{"id":574,"date":"2013-07-09T13:36:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T13:36:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/knightware.net\/?p=574"},"modified":"2013-07-09T13:36:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-09T13:36:24","slug":"making-a-great-desktop-pc-from-your-surface-pro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/?p=574","title":{"rendered":"Making a great desktop PC from your Surface PRO"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft’s Surface PRO is a great tablet \/ laptop device, but for me a problem has always been transitioning away from my home desktop\u00a0during travel onto a mobile device.\u00a0 Compounded with the sheer number of PC\/Tablet\/Laptop\/Ultrabook devices I have going, it’s a recipe for pain.\u00a0 Well friends, there is good news; I found a \u00a0Targus USB 3.0 docking station on Amazon\u00a0which allows you to connect up to 3 additional monitors to your Surface PRO (or other USB 3.0 capable ultrabook \/ laptop), and it works great!<\/p>\n

Targus USB 3.0 Docking Station (ACP70USZ)
\nhttps:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Targus-Docking-Station-Ultrabooks-ACP70USZ\/dp\/B005YR1PV2<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Surface<\/a><\/p>\n

I’ve already torn down my old home PC, and moved to using this as my main home desktop PC.\u00a0 It’s slick –\u00a0runs faster than the AMD based desktop it replaced,\u00a0adds a third touch-enabled screen to my traditional dual-monitor\u00a0setup (nice development plus), and when it’s time to take it with me I just disconnect power and a single USB cable.<\/p>\n

Some Windows 8.1 Specific Nice-ities<\/h2>\n

Natrually since it’s shiny and says Microsoft, I’m running the preview of Windows 8.1 that came out a week or two ago.\u00a0 This adds some really nice benefits for this\u00a0Surface desktop of scenario over previous versions of windows that I thought I’d take a minute to mention.<\/p>\n

Note:\u00a0 If your running Windows 8.1 with the Targus docking station, you’ll need to visit the displaylink.com website to download new drivers for the external displays.\u00a0 Luckily they had drivers for 8.1 within a week of the preview being announced – kudos to them!<\/em><\/p>\n

First off, it supports\u00a0independent scaling ratios for each of the monitors<\/strong>, which is a big deal when you have a high DPI device like the Surface PRO connected with some standard 96 DPI monitors.\u00a0 With all previous versions of windows, stuff would either look\u00a0really<\/em> small on the surface PRO or\u00a0really<\/em> big on the other monitors, depending on which scaling option you set for Windows.\u00a0 This is nice addition to Windows, and it works really well in practice.<\/p>\n

Secondly, and in my opinion more importantly, it\u00a0expands support for more Windows store \/ metro style\u00a0 \/ modern\u00a0apps<\/strong> running concurrently on your desktop, at user definable sizes.\u00a0 No more single store app with maybe one more\u00a0snapped to the left or right of that\u00a0app.\u00a0 Now you\u00a0can have multiple store apps running side by side and resize them as you like, and you can even have store apps on each of the different monitors.\u00a0 Apps can even open\u00a0other apps in new ‘windows’ or add additional\u00a0window instances of their own app (think\u00a0new windows for tabs in IE).\u00a0\u00a0This is another great addition, and I think that with this the Windows Store style applications will become\u00a0naturally interwoven in people’s daily desktop usage.<\/p>\n

Overall I’m super excited about this setup, and I recommend it to everyone.\u00a0 Be aware that Windows 8.1 is in preview and does have some quirks, so if your not into the pre-release scene (don’t feel bad just because I think your weird) then wait until the August RTM.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft’s Surface PRO is a great tablet \/ laptop device, but for me a problem has always been transitioning away from my home desktop\u00a0during travel onto a mobile device.\u00a0 Compounded with the sheer number of PC\/Tablet\/Laptop\/Ultrabook devices I have going, it’s a recipe for pain.\u00a0 Well friends, there is good news; I found a \u00a0Targus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.knightware.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}