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Surface Pro, Sick!
- Thread starter spinedoc77
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Thanks for the info. Does the Yoga 13 come with W8 RT or Pro?
It appears the Yoga 13 sold on Amazon has the better processor vs the one I saw at Best Buy. And the Amazon version is grey where the Best Buy model was orange.
Comes with W8 Pro.
I bought the 4GB model and upgraded the memory to 8GB (very easy DIY upgrade). It also can be user upgraded to a 2nd SSD (e.g., 2x256GB).
On a 13" device thats not great but not too low by any means (its more than the 13" MBP). The Yoga screen looked awesome when I checked it out.
I guess you could pay another 70% for a MBPr 13", gain some speed and ram, but lose the touchscreen and Yoga hinge. All trade offs.
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Yes, it looks like so. I really appreciate high resolution screens, since I like to work with several windows opened at once. It doesn't bother me, even on a small screen, but I know that several people find it annoying and think that 1600x900 resolution is just perfect for the 13-inch form factor.
How is the keyboard on the Yoga? Being a Lenovo, is it any better than the keyboard on the rMBP or on other ultrabooks?
Well not quite because the screen isnt retina level. A retina level screen should be the minimum spec any tablet should be these days. Even the pros screen is still poor.
Also my understanding is that the RT does not run full blown office but a scaled down version. By full blown office I mean exactly the same office as found on pcs so any work is interchangable.
So Spine, iFixit reavealed the use of a mSATA drive. Are you going to upgrade your surface pro to a 256GB SSD? 
Thanks for the review! I've been hunting through the Wacom-based Windows 8 tablets, and until yesterday, the Surface Pro seemed like the best of the bunch.
Yesterday I saw the Engadget review of the Lenovo Thinkpad tablet 2, which uses the Clover Trail Atom processor. At $680 though, it's the cheapest of the pen-based windows tablets, and has a 10+ hour battery life.
The only other system that temps me is the upcoming Lenovo Helix, but that might be way out of my price range.
Yesterday I saw the Engadget review of the Lenovo Thinkpad tablet 2, which uses the Clover Trail Atom processor. At $680 though, it's the cheapest of the pen-based windows tablets, and has a 10+ hour battery life.
The only other system that temps me is the upcoming Lenovo Helix, but that might be way out of my price range.
Just curious, but surely you knew the Surface Pro had no WWAN before you bought it. For that matter, the MBA you sold and was hoping to replace with the SP doesn't have it either. Did you just recently decide to switch to a prepaid plan? And if you still had the MBA or had another laptop, would that affect your decision about switching plans? And pardon me for being too lazy to investigate, but does any Win8 tablet/laptop hybrid come with WWAN capability?
Well I wanted to try it out, and yes the decision to go prepaid was after I bought it. Part of the reason I wanted wwan is this will replace my mba and my iPad. The Lenovo ThinkPad tablet 2 has an option for wan, and so does the dell 10.
On any account I did an about full face on my opinion, the surface Pro was indeed way too much of a compromise on both ends, laptop and tablet, I ended up selling it for a nice profit and having enough to buy a dell atom 3g tablet, a galaxy note 2 and still had a couple hundred left over for an eventual purchase of a convertible\laptop.
Okay. Any chance you could elaborate on why you came to that change of mind? And why did you decide to buy two tablets? Why not go back to the Thinkpad 2?
Well, really most of what others had said in the thread, I only had to own and use the surface Pro for a couple of days to realize it was true. It was way too heavy and thick, on paper you could say it's not really that much heavier and thicker than say an ipad, but that difference really really is evident when you have it in your hands. It's not a tablet you can use one handed for more than a few seconds, and even holding it up with 2 hands you quickly tire of it, and I'm no wimp.
Another major con, of course, is the battery life. I've been too spoiled by the ipad and more recently the atom tablets where I never ever have to even think about my power cord unless I'm going somewhere overnight, and even then I would probably be ok not bringing a power cord. Not so with the surface, the power brick is pretty much a required item to carry if you are going to be anywhere for more than 2 or 3 hours, maybe less if you push it. Sure the surface pro has more power, but really you can only harness that power for very short periods of time on battery, or you have to be married to a plug, and the surface Pro power brick ain't that small, it's much bigger than the ipad brick, especially when you factor in the 2 cords. But even then I didn't get the feeling the Pro was really that powerful, it didn't play any of the games I threw at it, and IE10 stuttered a lot, although I have a feeling it was a cache issue as it was smooth at first and over time it got worse.
Another con, the DPI just didn't make sense. Even at 150%, pretty much the max you can scale it up before it starts ruining things, you have to squint and really aim your finger perfectly to make things happen. Hopefully MS addresses this, but it's somewhere the lower resolution of the Atom units really shines, and in many reviews they note not much difference between the atom displays and the Pro display even with the resolution difference.
As for the Atom tablets, I did consider getting a Lenovo again but for a few things, otherwise it was an incredible little tablet. The USB has some hardware issues which Lenovo is aware of, but months later they aren't addressing or telling people about, which is unacceptable to me. Also their 3g model is 4 weeks out, and for Lenovo 4 weeks means 2 months in my experience. It's also $949, which is price gouging at its finest, the Dell 10 with 3g AND a dock was $749.
Keep in mind this is for my use that I am putting up my opinions, I can see the surface Pro shining in some other use scenarios, but they are kind of few and far between.
Dude, you had more guts than most of us to put your money where your mouth is and really put the Surface Pro to the test! Well done, and I guess the up-side is that you found out that it just wasn't for you BEFORE the return period is up.
Actually I sold it on Craigslist for a nice little profit.
the 128gb are still sold out and I had a sale within an hour of posting the listing. I think they will be more popular than you think, but there will also be a LOT of buyers remorse.
Sounds like I am having much the same experience as you Doc. My Surface arrived this morning and I'm somewhat doubtful I'll keep it even though work is paying.
Not only is the battery life killer as you say - I brought mine home tonight purposely without the power cord, and it will be lucky to make it to morning despite extremely light usage. I'm keeping a running tally of pros/cons in OneNote and so far the pro column is extremely short and the con one quite long.
Some highlights from that list:
-resume is very slow compared to an iPad. You get used to instant on and any wait is hard.
-the 16:9 screen is just way too narrow for the effective resolution it is set at. For example, same webpage viewed in Metro IE and on my iPad both in landscape. The iPad shows more page content while ALSO showing the status bar at the top, all my tabs, the address and search bar, and my bookmarks. I dislike 16:9 screens and this really illustrates why.
-worse, the entire system is not optimized to work in portrait at all. Even if you want to it is buggy and definitely a second class experience.
-the entire Metro environment just feels incomplete. Apps can only do a fraction of their functionality even when compared to ios. There is no polish, everything feels half done.
-despite having orders of magnitude more power than an iPad, response is often still laggy. Scrolling in metro can be jerky and text renders slowly.
-touch accuracy and response is nowhere near the ipads league. This machine is technically faster, but it doesn't feel it for average tasks.
The real telling point is that for a lot of things it feels like way more work to do them on this machine than the iPad I have sitting next to me. Sure, there are power things I could do here, and I will continue to explore those before deciding, but I'm doubtful they will bring anything so great to the table that we wouldn't be better served with a laptop and a tablet appliance.
Not only is the battery life killer as you say - I brought mine home tonight purposely without the power cord, and it will be lucky to make it to morning despite extremely light usage. I'm keeping a running tally of pros/cons in OneNote and so far the pro column is extremely short and the con one quite long.
Some highlights from that list:
-resume is very slow compared to an iPad. You get used to instant on and any wait is hard.
-the 16:9 screen is just way too narrow for the effective resolution it is set at. For example, same webpage viewed in Metro IE and on my iPad both in landscape. The iPad shows more page content while ALSO showing the status bar at the top, all my tabs, the address and search bar, and my bookmarks. I dislike 16:9 screens and this really illustrates why.
-worse, the entire system is not optimized to work in portrait at all. Even if you want to it is buggy and definitely a second class experience.
-the entire Metro environment just feels incomplete. Apps can only do a fraction of their functionality even when compared to ios. There is no polish, everything feels half done.
-despite having orders of magnitude more power than an iPad, response is often still laggy. Scrolling in metro can be jerky and text renders slowly.
-touch accuracy and response is nowhere near the ipads league. This machine is technically faster, but it doesn't feel it for average tasks.
The real telling point is that for a lot of things it feels like way more work to do them on this machine than the iPad I have sitting next to me. Sure, there are power things I could do here, and I will continue to explore those before deciding, but I'm doubtful they will bring anything so great to the table that we wouldn't be better served with a laptop and a tablet appliance.
Sounds like you are trying to use the surface Pro like an iPad which has a mobile OS. This is another type of beast entirely.
Agreed. For another point of view, I've been loving mine. I was able to head down to LA with just a backpack that weighed hardly anything, with a ridiculously powerful machine that I can run Hyper-V on (granted, 4 GB of ram is a joke and I will be moving to a Lenovo Helix in a few months I have no doubt).
I've been using it for days now at my friend's house - on my lap, in bed, on tables, etc. Very versatile. I am very comfortable with Win8 having used it now for well over a year, but I find with the surface it's great because I have this hybrid mode of doing certain things with the trackpad and certain things via touch - works very well. I run at 125% dpi and have no issues but my eyes are solid. Office 2013 has a touch mode that spaces things differently and gives you plenty of larger targets for touch interaction - I haven't run into any issues.
Ultimately having a slightly larger screen will be great (especially considering the Lenovo supposedly will weight the same or even slightly less), as will 8GB of ram.
I guess I'm used to the larger ipad but I find the Pro very easy to hold and work with in tablet mode. Then again I juggle medicine balls for fun haha.
In short, I find the Pro to be a more than worthy replacement for my MBP. Obviously for long work stretches I prefer Win8 on the mac mini and 27" display, but as a travel machine the Pro is fantastic.
These are the major problems that I suspected.
I suspect MS will fix most of these issues in future versions, but for now, the surface pro for me is a bit "meh". It kinda falls through the cracks between the two jobs.
In a few/5/10 years (as mobile broadband cheapens), what i really suspect will happen is most software will be cloud based and the cpu in the mobile device won't be as important.
Personally for me though the kick-stand is a non-starter. It means in laptop mode, you can't actually use it on your lap. It's a portable DESKTOP/tablet hybrid.... the point of me needing a laptop is to use when i have no desk
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MS ballzed it up a bit though. They don't let RT join a domain, so a major advantage (Centralized authentication / single sign on) of Windows-on-tablet for corporate types goes out the window. Which means you're pushed to surface Pro with the additional cost, virus scanner requirement and battery life compromises. At the Pro cost, you're looking at laptop REPLACEMENT (but too compromised) rather than complimentary device.
Give me surface RT with domain support please - or Surface Pro with a next generation Atom.
Is Windows 8 32 bit the same as Windows 8 RT?
Not at all. However, I confess I also felt confused when I was looking at Dell tablets earlier today and noticed that they offered two varieties of Win 8. Here's a page at Microsoft showing the diff between plain Win 8 and Win 8 Pro.
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/buy
Not sure I understand what the extra features of the Pro do, exactly... But that's Microsoft for you, I guess.
To some extent, yes, but only because my computing experience is now partially defined by the existence of the ipad, and as I've said all along, there are certain things that the ipad brings to the table that are extremely valuable. I've also said that the Surface is a compromise on both fronts, and so far that expectation is being proven by reality. It's a significantly worse tablet than an ipad or an android device, while also being a significantly worse laptop than almost everything else out there. Adding the touch interface doesn't seem of that much value to me because there is nowhere in this OS or this device where it is optimized; Modern apps are too limited, and the desktop mode can't really be navigated smoothly without using the trackpad or the pen.
I'm just not seeing what this brings to the table compared to a good ultrabook. It's not a terrible alternative to an ultrabook for someone who really wants a touch device integrated into their main computer, but honestly, a nice ultrabook and an ipad mini or nexus 7 is a much better combo than this single device at the moment. (admittedly at a higher cost)
I can say honestly that there hasn't been a piece of tech in a long time that I was as excited as this to get my hands on, so I'll definitely keep at it for a while yet before making a final verdict; these are just my early impressions.
Is Windows 8 32 bit the same as Windows 8 RT?
In addition: Windows RT is the version running on ARM CPUs (as in iPad and Androids) and to my understanding only available pre-installed on hardware; not available to end user for own installation. It is not binary compatible with Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro. Those both are for Intel/x86 compatible CPUs.