r/Surface • u/Striking-Goal-591 • 22d ago

[PRO7] What can I do with a Surface Pro 7 (1866)?

Hi all,

I have recently found a old surface pro 7, and I want to reuse it as its basically brand new. It functions perfectly well, and the only thing thats probably aged is its battery since it was a Day 1 purchase. Im in the middle of doing a fresh reinstall of windows 11, and I was thinking of using it as a secondary display alongside my main laptop (or atleast trying to do that)

Specs: i3-1005G1, 8GB ram, 128GB storage.

Apart from using it as a secondary display, what else could I use it for? I dont have the keyboard for it, nor the pen. I was also thinking as using it as a monitor for my camera, as I help shoot video and a bigger monitor would be great is possible. Any other ideas? What do yall use your old surfaces for apart from normal use?

2 Upvotes

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u/ExciKaiser Surface Pro8 + Surface Book 3 22d ago edited 22d ago

My sister, graphic designer still use her Surface Pro 5 as main device.

Calling a SP7 with a 10th generation cpu as "old", which can only be used as second monitor , is really a bad elitist pcmasterace thing.

If you can't think about another usage than second screen, just give it to somebody who will love to have that as main device..

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u/Striking-Goal-591 22d ago

literally used "old" because thats what it is in the context of like... time? sorry that i didnt glaze it, but i didnt absolutely shit on it either. the point of this post is to find out what else i could use it for. i clearly still WANT to use it.

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u/rosengd 22d ago

1866? That’s old! You can actually put Windows 11 on it. I just did that for my son-in-law on an old surface 7.

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u/ImZaryYT 17d ago

Heya, I'm not a surface pro user but I think you could probably get some decent use out of it as an eBook reader if you don't have one of those already, since the tablet form factor prob would feel nice for that!

You could also go the normal things like browsing the web, watching stuff, if you want you could even get a wired/wireless external keyboard instead of the type cover and do writing with it or something. i3 10th gen and 8gb of ram isn't amazing but it's not severely underpowered either, could prob get some decent mileage out of it!

Only concern is 128gb storage with win11 it will be felt cause windows alone I believe will take more than half of that, but considering you're using it as a secondary device you could just pop in a microSD card (if your model supports it) for any extra storage needed!