Runing matlab on surface go?

Will the surface go run matlab well well? Or will I have issues with this?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

There are two versions of the Surface Go. One of them only has 4 Gb of RAM, and so barely reaches the current minimum specifications for MATLAB. The other one has 8 Gb of RAM, and so is plausibly useful for MATLAB.

I did a lot of productive work with MATLAB in 8 gigabytes of RAM. However, I was getting increasingly frustrated with having only 8 gigabytes. MATLAB was increasing in size, the operating system was increasing in size, the number of operating system daemons was going up, browsers were increasing in size, the amount of data I was trying to handle at the same time was increasing, I was running more simultaneous Maple windows computing things for MATLAB users, I was running virtual machines so I could run MS Windows on my Mac so I could answer Windows-specific MATLAB questions (or so I could help administer my mother's Windows system)...

These days I would no longer purchase a new system with as low as 8 Gb for more than casual MATLAB use.

However, if your intended use is just school assignments, then 8 Gb might work fine for you for a few years. By the time of final year projects, it is a bit more difficult to predict whether it would be enough or not.

If you are thinking of it as a longer term system, then I would not purchase the Surface Go. It is only dual core 1.66 GHz.

Oh wait, major problem: The Surface Go runs Windows 10 S, and "Rather than allowing you to download and install whatever you feel like, Windows 10 S Mode will only permit apps from the Windows 10 Store to be installed. " MATLAB is not in the Windows 10 Store, so you would not be able to install it -- not unless you switched out of Windows 10 S mode, which is not currently permitted (but is in the works.)

[Jacob Roach]

Hmm, I've seen videos of people switching out of windows 10 s mode though, can I not do that?

[Walter Roberson]

Perhaps, if you could find instructions on how to do it, and could find evidence that it could be done in the Go. There is no official support for switching out of Windows S at this time that I could see, but Microsoft says they actively intend to make it possible.

[Jacob Roach]

Could you take a look at this? https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-go-how-unlock-windows-10-s-mode Is this not switching out of s mode? Would this be bad for me to do?

[Walter Roberson]

That looks easy enough, and looks like it is an approved way (not a hack), so it should be safe enough.

[Jacob Roach]

Awesome! Thank you :)

[Walter Roberson]

One thing is for sure: it won't have an NVIDIA GPU ;-)

I see that the only external port it has is a single USB-C .

You will be wanting to add a bluetooth mouse, as you will not want to be locking up your one and only external port with a wireless mouse dongle. The bluetooth mice I have happened to use have gone through batteries notably faster than the wireless mouse+dongle mice I have used on various computers, but it has been a nuisance that the dongle uses a slot.

Or perhaps you will want to get the pen for the Go; that might make sense for various uses.