[pastelpony]

For the price of that Surface Pro, you could easily buy at least four basic i3/A6/A8-powered Asus/Toshiba laptops. The Surface Pro really is not ideal for usage as a programming computer or drive station (neither are tablets in general.) It's better to have a plethora of working computers to fall back on rather than a fragile tablet as your workhorse. Besides, the processing difference between a newer i3 and i7 are not really that large when used for FRC.

And on the topic of USB-to-Ethernet adapters, my team successfully used one in several of our events (until it went missing) even though we did indeed have a physical Ethernet port on our laptop. The purpose of the Ethernet adapter was to save our physical Ethernet port wear and tear and to provide a better hold. I'm not quite sure of the brand, but it was a lesser-known brand.