The Surface screen is not as easy on the eyes as the iPad, although it doesn’t have any noticeable flicker and the resolution is very good. It does not work well for outside use (glare is a problem as the screen is very reflective). , If you don't have reflective light sources it works very well indeed and due to the letter box format it is a pleasure to use for wide screen video (cue watching a feature length film in a darkened room). I tested the video by watching Oblivion in SD. I still need to try an HD video to see whether there is any noticeable difference when watching high def material on the tiny screen. Although I really like the small, portable nature of the surface, I do find myself wishing for a slightly larger display, something the size of an A4 piece of paper would be about right for me.
VGA
VGA support is critical for me, as this is still the only option in many lecture theatres (although HDMI cables are becoming more common).
When hooking up the surface to a VGA cable you need to make sure you have the right adapter (mini-display port to VGA). Microsoft sell a Surface Pro specific vga adapter, NOT to be confused with the adaptor for the surface RT. The first time I went to hook up my Surface Pro in a lecturer theatre I discovered I had been supplied with the RT adapter, which isn't compatible (the RT uses a different display port). There are third party adapters available, so you don't have to go with the Microsoft one (although it does look nice and reduces the chances of putting in the adapter the wrong way around).
The surface connected fine to my 24” dell external monitor using a third party vga adaptor and the MS specific one. It also connected fine to a lecture theatre projector using both a third party and MS vga adaptor.
DVI
In my office I work with two external monitors connected to my Surface, both via DVI. One is connected directly to the mini-display port via a third party adapter (you can also get a MS specific one) and the other is connected via a DVI cable to the Targus USB 3 powered docking station (an essential accessory in my opinion - more on this in another post). Connecting directly via the mini-display adapter seems to be pretty much fool proof.
Configuring the docking station took a little work (more on that later). I've now done it twice, first for the evaluation model and then on my personal one.
On the evaluation model things initially worked well but then I passed it on to someone else and when it came back, I ended up with a flickering problem when trying to connect via the docking station. I think something screwy was going on with the drivers but I had to return the evaluation model before I could resolve the problem. This flickering issue hasn't occurred on my personal Surface, so it remains a mystery as to what caused it and how it could be fixed.
Now that I have my personal Surface configured (with display drivers for the docking station installed) it seems to handle reconnecting to the display plugged into the adapter reasonably well, although sometimes I need to power the docking station on and off to pick up the display.
In theory it is possible to drive three external monitors (two via the docking station and one via the mini-display output port). Since I haven't got three monitors, I haven't tried this though.
I usually work with my laptop and an external monitor set up to extend (side by side). This
mode is not so natural for the surface because of the screen
size disparity. Instead it works far better having the external monitors
set up above the surface screen, allowing easy access to the touch
screen. Curently I have them configured in a triangle,with the two
external monitor side by side and the surface in the middle below them.
This places the Surface close enough to use as an input device and I can drag
between all three displays.
iPad as an external monitor
When I was out and about I found myself wishing I
had some more screen real estate, so I used the splashtop app to set up my iPad as a
second monitor and that worked great. You'll need to install splashtop on
your Surface and your iPad. If you happen to have an iPad this gives you
a portable option for extending your display (which if you have an iPad case
that doubles as a stand looks very nifty.
Scaling Issues
One area where windows 8 is a little frustrating
is in the scaling of icons and the like. The Surface has
a very high res screen but the dimensions are small, which can make icons
and text hard to read (and even harder
to navigate using your finger). To get around this
you can scale icons/text to be 125% or 150% of usual size, however the
external monitors look better if using 100% scaling rather than 125% or 150%.
Unfortunately this presents a problem when using external monitors as the
scaling is universally applied to all displays and to make matters
worse to change the scaling you need to log out, so it is not convenient to
toggle this setting. Some apps (e.g. chrome) allow zooming of text.
A better fix may be to disable display scaling on high dpi based on a per app
basis, as described here:
Aside: to do this right click on the google chrome
icon, from properties select the compatibility tab check “disable display
scaling on high DPI settings” This seems to help a bit, although still
not a brilliant solution.
You can zoom in some apps although zooming in google chrome while editing docs does weird things to the cursor location (this is a known chrome issue). If you don't zoom in, you have to have pretty good eye sight to use the default text size when sitting back from the screen.
I tend to use firefox and chrome for browsing but on the Surface IE is the way to go, as it does a much better job of supporting touch screen browsing.
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