First class day exerience

[LibbyLA]

I used my Surface Go for my first day of class yesterday and it's definitely a "go" for me. I've already given away my Toshiba Portege and I'm in the process of wiping my Surface Pro 3, Surface 3, and Dell Venue 8 Pro before finding new homes for them.

I teach a statistical programming class once a week in a 2 hour 50 minute block. For all but this first day of class, students watch videos and work exercises outside of class then come to class to ask questions and work on their assignments. The first day of class has to be real time, though.

The Go is the perfect size to fit on the multimedia kiosk in my classroom. The screen and mouse for the computer in the kiosk is there, so there is limited space on the kiosk for a portable computer. The Surface 3 wasn't bad, but the Go is a more comfortable fit.

I connected the overhead projector (VGA to mini DisplayPort) and a USB headset to the dock and the external speakers to the Go. (In the remaining classes, when I'm not recording video, I'll just be connecting the Go to the projector with a dongle so no need to haul the doc.)

I used Camtasia 2018 to record the lecture, two and a half hours total. I did basic editing and rendered the video on my desktop computer, not on the Go, although I have rendered some very short test videos on the Go.

I'm very happy with the Go's performance. It recorded the PowerPoint presentations, OneNote demonstration, and SAS demonstrations (nothing complicated, just very basic intro material) without a hitch. I particularly like that it handled being connected to a 1024 * 768 overhead projector without changing the screen resolution or scrambling my desktop icons. That may be a function of Windows 10, rather than the Go's video drivers, as the two computers I've been using are Win 7 Pro and Win 8.1. Still, it was nice not to experience screen shenanigans.

I think I've found my personal "just right" Windows portable. It's small and lightweight but the screen and keyboard are big enough for my needs without being too big.

 

[libra89]

Awesome! Thank you for reporting back. I'm glad that the Surface Go worked out so well for you.

 

[HeyCori]

That's really great to hear. People are always quick to ask if it can run Photoshop, but there is so much more software out that the Go can run, and so many scenarios where having a full Windows PC can come in handy.

 

[LibbyLA]

I don’t use SAS to process huge data sets or perform complex statistical analyses. I have run it on a Dell Mini 9 and a Toshiba Netbook. I have used the Dell Venue 8 Pro to score exams of 25 answers given by a thousand students, give or take. I didn’t care if it took 5 or 10 seconds on my desktop vs. 30 or 45 on the DV8P. I could score those exams while in the truck heading to our camp on Friday evening, get the results uploaded for the students, and the summary info to the two instructors, something I couldn’t do with my desktop.

It does fine with screen shots. It doesn’t take much longer for it to open Camtasia than it does on my desktop. I’m looking forward to inking on it rather than having to turn the projector off and raise the screen. I have Duet Display so I can use an iPad as a second screen if need be when I’m away from home. I wouldn’t want to compose a complex document with lots of screen shots in it, that’s for my desktop with dual portrait monitors is for.

For my purposes, this is a winner.