Greetings SaeedR_706,
That is a good question, however I would suggest rather then using the USB cable, to transfer files over your WiFi network to a shared folder on your Windows 7 Laptop.
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I have a Toshiba Thrive running Android. I can connect it to my PC with a USB cable and access files on my Thrive on the PC. The PC treats the Thrive as a hard drive. Can I connect my Surface in the same way? I have tried and the PC does not appear to see the Surface.
This is a pain, one of the reasons I bought the Surface was to be able to do this type of hard connection and not have to use "iTunes" or the Cloud.
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Greetings SaeedR_706,
That is a good question, however I would suggest rather then using the USB cable, to transfer files over your WiFi network to a shared folder on your Windows 7 Laptop.
Hello Rrccw,
No, you cannot connect the Surface to the PC via USB. However, you can setup Shared folderson your PC. Once you have that, have the Surface connect to the same network via WiFi and then go into Network from the Desktop app, select your PC and then see the Shared Folders. From there, the Surface should have Read/Write access if you gave the permissions on the PC.
Exactly my point on my original post, the option should be tbere.
I can here looking for answers to the same question as the OP. What some of you are missing is, maybe YOU don't want to hard wire the two things (surface 2 and PC), maybe YOU prefer doing it another way, and maybe some people coming here reading through this might choose to do it the other way, but that doesn't mean others don't want to connect the two with a cable. Why is it a bad thing to want to be able to use the device in the manner you are most comfortable with? The device has a USB port and whether YOU would use it to connect to a PC or not, it is ridiculous for MS to not give someone the capability of using it in such a way.
Having the ability hurts you in no way at all. This is just MS deciding that it should be done THIS way not giving people the option of doing it a very common and normal way. A way you would assume is possible from the presence of the USB port on the Surface 2.
I will try the network sharing method because the USB flash drive method is a bit of a pain. But I'm not happy that I can't do a simple function on this nice device like I can on my very limited Nook tablet, which the Surface 2 is replacing. Not good when a very limited device like the Nook tablet has capabilities that this doesn't.
Is this a personal network or a company one? How many people share the connection? If you're the only one on the network, I honestly don't see any issue with a file transfer taking up a lot of your local bandwidth. That's what a network is for - sharing files and resources. Why wouldn't you take advantage of that capability?
Of course, if others are using the network too, then there might be an issue, but that can be worked out.
What speed is your network? My home wireless is N, so I usually don't see too bad a slowdown when doing multiple things. I can have a download going on my tower, have multiple people checking Facebook on our tablets, and stream a video from Netflix with no problems on any front. Nothing gets the full speed, but I rarely if ever see a serious delay. At worst the Netflix video might not stream at full HD. It's usually a decent balance.
Unless you've got people complaining that you're hogging bandwidth with the transfers, I see no reason to not use your network for file sharing and copying.