Microsoft Surface: More Thoughts from an Early Adopter

Today was day two of my out-of-box experience with the Microsoft Surface tablet.  Here are some quick thoughts on the experience so far:

A little personalization of home screen

• Music and Photos -- I was able to connect my phone (a Blackberry Bold) to the Surface using a USB cable.  It was easy to transfer photos from the phone to the Surface.  I could also copy music files from the phone to the Surface by treating the phone as a connected drive and dragging files from the phone to the storage on my tablet. The files were recognized by the music player app and played fine. Like others have stated, the speakers aren't that good but they'll do.  Headphones sound great.  One odd thing is that M4A (AAC encoding) files play on the Surface but you can't view the cover art while the song plays.  Cover art does show properly on MP3 encoded files.  I contacted Microsoft support and confirmed that this is they way it is.

• Scanning - There's a USB port, can I just connect my scanner and push the scan button? Sadly no.   My scanner is an Epson GT-S50 scanner that uses generic TWAIN drivers so I was hopeful it would be supported.   Definitely not, as Microsoft support confirmed.  On a more positive note, the Windows Store has an HP app called Scan and Capture that works with their all-in-one printers.  I successfully scanned a document over wifi using the HP Officejet 8600 Pro in my office.  I haven't tried yet to connect the printer to my device with USB but I have successfully printed to the 8600 from the Surface. 

• Printing - Printing is much better with Surface than with iPad or even with Chromebook. It's more like printing from a Windows computer. Even though I use HP wireless printers that support e-print and Google Cloud print, I have better control over output and the print job happens much faster than  with the other devices.  If you need to kill trees to get your work done, you'll appreciate the Surface over the iPad or Chromebook. 
• Remote Desktop Connect - If your work involves connecting to a server with Microsoft Remote Desktop, the app is included and works great! I was able to map the local storage on Surface to the remote server and transfer files.  I was also able to print from the remote server to a local printer much like I can do on a PC or Mac.  Chromebook will also print local if I use Sparkview or Ericom Access Now, but it's a more complicated process involving a separate tab with a PDF view.  Find the remote desktop connection app from the home page by swiping up from the bottom and selecting all apps.  You can drag down slightly on the RDC app icon and a menu will pop up on the bottom with an option to pin the icon to the home page.
• Typing - I bought the red touch cover with my Surface.  Yesterday, my typing was atrocious. Today it is way better.  I'm touch typing with greater speed and way fewer typos. I still have some room for improvement.  Propping up the Surface on my lap with kickstand and typing on keyboard works better than I imagined it would.
• Reader - I love the news reader app.  You can opt to pin particular publications on your home page if you want.  It is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and there's a lot of free content.

• Mail  - This app is an abomination. I can't believe this app comes from the creator of Outlook!
• One Note - I'm rediscovering this app.  It's not as touch friendly as I'd like.  Still, it's nice that the app is included.  Evernote is available for download from the Windows store if you've moved on.
• Browser - This is a one-app town.  It's IE 10 or nuthin'.  I'm okay with that for now, but I still miss Chrome.

I hope these random thoughts give you a better idea of what it's like to use the Surface tablet.  I'll post more thoughts over the next few days.