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Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

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Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#221

Post by mcintyre1994 »

codeulike wrote: post #122
ldd- wrote: post #59

As a proud Gen 1 Surface Pro owner, this looks spectacular. My Surface replaced my laptop, and while I definitely had my issues with the transition (trackpad sucks so often use external mouse, aspect ratio is inconvenient for Office, display angle is limiting, and no built-in LTE), I've ultimately come to enjoy using it. I've almost always got it with me, and I've found I've become nearly as productive on it as I was…

Yeah I have a Surface Pro 1 and I now use it for everything - development, taking notes, writing apps, playing minecraft, scribbling on PDFs. The direction they're taking the Pro 3 seems to be a good clear message at last 'the tablet that can replace your laptop' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t7rSZT_77E The bigger screen is a good move I think. I've started using the ArcTouch mouse with my surface when I'm out and…

Just out of interest, are you developing on Windows? Do you have any experience running Linux on them or know if that's pretty much a no go?

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#222

Post by rdrdss23 »

smrtinsert wrote: post #194
bri3d wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX ? In my experience Cygwin works better for the "compile software targeted mostly at Linux users" use case, but Microsoft definitely pursued the "make Windows a Unix" approach. Sadly Interix saw limited adoption (probably due to pricing) and has been discontinued, so we're left with the user-space emulation approaches (like Cygwin).

They should really just buy cygwin and make it the default shell keeping powershell as optional. It's time for MS to acknowledge they need to catch up and be a little bit more interoperable with power users from other oses. cygiwn is one of the first thing i install when I bring up a new windows box.

cygwin has a license problem b/c it's GPL. So it's a no-go. You can't bundle your proprietary software with it easily.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#223

Post by doczoidberg »

This is a notebook killer literally. It is for taking notes as a notebook should do. Maybe it is a laptop killer for some too.

Comparisons with Ipad and ohter tablets are ridiculous. This is a working machine.

I think this will be my next machine.

Nobody in the press has mentioned the new power connector by the way. If you look at the docking station all connections are done by this connector. I hope there will be a cable based adapter for usb+dp+power too.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#224

Post by teamonkey »

mikerg87 wrote: post #154
mrbill wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got a Surface Pro 1 (with Type Cover 2), and have never had problems getting firmware and driver updates from Microsoft Update. Have no idea what you're talking about regarding "manual upgrade" with CLI tools.

I was talking about these driver/update packs for Surface Pro 2: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3882... . I've never seen these updates come through standard Windows Update for the Surface Pro 2.

"This firmware and driver package contains drivers for all of the components in the Surface Pro device, as well as updates to the system firmware that have been released via Windows Update."

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#225

Post by steele »

agscala wrote: post #8

This sure is a bummer for people who recently bought a Surface Pro 2 (like me). It's unreal that a 6-month old $1200 machine already is outdated

Got an SP2 at launch, and it has served me well. Will skip this upgrade, but it's pretty tempting with the new form factor (aspect ratio, thickness, screensize). Calibrating the digitizer for accuracy in corners is a struggle on SP2, and although I remain skeptical about N-trig, I'm optimistic that it is something they've had to notice/address when changing vendors, but losing pressure levels is kind of a bummer. The type cover touchpad update would also be a significant change, because v1&2 are borderline unusable touchpads. That is one of the primary reasons for me to holdoff on charge cover; great idea, but it took too long to ship and I'd be willingly paying for the same bad touchpad as my typecover. They would've sold far more charge covers if the touchpad was an improvement over typepad2.

I'm glad that Microsoft is committed to this offering. However, my thought process to rationalize holding off on a preorder as follows:

1) I would likely try to sell my SP2 for some amount, and my loss/cost-of-use might be significant since form factor is changing. Alternatively, if I stay the course, I might be able to pick up SP/SP2 docks & accessories from SP3 early adopters on the cheap, holiday discounts, or inventory clearance.

2) haswell has been great, but even with all the advantages of SP3, I can't justify the cost of #1 without some iGPU spec bump. MS has the $ and will likely want to ship a broadwell model eventually even if SP3 doesn't sell like hotcakes. Probably a 2015 ordeal though since holiday will be reserved for discounts & bundles.

3) SP2 got a haswell slight spec bump after launch, due to inventory I suppose, so I feel somewhat burned. Irrational, I know, but I need to acknowledge it.

4) same CPU generation, same battery, bigger screen, no chargecover -- SP2 battery life for my usage was good, but unless reviews prove otherwise, I've no reason to think SP3 will have a better battery life.

5) SP2 works well. Microsoft should have sales penalized for shipping the slate & typepad separately, if it is going for "laptop". An expected retina refresh to the ultraportable macbook line will likely be priced comparably or less than SP3 w/ typecover so marketing will have fun with that.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#226

Post by Joeri »

bane wrote: post #16

I'm starting to see more and more Surface devices in my area. It seems to be getting popular with the Starbuck's salesguy crowd who need something as compact as a tablet, but they can use real applications on. I know that's kind of cliche, but you don't really "get" that meaning until you walk into a coffee shop and see 2 or 3 people sitting around with tablets sticking up on the tables. The Android and iPad guys are…

Check out the asus t100. It's what a low end surface would be like. I have one and i really like It.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#227

Post by eropple »

LeafyGreenbriar wrote: post #121
bunderbunder wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's something of a double-standard here. I use a virtual machine running Windows to take care of software my Mac won't run natively. I could just as easily run Linux or BSD in a virtual machine on a Windows box. Or even OS X, if I were in a EULA-violating mood.

I've had to run a Windows VM on a Mac because I needed to run SSMS, but if I were doing .NET development in Visual Studio and heavily using PowerShell on the command-line, I'd probably prefer to just have a Windows computer rather than having so much of my workflow inside a VM. Because I currently work mostly on the command-line, having a rich command-line environment with access to a powerful shell and great tools i…

I always thought I'd feel similarly, but I've been doing a bunch of .NET/Mono stuff in Windows 8 (instead of using Xamarin Studio), as a virtual machine in my Mac. Works pretty great, as long as I correctly train my fingers to hit the right shortcuts when in and out of the VM.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#228

Post by rdrdss23 »

themodelplumber wrote: post #126

I look at the environment in which the product was presented and it's just one no-no after another. Check out this photo: http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/05/20/microsoft-unveils... They've picked some awful desaturated blue/green wallpaper image that clashes with the tiles that are supposed to be so great in Windows. Then the tiles themselves have this weird whitespace issue that creates an imbalanced appearance…

I have a similar issue with the Metro color scheme. It's incredibly overstimulating. Each time I open the start menu, I feel like I just walked in to a kindergarten. I wish there was a way to make it black and white b.c applications icons are generally colored as it is (but get washed out by the tsunami of color coming at you)

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#229

Post by teamonkey »

dgarrett wrote: post #170
iaskwhy wrote: post #148

For reference: Surface Pro 3: 12" @ 2160x1440 => 216 PPI MacBook Air 11": 11.6" @ 1366x768 => 135 PPI MacBook Air 13": 13.3" @ 1440x900 => 128 PPI MacBook Pro 13" (Retina): 13.3" @ 2560x1600 => 227 PPI (Rumor) MacBook Air 12" (Retina): 12" @ 2304x1440 => 226 PPI

Don't forget the horrors of Windows high DPI scaling. Poor, blurry Google Chrome. Edit: I was inspired to look into it a little more, and it looks like Chrome does have high-DPI support: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom... It has to be enabled by a registry key and seems to break Chrome's notification tray icon.

Win8 desktop is definitely better than Win7. The worst thing is that the scaling (and touch) breaks all the non-standard GUI kits.

XMind, for example, has icons that you can hardly see on my Pro2.

Unity3D's GUI scales up correctly but there are a whole load of fixed-sized panels that become too large to be useful.

Chrome's font rendering is still screwed even on low DPI windows machines, especially if Google Web Fonts are used.

Re: Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

#230

Post by ChikkaChiChi »

emehrkay wrote: post #180
ggreer wrote: post #50

That's a really nice piece of hardware. I've used MacBook Airs since 2010, but the Surface 3 looks to be strictly dominating in the hardware department. Unfortunately, I don't think Microsoft will convert many OS X devs unless they make some changes to their software. One of the advantages of OS X is that it's a Unix, and lots of Unix software runs on it. It's not hard to compile tools such as nmap, Vim, or steam loc…

Id honestly love a dock-able iPad with a sandboxed OSX app. <-- this is my prediction as to where Apple is going. They won't merge the two OSes. One would assume that they already have an arm version of OS X running, emulation probably isn't strong enough yet.

I believe iOS is derived from OSX, so that would be correct.
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