iPad I ditched my iPad and used Microsoft Surface 3 for a month

[bcortens]

You and me a complete different. I dislike using different devices for different purpose. Even if each different devices offers better user experience for different use cases.

I want a devices that do it all, even if this devices offer subpar experiences and I am okay with this. Surface devices offers subpar tablet experiences and subpar laptop experience, but I am okay with it. I don’t need use my iPad and have to switch to my PC or Mac for different task. Surface is also light enough for me to carry when I am travelling.

And regarding to formatting external drives, even if I am doing this once in ten years, I would rather have a device that has this capability than a devices that doesn’t.

It sounds like you’re never going to be happy with apples devices - they seem to prioritize ensuring that each device has an optimized experience.

Also. Again, subpar for you. The iPad is not a subpar experience for me and and many others. I would rather they evolve the iPad to add the missing features and lift restriction without changing the UX.

 

[koelsh]

It sounds like you’re never going to be happy with apples devices - they seem to prioritize ensuring that each device has an optimized experience.

Also. Again, subpar for you. The iPad is not a subpar experience for me and and many others. I would rather they evolve the iPad to add the missing features and lift restriction without changing the UX.

Which they could readily do if Apple stopped treating the iPad primarily as a marketplace.

 

[Abazigal]

You and me a complete different. I dislike using different devices for different purpose. Even if each different devices offers better user experience for different use cases.

I want a devices that do it all, even if this devices offer subpar experiences and I am okay with this. Surface devices offers subpar tablet experiences and subpar laptop experience, but I am okay with it. I don’t need use my iPad and have to switch to my PC or Mac for different task. Surface is also light enough for me to carry when I am travelling.

And regarding to formatting external drives, even if I am doing this once in ten years, I would rather have a device that has this capability than a devices that doesn’t.

In principle, I am not against the concept of having an all-in-one device that does everything. However, the reality is that I haven’t found one that walks this fine line of excelling in all the areas that I do care about, while making compromises in the areas that don’t really impact me (ie: the old maximise benefits, minimise drawbacks paradigm).

I mean, I already have to bring my work-issued windows laptop to and from school everyday, so I have been bringing that and my ipad back and forth daily, and for now at least, I find it’s the best compromise. I really do enjoy using my iPad to teach in the classroom. iOS just seems more optimised for this use case compared to windows (at least for how I use it), though there are times when I still have to bust out my laptop. It’s really about knowing what you are going to do with your students and prepare accordingly.

As for your scenario on formatting drives, I am not saying it doesn’t matter. Just that since I already have at least one device that can do this (my Mac), I don’t need the iPad to possess said capability. I wont begrudge said feature coming to iOS in the future, it’s just not a dealbreaker for me.

 

[Aoligei]

op ever heard of wifi printers lol

I do. But my printer is completely fine, I don't need new a printer, nor I want to buy new one with Wi-Fi Printer.

 

[Mcuserr]

I do. But my printer is completely fine, I don't need new a printer, nor I want to buy new one with Wi-Fi Printer.

must live on your own

 

[Farrellcollie]

I tried to use a surface pro four for work and I like the hardware - I just hate windows. Windows was the problem that I found with it

 

[Ashbash75]

must live on your own

I have a printer (scanner built in) too, bloody useful sometimes. Same with my USB DVD drive.

 

[Aoligei]

UPDATE:

Fully De-Appled So far. iPad Pro is sold, MacBook Air which I had was sold, iPhone 12 putted away. Proceed from sale, brought Microsoft Surface Pro 6, Surface Go 3. Switched phone from iPhone 12 to Google Pixel.

Updated Surface 3 to Windows 11 and planning to update Surface Pro 6 to Windows 11 as well. I have decided to go with used market instead purchasing new Surface Pro. Used Surface goes with very attractive price. The Surface Pro 6 was only for about $500 and Surface Go 3 for $300.

 

[Digitalguy]

View attachment 2126766

UPDATE:

Fully De-Appled So far. iPad Pro is sold, MacBook Air which I had was sold, iPhone 12 putted away. Proceed from sale, brought Microsoft Surface Pro 6, Surface Go 3. Switched phone from iPhone 12 to Google Pixel.

Updated Surface 3 to Windows 11 and planning to update Surface Pro 6 to Windows 11 as well. I have decided to go with used market instead purchasing new Surface Pro. Used Surface goes with very attractive price. The Surface Pro 6 was only for about $500 and Surface Go 3 for $300.

Is the pro 6 a 16GB RAM version?
So the one in the middle is the go 3, the one in the left the 3, and the one in the right the pro 6?
Do you like Windows 11? I personally hate it and I am keeping every device on 10 for as long as supported.
The only device on 11 is my Surface Book 3, but I am using a software that basically turns Windows 11 into Windows 10.

 

[Marsikus]

Does Surface Go configurations like that can run at least bare Windows with Office for prolonged time?
Surface Go 3 - Platinum, Intel Pentium 6500Y - WiFi, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD.

 

[Ludatyk]

Is the pro 6 a 16GB RAM version?
So the one in the middle is the go 3, the one in the left the 3, and the one in the right the pro 6?
Do you like Windows 11? I personally hate it and I am keeping every device on 10 for as long as supported.
The only device on 11 is my Surface Book 3, but I am using a software that basically turns Windows 11 into Windows 10.

I personally like Windows 11... new tabs feature for Explorer, I'm a fan of the centered taskbar and being able to pin apps. I like the new settings, um... widgets weren't really needed. Tried to get into the whole Android apps on Windows... but using the phone to access Android apps is much better. Not sure what's to hate.

 

[Digitalguy]

Does Surface Go configurations like that can run at least bare Windows with Office for prolonged time?
Surface Go 3 - Platinum, Intel Pentium 6500Y - WiFi, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD.

The pentium 6500Y in the go 3 is just a rembranded M3 from the go 2 (which I have) and it's a very competent chip, faster than quite a few dual core core i5 and even i7 from a couple of generations prior. It's way faster than the slow pentiums in the surface go 1 and 2.
4GB of RAM is plenty for Office, at least on Windows 10, where the minimum RAM requirement is 2GB. Where it's not much is for heavier multitasking (which already starts when you open a browser and start opening tabs). As for the SSD, I think the 64GB verison is not a real SSD but EMMC. SSD starts at 128GB.

 

[Digitalguy]

I personally like Windows 11... new tabs feature for Explorer, I'm a fan of the centered taskbar and being able to pin apps. I like the new settings, um... widgets weren't really needed. Tried to get into the whole Android apps on Windows... but using the phone to access Android apps is much better. Not sure what's to hate.

For me they removed too much functionality (right click, taskbar) and the new Start menu is much more limited than the W10 start menu, that's why I turned W11 into W10 (but I still have the benefits of W11). I installed WSA (for android apps) and even the Google play store, but I haven't used it since, because it takes too much CPU and and some RAM (it's basically a virtual machine).

 

[Ludatyk]

For me they removed too much functionality (right click, taskbar) and the new Start menu is much more limited than the W10 start menu, that's why I turned W11 into W10 (but I still have the benefits of W11).

Completely understand. But if I'm not mistaken, they are slowly adding back some of the functionality that was missing initially. Not sure why it wasn't there to begin with.

I installed WSA (for android apps) and even the Google play store, but I haven't used it since, because it takes too much CPU and and some RAM (it's basically a virtual machine).

I agree. I stopped using it as well... I like the fact Microsoft is trying new things. But they should apply their resources elsewhere.

 

[rui no onna]

For me they removed too much functionality (right click, taskbar) and the new Start menu is much more limited than the W10 start menu, that's why I turned W11 into W10 (but I still have the benefits of W11). I installed WSA (for android apps) and even the Google play store, but I haven't used it since, because it takes too much CPU and and some RAM (it's basically a virtual machine).

I have Windows 11 on my gaming laptop.

With the 22H2 update, it hasn’t been as annoying. Still can’t drag and drop directly to taskbar but now, I can hover on the app taskbar icon and it will open the app window so I can drop the file there.

 

[Aoligei]

Does Surface Go configurations like that can run at least bare Windows with Office for prolonged time?
Surface Go 3 - Platinum, Intel Pentium 6500Y - WiFi, 4GB RAM, 64GB SSD.

Yes. Even with very weak Atom processor found in Surface 3 is capable enough to handle Office for prolonged time. I have been using Microsoft Word with very large of annotations and more than 50 pages typing.

 

[Aoligei]

The pentium 6500Y in the go 3 is just a rembranded M3 from the go 2 (which I have) and it's a very competent chip, faster than quite a few dual core core i5 and even i7 from a couple of generations prior. It's way faster than the slow pentiums in the surface go 1 and 2.
4GB of RAM is plenty for Office, at least on Windows 10, where the minimum RAM requirement is 2GB. Where it's not much is for heavier multitasking (which already starts when you open a browser and start opening tabs). As for the SSD, I think the 64GB verison is not a real SSD but EMMC. SSD starts at 128GB.

If you remember, there was a MacBook from 2015 using Intel's Core M3 chips, which no one complains about performance.

I found even with Dual Core Celeron chip is enough for basic tasks like Word processing, 4K video streaming etc. Computer power certainly comes along very far.

 

[Aoligei]

Is the pro 6 a 16GB RAM version?
So the one in the middle is the go 3, the one in the left the 3, and the one in the right the pro 6?
Do you like Windows 11? I personally hate it and I am keeping every device on 10 for as long as supported.
The only device on 11 is my Surface Book 3, but I am using a software that basically turns Windows 11 into Windows 10.

The Pro 6 is the one with 8GB RAM one. Middle one is Surface 3 and left most one is the Surface Go 3. And the moinitor is attached with my desktop PC with Ryzen 5.

 

[Digitalguy]

If you remember, there was a MacBook from 2015 using Intel's Core M3 chips, which no one complains about performance.

I found even with Dual Core Celeron chip is enough for basic tasks like Word processing, 4K video streaming etc. Computer power certainly comes along very far.

Not only I remember but I have the 2017 model, I actually have 2 of them, an i5 and an i7 (rebranded in that generation from the previous M5 and M7, but sill "y" chips, like the M3). To be honest some complained about the 2015 being slow, but most agree that the 2017 was a much snappier device.
So I did some benchmarks to compare the 8th gen M3 in my Go 2 (equivalente to the Pentium in the Go 3), and those 7th gen i5 and i7.
Geekbench gave me (I rounded up by very little, under 5 points each time)
M3: single core: 800, multi core: 1500
i5: single core: 700, multi core: 1500
i7: single core 800, multi core: 1600

So the Surface go chip is as good as the i7 in single core and as good as the i5 in multi-core... not bad.
I also tested browsing speed and they are similar in Chrome, while Safari is around 15-20% better (no different between the i5 and the i7)

Surface 3 with its atom chip is in a completely different league.... 227 for single core and 776 in the multi-core (so even the multicore is under the single core of the surface go...)

PS I ran the benchmarks while plugged in, on battery the scores are lower (not for the Macs)

 

[koelsh]

Fully De-Appled So far. iPad Pro is sold, MacBook Air which I had was sold, iPhone 12 putted away. Proceed from sale, brought Microsoft Surface Pro 6, Surface Go 3. Switched phone from iPhone 12 to Google Pixel.

Updated Surface 3 to Windows 11 and planning to update Surface Pro 6 to Windows 11 as well. I have decided to go with used market instead purchasing new Surface Pro. Used Surface goes with very attractive price. The Surface Pro 6 was only for about $500 and Surface Go 3 for $300.

How’s the touch experience so far or do you use them largely with mice?

What’s the battery life been like?

 

[Aoligei]

How’s the touch experience so far or do you use them largely with mice?

What’s the battery life been like?

I use touch screen mainly before I go to bed and want to watch some shows, just like any tablet. Windows touch experience has been improved with Windows 11, but it is somewhat iffy, especially with desktop applications. Windows for most isn't really designed for touch. Touch experience is more or less add on.

But like i said before, I am more than willing to accept the compromised experience.

Battery life is kind okay, I am able to get 4-5 hours screen on time.

 

[Ashbash75]

I tried to love the windows 11 start menu but it is still naff. startallback works really well.

I also use O&O ShutUp10++ & ThisIsWin11 to remove the bloat & spy ware from Microsoft with some extra UI tweaking.

 

[Joe Dohn]

You have such a narrow use case vision for iPad. I do a great deal of document based work on my iPad, I can do a lot of project management on the iPad... Just because you can't imagine workflows doesn't mean they don't exist.

As I said in a previous post, it probably can connect to your printer, but are there drivers using driver kit for it?

Just the fact that you have to imagine workflows, as opposed to them being obvious, is very troublesome.

Also, you CAN "run" full-blown Windows on your iPad. All you need is to run Moonlight or Parsec on a host, and then stream it. Of course, that costs extra money. Why would you use two devices when you SHOULD be able to do so much more with the iPad in the first place?

 

[bcortens]

Just the fact that you have to imagine workflows, as opposed to them being obvious, is very troublesome.

Also, you CAN "run" full-blown Windows on your iPad. All you need is to run Moonlight or Parsec on a host, and then stream it. Of course, that costs extra money. Why would you use two devices when you SHOULD be able to do so much more with the iPad in the first place?

Reading comprehension fail:

I said - specifically - that I can get document based work done on my iPad - I also pretty much exclusively do my PDF reading and markup on iPad rather than Mac as it is by far the better device for this task.

I am not imagining workflows. I was responding to a post that basically said all the iPad was good for was web browsing and watching videos ... this was a failure to look beyond their own biases.

As I keep expressing, doing more on an iPad should be possible, Apple will hopefully be forced to open up their platforms more by regulations (the EU has started on this already and hopefully it forces them open elsewhere as well).

 

[Joe Dohn]

Reading comprehension fail:

I'm sorry you got the understanding that I was trying to comment on your use case. That is not what I meant. I was just commenting that you CAN run everything on it, but it's cumbersome, since it's not relying solely on the iPad.