Geek Time is back baby!

 Nov 10, 2016

Who would have thought – Microsoft has brought back Geek Time, and it’s great to be a bona fide geek again! Microsoft have just announced (October 2016) their latest Surface products and what an absolutely mouth-watering smorgasbord they have given us!

Full disclosure here – I am a dyed in the wool geek from way back – I started building my own computers from PC board kits in the very early days, moved on up to overclocking 486’s, and I think my record was 17 PC’s at home, none of which had their covers on as I was always changing one component or another! - that was before removable disk drives and virtualization. Of course I am more sedate now and remarried, and my home network has shrunk to just 2 servers (a home/media server and a Hyper-V server), my wife and son have their own laptops and I have either Apple TV or Roku boxes on our 3 large screen TV’s. Oh and my pride and joy at the moment is my Surface Pro 3 (maxed out of course) which I got when they were first released, and I have been upgrading ever since (It originally came with Windows 8, then 8 Pro, then 8.1 Pro and now Windows 10 Enterprise). Microsoft were right when they said that this was a true desktop replacement – it absolutely replaced my previous i7 water cooled tower beast of a PC, and I get the benefits of portability as well! Teamed with an Office 365 account this truly has been a little wonder, and with the addition of a little USB fan at the back of the docking station, the Pro 3 runs Elder Scrolls Online flawlessly on my 34 inch curved screen (a guy has to relax sometime doesn’t he?)

Anyway, to get back on track, Microsoft have just announced details of their new Surface line-up, and as a true power geek I haven’t been as excited as this in a long, long time.

First up is the Surface PC – sorry the Surface Studio, a 28-inch PixelSense (substitute absolutely stunning display – 4.5k ultra HD screen (63 percent more pixels than a high-end 4k TV)), touch-screen display. And it comes in various configurations from i5 with 8Gb RAM and 1TB storage up to an i7CPU (with a 4GB GPU!), 32GB RAM and 2TB of storage. All in a very practical and elegant form factor – finally Microsoft design teams have come up with a winner that leaves even Apple’s much vaunted designs in the dust! And it handles the Surface pen and the new Dial (more on that in a minute!). (Hey Boss, if you are reading this a couple of these would be brilliant and absolutely perfect for running our OLL classes!)

Secondly, Microsoft have announced their new Surface Books, from an i5/8GB RAM/128GB configuration up to an i7/2GB GPU/1TB storage and a quoted 16 hours battery life. And move over Apple, there is a new design king in town! Again this is a top notch design in an elegant, light and highly portable package with a detachable touchscreen, Surface Pen and Dial capable and enterprise business powerful into the bargain. It has TWO USB 3.0 ports, an SD card reader slot, mini DisplayPort, headset jack, TPM chip for enterprise level security facial recognition for authentication, stereo Dolby speakers and sensors such as Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Magnetometer, Hall Effect and Ambient Light sensors.

And finally, the new Surface Dial. This is a brand new type of input device that looks very much like a hockey puck, but when placed on a Surface screen a context sensitive menu appears around its edges, allowing you to select a colour palette, rotate your work, zoom in or out, easily scroll through multiple articles on a web page, change the volume on your music programs etc. etc. It has haptic feedback and can work together with the Surface Pen, making it a must have creative tool for the new 3D Paint program and a host of other 3D programs Microsoft and other third party vendors are also releasing.

So Geek Time is finally back with a vengeance, and I can’t wait until these new geek toys Enterprise PC’s finally hit the Australian shores, think how much better and faster and easier Elder Scrolls my corporate programs will run! Click here for all the geeky technical details on these great new devices:

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About the Author:

Gordon Cowser  

With over 22 years real world and training experience, Gordon is our most senior IT Infrastructure trainer. His expertise includes but is not limited to; Microsoft Server and Client OS, Messaging, Collaboration, Active Directory and Network Infrastructure. Gordon also specialises in SharePoint technologies training in both technical and end user aspects. With his extensive skill-set he brings a thorough mentoring capability to the classroom where he can advise on technical issues and challenges often beyond the scope of the course curriculum. A very approachable and experienced training professional, he has the ability to establish credibility fast with students at all levels.

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