Why the Surface Pro 3 has quietly replaced my work PC

[megatronium]

I find myself doing most of my premiere work on my SP3. I like being able to watch TV while simultaneously editing a DVD for my church while lying in bed. If you think about it, that's pretty crazy!!

 

[Moonsurface]

Depends on what email address you use on your PC to log into OneNote. Corporate or Microsoft?

Personal Microsoft account I can log in to OneNote notebooks on my work PC (One Note 2010) so I can sync to stuff I had on my Surface but I can't sync new stuff while I'm back at work, only when I get home (or if I go to KFC fo rthe free wifi...lol) .

It's a large government agency. We only just got Win 7 laptops (Ones that are 2-3 years old as they'd been sitting in a warehouse for all that time...) I don't know anyone else who uses One Note/a Surface Managers have iphones as corporate phones and ipads for a few people. I'm not important enough to get either.

Yo, dude. Probably worth your while to talk to your IT department and upper management. The whole concept of BYOD along with cloud services, mobile connections, mobile security and Azure means or could mean, less out of pocket expense for the company since you are providing the computing power at your desk and on the road that the company now provides. Company apps and remote access would/could occur in some desktops/pages of Win 10 with the machine recording the time and charges for company business and then not pay when you are online as yourself with a Steam Connection playing whatever. I think most companies would be paying less at the outset and less (to none) in maintenance, parts and upgrades. And when you are signed in with ID/Pwd "A" you'll be not only on company time but to their cloud access and share files. When you log off and use ID/Pwd "B" you have access only to your personal cloud files, saved games and movies. Then when you leave the company they nuke the ID and Pwd and you are left with your machine to yourself.

Or do I have this whole concept wrong?

See above^^^

 

[kristalsoldier]

Nice article! To all intents and purposes, the SP3 has indeed replaced my laptop and desktop. At work, I leave my Univ. provided desktop machine untouched. At home, I use the desktop machine from time to time and I have not used my laptop now for over a year (ever since I got the Surface 2 (RT)). But my primary machine for doing work and everything else is the SP3. However, I will still keep a desktop machine just because of the expansion capabilities. This I do think will change when I get either the SP4 or the SP5 (more likely the SP4!). Why? Because I think a little more battery power is necessary and the next time I will opt for a higher RAM and SSD capability. 128 GB of SSD works well when one is always connected to the cloud, which is the case when I am at my home base. But when traveling with spotty mobile connectivity etc., a larger local HDD is important.

 

[unruledboy]

best windows hybrid ever

 

[andersostling]

I'm pretty sure that mine would replace my work PC too... but it's a personal device and cannot connect to the work LAN, .... so the power is pretty useless unless I want to use my phone to sync to the cloud...

Same problem here until I discovered that consultants are using a Citrix web gateway to access the corporate desktop. So I asked our IT to convert my "managed" desktop computer to a virtual machine. Two days later and I am now running the previous Win7 desktop with all corporate apps just like if I was at the desk.

How about network access? Since the Citrix gateway is accessible through a firewall, I can run the VM from home without any problems. At the office I simply turn on the WiFi sharing on my 4G WP Lumina 930 and off I go. No need to break any rules by connecting personal equipment to the wired network.

This is a wonderful situation since I don't need to bring along a corporate laptop besides my SP3. I work as a consultant and have a couple of other customers. To accceess their network I often use remote desktop connections (server administration mostly) either over WiFi directly or through a VPN gateway.

My SP3 is my best workhorse right now. I can get about 6 hours work out of it, so I need to bring my power cable. Otherwise the portability and flexibility is outstanding.

Regarding Windows 10: I was very near to sign up for the preview, but when I learned that most touch functions still are absent I killed that thought. Maybe in a couple of months.

 

[vulcanvillalta]

Very good article. Thanks for posting!

 

[Deryl McCarty]

I agree with everything you said, except:

Regarding Windows 10: I was very near to sign up for the preview, but when I learned that most touch functions still are absent I killed that thought. Maybe in a couple of months.

Uh oh, neither I nor my SP3 got that memo (about the loss of touch functionality in Win 10).

But I will not tell my one-week-since-converting-to-Win-10 SP3 about that "loss". That way it will still feel all 8 fingers and two arthritic thumbs without missing a beat just like 8.1. And I did not install it VM, but straight up.

I do recall that the one click and two click button functionality on the pen is temporarily missing with W10, but I can live with that until next month (please MS, I love the pen and One Note.) But touch functionality...no. Unless you are talking about the charms bar, in which case Win+C works. Although if a KB is not attached you can swipe from the right and the Charms bar shows up pretty as you please.

Could someone please forward the memo.

 

[andersostling]

I agree with everything you said, except:



Uh oh, neither I nor my SP3 got that memo (about the loss of touch functionality in Win 10).

But I will not tell my one-week-since-converting-to-Win-10 SP3 about that "loss". That way it will still feel all 8 fingers and two arthritic thumbs without missing a beat just like 8.1. And I did not install it VM, but straight up.

I do recall that the one click and two click button functionality on the pen is temporarily missing with W10, but I can live with that until next month (please MS, I love the pen and One Note.) But touch functionality...no. Unless you are talking about the charms bar, in which case Win+C works. Although if a KB is not attached you can swipe from the right and the Charms bar shows up pretty as you please.

Could someone please forward the memo.

Most articles I read said that this release was optimized for mouse/keyboard and not touch. I have no *memos* that support that, but most articles and blogs I read said the same thing. Better touch support will be added in a later update according to the same writers. Maybe I was dreaming

Besides that, the lack of pen button support will keep me back since I use OneNote a lot.