Perhaps, an area of use that modern technology might not be immediately apparent is in the field of landscaping. Many of us have several ideas and visions of what a landscaper traditionally looks like and a tablet-toting artist isn’t among them.
Well, landscape designer Brian Shernce is using a Surface Pro 4 to upend many of our preconceived notions of what the industry landscaping involves.
Despite the idea of being entangled in branches and bushes all day, Shernce spends a portion of his time in an office attending to the full gamut of his clerical duties. However, thanks to the Surface Pro 4, Shernce can now bring his office with him on the road.
“Whereas before if I needed to do any real computing work, I’d wait to get back to my desk – which often caused the work to snowball – now I can work from anywhere.”
Interestingly enough, Shernce chose the Surface Pro 4 as his mobile office over the familiarity of Apple he had become accustomed to. As a self-professed “Apple Guy” who owned a few Macs and iPads, Shernce explored the possibility of using an iPad Pro as his mobile office solution. Despite conducting online research, tutorials, and one-on-one training at the Apple Store, Shernce came to the reality that a Surface Pro 4 was better suited for his needs.
“He notes with surprise that the switch from the Apple to the Microsoft ecosystem was painless, despite his longstanding history with iOS. Since much of his work is in the cloud, he was simply able to unbox the Surface, sync his Surface Pen, get online and start manipulating the same files he used to grapple with on his iPad Pro. He has now purchased two Surface Pro 4s, providing one to his production manager so they can quickly markup documents like AutoCAD PDFs and project estimates with the Surface Pen, work on budgets together in Excel and even run renders to design exquisite outdoor spaces for their clients. All of these are possible wherever work takes him thanks to Surface Pro 4’s impressive power and small size.”
The use case that solidified the use of the Surface Pro 4 for Shernce was when he was emailed an AutoCAD plan for a large job opportunity that was time sensitive. Using the Surface Pro 4, Shernce was able to forego the traditional regiamorale and time wasting efforts of printing out the large plan, having a production manager mark it up and then scanning the changes back into a computer to send it back to the client. Instead, all changes were done directly on the Surface Pro 4 and Shernce was able to nail the proposal and snag the job in record time.
Once more, the Surface Pro 4 is increasingly replacing the workflow of Shernce’s MacBook and tablet combination.
Microsoft’s Surface devices are continually finding niches to fill with their compact power and portability value propositions as more professionals become mobile.
