Until recently I had been using a 10+ year old Dell laptop as a “server” running Ubuntu with several Docker containers for various apps. I woke up one morning to a powered off laptop. Nothing I did would revive my “server”. So to get back up and running, I removed the internal SSD from said dead laptop and copied the needed files over to another laptop that already had Ubuntu loaded on it in a dual boot setup with Windows. A bit of cp here and there and my “server” was back up and running without too much fuss.
I had been contemplating replacing my dead “server” with an Intel NUC, but while walking through the electronics section of a local store I spotted the latest Microsoft Surface Pro 9 was on sale. Looking further online later I found that the Surface Pro 8 was on sale for an even better deal, so I decided to give one a try. The model I have is the Core i7 with 16GB RAM and 512GB of SSD storage running Windows 11 22H2.
The first day of Surface ownership was getting the initial setup completed, applying all the missing Windows Updates and then downloading the apps that I want to use. Nothing out of the ordinary here but there is some getting used to the way Microsoft has done things with Windows 11 and the Edge browser.
The package deal I bought came with the Signature Type Cover and Surface Pen. I haven’t spent much time with the pen input other than to know that it works. Typing this post has all been done with the Type Cover and the keyboard works quite well. There is a bit of bounce but nothing objectionable to me. The touchpad I am finding to be a bit over sensitive with how close I am accustomed to hovering my fingers over the trackpad. I keep right clicking in random places or selecting links, etc. I adjusted the sensitivity in the control panel settings but it doesn’t seem to have helped much. A bit of retraining my brain will likely fix the annoyance.
Overall I am happy with the Surface experience and the speed of the system so far has been quite good. Battery life from what I’ve seen in limited use has been also been satisfactory. I’ll provide updates as I continue to use the system more.