Trade in MacBook Air for a Surface Pro 3

I'd be curious to see how many people take them up on this offer, i bet the number will be low.

Our chairman of the board came to our office today, and has a board meeting to attend. I was tasked with helping get her configured. We were working under the assumption that she probably had an Apple device. We were a little surprised when she arrived that she had an iPad with a keyboard dock. Apparently it's enough for her to do her job, and it's super easy for her to travel with...which is important and she traveled approx 10,000 miles to our office.

Does the SurfacePro have retina display, PCI-e flash drive (faster than SATA 6), instant wake from sleep, long battery life, etc.? I didn't think so...

My 2013 MacBook Pro has all of the above and then some. It also runs Windows 8.1 in VMware, including MS Office 2013, Visio 2013, and any other windows programs that I need. The fringe benefit of VMware, that the same image, portable via the USB 3.0 external storage with a 128 GBs SATA 6 SSD, is running on my Windows 7 box albeit a bit slower than it does on the MacBook Pro. Yeah, no but thank you...

Cr00zng said:

Does the SurfacePro have retina display, PCI-e flash drive (faster than SATA 6), instant wake from sleep, long battery life, etc.? I didn't think so...

Click to expand...

Well, the retina display is effectively a 1280x800 display, just with doubled pixels. I run my MacBook Pro at a scaled 1600x1050 resolution because I cannot stand how big everything is in retina mode. Unsure how fast the wake from sleep is on the Surface Pro 3, but it's one of my favorite features of my MBP. The Surface Pro 3 does offer long battery life.

pparks1 said:

Cr00zng said:

Does the SurfacePro have retina display, PCI-e flash drive (faster than SATA 6), instant wake from sleep, long battery life, etc.? I didn't think so...

Click to expand...

Well, the retina display is effectively a 1280x800 display, just with doubled pixels. I run my MacBook Pro at a scaled 1600x1050 resolution because I cannot stand how big everything is in retina mode. Unsure how fast the wake from sleep is on the Surface Pro 3, but it's one of my favorite features of my MBP. The Surface Pro 3 does offer long battery life.

Click to expand...

The display has a PPI of 216 which is more than plenty for me. I don't know if i'd want a higher resolution just to get a lower run time.

Instant Go is fantastic. It comes on immediately from sleep.

Yesterday, I browsed for 3 total hours at work with auto brightness on 30%, Bluetooth on, and still had 44% when I got home. The day before I got 7 hours of usage browsing, installing Photoshop CC and Office 2013, along with an hour of streaming video to my Xbox One, with 28% left before going to sleep.

pparks1 said:

Well, the retina display is effectively a 1280x800 display, just with doubled pixels. I run my MacBook Pro at a scaled 1600x1050 resolution because I cannot stand how big everything is in retina mode. Unsure how fast the wake from sleep is on the Surface Pro 3, but it's one of my favorite features of my MBP. The Surface Pro 3 does offer long battery life.

Click to expand...

There are ways to increase the resolution for the retina display to 2880x1800 on the MacBook, but...

Windows 8.1 in VMware runs at resolution, that depends on the OSX set resolution. For example, using the lowest 1024x640 in OSX results in W8.1 2048x1280 resolution. The highest OSX resolution of 1600x1050 results in 3360x2100 in W8.1. I use 1440x900 in OSX results that results in 2880x1800 in W8.1, mainly because that's where I spend most of my time. For me, the McBook Pro with retina display is the best hardware for W8.1....

I take your word for the Surface Pro 3's battery life and I stand corrected...

I tried the 2560x1600 on my Mac Book Pro. It worked, but a little too small for any real practical use. I have the 13", hence the resolution stated above.

pparks1 said:

Cr00zng said:

Does the SurfacePro have retina display, PCI-e flash drive (faster than SATA 6), instant wake from sleep, long battery life, etc.? I didn't think so...

Click to expand...

Well, the retina display is effectively a 1280x800 display, just with doubled pixels. I run my MacBook Pro at a scaled 1600x1050 resolution because I cannot stand how big everything is in retina mode. Unsure how fast the wake from sleep is on the Surface Pro 3, but it's one of my favorite features of my MBP. The Surface Pro 3 does offer long battery life.

Click to expand...

Hi there

I didn't like the retina display.

There's nothing wrong though with a MacBook air -- if you like apple there IMO is no reason to change.

For what I need though increasingly is absolutely more and more portability (and weight - or reduction of). I'm not getting any younger and although reasonably fit I still have problems when sitting in "Cattle Class" in planes -as I'm quite tall and large (not fat or obese in any way BTW) and then for me using a conventional Laptop is out of the question.

This device has the power I need, the video resolution is great, I DO like the screen arrangement - I do a LOT of EXCEL so it's perfect and with the docking station I couldn't ask for more.

I'm also pleased to have received a notice that my delivery scheduled for around second week in July will now arrive on Monday -- I can't wait.

BTW I can't get used to the standard laptop video resolution of 768 X 1366 any more -- I'm getting much too picky in my "old age".

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

BTW I can't get used to the standard laptop video resolution of 768 X 1366 any more -- I'm getting much too picky in my "old age".

Cheers
jimbo

Click to expand...

You aren't alone here Jimbo. About 10 years ago, the company that I worked for tried upgrading my then laptop that ran at 1400x1050 with a new model that ran 1024x768. I pretty much refused to take it and nobody could understand why. So, I got the Help Desk group all together, but the 2 machines side by side and showed them how much usable space I was loosing dropping from 1400x1050 to 1024x768. Let's just say it was finally an eye opening experience for everybody to really comprehend what I was saying. It had nothing to do with picture quality, it had everything to do with how much scrolling I had to do or not do, depending upon the resolution. We never ordered the crappy resolution option again, ever.

I've since moved onto another company, and to do this day, I never order machines like this. I avoid 1280x800 and 1386x768. These days it must be 1600x900 or higher. On my new 27" Dell Monitor,I run 2560x1440 and feel that is it absolutely fabulous...but it takes a large screen to make it work.