Discussion
dxg said:
Yup, I'm kind of intrigued by the prospect of Windows10 (which is shaping up well) and a Pro 4.
A friends wife work for Microsoft and they've been told July. I'm holding off until it arrives before replacing my laptop. Few colleagues use Surface Pro 3's and rave about them. Kudos said:
Few colleagues use Surface Pro 3's and rave about them.
Excellent bit of kit. I've had the i5/8Gb since it was launched, bought to replace my ageing work laptop. Plenty of power, long battery life and absolutely nothing about it I could fault. Never really took to tablets but with full Windows support and a decent performance, all in a light package, the Pro 3 has been brilliant. My day-to-day use includes Photoshop, Office 2013, specialist processor-intensive document composition and print analysis tools - the Pro 3 handles it all with ease.
There is no way I'll be going back to regular laptops. Even the Macs look dated against it.
As for comparison with iPads, they aren't even in the same market. It's like comparing a G-Wiz with a Range Rover because they are both cars ...
Loads of the consultants and contractors and sales people that come in to see us at work have Surface of some variety these days. Some with the keyboard, some don't bother with it. Very popular machines all of a sudden.
I've got a Dell Venue Pro 11 or whatever it is that I got a lot cheaper than the equivalent Surface, as a poor man's surface I'm very pleased with it, full Win8.1 in full HD but a lot lighter than a full laptop is great. Everywhere I go they have USB keyboards lying about so I just use those, I do also have a bluetooth keyboard I could take with me if I needed but haven't really bothered, don't need to. I recently added to my kit collection an ASUS full HD travel monitor which is just stunning, that really makes people go wow when I get that out, it is thinner than the Venue, basically just the screen panel in a tiny bezel case, connects via USB 3.0 and gives me dual screen, will work perfectly well with any Surface with a spare USB connector I would have thought.
I've got a Dell Venue Pro 11 or whatever it is that I got a lot cheaper than the equivalent Surface, as a poor man's surface I'm very pleased with it, full Win8.1 in full HD but a lot lighter than a full laptop is great. Everywhere I go they have USB keyboards lying about so I just use those, I do also have a bluetooth keyboard I could take with me if I needed but haven't really bothered, don't need to. I recently added to my kit collection an ASUS full HD travel monitor which is just stunning, that really makes people go wow when I get that out, it is thinner than the Venue, basically just the screen panel in a tiny bezel case, connects via USB 3.0 and gives me dual screen, will work perfectly well with any Surface with a spare USB connector I would have thought.
I just saw the Surface Pro 3 docking stand, f
k me, £170? For what's basically about £3's worth of materials? They must be smoking some really good drugs at MS HQ.
It baffles my mind how they come up with the pricing of their products and then wonder why the competition is beating them in sales.
k me, £170? For what's basically about £3's worth of materials? They must be smoking some really good drugs at MS HQ.It baffles my mind how they come up with the pricing of their products and then wonder why the competition is beating them in sales.
Will be interested to see how well this performs when it comes out. Been burnt by the Intel atom before when they first arrived. They were barely fit to run a web browser let alone anything else. Of course things move on.
Very tempted by a surface pro 3 but perhaps they are an almost machine. I read about them getting too hot when doing anything intense and also having wifi problems. But then I am worried for what they will do for the pro 4, I hope they don't make it thinner and fit it with those core M broadwells. That'll be taking a step backwards. The form factor looks perfect as it is, it just needs cooler running processors fitting, that's all.
Very tempted by a surface pro 3 but perhaps they are an almost machine. I read about them getting too hot when doing anything intense and also having wifi problems. But then I am worried for what they will do for the pro 4, I hope they don't make it thinner and fit it with those core M broadwells. That'll be taking a step backwards. The form factor looks perfect as it is, it just needs cooler running processors fitting, that's all.
Oakey said:
I just saw the Surface Pro 3 docking stand, fk me, £170? For what's basically about £3's worth of materials? They must be smoking some really good drugs at MS HQ.
It baffles my mind how they come up with the pricing of their products and then wonder why the competition is beating them in sales.
Accessories are never cheap , how much would Apple charge? k me, £170? For what's basically about £3's worth of materials? They must be smoking some really good drugs at MS HQ.It baffles my mind how they come up with the pricing of their products and then wonder why the competition is beating them in sales.
And most will be bought by corporate just as they would buy laptop docks, all much of the same.
I honestly think Microsoft have sold a massive amount of the pro 3's.
It's the original surface rt that bombed and Tbh not a surprise.
The cost of accessories like docks are peanuts relative to things like (a) the money the same places will be spending on really good Cisco or similar managed+secure corporate wifi (b) £200 a piece VOIP handsets on every desk which in turn are backed up with phenomenally expensive VOIP licences (c) the mega savings on office space (smaller desks, hot desks etc) and increased productivity (carry the thing with you to every meeting) that all these gadgets enable for FTSE and similar companies.
It's all relative, in the bigger picture the dock cost is sod all.
It's all relative, in the bigger picture the dock cost is sod all.
Otispunkmeyer said:
I read about them getting too hot when doing anything intense and also having wifi problems.
Had an i5 Surface 3 Pro for evaluation, and certainly saw heating and wireless issues (it was a fairly beefy application stack running on it - Apache HTTPD & Tomcat, GeoServer, Django & PostGIS - and it actually performed reasonably well, but tended to run hot and the wifi would drop out at repeatedly - ended up using a USB/Ethernet dongle to run the network because the wifi was too unreliable to use with long-running database connections). Didn't end up buying any examples, but will be interested to see how the next iteration performs.Edited by eharding on Sunday 5th April 12:38
anonymous said:
[redacted]
In the pro yes. Those are haswell U core processors, mobile versions, but not the ultra low power Y versions that go in the Core M branding. I expect they will use the Y branded ones for the 4 but hope they stick to the U ones or wait for the new architecture of intels skylake.Surface 3 gets cherry trail atoms with 4 cores. Think this is Intel's "tick" which means a process shrink (tock is a new architecture). So expect similar performance to Bay Trail, but less power usage.
http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/lap...
Edited by Otispunkmeyer on Sunday 5th April 16:28
Edited by Otispunkmeyer on Sunday 5th April 16:29
So did anyone else pick one of these up? I'm now an owner of the 2gb/64gb version and I have to say I love it, simply due to the weight and size. I'm a Pro 3 owner as well, which lives on a docking station most of the time but comes to work with me when I need more power. Despite the fact that the Pro3 is brilliantly lightweight, its still a beast of a tablet compared to this.
I'm resisting buying a keyboard for it, but I'm using the pen from my pro3 and it works as expected.
Anyone else taking the plunge?
I'm resisting buying a keyboard for it, but I'm using the pen from my pro3 and it works as expected.
Anyone else taking the plunge?
Polariz said:
judas said:
Just ordered a Surface Pro 3 to replace my elderly laptop and iPad 2. Decided to be fully assimilated and also bought a Windows Phone to replace my android one. Resistance is indeed futile 
Haha good man!No Surface 3 owners though? Not to be confused with Surface Pro 3
But then why not a surface 3? Would seem to have the same battery life, battery performance and more storage. It's a nice design and with its kickstand I wouldn't need one of these terrible floppy iPad cases. I presume the atom processor is absolutely fine when using mostly "metro" apps and then, it can be used to get real stuff done in a pinch if you need to thanks to x86/64.
It's definitely not a laptop replacement, it's a tablet replacement with a little extra up its sleeve.
Having said that, if I had an Air 2 ... I probably wouldn't be considering a surface 3.
I have been an Apple fan for a while.... but, more recently they seem to have ditched innovation for profit.
Just tried a Lenovo Yoga Pro and did not get on with it (too big) so tried a Surface Pro 3 and so far pretty impressed.
The whole scaling thing is a complete screw up (try using VMWare or RDP) but otherwise it gets my vote, Windows 10 looks to sort out the shocking UI that is 8.1
Conclusion - (for me anyway) the new MBP (due June????) will have to be pretty special to convert me back.
caveats...
only played with 10 preview for a while
no real idea if new MBP will be announced in June
I do hate the Apple new issue cycle (my iPhone 4S is just crap with the last few updates)
wish Apple had not drooped the kensington lock slot - I take my MBP to work......
Just tried a Lenovo Yoga Pro and did not get on with it (too big) so tried a Surface Pro 3 and so far pretty impressed.
The whole scaling thing is a complete screw up (try using VMWare or RDP) but otherwise it gets my vote, Windows 10 looks to sort out the shocking UI that is 8.1
Conclusion - (for me anyway) the new MBP (due June????) will have to be pretty special to convert me back.
caveats...
only played with 10 preview for a while
no real idea if new MBP will be announced in June
I do hate the Apple new issue cycle (my iPhone 4S is just crap with the last few updates)
wish Apple had not drooped the kensington lock slot - I take my MBP to work......
Otispunkmeyer said:
I am sorely tempted. Had a play in pc world and actually thought it was very nice. I have an ipad4 at the moment which I am beginning to itch about upgrading. It's getting a bit sluggish in places and I assume this will only worsen as iOS grows. 16 gb of storage as well is finally beating me. I don't do much beyond consumption of media on it but it's 16gb storage doesn't seem to be stretching very far these days. If I got an Air 2 I'd definitely be getting the next size up.
But then why not a surface 3? Would seem to have the same battery life, battery performance and more storage. It's a nice design and with its kickstand I wouldn't need one of these terrible floppy iPad cases. I presume the atom processor is absolutely fine when using mostly "metro" apps and then, it can be used to get real stuff done in a pinch if you need to thanks to x86/64.
It's definitely not a laptop replacement, it's a tablet replacement with a little extra up its sleeve.
Having said that, if I had an Air 2 ... I probably wouldn't be considering a surface 3.
So far the battery life hasn't been bad - but I guess that's a serious point to consider really. With an iPad air, you're looking at 10 hours or so on looped video tests, and about 7-8 for the Surface. But obviously the trade off is that it's a much more capable little device. You might not use it as a proper PC/laptop replacement but it's definitely useful that I can just take it upstairs, plug my USB printer in and just start using it. That and built in Mini Displayport to a TV without needing an Apple TV or whatever. For me, it's worth the drop in juice as it's just more useful.But then why not a surface 3? Would seem to have the same battery life, battery performance and more storage. It's a nice design and with its kickstand I wouldn't need one of these terrible floppy iPad cases. I presume the atom processor is absolutely fine when using mostly "metro" apps and then, it can be used to get real stuff done in a pinch if you need to thanks to x86/64.
It's definitely not a laptop replacement, it's a tablet replacement with a little extra up its sleeve.
Having said that, if I had an Air 2 ... I probably wouldn't be considering a surface 3.
There's a video somewhere of a guy who's plugged in the 2GB/64GB Surface 3 into a TV via Mini Displayport. He ran split screen apps, so had a Netflix film playing on one side of the Surface and a Youtube video playing in the other, and then on the TV he had a web browser open and also then ran Halo Assault on the right hand side of the TV (Playing with an Xbox controller in the USB port). The Halo game was as smooth as butter while having all these apps doing the same thing at the same time. Mental! And for £419 I'd say that was a bargain - try doing that with any other kind of tablet!
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