New member: A few thoughts

[Lorenzo B.]

Hi all,

I have just subscribed after buying an SP4 which will replace my aging 2011 MBA (11"/i7/4gb/250gb).
I decided to take the jump after looking at almost every ultrabook/portable out there.
My mind was almost set on a DELL XPS 13, then I bumped on a local store's very aggressive offer (SP4 i5/4gb/128gb/typecover + pen included -30% of the tablet-only street price), and knew I could not skip that one.

The first approach was not a very good one, since the system was plagued with driver-related bugs. A ton of software/firmware updates later the situation has improved dramatically, and now I can say that I am really very satisfied,
Operating Systems-wise I have never had any particular preference (well no... I used to love BeOs...), and therefore can work indifferently on MacOS, Windows or Linux. But the experience I am getting with this machine is something totally new.
I use Evernote a lot to collect clippings, bits of informations and notes which, I will mash together in a single file/spreadsheet. On other systems this has never been an hassle-free operation, the SP4 is giving me a simplicity and freedom of use that I find refreshing.
As I had an old copy of Office 2013 lying around I decided to give it a go, although I usually prefer other suites to get my work done. Well, I have discovered yesterday that I can use the SP4 pen to annotate/highlight/modify any file that I have ever produced with Office, save it on Google Drive and retrieve it, complete with the said notes/highlights and such, on any other device I will use to access GD.
To cut a long story short, my SP4 is enabling me to skip a lot of little annoying routines I have built through the years, to circumvent the limitations that other systems had imposed on my workfkows. Moreover, I have started using it even when I'm home (to watch Sky movies and series, to draw, play on Steam...), thus rendering useless the rig I had assembled to cover my gaming/leisure needs. In one move the SP4 has been replacing my work laptop, my home computer, my Xbox 360 and my couch-potato-tablet. I of course have had to buy a beefy card (Sandisk Ultra SDXC 200gb), but now I'm fully covered, and I think I will be good for a while.

 

[hughlle]

Welcome Lorenzo.

Glad you're having a good experience. Given your thoughts on annotation, evernote etc, you might want to give office/onenote/onedrive a google.

 

[bluegrass]

Glad the SP4 is working out for you, especially with the small amount of disk space and memory. You obviously work off of an external USB disk drive. Just in case you're not aware of it, there are many clouds out there. Apple pushes their clouds, Microsoft offers OneDrive, which I use and there are probably a dozen others out there including the one I'm not familiar with that you use. Thank you for showing us a positive report you've given us with your new SP4.

 

[Lorenzo B.]

Welcome Lorenzo.

Glad you're having a good experience. Given your thoughts on annotation, evernote etc, you might want to give office/onenote/onedrive a google.

Helo Huglle thanks for chiming in. I have been an Evernote user since its inception a few years ago. As such I have thousands of documents thar I rely on quite heavily for my work. Since I cannot aford loosing it and One Note is still not a mature application (in that it crashes constantly, at least with me), I'm going to stick with what I have, all the more now that Evernote for Windows has reached the same qualitative level of its MacOs/Android counterparts. I also use Google Drive a lot. I gave One Drive a spin but did not find any reason to use it as a replacement to a product which works very well and suits my needs perfectly.

 

[Lorenzo B.]

Glad the SP4 is working out for you, especially with the small amount of disk space and memory. You obviously work off of an external USB disk drive. Just in case you're not aware of it, there are many clouds out there. Apple pushes their clouds, Microsoft offers OneDrive, which I use and there are probably a dozen others out there including the one I'm not familiar with that you use. Thank you for showing us a positive report you've given us with your new SP4.

Hi Bluegrass. As per my post I compensate the small amount of space on my SSD with a 200gb microSD on the SP4 dedicated slot. Right now, with all my documents/data and apps fully loaded I still have 90gb of free space on C: and 150 gb on D:, more than enough to keep me going without having to lug around external disks and such.