Surface Pro 3 Discussion Thread

<<...This thread has now officially been upgraded...>>

Jeez... I've only been gone for two days...!?!!

 

Different learning techniques work for different people. But annotating your lecture notes, whether in Onenote, a pdf reader, or merely on printouts, is a great way to force yourself to focus on the relevant aspects of a lecture, and most likely a better strategy than just passively waiting for your instructor's information to seep in. Again, different people learn differently, and if you don't know how you learn best, then you're better off getting a device, like the SP3, that allows you to vary your learning technique until you find one that works best for you. You should not be expected to fit your device, but rather, like any good prosthetic, your device should fit you.

 

I have what may seem a daft question but would appreciate if anyone could answer it;

If I buy a SP3 from U.S while I'm there and buy a type cover from UK, will there be any issues with the keyboard settings or typing?

I'm guessing there would be none maybe just have to change the settings??

Thanks

 

Yes, you just need to make sure your settings in Control Panel is equivalent to your keyboard.

Sent from my SC-01F using Tapatalk

 

Interesting reaction to some of the individual reviewers, I don't see any reason to get up in arms about the WSJ one any more than I do to throw around Lisa glades name every couple of pages. Reviewers have bias, their own perspective and sometimes flat out get things wrong but by reading a large cross section of them you can get a pretty clear picture of what to expect of the device.

Again, I just feel for the third time now MS has missed the opportunity to stop playing catchup and compare. If you are going to come out and say "this can replace your laptop" then you are going to get comparisons to laptops and MBA and because its a device that does more than those devices, but doesn't specialise in being one of them chances are its going to come up short in areas eg typing.

That's why they should have just come out and said we wanted to give you the ability to do everything, anywhere so we invented the Tablet PC. Or better yet call it something new and better. Apple didn't come out and say heres a tablet we call the ipad. They said hey heres the iPad, look at how easily I can do this, access this, play this, enjoy this, send this, show this all in this mobile, light package that feels good to touch. Now if I walk down the street and ask people the first thing that comes to mind when I say tablet, whats the majority of response..

 

Agreed, they set themselves up to be put on the defensive. It's kind of ironic that the one time that MS invents a buzzword that sticks ('lapability'), it's one that highlights a drawback of the device. Way to go, Microsoft!

About the Stern review, I do wonder what WSJ thinks when they note that 75% of the viewers gave the video thumbs down. "Yes we did it!!" or "Hmm, this review must have been out of line..". Even the video review by the traditional Apple lovers from The Verge got 99% thumbs up.

 

Interesting idea, but I don't think Panay ever used his newly minted "lapability" with "portrait" - if he did it would be an epic mistake.

Ok - let's see how I can screw up these answers (in-line below):

 

I agree with most of what you say, and if I was one of these reviewers with a MacBook I might say the same as them. When I got my Surface Pro 2 and Type Cover I hated the keyboard. I was making typos all the time. Still do occasionally! But I can now type whilst looking at a monitor on my desk now I can visualise the spacing of the keys etc. It would just be nice to have some definition to the keys rather than being completely flat.

I think the Surface Pro 3 is a master of both PC and tablet as a hardware device, it fulfils many of my requirements and yes I would like a better keyboard but the Type cover will do me fine. I hardly ever used my previous laptop on my lap, and I gave my Sony i7 laptop to my wife as it was heavy and cumbersome.

It's when it comes down to tablet software that it stumbles a little. But as long as developers start releasing better quality apps into the app store it will be a great tablet, and this will come as more Windows devices come onto the market. It was the same when Android came out, it took a good couple of years for us to get anywhere near the level of iOS apps. I rarely use any Windows apps on my Surface Pro 2 other than apps/games for the kids, or games for me. I tend to just revert to using the full blown Windows apps, probably just by nature.

It will be difficult for Microsoft to win over hardened Apple folks especially when they have bought into the entire Apple ecosystem and invested a lot of cash in iOS apps etc.

 

Kind of hard to quote you when you put your quote in a quote (yo dawg..). Anyway, I find the 16:9 of the SP2 very convenient for side-by-side handling of apps/windows, so for me it's not just about media consumption. But for full screen apps in portrait mode I agree that 4:3 is more practical, so 3:2 should help.

 

<Random Ramblings while waiting for the SP3 to be available to try>

I've had a TabletPC's for about 10 years now. First starting with a Motion Computing M1400 (my favorite), followed up by a refurbished Fujitsu T2010 (great price, 9hr battery), and I'm currently using a Samsung Series 7 Slate (say that 5 times fast).

I've been looking for a replacement for the S7S - but all of the viable options turned out to have issues for me: Fujitsu Q704 (fan noise, performance and price), Motion R12 (price), SP2 (screen too small), Thinkpad Yoga (just cant get used to the fold back with the keys exposed - feels odd to me).

I'm hoping the SP3 hits the mark - and, at least on paper, it seems to. It has the bigger screen size I need, decent battery life, good processor and memory options, a decent digitizer (hopefully), the slate form factor that I like, useful keyboard options, and an acceptable price.

I use the TabletPC to take notes for my job. When I'm in sales meetings with customer I have to take a lot of notes, but I need to make sure its not a distraction - which is why I don't type my notes. And those notes need to be available to me at all times so I live in OneNote - but I still need a reasonably powerful machine to run demos, a few vmware player windows, etc etc.

I've never really been able to get the pen calibration as accurate as I'd like with the S7S or the T2010 - nothing beat the M1400 for that - and I'm hoping that the SP3 is better at this. Also, the M1400 had a bit of texture to the screen, so it felt closer to writing on paper. My other TabletPC's had very smooth screens, and it always felt a little odd writing on them.



Anyway, I want to thank everyone for their comments on the SP3 as well as the all important links to reviews of the SP3. It has helped me figure out what I really need in a new TabletPC, and it looks like the SP3 might be the one (keeping fingers crossed)

While this thread is very informative, it can be painful to try to keep up with - and I cant imagine a newcomer to this forum even trying to wade through the 100+ pages. The first page post is a great summary of the SP3, but I think a lot of useful comments/comparisons/etc will never get seen by most casual readers of this forum.

What do you guys think about starting a few different SP3 threads (preferably, before this launches tomorrow) to get this a bit better organized?

I was thinking about:
Surface Pro 3 - First impressions & hands on experience
Surface Pro 3 - NTrig digitizer comments & reviews
Surface Pro 3 - Keyboard cover comments & case options
Surface Pro 3 - Battery Life
Surface Pro 3 - compare i3 vs i5 vs i7
Surface Pro 3 - I hate it because it doesn't work for typing in my lap
Surface Pro 3 - Dock options
Surface Pro 3 - Screen resolution, glare, pen calibration, etc.
Where's the mini Surface pro?

Too many threads? Too few? Too organized? Too many times typing too?