Don’t bother with Microsoft Surface - they break when you so much as breath on them. I’ve got one here I’m about to throw in the bin, the worst thing I’ve ever owned.
We have several of them for our dLive rig and don’t have many complaints.
However; be aware - the wireless/network I/O for the Director software must be substantial because our Surface Pro battery life suffers whenever it’s connected and actively talking with our MixRack.
If we use Director “offline,” the Surface Pro will run happily, never getting warm, nor quickly draining the battery. As soon as it actually has to talk with the MixRack, that all changes… it gets quite warm and battery drains quickly. Happens on all four of our Surface Pros.
Never have this problem with Midas M32 and the same Surface Pros. Not sure why A&H has such a hard time with software.
The Director software will also disconnect from the MixRack if your tablet goes to sleep, and will need 2-ish minutes to reconnect. Something that also doesn’t happen with the M32.
Hello,
I use Lenovo Yoga for my dLive.
Of course, the screen isn’t really big, but it works great because you can use it as a tablet or as a normal laptop.
I like using a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with dLive Director. In fact, I like it so much, that I recently decided to purchase a 15" Microsoft Surface Book 2 to give me an even better experience (as the screen is detachable from the keyboard). And indeed, I like it much more!
I agree with the comments about the battery life. So I always use mine connected to a power source and since using the Surface Book 2, I’ve used that connected, as well, because of the issues with the Surface Pro. However, The Surface Book 2 does have a much larger battery and might be able to last an entire gig. And with the keyboard attached and the screen reversed, it will run on 2 batteries. But I prefer the light weight of the screen alone.
About the high battery drain:
I discovered that the CPU workload drops when Director runs in two separate windows. On my laptop with i5 CPU the workload drops from 30% to 4% when i enable the windowed mode. The same happened on another PC.
I’d like to save a little money and try the Surface Go. Do you think the lesser computing power of the CPU they use will be a problem? I’m not sure how much computing power Director needs…