A Shout Out to Staples

Lately, on the Tech Blogs, you hear about sales people at Best Buy, Office Depot and Staples trying to sell the Microsoft Surface and making a right bugger of it, as the English might say. Well, I want to give a shout out to Staples for having at least one person in the store who managed to hit all the high points about Microsoft Surface. I just wish that I had thought to get his name.

He saw me looking at the Surface and came up to see if I needed help. He asked if I knew anything about Windows 8, and I said I did, so he just talked about Surface. I thought he was going to make a mistake as he started by saying that the Surface ran Windows 8, and was just like the PCs with Windows 8, but then he fielded it cleanly by adding that it was the same, except that it would not run old Windows apps, then he showed me the Microsoft Store, and said that it would install any of these apps.

He mentioned that the Surface used an ARM processor. Now, I do not know about anyone else, but I have always just called it an “arm” processor, saying the word, but he spelled it out, saying that the Surface had an A.R.M processor. Sounded odd to me.

He pointed out the USB port, and the SD card slot, though actually he did not show me where it was. He showed that it could be used like a tablet, detached from the cover and even turned on its side in portrait mode. He also showed off the cable that will turn the mini display port on the Surface into either an HDMI port, or a VGA port. That he where he finally told me something I did not know, as I had not really looked at the peripherals for Surface.

He also showed me an ASUS and an Acer portable that had touch screens, and when I mentioned that I would like something with a little more graphics horsepower for games, he showed me an AMD processor portable with a better ATi card in it.
 
Over all, he was knowledgeable and personable and it was a rather pleasant experience…well, except for my not having the money to actually buy one.