Wifi 4G modem like the Netgear 785S. It would connect for 5 second and then disconnect and you could not see the modem again on your wifi.
Maybe you were lucky on the stylus issue, there were about 10 pages of people with the issue on reddit.
Here is my list of issues I had:
- External Display issues – scaling and integration is vastly inferior to OSX, probably as a result of less experience with retina display. While Windows 8 was virtually unusable with external displays without changing your display settings every time you connected and disconnected a display, Windows 10 is a definite improvement and is usable, but if you are constantly connecting to external displays, you are likely to find yourself having to restart your machine on a regular basis as unplugging the machine isn’t always seamless. I.e. one in every four disconnections was my experience. If you move around, connection to projectors in meetings and then shift back to your desk, this will be a major annoyance. If you plug in for an entire day or don’t unplug regularly, this probably won’t be as big an issue.
- Restarts – Other than the display issue, I found myself restarting on a regular basis. Sometimes once a day, sometimes more than once. Coming from my Macbook Air, the only time I restart is when software updates require it so this was annoying. Sometimes it was an application that caused the machine to slow down and without a restart, performance would remain bad.
- Hard Drive issue – The Surface Pro 3 hard drive had some issues with SSD speed. I found the source of the problem which relates to firmware on the drive but Microsoft tie down the OS so you can only apply firmware fixes approved by Microsoft. I.e. you can’t update the graphics card driver unless Microsoft releases the update. This would be great if Microsoft did the updates, unfortunately they haven’t so you’re stuck with crappy performance despite the Oct 2014 release date of the fix by Samsung. Yup. 1 year later MS is more focused on the SP4 than existing users who may just have dumped their product as a result.
- Stylus performance went horribly wrong after my Office 2016 update. There are heaps of posts on Reddit about this exact issue. It may have been fixed with Windows 10 SP1, but to be honest, I dumped the device after all the headaches so I don’t know. It was bad enough that writing in One Note was virtually useless. The pen would stop working halfware through taking notes in a meeting, and letters in words would be skipped.
- Reinstallation of Windows 10 multiple time – Never had to reinstall Windows on my Mac but in the time since the release of Windows 10, I did it twice on my Surface Pro 3 to resolve issues. Search simply wouldn’t work, the processor would max out for 20 seconds and the entire device would become non-responsive.
- All of our consultants suddenly found their 4G Wifi modems stopped working, different devices from Netgear thanks to a firmware update. A month later MS fixed it, a month too late because I dumped the device.
- One of the key features of OneNote with the stylus that sold me on the product was the ability to tap the back of the pen and have it open OneNote. On the original version (windows 8, office 2013), you could configure this to the desktop app instead of the tablet app, because the tablet app was terrible and lacked most of the features. With Windows 10 and Office 2016, they removed this ability to configure which mean the functionality was useless as it now defaults to the tablet app. That means you now have to login to the device, open the desktop app and then start writing instead of tapping the back of the pen once.
- Office 2016 would crash on a regular basis, sometimes in a large document. Outlook would crash regularly, particularly if you lost internet connection which for me was often thanks to point 6 where I found myself having to tether my device to my phone. Everytime I left to go to a meeting room to take a call, I would come back and Outlook was non-responsive.
- Search was dismal. Results were not great compared to spotlight which resulted in me having to buy X1 to cater for the bad search capability. X1 takes time to load up so in short, for someone who uses spotlight a lot, it was annoying as hell.
- Microsoft decided to use a AAAA battery which is not the easiest to find when you run out of battery. On top of this, they use a second battery in the top of the pen. Fortunately that last longer but is also harder to find, so if you need your stylus and your battery runs out, there is no way to fix it other than get another battery (and carry a spare with you always)
- My Surface Pro 3 had an issue with not switching off. If I put the cover on, it would switch off, but if I made the mistake of not switching off my mouse first, it would restart when I picked up the mouse and continue running down my battery in my bag despite the mouse now being off and no external keyboard or screen being attached. I would find myself boarding 4 hour plane with zero battery and no entertainment for my flight.
- Even when the point above wasn’t a problem, the battery drain overnight was still substantial with the device turned off. I would lose about 15-20% overnight for a device switched off. If I didn’t use it over the weekend, you could wake up on Monday with less than 50% of your battery remaining.
- Keyboard would randomly not work. It wasn’t regular but required restarts to fix
- Battery life definitely was not on a par with an iPad or my MBA. A 4 hour flight would pretty much kill all my battery.
- Travel – Lack of supported applications for travel. Virgin app not available so I tried Andy with Android but that would not show the headphones connected and mute the sound. If you use a web browser, the device seemed unaware that you were watching a film and would exit full screen mode after the screen timed out so you had to tap it every 5 minutes to keep it awake and stop it turning off.
- Default installation of Windows 10 cost me over $100 of mobile when they decided to setup torrenting of updates to other users out of the box. I.e. they default your windows 10 to send updates to other users on the internet which isn't fun when you are using a mobile broadband device. Found the problem, but not before it cost me a little.
- Apps constantly losing login details – What little apps existed (like Facebook), I found issues with having to reput in login details.
- Machine would randomly default to full user login instead of tablet login (full network login instead of tablet login). It didn’t happen often but was annoying.
- Microsoft Outlook had some issue where I couldn't pin the Outlook icon to the task bar. If I opened Outlook, it would open a second blank icon. The issue is known and annoying. MS didn't have a solution for it at the time I sold my SP3
Here is an example of the non-responsive search
1) Windows 8 wasn't great at scaling, thankfully that's a moot point as Win 10 is quite awesome at scaling. Works great all the way down to my 8" tablet and up to my 4k monitors. Never had to reboot my SP's either, and I use them every day at work that way: connected to 2 4k monitors, and regularly take the SP off the dock to show a patient a study.
2) I would only restart with software updates, never had to restart because of a hanging app. I've found the converse to be true and find myself restarting my wifes macbook frequently due to hanging apps.
3) No issues with SSD speed on my SP3. Of course MS caters to new users, Apple does as well. You can apply drivers outside of MS ones including SSD and graphics so Im not sure what you mean there. Windows is very open in that way.
4) OneNote on my SP3 has been flawless, I regularly write multiple page reports and regularly take notes at mulitple day seminars, I couldn't be more impressed with a product.
5) Never had to reinstall win 8 or 10 unless I was changing to a different PC.
6) No experience with that one, it's possible it was Netgear's fault but I have no idea.
7) MS has said in a blog they are adding that feature back in.
8) I've rarely had a crash in Office 2013, can't be more than 3 or 4 times in the past 3 years I've been using it. Office 2016 no crashes at all, but I've only been using it for about 4 months now. I constantly use Office, half of my work life is spent in Office.
9) Search with Cortana is excellent, much better than spotlight. I prefer Google though so I use that instead. I may be in the minority (or not) but spotlight searches suck IMO. I find myself filtering through irrelevent information for far too long.
10) Never had an issue, my battery lasted a full year until I transitioned into the SP4. My SP3 stylus still hasn't needed a battery, but I don't use it as much now. I am a very copious note taker and used the crap out of the SP3 stylus.
11) Yes I recall that issue very early in the SP3 life, but MS fixed that quite quickly.
12) Valid point, much of this was fixed on the SP3 but some still persists on the SP4.
13) Valid point, this happens VERY rarely but does happen. But I didn't need a restart, I simply unsnapped and resnapped the keyboard and it would work again.
14) MBA has better battery life. 4 hours is a bit short if you aren't playing games IMO. I'd say 5-6 hours is more realistic, maybe a bit longer tweaking settings. Once again though the MBA has better battery life, but it's not a valid comparison IMO. Apples versus apples you should compare the MBA with the non pro surface 3 which has much better battery life.
15) I'd just use the web app for a richer experience, but I'm not denying your point in regards to apps. I've never run the VIrgin app on OSx though so I'm not sure how much you were missing out on.
16) This can be turned off.
17) Never had this issue.
18) Never had this issue.
19) Never had this issue
Never had an unresposive search. Now I've owned 5 or 6 SP3's and 2 SP4's, not representative of all the sales out there but certainly a good experience with a lot of them. Once again, as stated before, I could put up a large list of similar issues with OSx and/or iOS, all hardware/software has issues.
Although this was meant to be a joke, Google may actually eliminate people from driving sometime in the future lol.
