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Hi Dan, thanks for the response. My understanding is that ESRI still hasn't implemented any sort of GPU acceleration, in ArcMap and so unless I'm doing something like using Spatial Analyst (which I've done 3x in the past few years), GPU doesn't really matter so much. So, map display/scroll and laying down vertex points is all disk I/O and CPU limited. Looking at the specs (Microsoft Surface - Wikipedia ), something that worries me is the weight of the Book versus Surface. I already have a laptop (2016 MacBook Pro) which I always travel with, so I'm a bit hesitant to get a Book which weighs >2x as much as the Pro. The CPU in the *new* Pros also look better benchmark-wise than the best Surface Books. I couldn't find the exact Intel CPU on the site, but here's the next-one down (as in, the top Pro has an i7-7660U, this is the i7-7600U, versus the top Book which is i7-6600U), comparison: http://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Core-i7-6600U-vs-Intel-Core-i7-7600U/m36828vsm220838. It performs about 9% better than the CPU in the Book. Compared with what you have (i5-6300U), it's 21% better. Please don't think that I'm trying to knock your suggestion -- I just spent a half hour looking into it to see if I think the Book would be better than the Pro for what I do; unless you think I'm wrong in the above analysis though, I think the Pro is going to be better. Did I miss something? Two side-notes: I travel a lot -- 18 trips slated for this year. So while this by no means is something I'd use every day, it's something that wouldn't sit gathering dust. Also, apparently the Trump administration is pursuing (more quietly than before) if not a laptop ban, then a laptop severe-extra-checks at airports and perhaps the Pro would slip more under the radar than a Book, and less hassle with security is always nice.
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06-29-2017
08:02 AM
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I've looked at past discussions on here for Microsoft Surface compatibility with ArcMap and there seems to be mixed results almost entirely based on what you want to do. So I will first describe what I do: I almost exclusively work in ArcMap, displaying multi-GB planetary datasets (basemaps and DTMs) anywhere from a few MB, to more often ~2-20 GB, to sometimes 100 GB. I almost exclusively use the "streaming" tool to create polyline features based on the data, and sometimes I need to edit the vertices rather than just erasing the shape and making a new one. I do all this using a Wacom Intuos Pro tablet interface with a desktop computer. I do rely on at least two programmable keys on the Wacom -- is there any analogue on the Surface, or would I need to get the keyboard and rely on that instead? That's literally 99+% what I do. I'm trying to investigate is whether the latest incarnation of Microsoft's Surface Pro (2017 model) is suitable for this. I realize that some of the datasets would need to be on a microSD card, but I could customize the data I have on the tablet to what I want to work on for that week. The purpose of the Surface wold be to do mapping on the road -- on an airplane or when I'm at a hotel and don't have my normal setup. As a Mac user for everything but Arc, it would also be useful to show colleagues stuff while at conferences. So this would not be a main working interface, but it would be one that would function pretty well for what I need to do. With that in mind, what do folks think? Will the Surface work for what I would like to do? If so, is there a spec set that I should shoot for BELOW the best one (i7 core at 2.5GHz, 16GB RAM, and 1TB SSD)? From everything I've seen, the answer appears to be "yes it will work and you might as well future-'proof' by getting the best," but I don't want to ask my work to buy one until I get some more information.
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06-28-2017
09:40 PM
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