Surface Pro 3

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by RZetlin

As an owner of a Surface Pro 2, I am disappointed that Microsoft went with N-Trig and not Wacom technology...

Quite frankly, so far I'm underwhelmed by WACOM on Windows 8.
My Surface Pros 1 and 2 (3 of them) and my Dell Latitude 10 all behave about the same: Relatively unprecise, especially in the corners.
I've had only one N-Trig tablet so far: HP Slate 2 with Windows 7.
It was at least as precise and responsive as the WACOMs mentioned above.

On Dell Venue 8 Pro, the pen surprisingly is more accurate and doesn't have the corner problem. One has to press a bit hard, though.
Not N-Trig or WACOM, but a welcome alternative.

Only downside I see for now with N-Trig: You need a battery.

[Dulin's Books]

have you seen David Pogue's article and video yet? fair warning the video autoplays https://www.yahoo.com/tech/if-you-ha...496376264.html the video is hilarious and both pieces are quite the change of heart for Mr Pogue who in the past has been almost fanatically in favor of Apple and dismissive of Microsoft's Surface line and Win 8

[pl001]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

Where the Surface line (and Windows tablets in general) fall short is in the quantity of quality Modern UI apps.

My Surface 2 makes a terrific netbook, but a poor tablet... because of the apps.

That depends on what your needs are. Windows 8 works great as a tablet for me. Most all of the basic stuff people use tablets for comes natively and the the interface is fast and fluid. There are already over 100,000 apps in the store, which is not bad at all for 18 months. Quality continues to improve. It's only if you have pretty specific needs or wants that it starts to fall short, in my opinion.

I understand what you are saying, I just think "poor" is not accurate. Perhaps that is the case for you, but I don't think it is for 90% of tablet buyers.

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

Where the Surface line (and Windows tablets in general) fall short is in the quantity of quality Modern UI apps.

My Surface 2 makes a terrific netbook, but a poor tablet... because of the apps.

I guess, that brings it to the point exactly!
On the train, while on a business trip, I often stroll around.
I mostly see iPads. (Not so many iPhones though, here in Germany Samsung is dominating the smartphone market.)
If I catch a glimpse, most people are:
- Watching movies.
- Playing games. Sometimes the well known casual ones, often enough some action games.
- Rarely reading.
If I check on issue #2, games: There are some spectacular ones on Windows 8. Mainly the ones from Microsoft themselves, Halo for example.
And especially the action games really shine, you natively can use any XBOX 360 controller, even the wireless ones.
But even I, as only an occasional gamer, see that the most famous titles are missing: No field runners, no Plant vs. Zombies, most of the Gameloft titles missing.
Being Microsoft, I'd go for the obvious solution:
Integrate the desktop titles into the Microsoft Store on the tablets as well. Now it's a link to the external websites and you have to download the .exe files and install manually. It would be way more convenient, faster and way more neatly arranged, to install them directly from the Store. I can't imagine, that licensing would be an issue.
For one, Microsoft now isn't directly involved either.
Last but not least: Why should Capcom not be interested, to significantly increase the number of potential buyers of Plants v. Zombies?
But as the situation is now, anyone looking for a gadget most likely will root for an iPad. As a toy, I love my iPad mini. It can't do the most basic business stuff for me, but as a gadget it's close to perfection.

And that's in my opinion the simple explanation for the (unfortunately) limited success of Windows 8 tablets:
If you're a private user and want to have a gadget, it ranks #3 behind Android and even more so iOS.
If you're a business user, you take what your employer is offering. And that's probably not a tablet, which might be considered too much of a "fun" unit...

Still: I consider my Surface Pro 2 a fantastic tablet. That's why I've instantly pre-ordered Surface Pro 3. But you're definitely right: With offering the 1.000 most popular apps (my gut says, now they may have 30% to 50% tops) as native Windows 8 apps, they would appeal to lots of additional target groups.

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by pl001

That depends on what your needs are. Windows 8 works great as a tablet for me. Most all of the basic stuff people use tablets for comes natively and the the interface is fast and fluid. There are already over 100,000 apps in the store, which is not bad at all for 18 months. Quality continues to improve. It's only if you have pretty specific needs or wants that it starts to fall short, in my opinion.

I understand what you are saying, I just think "poor" is not accurate. Perhaps that is the case for you, but I don't think it is for 90% of tablet buyers.

"poor" is indeed accurate for me. I'm not speaking for anyone else. 100,000 apps is a misleading number... because included in that number are "filler apps" like app-ified ebooks (of which there are many).

Based on my experience with the Surface RT/2 where only Modern UI apps are available, here are just the "heavy hitters" that are missing for me:

LOGOS Bible software. The Windows RT version of Logos has no resemblance to the iOS version. In Windows RT it is nothing more than a limited-function reader. No bookmarking, no highlighting, no notes... not even a TOC display. Alternative Bible reading software is not applicable here due to the resources (books, commentaries, etc.) that are specific to Logos.

Boss Jock Studio. This iOS app is a terrific podcast production app. The widescreen aspect ratio, and powered USB port of the Surface would make it a superior platform for podcast production. The widescreen would allow for a split-screen display of a text script, and the powered USB port offers greater flexibility in the number of supported USB microphones.

WriteRoom/Notesy/PlainText. I keep important notes as plain text in a DropBox folder that is accessed by Notesy/WriteRoom/PlainText on iOS, ResophNotes on Windows, Epistle on Android, and nvAlt on OSX. I have a variety of devices that I use and this setup ensures that the information is always available and synced. There is nothing like this available for Windows RT. I've tried using text editors to access those files on DropBox but it is not the same. No support for labels, keywords, or even searching across the notes. I've been giving some serious consideration to using OneNote for these purposes but the WYSIWYG notebook metaphor is not as useful as nvAlt-style notes.

Track 8 Audio player (technically, support for rubust ID3 Metadata tag support). All music player software for Windows RT appears to use the same underlying APIs. When I used the Zune desktop software, it was very finicky in handling ID3 tags. It took a lot of effort to keep things straight... specifically, using ID3V2.3 tags was the only way to ensure that the Zune would catalog things properly. I've since moved to OSX and iTunes (quite inferior to the Zune software). It seems like Windows RT is as finicky as the Zune. This will require additional work to bring newer tracks into line with the rest of my collection... even though it all works fine on OSX, iOS, and Android devices.

Feedly. When Google Reader was discontinued I settled on Feedly as an RSS reader. Yes I can open up the Feedly website in IE, but it is NOT as usable in touch mode as a native app.

There are quite a few others that I've had to "make do" with what is available. The alternatives are not as robust or feature-rich but it'll get the basic job done.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

have you seen David Pogue's article and video yet? fair warning the video autoplays https://www.yahoo.com/tech/if-you-ha...496376264.html the video is hilarious and both pieces are quite the change of heart for Mr Pogue who in the past has been almost fanatically in favor of Apple and dismissive of Microsoft's Surface line and Win 8

Yes. It was hilarious.

Now I'm going through SurfaceP3 versus Lenovo angst AGAIN. URGH.

Hitch

[mgmueller]

Originally Posted by WillysJeepMan

"poor" is indeed accurate for me. I'm not speaking for anyone else. 100,000 apps is a misleading number... because included in that number are "filler apps" like app-ified ebooks (of which there are many).

Based on my experience with the Surface RT/2 where only Modern UI apps are available, here are just the "heavy hitters" that are missing for me...

Surface RT 1 & 2 indeed fail as tablets. What good is the desktop, if you can't install any desktop apps?
On Surface Pro, the desktop sometimes is a bit annoying, when using none-touch-optimized software without a mouse. But at least in general you can solve every task. On Surface RT, you're often lost without any alternatives.
It's a pity. The look, touch and feel of Surface RT are great - if you're options wouldn't be that limited...

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by pl001

That depends on what your needs are. Windows 8 works great as a tablet for me. Most all of the basic stuff people use tablets for comes natively and the the interface is fast and fluid. There are already over 100,000 apps in the store, which is not bad at all for 18 months. Quality continues to improve. It's only if you have pretty specific needs or wants that it starts to fall short, in my opinion.

I understand what you are saying, I just think "poor" is not accurate. Perhaps that is the case for you, but I don't think it is for 90% of tablet buyers.

Wait... so if you want a device that "has apps" Win8 is great, but only once you (unreasonably) start wanting specific apps rather than the abstract concept of apps, is there grounds for complaining that the Windows Store is poor in apps?

[fjtorres]

The actual CPUs and video chips detailed:
http://www.zdnet.com/which-cpus-will...tag=TREc64629f

Also, external monitor support:

For those concerned about multiple monitor support, Microsoft engineers tell me they've tested these scenarios thoroughly. The i3-based model can comfortably drive two Full HD (1920x1200 at 60 Hz) displays, while the i5 and i7 models can power two external displays at a maximum resolution of 2880x1800 each at 60 Hz.

That, in addition to the onboard display.

[frquixote]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Hopefully, I'll win a lottery into which I've never entered, and then I can justify buying a device that is "cooler" than I actually need. :-)
Hitch

Hitch,

Have you given any thought to one of the 2-in-1's? I bought an ASUS T100TA and just love it. Runs Windows 2.1 and has a boatload of features you won't find on any Apple devices. Its low price makes it easy to buy a 128 GB SDXC card for the onboard SDXC slot and still come in well below ANY of the Surfaces. The keyboard locks into the side of the tablet when you want to use it as a PC (and you can even still use it on an airplane, where you still aren't supposed to use Bluetooth devices). Best of all, you can find it at your local Microsoft store and Amazon!

Best,
frquixote

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by frquixote

Hitch,

Have you given any thought to one of the 2-in-1's? I bought an ASUS T100TA and just love it. Runs Windows 2.1 and has a boatload of features you won't find on any Apple devices. Its low price makes it easy to buy a 128 GB SDXC card for the onboard SDXC slot and still come in well below ANY of the Surfaces. The keyboard locks into the side of the tablet when you want to use it as a PC (and you can even still use it on an airplane, where you still aren't supposed to use Bluetooth devices). Best of all, you can find it at your local Microsoft store and Amazon!

Best,
frquixote

Thanks--no, I hadn't. I will look into it; I've promised myself I'll make a final decision (finally...been dithering about it since last November, for heaven's sake) and buy this weekend. By Tuesday, fersure. (Or Wednesday, if I'm busy on Monday, and Tuesday...that's how that goes.)

Thanks, really. I will indeed look at it.

Hitch

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Oh, maybe because pixel count isn't the only, or even the best, measure of screen quality. (Color fidelity and purity, to mention two, come to mind.) It has value but it has its limits in describing quality, especially in the newest PenTile displays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PenTile...ly#Controversy And, maybe because higher pixel counts mean the GPU needs to work harder and generate more heat, just to display the same information. (Remember the short-lived iPad3? The jump to "retina" resolution ate the added processing power, ran hotter, and required a bigger battery.)

I disagree with the idea that pixel count and color "fidelity" (as a musician, I like your audiophile-parlance substitution for accuracy) must be mutually exclusive, or that your argument about the limited use of PenTile screens of specific vintage in Samsung mobile devices has anything to do with the tablets we're discussing, which use standard IPS displays.

And I'd expect virtually everyone at MR to be aware of the issues not only with the iPad 3, but also with the possibility of similar issues with devices like Lenovo's upcoming Y50 -- a gaming laptop that will have the highest-res screen of any so far and will likely be a cooling nightmare. Using a worst-case device -- instead of any of the current and more evolved devices -- to argue in favor of lower ppi is a straw man argument.

I say this not to glove-slap you while citing a hoary arsenal of rhetorical fallacies that any of us (including me) might be guilty of resorting to occasionally, but to stress the fact that the iPad 3 example doesn't apply to current cases. If your point is that MS is being conservative given the potential of the added processing power for overheating, then I would suggest they could still find a way to use an HD IPS panel without heat issues and not sacrifice sales to consumers and "prosumers" who care about resolution (graphic designers, etc.).

Not all the features that define the quality of a product are readily apparent or appreciated by the mainstream market. Sometimes, the best engineering intentions result in superior quality that goes underappreciated or even ignored by most buyers.

You seem to be dismissing users as ignorant and "unappreciative" -- users who comprise an area of the business market and are not merely part of what you seem to be characterizing as the oblivious masses -- though I think it's also a mistake to dismiss ordinary consumers as being concerned with the wrong features and "intentions."

My girlfriend is a web designer/graphic designer who deals with printed and web media transpositions; her sister is an industrial designer. Neither is likely to buy a Surface Pro until the ppi is higher. I'm on the fence specifically because I deal with multiple windows in music and high-resolution images in book design. If I bought an SP, I'd want to be able to use Adobe products like InDesign and even Photoshop at their full potential.

(The much maligned Zune comes to mind: it had spectacular audio fidelity far superior to ipods. But you only noticed if you fed it high quality files and played back through a quality stereo or truly premium earbuds or headsets. Most buyers simply noted that it sounded better than the ipods but assumed it was just because it had better earbuds.)

You're on shaky topsoil praising the Zune to an obsessive listener like me, who has demo'd it and several other music players with a variety of high-end headphones and amps.

Neither I nor a number of critical users found that the Zune was "far superior" to, say, the iPod 5.5G, nor did we find it sounded as good as Sony's offerings at that time. Back then, I was very close to buying the Peter Saville limited-edition Zune until I actually A/B'd one with the Sony NW-A810, Sony X and even an iRiver iHP40. In the opinion of many of us who listened at the Head-fi meet, the A810 destroyed the Zune. We also compared an iPod 5 using the same headphones and amp as the Zune and heard no evidence that it trashed the iPod or even bested it in the way you've suggested -- some of us actually preferred the iPod. Besides which, the Zune couldn't play 16-bit 44.1k FLAC files, which was the definition of a higher-end portable music player back then. Apple had its same-res alternative to FLAC, of course -- ALAC, which is just as good but irritatingly proprietary -- but the point is that the Apple, Sony and iRiver players all played lossless audio files while the Zune did not.

And of course there was the problem of the ecosystem being significantly smaller on the Zune, which didn't matter to me (since I burned my files from my own sources and stripped DRM from the files I bought) but mattered a great deal to others.

Again: You can interpret the resolution issue any way you like, but audiophiles weren't going to pay for a Zune that played lower-res files any more than they're now likely to prefer the iPod Classic (16-bit/44.1 files) to the Sony PCM-M10 (96/24) or the Astel&Kern AK120 (24-bit/192k) or the Samsung Note 3 with the Exynos processor (i.e., with Wolfson DAC) -- or virtually any current Samsung device when paired with an external DAC (24/192).

Edit: check these displaymate reports http://www.displaymate.com/Tablet_ShootOut_3.htm

That comparison is not only old news; it is also one with which I've never disagreed. I've even responded to that comparison before on this forum and cited it on others.

For some reason, you seem to feel that we're debating whether last year's news stories about certain displays being better than Apple's are true, and that I've disputed their claims uncharacteristically -- as if I were some Apple apologist invested in asserting the iPad's superiority rather than a person who's simply pointing out that all three of the panels being tested in your link have higher resolutions than the SP3's. Again: That's a straw man in this discussion. You're attempting to disprove arguments that I've never made.

The Zune was a failure, but I think you and I can agree that we'd like the Surface Pro series to be successful -- specif. for the leap in flexibility, professional software access and power that it offers. To ensure that the Surface Pro is as successful as possible, Microsoft should invest in a display solution that combines heat efficiency and color accuracy with a higher pixel density. Otherwise, many consumers and graphics people are likely not to purchase the SP3 because it costs more than the competition and has a lower-resolution screen. The Surface Pro doesn't need that kind of problem, which ought to be solved in later models so that a greater number of consumers will embrace the line.

[fjtorres]

I wasn't trying to dismiss or deprecate anybody: my point was abd remains that companies can put effort and resources into features that while impressive on paper, don't actually buy them enough added sales to justify the features.
Which is what the Zune example was about: most of the reviews I saw at the time compared the audio output of the Zune favorably to the iPod shipping at the time but when it came time to generste sales, it did them no good.

Microsoft is a big believer in usability labs, no secret there (right?) but usability testing (and product design) depend on identifying usage scenarios that reflect user needs and values. When the users don't appreciate the added value of a feature or trait, the product might as well have it. And some times the inevitable tradeoffs work to the product's detriment, which is why I cited the displaymate reports to highlight how Google (not Apple) had focused on achieving the highest pixel density of the day and ended up with a problematic display.

Now, the surface 3 has plenty of tradeoffs hidden in the design: Microsoft thinks the balance of resolution, image quality, weight, thin-ness, form-factor, etc will outweight the features they chose not to implement, like 8GB RAM on the cheaper models (to support virtualization) Or higher pixel density. I will say I've seen a lot more disappointment over memory configurations than over screen resolution. (Sorry!) The ZDnet and Cnet crowds skew corporate IT, of course.

We can speculate all we like, but in the end it will be the folks voting their wallets that determine whether they appreciate the features and tradeoffs or not and how far the Surfaces go.

Me, I like a lot of things about the line (especially the pen) but it doesn't particularly matter because my purchase cycle is out of phase for the Surface 3 today. Next year, maybe. Especially if the i5 and i7 refurbs put one of the bigger models within justification range.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Wait... so if you want a device that "has apps" Win8 is great, but only once you (unreasonably) start wanting specific apps rather than the abstract concept of apps, is there grounds for complaining that the Windows Store is poor in apps?

Here's the problem ... Microsoft has been "making hay" for years over the fact that Windows is required to run certain "standard" applications, that's why it's supposedly "superior" to Linux (or so the argument goes). So is it the fault of Surface RT buyers that they expect a Microsoft product to be compatible with Windows applications?

If you can't get the specific Windows apps you expect on a Windows machine, what's the advantage of the Surface RT over an Android, or an iPad or a Chromebook? After all these also come with the "abstract concept of apps." And, with the iPad and Android tablets there are many, many more and many more polished apps than with the Surface RT.

[WillysJeepMan]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Here's the problem ... Microsoft has been "making hay" for years over the fact that Windows is required to run certain "standard" applications, that's why it's supposedly "superior" to Linux (or so the argument goes). So is it the fault of Surface RT buyers that they expect a Microsoft product to be compatible with Windows applications?

If you can't get the specific Windows apps you expect on a Windows machine, what's the advantage of the Surface RT over an Android, or an iPad or a Chromebook? After all these also come with the "abstract concept of apps." And, with the iPad and Android tablets there are many, many more and many more polished apps than with the Surface RT.

It sounds like you agree with what eschwartz said.

I've said before, I'm willing to use alternative apps as long as they provide the equivalent functionality of a "specifically named app". The problem is that in a fair number of cases, even the equivalent alternative doesn't exist. That condition will cause the tablet use experience of the Surface to be subpar compared to an iOS or Android tablet... compromising the whole converged idea of the Surface Pro.