Graduate Student/Teacher Looking at SP4

[JDarrow86]

Hi!

I'm looking at purchasing a surface pro 4 for use as a personal device and as a teaching tool for a high school biology classroom. Are there any teachers that are currently using the device or would recommend the SP4? I am looking at the SP4 4gb 128 or the SP4 8gb 256. Would the 4gb have enough power? Also any good ideas for classroom use of the SP4?

 

[BillJ]

Hello and welcome to the forum!
I have a SP3 that I use to give lectures, and I make use of PowerPoint and OneNote particularly. Being able to annotate images that are displayed on a large screen is very handy indeed. A Surface Pro 4 would be able to do anything that a similarly outfitted laptop could do, and more!

As far as RAM, goes; 4 vs 8 gigs is a topic of many threads on this forum- you can search for these. The bottom line: more RAM is usually better, but only really necessary at this time if you are running applications that require it. 4 gigs are fine for usual document management; 8 or more are needed for intensive multitasking with complex applications. Good luck and enjoy!

 

[leeshor]

Welcome aboard @JDarrow86

I have been selling desktop systems with a base of 8GB for a long time now as the standard. With that said those are typically full time systems and it's hard for me to know much in advance what they may be running on that system. For that reason 8GB is a safe bet, for me. But my 4GB SP4 has run just fine with everything I've thrown at it and the most RAM I have seen being used to date was 55%. YMMV.

 

[Pjniez]

My feeling is that since both the RAM and the SSD are not upgradable, you should definitely get the most you can afford. I know the SP4 has a micro SD slot. So you could get more storage that way. But I deal with a lot of pictures and videos and don't want to be swapping in and out the SD cards from my cameras with an SD card that I'm using for expanded storage.