is that it's still a sub service.... (on a 3rd party server with fine print about file transfer limits and such, to boot)... but cloud definitely is convenient.

 

[tarrant64]

Yeah - it's still a good service. The limitations I can currently think of are 2gb file sizes - I don't think there are any related to download/upload caps or anything like that. The 2GB file size limitation isn't permanent, and they were supposed to be looking at increasing that gap. At the time it was designed, several years ago, it was thought that a 2GB file was huge. Well, today that's just not the case. .

 

[revmike]

Get the biggest one that you can afford.

 

[CrippsCorner]

What's the price difference between the 128Gb & 256Gb versions again? Seeing as though now (as per other thread in this section) you can now get 128Gb micro SD cards for £120, I wonder if it's cheaper getting the smaller one and chucking that card in?

 

[tarrant64]

Yeah I think so. The 64gb and 128gb combo's make more sense with that new addition. I think the price difference is roughly $200-$300 - but the bonus of paying that much more with the Surface Pro 2 is an additional 8GB of ram, that's really it.

I was hoping that 128gb microsd card would come in around 125-150. But they didn't price it to make the Surface Pro users happy, can't blame them. First one to market? Put whatever price tag you want on it, people will buy it - lol.

 

[CrippsCorner]

True. I think a lot of people would have gone for a 128Gb & 8Gb RAM version if it were made...

Perhaps now, with the availability of the 128Gb micro SD cards, even a 64Gb & 8Gb RAM Surface Pro 2 version might sell if the price was right.

 

[wditters]

Hello!
I am currently looking into buying a Surface. I was hoping to have a bit of help on which one I should purchase. I am currently a web designer and need plenty of space for Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Flash, other design programs, also iTunes and music. What size do you think I should get? Thank you so much.

With Photoshop and Dreamweaver, 8Gb RAM would be a lot more important that storage size so if anything I would go with the Pro2 8Gb RAM as a minimum. True, SSD storage is fast and allows for relatively quick memory swapping but ultimately, you will want to optimize your performance on processing. From that perspective, 256Gb storage should be sufficient as you will commonly limit local use to work in progress. Any intermediate or final products can be stored in either offline archives (USB disks) or online archives (Onedrive) anyway. If you want to keep those files local as well, then go for the 512Gb option. That's what I did and I have not regretted it so far ...