Surface Book–a first look

I’ve had two Surface Pros. A Surface Pro 3 and a Surface Pro 4. I love them. Make no mistake these have been idea travel computers for me. And powerful enough for just about everything I could want. They are also great for teaching as I can carry them around the room, use the tablet, and project wirelessly to my LCD projector. But I have had my eyes on the Surface Book for a while.

And now, thanks to the MIE Expert program and the Surface Experts program (https://education.microsoft.com/microsoft-innovative-educator-programs/mie-expert) I just received a new Surface Book. As someone who teaching computer science this means three things for me. 1) More disk space - more VS is being installed now 2) more memory (8gb) so emulators should run better for mobile development 3) a faster CPU.

Actually the more memory means the most to me. More disk is a close second. Modern CPUs are fast enough for just about everything I do. Also the screen on the Surface Book is larger which is also a nice thing.

As I said though memory and disk are big plusses for me. I’m not your average classroom teacher. I like to install lots of software (I’ve had as many as three versions of Visual Studio installed at once in the past) and I always want to try more things. The disk space on the Surface Pro limited me a bit. The Surface Book has twice as much disk so I have installed a bunch of Visual Studio things to play with. I may not need it all for teaching but I do for learning.

Memory is the next big item. My Surface Pros have 4gb of RAM. I can run mobile emulators but barely and I have to be very careful about what else is running. With the Surface Book and its 8gb that problem goes away. With my computer lab being updated to 8gb systems over the summer I now have a lot more options to my Mobile Development course next year. To say nothing of my own “needs” for mobile development.

The look of the Surface Book is nice as well. I’m not big on esthetics of computers but having a nice clean design is nice. I understand the keyboard (a very nice friendly keyboard BTW) comes off but I don’t need that very often. And I still have my Surface Pro 4 if I do.

All in all I am very happy with it so far. It’s everything the Surface Pro is but more. Just what a computer science teacher who can’t stop trying new things needs.