Surface Pro (Newest Models) – Yet Another “will it Work for Me” Post

Ladies and Gentlemen,

My wife and sister-in-law are drawing me into a new business venture in which we will need to make some native (if that even means anything anymore) apps (and applications) for Windows, Android, macOS, and iOS. I have done all of these recently except Windows.

Well, I’m also wanting to use this as an excuse to get a decent Windows laptop. Bonus points if I can run Ubuntu or Arch cleanly on it (I’d prefer to dual boot as I need bare-metal hardware support; but if that’s not clean (and I’m guessing it isn’t on Surface) then I can resort to WSL2 (or a VM) and just get a cheap miniPC box to toss bare-metal Linux on.

I *really* want to use this as an opportunity to try a modern Surface.

BUT are these still Apple-priced devices without Apple build quality?

I’d *love* to try a Snapdragon ARM version but I’m thinking that will probably be too limiting for a dev device. That will probably end up being just a test device.

I know a Surface Laptop would probably be the more solid choice; BUT I really love the idea of the Surface Pro with the official keyboard form factor.

I need to be able to run full Visual Studio (so I can learn coding Windows apps). We will also be building out web applications as well (using ruby, preferably—BUT I’m open to using the “Windows” way of doing web apps…I’m assuming some sort of C# ASP.net successor?)

If I could do everything with the Surface that would be excellent. (This would include Android apps as well; I know I need Macs for the macOS / iOS development…I have the Macs to do that part.)

I have done some due diligence on the internet and YouTube but man…getting any kind of reasonable information out of the web nowdays is almost impossible; so I’m coming to the smart communities for help.

Thanks in Advance for advice and/or experiences!—Curtis