Hey Surface-GAF. Just a quick question. So... I'm going to buy a Surface this week.
Here's my question: i5 or i7? I'm looking at an 8gb model either way, I think. Between the two there's a $200 difference.
My case use is this: I've got a powerhouse gaming PC and a fairly decent (but 2-year-old) Dell laptop. I'm currently lugging this big Dell with me everywhere, and I don't want to, thus moving to a Surface Book. I'll continue to use the Dell around the house a bit when I want to work from a room that isn't my office, but the Surface Book will primarily be for travel.
When I travel, a lot of my work will be low-intensity stuff; I write a lot for a living, so that's not so much of a concern. However on occasion I'll also want to hop into Premiere Pro to do some video editing; we're talking 1080/60 at max (basically, game capture), and short-form - videos shorter than 20 minutes in length. I also might on occasion use the Surface for Capture - plugging in a capture card via USB and capturing to a MicroSD via the Surface. (I work in games, so sometimes this is required at an event or something.) Again, though, this isn't really high-impact stuff as all the high-end capture cards now do all the processing on the card rather than on the machine they're plugged into.
On rare occasion I might play a game on it mid-flight or something, but if I do I'd be keeping it small in scale. I'm not going to be playing Fallout or something on it; we're talking stuff like FTL, Kerbal, or things like the Steam rereleases of FF7-9... so I IMAGINE games won't be a factor, right?
But, with the video editing stuff - is there a boost worth considering from the i7? I understand there's a battery life trade-off too... but bearing in mind the video editing might only come into play once every few months (say, E3 or Gamescom) since I edit on my PC at home the rest of the time, I'm looking for a decent boost to something to justify the purchase.
I'm leaning i5, but I don't want to make a mistake, so I figured I'd ask GAF.
