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by Adam Z. Lein | May 13, 2013 7:50 AMRead OnMy first and biggest complaint after buying the Surface Pro months ago was that it did not include WinTab drivers for the screen's pressure sensitive digitizer input. The hardware supports pressure sensitivity, but with the default drivers, that only worked in certain newer graphics programs like Sketchbook Pro and Manga Studio. My first tweet the day I bought the Surface Pro went to the Surface team explaining that they NEED to implement the WinTab drivers. At first they thought it was an Adobe issue, but really they just needed some help from Wacom to make the right drivers. Those ...
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by Stephen Schenck | May 9, 2013 7:56 PM
Read OnIf you've been following our Microsoft Surface Pro coverage, you're already well aware of one of the otherwise impressive tablet's major shortcomings: despite having a pressure-sensitive stylus, the API Microsoft decided to support isn't compatible with software like Photoshop – exactly the sort of programs many users probably thought would be most useful on a device like this. Luckily, it looks like the needed drivers could be just about to arrive. We've been waiting for these for months – we heard back in early February that they could be here "soon," but clearly that didn't come to ...
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by Stephen Schenck | May 9, 2013 10:57 AMRead OnMicrosoft made some bold, risky choices when introducing its first Surface tablets. Both the Windows RT and Windows 8 Pro Surface models did things sort of differently from competitors like the iPad or any number of Android tablets. For one, Microsoft chose to position these two as premium devices, and avoided the bottom-scratching battle for budget tablet sales taking place in the $200-$400 range. It also gambled on not going with a unified platform for its mobile apps, making its tablets incompatible with apps already developed for Windows Phone. I'll get back to the app situation in a ...
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by Adam Doud | April 3, 2013 7:00 AMRead OnAn open letter to OEM's: Dear HTC, LG, Huawei, Apple, Nokia, et. al. We the mobile consumer wish to address a concern that we have, and indeed have had for some time. This concern has burrowed its way into mobile society and lies content it its satisfaction that it cannot be overcome. This concern is a clumsiness built into most mobile devices of today. My friends, I am referring to the abandonment of precision. The Stylus. The stylus's absence can be felt with every Draw Something sketch, with every cursor drag, with every photo that goes un-retouched. The human finger is just too big and ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | March 28, 2013 1:23 AMRead OnThere are two ways to look at the Surface Pro. You can either compare it to the other "consumer" style tablets out there which are generally considered smartphone-type devices with larger screens, or you can compare it to professional "ultrabooks" out there which are basically full-powered laptop computers compressed to fit in thinner form-factors. In some ways it's better than both of those device types put together, but in other ways it's not as good as either. Of course, your take-away is going to depend on which aspects of a mobile computing device are most important to you. Some would ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | March 6, 2013 12:11 PMRead OnToday we're going to take a look at some of the things that I often use the Surface Pro for during a work day and on the weekend. Not all of these things happen every day, but for the sake of demonstrating the wide variety of tasks that the Surface Pro helps me with, I'll compress them a little. Workday 8:45 am After most of the other morning activities are done, I like to catch up on the news. My Surface Pro's news tile usually has some interesting article animating on the start screen so I'll tap that to see what's going on. Really what I care about are my custom news feeds though, ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | March 5, 2013 6:30 AMRead OnRight now there are over 42,000 apps designed for the modern style of Windows 8 and that's the current count of available apps in the store. Before there was Windows 8, Steve Ballmer said that there are about 4 million Windows Desktop applications out there with about 800,000 that were made specifically for Windows 7. Some of those include programs developed only for private business use. You can also find a count for Windows 8 compatible desktop apps that have been tested by Microsoft in the compatibility center which turns out to be 17,381. So the real number available to ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | March 4, 2013 8:39 AMRead OnIt sounds like there are a lot of people out there who think the Surface Pro is not a tablet. How could you possibly think that? Maybe you don't know what a tablet is, so let's look it up on the internet. A tablet is a one piece mobile computer that typically offers a touchscreen with finger or stylus gestures acting as the primary means of control. There is nothing in the definition of a tablet computer that says anything about what the battery life should be, what type of processor it should use, what kind of operating system it should have, or what apps it should be capable of ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 28, 2013 9:10 AMRead OnToday I've got both the Surface Pro vs. Surface RT so we're going to compare them! First let's talk about weight. Neither of these feel heavy to me. The Pro is certainly heavier at 2lbs, versus the 1.5lb Surface RT, but even holding them both together is lighter than the camera I carry and definitely lighter than my old 4.7lb Tablet PC. Plus I have the advantage of extremely muscular upper body strength. The Pro has a much faster boot time and shutdown time which actually makes turning the tablet fully off not much different speed-wise compared to putting it into sleep mode. Resuming ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 21, 2013 10:00 AMRead OnWe've already seen how well the Surface Pro performs with high-end desktop programs as well as Android apps. How about Linux? Since the Surface Pro hardware supports Hyper-V virtualization, it's extremely easy to install secondary operating systems in a Virtual Machine. Hyper-V is not enabled by default on the Surface Pro, so you'll have to turn that on first. To do this, swipe from the right edge to get the charms and tap the Search charm. Then tap "Settings" and type "Turn Windows Features On" in the search field. Tap the "Turn Windows Features on and off" item and scroll to ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 20, 2013 10:05 AMRead OnThe two cameras built into the Surface Pro on the front and back are not professional quality at all. They're only 720p resolution, so basically they're only good for things like Skype video calls. Still the Surface Pro is for professionals, so I'm going to use it to control a full-sized digital single lens reflex camera connected via USB. In this video we'll be using a Nikon D7000 with the Nikon Camera Control Pro 2 software installed on the tablet. Most other professional DSLR camera brands are capable of connecting to similar software for remote camera control and image storage. ...
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by Jaime Rivera | February 19, 2013 7:00 PMRead OnWatch today's Pocketnow Daily as we talk about the Ubuntu Tablet operating system and what's cool about it. Then we move to iOS 6.1.2 and how it fixes just some of the current bugs known. The iPhone 5S is next as we found its motherboard rocking a lot of improvements over the current model. The Microsoft Surface Pro takes the spotlight later as we show you how to run Android apps on it. We end today's show talking about the HTC One, and why this phone may change everything for HTC. All this and more after the break. Stories: - Ubuntu Releases Tablet Video Preview - Apple Releases iOS 6.1.2 ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 19, 2013 1:07 PMRead OnYou've already seen how well full high-end desktop PC programs perform on the new Surface Pro from Microsoft. What about Android apps though? In the video below, we'll show you how to get your favorite Android apps on the Surface Pro using a new Windows 8 optimize version of the Bluestacks software. This software is an early version that's still in beta, so you can expect a few bugs, but still you'll notice that many things are working quite well. The Surface Pro does not have dedicated Android hardware buttons like "Back", "Home", or "Menu", so the Bluestacks software had to make virtual ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 15, 2013 8:15 AMRead OnMicrosoft has been doing handwriting recognition for a very long time. They started promoting ink support in 2000 with the Pocket PCs which had inking and handwriting recognition as part of every "notes" field in any kind of data item. Contacts, Calendar appointments, etc. Then in 2002, inking became part of the Windows Tablet PCs. Today, that ink and handwriting recognition has evolved significantly and it really shows how far we've come in the Surface Pro with its included Wacom stylus. In the video below, we'll take a look at just how it works. You'll see how well it can ...
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by Adam Z. Lein | February 13, 2013 11:34 AMRead OnI know a lot of you out there are interested in seeing some real world performance tests with the Surface Pro, so in this video were going to show you just how fast this tablet is at things like rendering HD videos in Premiere Pro, Applying Photoshop Filters, opening RAW images, HTML5 Rendering, and some "League of Legends" game play. Booting up the device from a completely turned off state is extremely fast. If you're not going to use the Surface Pro for a while, shutting it down is not a problem since you can be back up and running within about 6 seconds. The web browser is also ...
Posts tagged with: Surface Pro