November 2, 2019

Surface Pro 7 Review

This is the temporary nerve center of my blogging empire while the rest of our house is being torn apart and put back together again.Kevin Drum

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I am now on my seventh tablet and my third Surface Pro. There are probably three or four of you who are interested in this, so here’s my review of my shiny new Surface Pro 7.

I finally caved in and bought the top-of-the-line model, for reasons that have little to do with performance but are too complicated to spend any time on. It’s got a Core i7 processor, 16 GB of RAM, and 512 GB of SSD hard drive. Performance is very snappy indeed, about as good as my desktop computer. It connects to WiFi networks quickly and reliably and download speeds are excellent.

The only physical change from previous models is the addition of a USB-C port, which is very handy. I transfer files from my camera to the tablet all the time, and the combination of high performance and the USB-C port makes transfers about 10-20x faster than with my previous Surface Pro 5.

Battery life is finally acceptable. I haven’t run the Pro 7 down to zero yet, but it looks to me like it gets a legit eight hours of battery life based on moderate, everyday use: mostly browsing, e-reading, and photoshopping. (I don’t do any gaming, so I have no idea how well it performs or how long it lasts for gamers.)

Everything else is about the same as before. The screen resolution is great; it weighs about a pound and a half; and it costs a fortune. My last two Surface Pros have both developed screen problems after about 18 months, so I highly recommend getting the 2-year extended warranty.

This is my first tablet that I truly have no complaints about—aside from the $2,000 price tag, that is. Here’s hoping that it lasts me a good long time.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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