I like checking the social media scene from different conferences to see who’s using their Surface to take notes or stay productive will they’re attending conference sessions.
Well, you can be sure there will be some Surfaces at the DogFood Conference this year – this conference is all about the latest Microsoft technologies, from Surface to Xbox to SQL Server to SharePoint.
I’ll be there with my Surface Pro speaking on SharePoint – check out more details at my SharePoint CowBell blog!
If you’re using Windows 8.1 Preview on your Surface Pro like me, you may have noticed that there’s a new feature added to the Share charm that allows you yet another way to take screenshots from Metro apps.
Here’s how:
If you need help or ideas on figuring out the best way to maximize your use of touch devices (like the Surface Pro) with Office 2013, check out Microsoft’s Touch Guide for the new Office. There are some feature tips there that you might not know exist in Office – check it out:
Did you know that when you rotate your tablet to the Portrait orientation, OneNote 2013 automatically flips to full page mode, meaning it hides all the navigation and chrome, thus maximizing your writing space?
This is a very cool feature for us Surface Pro users who want to use our pen to write notes in the traditional way we’d do it if we had a paper notebook in our hand. But below is a slight tweak I use to help me get access to frequently-used features, while still maximizing space.
I don’t have an elegant solution here – it’s simply a statement: trying to finger-click the ellipses (3-dot) button on a SharePoint site using a Windows tablet (like my Surface Pro) can be tricky. Check out my video to see what I mean:
Every time I’ve ever tried to insert a scanned image or webcam image into OneNote (desktop version), I was met with an error about drivers, and being unable to access the scanner/camera.
Thankfully, OneNote MX (Win8 Metro version) seems to have addressed this issue. The below video shows the smooth integration of the webcam for inserting pictures. I’ve seen this work both with my Surface Pro, as well as a traditional laptop using OneNote MX. It’s certainly not a solution to the desktop-version problem, but it’s a pretty good alternative:
Surface Pro owners have been giddy over the fact that Wacom finally created drivers that allow for pressure sensitivity in Photoshop – the buzz is all over Twitter. This is indeed very kool for those looking to use the Surface Pro for high-end graphic design, but it’s also exciting for us mere mortals as well!
Looking at the new Pen Tablet Properties screen shows that we get some additional features beyond just Photoshop goodness:
This case (MoKo Rotary Case) has been working out well for me. I wanted to show my little do-it-yourself trick for stowing the pen in the case, since this case (and most cases out there) don’t have a good solution for pen storage. I just use the magnets at the bottom of the Surface (instead of the magnet on the right side that’s meant for the pen) – it fits pretty snug in the bottom groove, and works for me:
Click here to download a free Windows 8 Tablet avatar prop for your Xbox persona.
Look how happy my avatar is now that he’s go t his very own tablet:
Here’s the short Surface Pro version of a video I created as a means to compare with a previous video I created using the HP Slate 500 Win7 tablet PC. Because of the more powerful processor, things like right-click (ie pen-button) actions, and two-finger panning/zooming are much smoother:
Surface Pro (using OneNote 2013:
HP Slate 500 using OneNote 2010 (original post here):
The new Windows 8 Twitter App was just release this week. In this video, we take a hands-on look at how it works on the Surface Pro. Two obviously missing features are the ability to see your Lists, and the ability to manage multiple accounts:
“…The Surface Pro has made my workflow more efficient and I am more productive than I had been when I was using a MacBook Air and iPad separately. If you need a powerful device that just does it all, this is the one gadget to get…”
