Microsoft surface pro

Jeppesen will be migrating its system to the Surface, if the rumors are correct. It feels the Surface will have more users than an Android system.
 
Get a touch pad keyboard for data entry. Get a mouse. Be aware that if you use other Blue Tooth devices they may interfere with blue tooth connections to Surface Pro. It does on mine. The pointing device can be a handy navigation tool. You may want a mobile wi-fi hotspot if you want it to go online away from your provider. I now use mine on the road instead of my laptop.
 
I want an 8 inch smartphone. Not an Apple either, a Samsung Galaxy. They have them in Asia.
 
evapilotaz said:
I'm not sure if I need or what it. I'm getting because we'll, perks of being the IT director :)
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Your the Director of IT and you are not involved in the purchasing decisions?

Basically the same title here and I sign off on any tech purchase. :dunno:

As far as an 8" smartphone goes, man that would be tough to fit in your pocket.:yes:

I recently upgraded to the Galaxy S5 and use Avare on it. I was concerned it would be too big for a phone. After having it a few weeks it is big but manageable. I am not sure I would want anything bigger.

I was playing around with a Nexus 7 which was great too but the S5 seems plenty big for what I need. The plane I usually fly has a 430 in it and the S5 gives me moving map and the few other features I need for the VFR weekend warrior flying I do. If I were going somewhere I would consider bringing the Nexus with me just so I could see more map at once but the few extra inches isn't critical for 99% of what I do.
 
I've been impressed by the Surface. If I could get FF or GP on one I'd consider it. You'd have your favorite EFB and a competent notebook computer all in one.
 
DFH65 said:
Your the Director of IT and you are not involved in the purchasing decisions?

Basically the same title here and I sign off on any tech purchase. :dunno:
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Perhaps he knows how to delegate? :lol:
 
LDJones said:
Perhaps he knows how to delegate? :lol:
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If the people he is delegating to are buying equipment as perks or that he isn't sure he needs maybe he needs to rethink who he is delegating to. :D
 
DFH65 said:
Your the Director of IT and you are not involved in the purchasing decisions?

Basically the same title here and I sign off on any tech purchase. :dunno:

.
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The CIO thought is was a good Idea to get surface pro's for traveling users. I think they are too nice for our end users because they abuse the equipment. Many of our Laptops gets mangled by the end users.

Yes I approve many our our software and hardware purchases.
 
Here is sits in all its glory. I haven't logged into it.

My first thought was can I use FF or GP on it. :no:

BTW the Biplane had a gear up landing and lost the rudder. :rofl:
 

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The only reason I keep a windows system around is that microsoft made the ability to open encrypted emails locked to internet explorer only and proprietary. At work we encrypt a lot, and therefore windows is the only thing I can use to open those.

I have a $200 asus touch screen mini-laptop collecting dust for when I need to do work business from home.
 
gitmo234 said:
The only reason I keep a windows system around is that microsoft made the ability to open encrypted emails locked to internet explorer only and proprietary. At work we encrypt a lot, and therefore windows is the only thing I can use to open those.

I have a $200 asus touch screen mini-laptop collecting dust for when I need to do work business from home.
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I keep a Win7 system for MS Access projrct, once a month for reports. Other than that, the machine isn't even turned on. Anything else I need Wintel for, XP under Parallels on the Mac is just fine.
 
Well I gave my Surface pro a fair shake. The screen is too small for the kind of work I do. I could hook it to a dock and run a full size monitor but that defeats the purpose of it being portable. Its great for watching movies and playing games with. Anyway I'm done with it.
 
murphey said:
Jeppesen will be migrating its system to the Surface, if the rumors are correct. It feels the Surface will have more users than an Android system.
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Yes, but it has nothing to do with the Surface Pro. They are entirely different systems.
 
zaitcev said:
Yes, but it has nothing to do with the Surface Pro. They are entirely different systems.
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I think the premise is false in its entirety. Android tablets will outsell all surface products. Microsoft has never fared well selling advanced consumer products, Zune anyone? They do ok in the cheap peripherals department of hardware, but that's about it.
 
My office purchased two surface pro 3's for evaluation and I have been assigned one. It is a very nice computer and I will use it to replace my HP laptop at work. I have it running dual 24 inch monitors (1900 by 1200) without any issues. When I compare it to other solid state HD and I7 processors, it is comparable in price. I really like its lightness and using a USB 3.0 hub I have two 1 TB external harddrives connected to it. I will be testing using the MS docking station inplace of the hub which is $50 more expensive. I have not seen any aviation applications at this point.
 
winrose46 said:
My office purchased two surface pro 3's for evaluation and I have been assigned one. It is a very nice computer and I will use it to replace my HP laptop at work. I have it running dual 24 inch monitors (1900 by 1200) without any issues. When I compare it to other solid state HD and I7 processors, it is comparable in price. I really like its lightness and using a USB 3.0 hub I have two 1 TB external harddrives connected to it. I will be testing using the MS docking station inplace of the hub which is $50 more expensive. I have not seen any aviation applications at this point.
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Have you looked for a Jeppesen application?
 
I asked Jeppesen about running their app on my Surface Pro 1. They said they only supported airline operations, which I took to mean they didn't have anything for us GA pilots on the Windows 8 platform. I could well be wrong and would like to find a good app for Windows 8.
 
jnmeade said:
I asked Jeppesen about running their app on my Surface Pro 1. They said they only supported airline operations, which I took to mean they didn't have anything for us GA pilots on the Windows 8 platform. I could well be wrong and would like to find a good app for Windows 8.
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It would not surprise me. They probably signed non compete agreements with Garmin and the other companies they provide through saying that they would not compete in the GA sector. None of the Jeppesen offerings I have seen since way back have been any good. They had one of the original chart plotting programs in the 90s, Flight Star or something like that, that I had on my old 486 Toshiba with a DGPS-53 head from Garmin feeding it. On the consumer end Jeppesen has focused more on it's maritime products with the Nobletec series software than aviation.
 
evapilotaz said:
... I could hook it to a dock and run a full size monitor but that defeats the purpose of it being portable. ...
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Oh, I disagree. For maybe fifteen years I have used portable computers in docks at home, at our lake place, and at work. Good keyboards, good monitors, good mice. Easy to to my work.

For outside meetings and on the road though, I unplug from the dock and have the same computer that I have everywhere else. Maybe not an ideal keyboard or monitor, but I don't have to worry about synchronizing, DropBox, Evernote, etc. All my stuff is exactly where it always is, right where I left it.

In Olden Times, the portable was a laptop. From about 2004 it was a Compaq TC1100 tablet, followed by Fujitsu P16x0 convertible tablets. I have tried the Atom-processor windows tablets but they are still slower than my elderly, SSD-equipped P1630. So I am waiting. ...

I am watching the emerging Broadwell generation of convertible laptops, as I think they will have the processing power I want. The Surface Pro 3 is a candidate, but I really want something a little smaller (10" screen) and hopefully without the movie mavens' short, wide aspect ratios. More waiting ...

The only negative about my main computer being my portable computer is security. There is stuff on my computer that I wouldn't want to have stolen. When I travel internationally especially, I do leave the portable computer at home and get email and the web on my Nexus 7. I also have some of my Evernote folders duplicated on the N7 so I don't need an internet connection to access the information.

Re windows apps, I beta tested for one of the Windows EFB companies for 6-8 years, flying with the Compaq and the Fujitsus. I think the iThings and Android have driven all the windows EFB vendors to extinction, though, and I see little reason for windows EFBs to return. That's probably OK, though, as I think smaller screens are better for EFBs due to limited cockpit space, while bigger screens are needed for windows apps. So different tools for different jobs.
 
winrose46 said:
My office purchased two surface pro 3's for evaluation and I have been assigned one. It is a very nice computer and I will use it to replace my HP laptop at work. I have it running dual 24 inch monitors (1900 by 1200) without any issues. When I compare it to other solid state HD and I7 processors, it is comparable in price. I really like its lightness and using a USB 3.0 hub I have two 1 TB external harddrives connected to it. I will be testing using the MS docking station inplace of the hub which is $50 more expensive. I have not seen any aviation applications at this point.
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That's the biggest problem with it, sales-wise. They keep trying to sell it as a tablet competitor at a laptop price.

I finally saw the first comparison ad for it against the *MacBook* on national TV during the football games today.

It's a super tiny laptop. It's not a tablet replacement at its core. It reminds me of the Toshiba Portege series from the early 90s like the Portege 3010/3015. (That thing rocked in the Win 98 days.)

The industry hadn't done "full power" laptops at that size for a long time until the MacBook Air came out.
 
By the way I agree with Airedale.

Portable hooked to a dock if you can get the portable in a comparable processor speed as a desktop, is a wonderful thing.

i3 and i5 portables suck. i7 or higher only. And going higher. More cores!!!
 
I'm not a fan for what my needs are!

I do a lot of after hours work via VPN from home. When I cannot Via RDP to remote servers the screen is to small to work on remote Servers. That is hang up #1 for me.
If I want to use it at work I have to hook two 24" monitors and hook up a full size mouse and keyboard. It takes some time to set this up. Its a nice portable device for many people but not the kind of work I do.
 
evapilotaz said:
I'm not a fan for what my needs are!

I do a lot of after hours work via VPN from home. When I cannot Via RDP to remote servers the screen is to small to work on remote Servers. That is hang up #1 for me.
If I want to use it at work I have to hook two 24" monitors and hook up a full size mouse and keyboard. It takes some time to set this up. Its a nice portable device for many people but not the kind of work I do.
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This is a common problem across platforms. You get used to a specific large desktop across multiple monitors and then use either MSFT or Apple's Remote Desktop solutions (even Linux) and the retarded things either try to show you a huge desktop on agony screen, or there just isn't enough screen real estate.

Neither RDP nor VNC nor really anything properly resize the desktop with any connection to the individual applications to scale down their windows appropriately. They all suck.

Let's not even mention keyboard shortcuts in a mixture of remote and local. Total cluster****.

Because of a VPN/DNS problem I spent all day remoted into various machines. I was so angry I wanted to kill both MSFT and Apple developers after a day of that. Talk about screwing up a workflow...
 
Not ready reading VOR-A. Abort, Retry, Fail?
 
I am currently running a test transferring 37 Gig of data in 537 files between two external hard drives using three monitors (counting the surface) and I have not noticed any issues with the mouse during the test of my surfing the web or typing a word document. Currently testing the external usb 3.0 hub. Next test will be using the surface pro3 docking station. No issues and I will make this my current work PC. Also it has the TMC encryption chip and the ssd drive is encrypted for the security folks. Using the Warpia usb3.0 display hub and transferring the data is a little faster than 4 Gig per minute.
 
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My first couple flying tablets were Windows based. They worked fairly well for the time. I was typically using Jeppesen's FliteDeck. Looks like Seattle Avionics still has their Voyager software, and I'm sure a couple others are still around.
 
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