Microsoft Surface 3

The Good

It’s clean design. Type cover is really a smart, useful accessory. it runs full windows! It really can replace both your laptop and your tablet.

The Bad

Still out of many people's price range. Slightly under-powered for real laptop work. Windows still isn't a touch friendly operating system. Tweener size is too big for tablets and too small for laptops.

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Buy It Now | Microsoft

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If you want to purchase a Microsoft surface, the Surface 3 is your best bet. The Surface 3 is both useful and affordable. It starts at $500 and runs a fully operational version of Windows. The surface 3 is a very good device.

Ok that’s not really true. the full Surface experience requires the $130 Type Cover ( for typing) and the $50 Surface Pen (for interacting with the touchscreen).  That’s $680 for the whole package, which puts the “cheaper” Surface well beyond the price range of the average PC buyer , Who, statistically speaking, spends less than $500. AT $499 for the tablet alone, the Surface remains firmly in luxury purchase range, along with the same priced iPad.

The Good Under the Hood  

The Surface 3 is a sturdy, attractive device, made of a single block of silver magnesium that looks as refined as anything Apple makes. Coming in at only 1.4 pounds and 8.7mm thick

It runs a mobile friendly, Super efficient 1.6GHz Intel Atom X7 processor instead of the pro’s desktop class Core chip.  It offers a generous helping of I/O- USB 3.0, Mini Display-port, A micro USB charging port, and a micro SD slot along with the same charging connector/port as the Pro 3 has.

Personal Opinions

“But in total it is complete shit I didn't like how it had the name Microsoft on it, that's what ruined it for me”

As this person stats he does not like the product solely because of it’s name. He does not like anything with the name Microsoft.

With the lineup of the Surface tablets I feel as if they are just turning them into more of a mainstream tablet rather than an exclusive device made for a specific type of person. No one knows where Microsoft is going with these devices but some say that they are just driving the lineup down but others say that  they are making a new product to keep the tablet world interesting.

What do I think?

I personally think that Microsoft should NOT continue with this lineup. When they first started with the Surface tablets it was a great idea, they had the first compact design plane for a but they executed it the wrong way. They forced Windows 8 of pretty much everyone and made it more relevant for touchscreen laptops and phones. You might be thinking that “well the Surface is a touchscreen device so what do you mean?” What I mean is that they released two versions of the Operating system, Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT. What are the differences you might be asking yourself? Windows 8 is the full on operating system that’s on desktops and laptops. Windows 8 RT  is the scaled down version of Windows 8. Windows 8 RT doesn't run legacy apps (.exe files).

 

The History of Computers

The world of technology is a wonderful place. We are surrounded by computers and cell phones everywhere you go. I'm sure that you all are reading this on either a smartphone or computer so you understand what i'm talking about.

Let's look into the world of computers shall we. The definition of a computer is general purpose device that can be programmed to carry out arithmetic or logical operations automatically. Since a sequence of operations can be readily changed, the computer can solve more than one kind of problem. 

Pre-twentieth century 

Devices have been used to aid computation for thousands of years, mostly using one to one correspondence with fingers. The earliest counting device was probably a form of a tally stick. Later record keeping aids throughout the fertile crescent included calculi (clay spheres, cones, etc.) Which represented counts of items, probably livestock or grains, sealed in hollow unbaked clay containers. The use of counting rods is one example. 

The Abacus

The abacus was early used for arithmetic tasks. What we now call the Roman abacus was used in Babylonia as early as 2400 BC. Since then, many other forms of reckoning boards or tables have been invented. In a medieval European counting house, a checkered cloth would be placed on a table, and markers moved around on it according to certain rules, as an aid to calculating sums of money.

Antikythera mechanism 

The Antikythera mechanism is believed to be the earliest mechanical analog "computer", according to Derek J. de Solla Price. It was designed to calculate astronomical positions. It was discovered in 1901 in the Antikythera wreck off the Greek island of Antikythera, between Kythera and Crete, and has been dated to circa 100 BC. Devices of a level of complexity comparable to that of the Antikythera mechanism would not reappear until a thousand years later.

The first electromechanical computers

By 1938 the United States Navy had developed an electromechanical analog computer small enough to use aboard a submarine. This was the Torpedo Data Computer, which used trigonometry to solve the problem of firing a torpedo from a boat to a moving target. During World War II similar devices were developed in other countries as well. Early digital computers were electromechanical; electric switches drove mechanical relays to perform the calculation. These devices had a low operating speed and were eventually superseded by much faster all-electric computers, originally using vacuum tubes. The Z2, created by German engineer Konrad Zuse in 1939, was one of the earliest examples of an electromechanical relay computer.

In 1941, Zuse followed his earlier machine up with the Z3, the world's first working electromechanical programmable, fully automatic digital computer. The Z3 was built with 2000 relays, implementing a 22 bit word length that operated at a clock frequency of about 5–10 Hz. Program code and data were stored on punched film. It was quite similar to modern machines in some respects, pioneering numerous advances such as floating point numbers. Replacement of the hard-to-implement decimal system (used in Charles Babbage's earlier design) by the simpler binary system meant that Zuse's machines were easier to build and potentially more reliable, given the technologies available at that time. The Z3 was probably a complete Turing machine.

HP Chromebook 11 (Snow White)

I'm sure you all have heard of Chromebooks and I'm sure that you all have your own ideas about them. This is not an article about what is or isn't correct, this is about what I personalty think of them and why I own one. Most people who think of Chromebooks put them in the same category as laptops but I don't think that's right. Chromebooks are more like a high end tablet with a built in keyboard and track pad. With computers and tablets coming closer and closer together it's getting harder to find the line between the two.  I already own an HP Pavilion laptop for main use at the house but I needed something cheap but high quality to use when I'm on the go. I would have loved to get a macbook air but sadly those are out of my price range. I went the route of Chromebooks because of their simplicity and style. They are lightweight be easy to use (once you understand chrome OS). I can't speak for everyone when I say this but I think that if you are a high school or college student you should have a laptop or a tablet of some kind that they carry around to class for note taking and such. (I use a surface 2 at the moment).

I think that Chromebooks are more in the tablet family more then they are the laptops family. Most Chromebooks have a tablet like CPU and flash storage or an SSD with 16GB like mine has.

I have talked enough about Chromebooks in general but this is about the one I picked up and why I choose to do so. I purchased the HP Chromebook 11 in Snow White from Amazon, Here are a full list of specs.

• Screen Size; 11.6 inches
• Screen Resolution; 1366 x 768
• Max Screen Resolution; 1366 x 768
• Processor; 1.7 GHz Exynos 5000 Series
• RAM; 2 GB DDR3L SDRAM
• Hard Drive; 16 GB
• Wireless Type; 802.11bgn
• Number of USB 2.0 Ports; 2
• Average Battery (in hours); 6.25 hours
• Brand Name; HP
• Processor Brand: Samsung 
• Operating System: Chrome OS
• Weight: 2.7 pounds

So it sounds like a pretty good deal right? Like I said before It's only going to be used for web based functions such as my blog, Facebook, and school work. If you want to check it out yourself click this link. HP Chromebook 11 (Snow White)

My full review of the Chromebook will be coming so stay tuned.