WTB- laptop, is Microsoft surface pro 4 good for...

[T19gun04]

Business, Microsoft office, quickbooks, online streaming?

I'm in the market as my old laptop hard drive was dying the tech said.

I'm interested in other laptops just not apples.

Any information / recommendations on laptops and or laptop sales would be appreciated.

[AreWeFree]

Will it work? Yes.
Is it good for business, office, quickbooks? No.

It's an expensive tablet with a tiny screen, how hard do you want to work?

A good keyboard is my highest priority, 14" screen is my minimum but prefer 15".

[C.G.]

I wondered about that last year when Surface 3 came out. I ended up with a Yoga 2 Pro as it was less expensive and hard drives, battery and wifi cards etc are relatively easily swappable (with Surface you are stuck with what you bought and is next to impossible to upgrade/replace components. The Yoga is just fine for me for business and other you have described. I am not sure if the Yoga 3 is the same for upgrade/repair as Yoga 2, but you may consider that. Also Asus came out with several Surface type units. The other option is installing a new hard drive on your old lap; hard drives are not that expensive nowadays, even SSDs.

[soul]

Surface Pro 4 will work just fine, I have been using Pro 3 and the Pro 4 is still better.

In case if you large part of the work is typing then you may feel the keyboard restrictive. I do tons of powerpoint, office, visual studio, R, etc and it works just fine.

There is a big advantage moving towards Microsoft hardware, they control the full experience. So firmware, device driver updates are timely (unlike other OEMS). I have seen strong MacBook Air folks and Apple fans appreciating Surface Pro line and making a jump.

Few benefits of Surface, is high resolution screen, awesome Pen and a very convenient carry form. Add the optional dock and you can drive 2 4k displays and desktop keyboard/mouse.

[Mute]

I have a Surface Pro 3 and I do just fine with the keyboard. The high resolution on the 12" screen does make me squint a bit with my middle aged eyes but I have no trouble using it. The Pro 4 keyboard is a good improvement over the 3 keyboard. I may get one just to use with my Surface 3.

I like 15" on laptops but I willingly sacrifice the larger screen for the reduced weight and size of the Surface laptops. YMMV. Some people just don't want to work on anything smaller than a 14" screen, but it depends a great deal on what kind of work you do. For general office use, I'll take the lighter, smaller package. I only care about the bigger screen if I plan on doing anything that depends highly on graphics (gaming, video/graphics editing...etc.)

[T19gun04]

Thanks for the advice calgunners.

I have done more research and I am going to a Microsoft store to test out the surface pro 4 and the surface book.

The biggest difference between the book and pro 4 is the surface book is more expensive, bigger screen @ 13.5 inches, lighter, and more of a laptop that does detach. Both have touchscreen, same camera, high resolution.

[Ricky-Ray]

I have been using the Surface Pro 3 for a little over a year now. It replaced my laptop when it was starting to die too. My 2 biggest gripes about the Surface Pro 3 is there's only 1 USB port and the keyboard is a bit small. Other than that it has worked really well. 6 months into it I finally broke down and got the docking station and now I can do dual screen with my 24" monitor and the keyboard is no longer an issue as I prefer using the Microsoft Ergo keyboard instead.

I'll have to look into the Surface Pro 4 and maybe do a trade up.

[SMR510]

I would recommend the Lenovo Yoga and specifically the Thinkpad Yoga if you want to have the 2-in-1 or convertible laptop. If not, I think a Lenovo Ultrabook would be perfect.

I can't take the surface seriously because of the whole kick stand thing. The surface book should be ok but there have been lots of people having problems with them so far. I have a thinkpad yoga and it is wonderful, great keyboard, digitizer + pen, very fast, etc.

[soul]

I sold my Yoga 2 Pro to buy the Surface Book, and am very happy about it. They released few firmware upgrades in the first week itself, solving all initial issues, Lenovo really lagged in terms of any updates to its firmware or drivers, the Yoga 2 Pro was better than the Yoga 3 Pro in my experience.

Now after 2 weeks, I find Surface Book the ultimate laptop experience in the market. Starting with hardware quality, the Hello login, Pen, tablet, keyboard, touchpad is just superior to anything out there. It is expensive, but a professional grade machine.

It is heavier than Surface Pro 4, so if portability is concern then the SP4 is better option.

[billofrights]

I'd go with the Surface Pro 4 over the Surface Book. The Book is way expensive for what you get. Yes it's neat tech, but v2.0 will be a much better deal when it comes out. The Surface Book is kinda like a concept car at an auto show.

[C.G.]

I sold my Yoga 2 Pro to buy the Surface Book, and am very happy about it. They released few firmware upgrades in the first week itself, solving all initial issues, Lenovo really lagged in terms of any updates to its firmware or drivers, the Yoga 2 Pro was better than the Yoga 3 Pro in my experience.

Now after 2 weeks, I find Surface Book the ultimate laptop experience in the market. Starting with hardware quality, the Hello login, Pen, tablet, keyboard, touchpad is just superior to anything out there. It is expensive, but a professional grade machine.

It is heavier than Surface Pro 4, so if portability is concern then the SP4 is better option.

I have a Yoga 2 pro and I had no problem upgrading to W10. Lenovo posted most of the drivers beforehand and the ones they didn't updated with W10 installation.

[soul]

It can do all of it, as it is a full PC. The price is on a higher side, for the form factor and the hardware.

At this point of time there is no other machine that can run Core i7 CPU (I have is Core i7 8GB 256GB SSD) in a 8.6mm thin frame. The 4 also has improved pen, keyboard and touch pad. It is a go to, no compromise device for all needs both as a tablet or as a PC.

[njineermike]

I have the surface 3 and wish I'd bought the pro. The screen is small, but they have monitors everywhere I go and it has a micro DisplayPort on it. I've seen guys with the 4 Pro running graphics intensive video games with better response than I get with my full size Dell with a last-Gen i7. It's small, light, and powerful. The only offset is price and scalability. You can't upgrade memory or HDD unless you feel like completely tearing the machine down.

[J Money]

I just got a SP4 as an iPad replacement. In typical fashion I went a little too big. Ended up with an I-7, 256GB HD and 16GB of Ram. It benchmarks higher than my XPS 9343. Using it right now and it's pretty legit. Battery life is mediocre and sometimes the fan runs. But looking at the task manager I see an app crushing CPU usage. Once I work out this bug is will be a good all around machine.

[T19gun04]

I opted for the Surface book. Really enjoy the graphics, touch screen, and pen. I use it for office 365, sending emails, streaming. I also used one of Microsoft apps called Sway.

It's expensive but if you buy sp4 or sb do not get the 1st tier produce, opt up and spend extra for better storage, speeds, and space.