Should I replace my laptop with a surface pro?

[anon(5370748)]

Ps CS4's icons will be fuzzy because it's not optimized for HiDPI. CS6 looks nice on it, but the icons are very small and the pen accuracy in the upper left corner is a bit wonky, which makes hitting the File menu tricky. Works perfectly with an external mouse or Wacom tablet (silly to think about it, but it works much better than the active digitizer for precision work). Also, there's no pressure sensitivity in Ps as of now with the built-in digitizer in the Pro. They're apparently working on it, but no timeframe yet. Aside from that, it runs CS6 shockingly well considering the specs. It's good for touchups and quick edits on the road and managed a 300MB 25-layer 5K x 3K image far better than I had expected, but doesn't replace a workstation for heavy-duty use. Lightroom is a joy to use on it. 128+64 is plenty for my needs, and then I just export each shoot when I get home to put on my dedicated drive/backup system. I don't feel comfortable running around with ALL of my photos on an easily-stealable device It doesn't render 1:1 previews nearly as quickly as my MacBook Pro, but it's faster than I remember LR3 ever running on any computer I ever installed it on. Compared to your AMD, it should be great.

No issue streaming video or listening to music, and playing the occasional game. Like link68759 said, you won't be running anything that really wants a dedicated GPU, but Jetpack Joyride, Bejeweled, Tetris, Peggle and stuff like that run perfectly, and if you're willing to take a bit of a graphics hit, you can edge by with other games.

I love my Pro

 

[AndyD33]

I'm a photographer who bought a Surface Pro. Like you, I wanted to be able to run Photoshop and other photographic apps such as Nikon Camera Control for tethered shooting and the Pocket Wizard Utility for configuring my flashes. It works perfectly. Just remember, its got a 10.6" screen at 1920x1080 res. Things will be tiny. With a mouse, I could use Photoshop on the go but It's not a substitute for a powerful desktop with multi monitors.

Yeah, I know it's a smaller screen. It *is* higher res than my laptop's screen though.

The main thing I'd use for photos would be Lightroom for dumping photos onto and doing basic touch ups. (eg. cropping/developing) Serious PS stuff would be done on my desktop.

How big is your current laptop's screen? The 10'' screen might be small for you. In many aspects, it's like a tablet.... You can't upgrade the ram or the HD. The microSd card is good for storage, but not great for installation of apps (this requires some mild hacking).

Current screen is 17" but not full HD. It's a bit too large for lugging around for my liking though, which is why I've been waiting on the surface pro to release.

As to upgrading the hard drive/RAM; I'd be getting the 128 so I'd have enough storage for a good while and then expand it with a microsd card. Which would be used for data storage, not programs.

I do not have a surface, but if you ever want to play a game made in the last couple years, that intelhd4000 is not going to make you happy.
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Like I said, I rarely play games on my laptop. At the most I'd just run Raven Shield, which I'm sure would run fine.

I *will* run Rogue Spear on it though, since it won't run on my desktop or current laptop. (doesn't play well/at all with ATI/AMD cards on Win7/8 but runs fine on Nvidia/Intel)

Anything beyond those would be only for my desktop.

Absolutely! I run Lightroom on my Pro 128 and it's great. Nice when you're shooting on location and need a quick touch up to show someone. When you're home just plug it into an external monitor and voila, you have everything you could ask for. I have had zero regrets about my purchase and I can't imagine going back.

Thanks for the info! I'd be using lightroom for basic cropping/developing and PS CS4 just once in a blue moon to mess with B&W/Color highlighting. The one thing that I'll miss regardless is WL Mesh. I loved the p2p syncing between my laptop and desktop of photos with it. Now I have to manually copy them over.

Thanks for the info guys! I'll definitely be saving up for one now.

For anyone who has gone to the MS Store grand opening events, do they have any discounts/deals/coupons that apply to the Surface Pro at them? There's one opening near me on the 13th of next month, which I have been considering going to.

 

[Spock45]

What were the default setting on Star Trek Online? Its the main game i play and seriously considering getting the pro but i still want decent game quality.

 

[Spock45]

I've loaded Portal 2, Star Trek Online and the older Myst URU...all play flawlessly at default settings. I wasn't expecting highest resolution and it works just fine.

What were the default setting on Star Trek Online? Its the main game i play and seriously considering getting the pro but i still want decent game quality.

 

[Jesse Spencer1]

Yes. It is great. I am working for an appraisal company. I am able to take it on inspections & then come back home plug it in to my Asus 3.0 USB docking station & run two external monitors + the surface screen to work from. I also have a 2TB external hard drive, external dvd burner, wireless mouse/keyboard & a Bose speaker system hooked up to it.

 

[Ted Ritsick]

If you want a major FPS increase, drop your resolution a bit. That helps me alot. I also play Battlefront 2 on mine alot and it runs great. You really don't need intricate graphics since the screen is so small if you're playing on the device screen alone.

 

[syc1984]

Is it possible to run COMSOL on the Surface Pro?