Let me tell you about my new obsession: the Microsoft Surface tablet. Thanks to the Her Campus national team and Microsoft, this amazing device is all mine to use for the next month, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be making a purchase when the month’s up.
Last week, I spent an afternoon in the Prudential Center’s Microsoft Store with other HC Collegiettes in the Boston area eating chocolate covered strawberries, playing Just Dance on the X Box Live, and most importantly, getting acquainted with our new gadget—the Surface.
But seriously, if you have not played this dance game you need to get on that…like now.
The most versatile tablet on the market, the Microsoft Surface not only allows you to be productive when you need to get work done, and entertained when you don’t, but it allows you to do both at the same time. How is this possible? Say hello to the double screen multitasking feature. While it may not actually make me any better at multitasking, it allows me to pretend that I can attentively take notes in Physiology while checking to see if anyone commented on my new profile picture, and for that, I am grateful.
In class, the Surface functions as an all-out superstar. Because it’s small and lightweight, I can type notes without taking up a whole desk. And when I get sick of typing a million words a minute, I can simultaneously video the lecture without anyone noticing and then embed it in my notes. In other words, it lets me be sneaky in class, which is probably one of my favorite things.
On a less academic, but no less important note, the Surface is perfect for taking selfies. When it takes a picture, it actually takes 15 around the precise moment you click, and then lets you scroll through them to pick the best one. Finally, a device that understands me and my quest for the perfect selfie!
I can watch Netflix, read books on my Kindle account, check my favorite News app, get a yoga workout from the Health and Fitness app, and customize my home screen so that my most used apps are the easiest to open. Also, it has a cool “Fresh Paint” app that takes doodling to a whole new level. It has a feature that starts a painting for you, and lets you finish it with different paintbrushes and colors to choose from. I tried this tiger one…and I’m going to go out on a limb and say the finished product will not be a pretty sight, but thanks to inventions like this people like me (the artistically challenged) can pretend they’ve completed a piece of artwork, and for that, Microsoft deserves a pat on the back.
As you can see, I’m already pretty emotionally attached to my Surface, and can honestly say that I don’t know how I will be able to give it back to Microsoft in a month when my time is up. There may or may not be tears and ice cream involved in the aftermath, and I can’t promise that I won’t return to the Pru the very next day to buy my very own Surface for keeps. Trust me, if you spent even an hour with this tablet, you’d feel the same.