Surface Pro Laptops

[red321]

Anyone familiar with the Surface Pro laptops? I prefer Mac laptops, but I'm thinking it might be useful to have a laptop with a touchscreen that can easily convert to tablet/design mode that will allow me to work/edit photos directly on the screen. Doing some basic research and the Surface models looked intriguing. Have tried some other brands (HP, Asus) in the past and ended up returning them quickly.

[nate]

19 minutes ago, red321 said:

Anyone familiar with the Surface Pro laptops? I prefer Mac laptops, but I'm thinking it might be useful to have a laptop with a touchscreen that can easily convert to tablet/design mode that will allow me to work/edit photos directly on the screen. Doing some basic research and the Surface models looked intriguing. Have tried some other brands (HP, Asus) in the past and ended up returning them quickly.

I can't remember if it was the laptop or the tablet, but one of them got some really bad marks from Consumer Reports because of poor reliability.

Quick Google says it is both the tablet and the laptop.

https://www.consumerreports.org/laptop-computers/microsoft-surface-laptops-and-tablets-not-recommended-by-consumer-reports/

[AngelsLakersFan]

The issue consumer reports had was with Windows 10, not so much with the surface itself.

I was thinking the same way as you last year and ended up settling on the iPad Pro. 

[red321]

6 minutes ago, calscuf said:

I use a surface pro as my laptop when I'm at other attorney's offices and in court.  Works fine for what I need.

I'm sure I could get midget porn on pretty much any device though

[red321]

7 minutes ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

The issue consumer reports had was with Windows 10, not so much with the surface itself.

I was thinking the same way as you last year and ended up settling on the iPad Pro. 

I thought about the ipad pro, but I'm not sure it has the tools I need. First off, I don't want to use the cloud version of Lightroom, which is really underpowered when compared to the "classic" desktop version. I also use other tools from OnOne and Topaz and while they have Mac versions, I don't think they have iOS versions.

[Blarg]

That's what she said.

[AngelsLakersFan]

3 hours ago, red321 said:

I thought about the ipad pro, but I'm not sure it has the tools I need. First off, I don't want to use the cloud version of Lightroom, which is really underpowered when compared to the "classic" desktop version. I also use other tools from OnOne and Topaz and while they have Mac versions, I don't think they have iOS versions.

It's definitely not for everybody. 

I use the regular version of Lightroom, which connects with Lightroom mobile on the iPad. Typically I import via the iPad which it syncs back to the desktop version (it uploads my photos to my desktop). I use the desktop for batch adjustments and the iPad for individual images. 99% of the time is spent in Lightroom mobile though, if only because adjustments with the pencil is more intuitive, and fun than on the desktop or my macbook.

It's still a work in progress, IMO (there are a handful of 'gotchas'), but in conjunction with a mac I think it's great. If I could only have one machine though, I don't think I could go with the iPad. 

[Blarg]

Red, you are probably not going to like interfacing and file sharing between two competing operating systems. You will also have to learn all of the PC quick key commands, it will be annoying for quite a while.

[Thomas]

I've used a Surface Pro 3 at work. The stand can be a bit unreliable and tricky to use, especially with the keyboard, if a flat surface isn't available.

Windows 10 in tablet mode feels barren as there are relatively few applications that support this mode. Though for your usage it may be the best device available. 

[nate]

Not a fan of the iPad pro for this.  If you really want touch screen then Surface Book probably works best, and if the problem is only Windows 10 then no big deal.  I saw 25% fail rate and wanted to stay away.

I don't have a need for touch screens so I prefer a 13" MBP.  I have a brand new 13" and an older 15".  I like the portability of the 13.

[AngelsLakersFan]

3 hours ago, Blarg said:

Red, you are probably not going to like interfacing and file sharing between two competing operating systems. You will also have to learn all of the PC quick key commands, it will be annoying for quite a while.

I have gone back and forth between PCs and Macs since at least 2009. It'd probably be far more convenient to do all one or the other, but I haven't found juggling them to be too difficult. It used to be more difficult, but now a days everything seems to fit together nicely. The biggest challenge really is dealing with the hideous interface of Windows 10.

[nate]

Yeah, file sharing between Windows and MacOS isn't that bad anymore.  Especially if you have a NAS, samba is universal.

[red321]

I'm not overly concerned about going back and forth. My primary computer is a desktop, we have a mac laptop, and I have NAS setup. Key configuration isn't too big of a deal, at least in lightroom they aren't using a bunch of ctrl, or alt, it's usually just character based (e.g. hit "d" to go to develop module).

Maybe I'll go play with one this weekend and see how it goes. 

[red321]

16 hours ago, AngelsLakersFan said:

It's definitely not for everybody. 

I use the regular version of Lightroom, which connects with Lightroom mobile on the iPad. Typically I import via the iPad which it syncs back to the desktop version (it uploads my photos to my desktop). I use the desktop for batch adjustments and the iPad for individual images. 99% of the time is spent in Lightroom mobile though, if only because adjustments with the pencil is more intuitive, and fun than on the desktop or my macbook.

It's still a work in progress, IMO (there are a handful of 'gotchas'), but in conjunction with a mac I think it's great. If I could only have one machine though, I don't think I could go with the iPad. 

You don't find the lightroom mobile version to be too limiting? I was reading about lightroom cc (the cloud based version) and there were a lot of limitations as compared to the lightroom cc classic version. (could they make their naming convention more annoying?).

[AngelsLakersFan]

3 hours ago, red321 said:

You don't find the lightroom mobile version to be too limiting? I was reading about lightroom cc (the cloud based version) and there were a lot of limitations as compared to the lightroom cc classic version. (could they make their naming convention more annoying?).

The only real issue I have with LR mobile is that it doesn't batch process. With LR mobile I can ingest hundreds of photos in minutes, but I can't batch edit them so I wait for them to sync over on my macbook to do batch processing. This takes about as long as importing images to my network raid over wifi on the macbook.

This is mostly just an issue when I do events. If I only take or need a handful of photos then I can just jump straight in to editing individual photos. 

I tried the new desktop CC version and wasn't a fan. It's pretty similar to mobile, but that layout just doesn't work for me on a 34" monitor. It seems that eventually they will replace Classic with CC, but that won't happen until the CC version surpasses the OG version. With that in mind, I expect batch processing to show up any day now on mobile.