2. How often do Surface Pro users REALLY use the Surface Pro without a keyboard? It comes with a keyboard with a trackpad by default and that's how people tend to use it.
2. It does NOT come with a keyboard by default.
You could spend $2,700 and get a powerful desktop
and a lightweight ultrabook/2-in-1.
And you'd get the best of both worlds... with both computers doing the best they can.
Instead of the "jack of all trades... master of none" Surface Pro.
True, and how mobile is that? I travel a lot and I want to carry my desktop with me. I don't want to be syncing back and forth. With the Surface Pro, when I'm at the desk it is my desktop machine and my tablet for note taking. I plug it into a dock, connected to a 27" 4K monitor with mouse/keyboard, and tilt the Surface Pro down on my desk and use it as a dedicated OneNote tablet with the pen. When I need to leave, I undock and go.
Good point. However, if you're going to run "legacy" Windows apps (and most Surface Pro users seem to do that eventually), you might as well buy a legacy laptop for substantially less money than a Surface Pro. In fact, you could be a very capable Windows laptop and the iPad (starting at $329) and the two devices together would still be cheaper than one Surface Pro.
I guess there are two things that are not getting understood by many in this thread. First off, having touch on a laptop is a wonderful thing that someone who only uses a Mac is not going to get. Being able to transform that laptop into a tablet is another wonderful thing. True, its not a dedicated touch environment like the iPad, but that is a tradeoff with being able to do real multitasking and run full function apps. Its a choice of which you prefer. The second concept that seems to be missed is that many people don't want to carry around 3 devices... smartphone, laptop, and tablet. I don't. I also do not want to go on a business trip without the full horsepower of a real computer. Some people are OK traveling with just an iPad. More power to them. That doesn't work for everyone. I have two iPads and haven't used them at all for several years.
And I can use Office , Run OneNote and annotate PDFs on my iPad. So if that is your measure of "getting stuff done", you should be able,to do it on an iPad as well. Easy, I do it myself.
You are running gimped versions of the apps. If you need to do any heavy lifting or need 4 or 5 applications open at the same time to work on something, things will fall part pretty fast.
And considering that Apple is sitting on $250 billion in cash and might become the first company in history with a $1 trillion market cap, I don't think they are worried about ANYTHING Microsoft does. If they did, they would have added at least some rudimentary touch capabilities to Macs by now.
Many a empire has fallen with that line of thinking. They have a huge pile of cash and clearly becoming interested in lots of things that are distractions from delivering the best solutions to their customers.
To MicroSoft my only complaint is manufactures add on programs. Over the years of supporting all flavors on Windows NEVER buy a straight on Windows machine. Trust Home made systems and you will see how much quicker Windows will be on a naked install!
Now I don't live in a vacuum and the move to laptops is whole different story. So on those systems learn how to do fresh installs!
1. This is a Microsoft machine so this "add on" doesn't really apply.
2. Windows 10 has a menu choice to do a fresh reset of everything to out of box Microsoft Windows.
I do find it funny how often people use the term "serious work" when referring to why they use Windows. Yes, Office has more features bloated into the suite than on the iOS version of office. But I can produce an equally stunning PowerPoint deck on iOS, or any other product I need. Microsoft streamlined the suite to be sure, but if you can't create or produce because you are missing that ridiculous font, or transition or its too hard to insert an image, then at least stop calling yourself a "power-user". A "power user" of either platform can get it don't on their platform. Both the Surface and the iPad Pro have some different strengths and weaknesses, and I understand a personal choice for either product. But the constant claim that you can't do "serious work" on an iPad is pretty idiotic (and disparaging). BOTH platforms are globally used, from hospitals, the flight decks of commercial aircraft, the Arts, Education, to every business that we can probably conceive of. Both are fully capable of supporting people in "serious work" - move on.
The definition of "serious work" for each person is going to be different, but I believe what most people are saying is that many of us need the full versions of applications, and true multitasking, to be productive. I frequently have multiple applications open at the same time jumping between them to work on a presentation, spreadsheet, etc.. Trying to do that with the iPad's gimped multitasking and scaled back apps is not going to do it. If your needs are simpler, than awesome... get an iPad. If you do need the full power of laptop, and you want to also use a tablet... the Surface Pro gives you a very good way to do both in one machine. There are a lot of benefits to having that, and there are also some tradeoffs. But lets not kid ourselves that an iPad has the same level of business application capability as a full OS, be that MacOS or Windows.
