I Got Myself A Surface 3!

[Renzatic]

I'd tell you what I think about it, but I've spent the last half hour waiting for the damn thing to update itself. olol Microsoft.

This thread is now pending.

edit: JUST A MOMENT MY ASS!

edit 2: Seasons change, the years roll on, children grow old with each passing day, and I become wiser with age.

Damn thing's still updating. I'm staring there at that blue screen with the animated circle, telling me, nah...TEASING ME with "just a moment". GET DONE DAMN YOU! I GOTTA GO!

A progress bar sure would be nice.

edit 3: at least I can bounce the screen up and down. Up and down. Up and down. Tee hee. SO ******** FUN!

edit 4: Found the battery for my stylus. It was in the bottom of the box, underneath the manual. Those sneaky bees.

edit 5: when I press the Windows button, it goes bzzt.

Still telling me to wait just a moment.

edit 6: I now have irrefutable proof of Anthropogenic Global Warming. I haven't discovered anything particularly new, it's just that enough time has passed...

edit 7: Thought it was done for a second there. Turned out it was just the glare off my lamp.

 

[mclld]

Pro or regular? If a Pro you picked a bad time to buy one lol

 

[Renzatic]

Pro or regular? If a Pro you picked a bad time to buy one lol

Regular. I decided that with my desktop, I didn't need an ultra powered ninja tablet. I'm only intending on using for pretty light usage anyway, so...

Surface 3.

Still updating, by the way.

 

[Tsepz]

Congrats!

Ah yes, good ol' Windows loading. I suggest you go watch The Godfather trilogy (it was a trilogy, yeah?), anyway, go watch and leave it plugged in

 

[lowendlinux]

I'm just, not, that, patient

 

[Renzatic]

It finished after about an hour. Took damn long enough.

Unfortunately, I had to leave out to finish up a job right after it was done, so I haven't had much time to play with it as of yet. My first basic impressions are...

It's surprisingly fast. Well, besides those damn updates anyway. Everything loads up surprisingly quickly. Mind you, this is only with the basic apps. I haven't installed Office, Photoshop, and all my other fun time productivity programs yet.

It's not quite as immediately friendly and easy to come to terms with as the iPad. It's far from being terrible, but you can tell it's a product half-in half-out of the touch paradigm. It's little things, like having to bring up the keyboard manually and whatnot. I pretty much knew to expect this going in, though. I'm well aware I'm trading some elegance for a lot more flexibility.

That screen is really damn nice. It's not as high res as the iPad, but it's hard to tell the difference unless you're hovering your face about 8 inches from the screen. Oh, and for the first time ever, Windows font rendering actually looks pretty good. Everything's so clear!

The speakers sound a good bit louder than my iPad. Maybe because the damn things are pointed right at me. You know, the way speakers are supposed to be positioned.

I do like swishing from the side to bring up the task view. That's nice

I'd say I'm pretty pleased overall. I'm not floored exactly, but this might be because there's more of a steep getting-used-to-it curve than there is with the iPad. In a couple days, I'll have a much better opinion, but it's pretty solid so far.

 

[Renzatic]

Okay. Went into tablet mode, and now things are much smoother. Who would've thunk, right?

 

[TheRealAlex]

Getting a Surface Pro 4

 

[Neverbepeace]

It finished after about an hour. Took damn long enough.

Unfortunately, I had to leave out to finish up a job right after it was done, so I haven't had much time to play with it as of yet. My first basic impressions are...

It's surprisingly fast. Well, besides those damn updates anyway. Everything loads up surprisingly quickly. Mind you, this is only with the basic apps. I haven't installed Office, Photoshop, and all my other fun time productivity programs yet.

It's not quite as immediately friendly and easy to come to terms with as the iPad. It's far from being terrible, but you can tell it's a product half-in half-out of the touch paradigm. It's little things, like having to bring up the keyboard manually and whatnot. I pretty much knew to expect this going in, though. I'm well aware I'm trading some elegance for a lot more flexibility.

That screen is really damn nice. It's not as high res as the iPad, but it's hard to tell the difference unless you're hovering your face about 8 inches from the screen. Oh, and for the first time ever, Windows font rendering actually looks pretty good. Everything's so clear!

The speakers sound a good bit louder than my iPad. Maybe because the damn things are pointed right at me. You know, the way speakers are supposed to be positioned.

I do like swishing from the side to bring up the task view. That's nice

I'd say I'm pretty pleased overall. I'm not floored exactly, but this might be because there's more of a steep getting-used-to-it curve than there is with the iPad. In a couple days, I'll have a much better opinion, but it's pretty solid so far.

 

[kevinof]

We have two of these in the office (also have a Surface RT.. Remember those?). They do take a while to update but it's not very often so not a big deal.

In terms of productivity they are light years ahead of any tablet. Only thing we miss are the apps that we are all used to, but then you have a full desktop browser to make up for that.

Great product and looking forward to seeing what the surface 4 brings.

 

[I7guy]

We have two of these in the office (also have a Surface RT.. Remember those?). They do take a while to update but it's not very often so not a big deal.

In terms of productivity they are light years ahead of any tablet. Only thing we miss are the apps that we are all used to, but then you have a full desktop browser to make up for that.

Great product and looking forward to seeing what the surface 4 brings.

It depends on your use case. I will be buying a SP4 as a laptop replacement and have played around with one in the stores for a few hours. It's a great device, but for a laptop replacement by wife was concerned about the screen size.

 

[iSheep5S]

I have a regular more powerful laptop and i got a Surface 3 as a tablet replacement but... for once advertising is right. It really could replace your laptop... and tablet.

For photoshop which it runs great i got a full size memory card to USB converter. Works a treat.

I see no lag with it on windows 10 and love the keyboard.

Top tip tho... the battery lasts way longer with the edge browser than chrome. I'm a chrome user but i have it setup with bookmarks now. Also Adguard is the program you need for ad blocking. Its free.

All in all i see no point in an iPad Pro, Pixel C or any other variant that will no doubt FLOOD the market in the next year as they were all inspired by the Surface.

Full operating system vs what your phone can do... but with a bigger screen.

 

[gotluck]

It depends on your use case. I will be buying a SP4 as a laptop replacement and have played around with one in the stores for a few hours. It's a great device, but for a laptop replacement by wife was concerned about the screen size.

Can always add more screens !

 

[Renzatic]

Neh. Seems I'm experiencing some problems today.

While I was playing with it last night, the thing flat out screamed. I was able to watch Netflix while browsing the internet through split windows with nary a hitch. Everything went swimmingly until I hit about 15% battery life, when it slowed down a bit. I wrote that off as Battery Sense kicking in, plugged it in to recharge, and went to bed.

Today? I can barely get it to load up webpages without it timing out. I went to download Steam, and 45 minutes later, I'm still grabbing the same 100MB update. Netflix? Can't even load up the menu selection. It's nigh unusable.

I started googling up some problems, and it seems the SP3 had a few issues with wifi last year, but it was supposedly fixed via a firmware update well over a year ago. Couldn't find a single thing about it on the S3.

So either my routers wifi is going bad, which is doubtful, but I'll consider it. I have something funky going on in software which isn't being fixed with a reboot, or I've got a dud Surface 3.

 

[Renzatic]

I have never had any device give me so many problems as this. I mean hell, I can barely even get Netflix to launch consistently, let alone watch movies.

I took it back to Best Buy, where I watched the damn thing run perfectly. But taking it elsewhere? Nothing. I have to assume it's a software problem. The wifi adapter isn't wanting to cooperate with something standard, and I can't tell what it is. Tried using it on 2.4Ghz 802.11g and 5Ghz 11n. Both give me the same results.

Whatever it is, it isn't consistant. Netflix will sometimes spin at the title page, and sometimes fire right up, and go to 20% load before freezing there. Sometimes it'll load up a video in 3 seconds, sometimes I'll be waiting after 3 minutes before it comes up. Most of the time, it fails me with an internet connection problem Webpages are the same. Some will come up immediately, others time out. It's never the same story twice.

Everything else works, though. I downloaded 300 meg of updates on my iPhone in no time flat. Laptop, slow as it is, fires right off. Desktop? Works great on wifi. It's just the damn surface.

All I know is it worked wonderfully last night. Then I got a firmware update, then it went slow when it went into battery safe, and now, it doesn't work. I'm very close to ditching this thing. Which is a shame, because I see the potential there, but what good is it if I can't get it to work?

 

[apolloa]

Try re-installing the drivers?

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en...tivity/install-wireless-drivers?os=windows-10

A quick google shows this result for the Surface Pro 3, but it was posted 3 days ago relating to the firmware update and it has updated the wireless and bluetooth drivers:

https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/mic...3-gets-a-second-firmware-update-for-september

Wireless Network Controller and Bluetooth driver update (v15.68.9030.41) improves the wireless network connectivity and stability.

So that's most likely the problem.

 

[Renzatic]

I'm in the process of doing a complete wipe and restore from inside Windows. I'll read those links while I'm waiting, though.

edit: though now that I think about it, doing a refresh like that resets Windows back to an MS set factory default, but I believe it keeps the current drivers installed as is. If that's the case, it might not make a difference, and I might not be able to roll back to the previous drivers without reformatting and reinstalling Windows from scratch the old fashioned way.

 

[Renzatic]

Okay. Complete refresh seems promising. It doesn't respond well to the 5Ghz Wireless N, but works just fine on Wireless G. Websites are loading quickly, and the updates are flying in.

Gonna test it some more.

 

[Renzatic]

Gotta admit, when this thing is running right, I love it. I finally installed Steam, so I could put it through its paces, and the updates, which before took me 5 minutes to get 15 meg, flew through the whole 119 meg update in about 20 seconds, give or take.

Netflix is now running smooth, too.

Internet pages come up about as fast as they do on my desktop PC.

...I just hope it stays this way.

 

[spinedoc77]

Congrats, hope you get it running right. It does have more complexity than the average tablet, but it's also MUCH more powerful than anything else non-windows out there. I'm also not a big fan of Windows 10, I stayed on Windows 8.1 which is far superior for tablet use.

My credit card is fully ready when the surface pro 4 is announced, I don't care what it is.

 

[zone23]

I know they are pretty tough watched my boss drop his from about 4 feet and it didn't break. He never uses it now after having to have it, uses his iPad.

 

[I7guy]

Congrats, hope you get it running right. It does have more complexity than the average tablet, but it's also MUCH more powerful than anything else non-windows out there. I'm also not a big fan of Windows 10, I stayed on Windows 8.1 which is far superior for tablet use.

My credit card is fully ready when the surface pro 4 is announced, I don't care what it is.

I'm going for the surface pro 4 myself.

 

[Renzatic]

Congrats, hope you get it running right. It does have more complexity than the average tablet, but it's also MUCH more powerful than anything else non-windows out there. I'm also not a big fan of Windows 10, I stayed on Windows 8.1 which is far superior for tablet use.

My credit card is fully ready when the surface pro 4 is announced, I don't care what it is.

Yeah, it took a bit, but I've finally got it running well. As you can tell from my posts above, I'm not too patient of a person, but now that it's moving on full steam ahead, I love it. About the only thing that'll make me take it back now will be MS introducing the Surface 4 this coming Tuesday.

As for Win8 vs. Win10, I'll admit that I don't have much hands on time with 8 on a tablet, but 10 in tablet mode works perfectly well for me. I could see someone missing the Charms Bar, but the action center does roughly the same thing, just not as thumb friendly. Task View I think is better than swishing through apps one at a time. An Expose like setup is something I've always wanted on my iPad, and now that I have it here, I can multitask like a mofo. I have no complaints as far as base usability goes.

The only thing I wish is that all the icons in the notification area would show up in tablet mode. It kinda sucks having to jump back to the desktop to kill off apps that go nesting there when you close them.

 

[apolloa]

Yeah, it took a bit, but I've finally got it running well. As you can tell from my posts above, I'm not too patient of a person, but now that it's moving on full steam ahead, I love it. About the only thing that'll make me take it back now will be MS introducing the Surface 4 this coming Tuesday.

As for Win8 vs. Win10, I'll admit that I don't have much hands on time with 8 on a tablet, but 10 in tablet mode works perfectly well for me. I could see someone missing the Charms Bar, but the action center does roughly the same thing, just not as thumb friendly. Task View I think is better than swishing through apps one at a time. An Expose like setup is something I've always wanted on my iPad, and now that I have it here, I can multitask like a mofo. I have no complaints as far as base usability goes.

The only thing I wish is that all the icons in the notification area would show up in tablet mode. It kinda sucks having to jump back to the desktop to kill off apps that go nesting there when you close them.

Don't worry, you will not see a Surface 4 next week. Because the current model was only launched in March, it's a very nice bit of kit and it runs the brand new top of the range Intel Atom processor, so it chugs along Ok. It can even run some games:

Not fantastic but for a compact fanless PC tablet it's alright. I may still buy one someday.

 

[Renzatic]

Don't worry, you will not see a Surface 4 next week. Because the current model was only launched in March

I didn't think they would for that very reason. But if they surprise us all and announce the Surface 4 with a Core M processor or something like, I'll be marching back to Best Buy to make the swap.

it's a very nice bit of kit and it runs the brand new top of hte range Intel Atom processor, so it chugs along Ok. It can even run some games

It's surprisingly speedy, stout little machine, yeah. I've been playing XCOM on it these last few, and while I have to set everything to low at 1280x800 to get it to run above 30 FPS, it still looks great on the small screen. It looks better, runs faster, and loads quicker than it did on my old iPad 3.

I'd say that provided you're willing to stick to older stuff, and indie titles, it's a great little portable game machine. And the most amazing thing about it is that it doesn't get all that hot, even when you're pushing it.

edit: I do have one more nit to pick. Gotta question the wisdom of putting the sleep button next to the volume rocker. I've hit it a few times by accident.