Talk to me about Surface

[MattDLEA]

So It looks like someone has been to a meeting and seen someone with one of these surface pro's.

 

I have a few questions.

 

Can they connect to a network? how is work saved off them.

Whats the deal with MS Office we use 2010 here and the proper version not the 365 how would this work with the surface pro's.

 

Also if you have them can you drop me a pm of your supplier please. I really have to beat a quote.

 

Cheers

[plexer]

A surface pro is a pc in a tablet so anything you can do on a domain pc you can do and more on a pro.

 

Ben

[Norphy]

There are two types of Surface, the Surface (RT) and the Surface Pro.

 

The Surface RT (And the Surface 2) uses an ARM CPU, it can't be joined to a domain and its management options are limited. You can use InTune to manage them to an extent but it's pretty limited. They can be joined to wireless networks like any other tablet or computer with a WiFi card in.

 

Then you have the Surface Pro. These things use Intel processors and can run full blown Windows. If you install Windows 8(.1) Pro or Enterprise on them they can be joined to a domain and can run any desktop software that's compatible with Windows 8(.1). This should include Office 2010 although it's not optimised for touch by any stretch of the imagination. They can be joined to domains, support the same features as any laptop does and can be managed like any other domain joined machine. You're not going to be able to put Windows 7 on them as they use secureboot enabled EFIs which W7 won't support.

 

In my opinion, if you're looking for Windows tablets you shouldn't focus exclusively on the Surface. Dell and Lenovo do a very nice range of similarly specified tablets but imo are tuned a bit more to the business user.

Whenever we've bought Surface hardware, we've bought it from Microsoft directly.