Questions about Surface Pro 2

[JustAGuy]

regarding your question for alternative memory

I would like to buy a Surface Pro 2 because some improvements have removed my resistance to Surface Pro 1, the most important being the extension of battery life.

Two matters still bother me.

If you opt for the version of Surface Pro 2 with say 128 GB flash memory installed, you don't have enough memory for a decent variety of installed programs. Should you manage to install your portfolio of programs, there probably won't be memory available for data (documents, photos, videos etc). You can opt for Skydrive, but that's about $100 for 200 GB per year, quite a hole in your pocket on a regular basis if you need at least 600 GB for your archive of files.

More installed flash memory comes at a very steep price, doubling the price of the Surface or worse. So you seem limited to the single USB port, to which you could add a USB hub, external hard drives, etc. This would mean lugging a lot of clumsy hardware around with the supposedly super-portable Surface Pro simply to gain memory.

Why only one USB port? Is there a slot for flash memory cards on the Surface Pro 2 you could use to extend your memory for data storage -- data to be transferred to a hard drive at home? How is one supposed to solve the whole problem of MEMORY when you buy the Surface Pro 2?

Another matter is how you attach a mouse. Is their a special Bluetooth mouse that won't require the use of the single USB port? The tiny mouse pad on the Surface does not seem suitable for fast and serious work.

Hi, I am also looking into the Surface Pro 2 as well as the ThinkPad Yoga through Lenovo. For Lenovo's Thinkpad Yoga. Costco offers the Thinkpad yoga without the digitizer pen but someone said any rubber tip stylus will still work for this model, just not a digitizer pen, but its currently $1199 at Costco.com and if you compare that 8gb RAM and 256 SSD with an 4th gen i7 vs the Surface Pro 2 with no keyboard, with stylus, and with 3 yr accidental coverage, you spend $22 more for the ThinkPad Yoga but get the actual keyboard with it and their keyboard is much cooler. The only reason I want the surface pro 2 myself is for school. I cant find another tablet/laptop that has the rear facing camera but I don't see that it can zoom in so it might almost be useless but I like the stylus pen.

I was told you can only put up to a 64 GB SDcard into the surface pro 2 when researching this model.

 

[TPadden]

Well pie in my face. It was still wrapped in the booklet still in box. Just did not really need to read it again, guess I was wrong, thanks guys.
Now that gives me around 540 gigs or so, that's including my 250 gigs trueimge 2014 cloud storage. Its so easy to make an image of my tablet drives and my desktop too. Backing them in there cloud service is also very good, can even get single files or folders from the images than having to get the whole thing. Has great backup features.

Thanks again guys.... off to set this up.

Cloud storage in the 100gb range really doesn't make any sense to me when I consider transfer times and cloud access requirements; particularly when USB 3.0 external drives in the TB range are so affordable. 64gb USB 3.0 thumb drives are another option I use before the cloud for file backup; I use the cloud for files I need to access from multiple devices not backup.

 

[JustAGuy]

Yes, they make a Bluetooth mouse they say would be good but it would be better if they just start adding at least 2-USB 3.0 ports to the device itself for those of us who use a trackball mouse and those aren't Bluetooth yet through Logitech. I also do not care for free things like 200GB free storage because it is not for life. It is only for a certain time. Your better off using a external hard drive to save things to. I bought a 1 TB from Costco (Seagate model) for $59

 

[Joypat]

Hi-speed WiFi external hard drives are slowly coming now, im planing on gettin one and that should indeed help getting you more storage.

 

[scadarick]

Well I have been working on the same idea ever since landing at a hospital for a few weeks. I have several Asus router's band they have there own usb port that your whole Network at home can use, just like having a cloud storage of your own, even my smart tv's can access it. Using a Seagate 2 terabit. Thats one way to go.