Tolerating the Surface Pro
ozar.me
Tolerating the Surface Pro
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Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#2I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic. It defeats the whole purpose of the form factor.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#3I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours f…
I don't see battery life being a small problem on a laptop either. Once you've experienced 10 hour battery life it's hard to ever give that up.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#4So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience"
>I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does.
This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#5I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours f…
My battery life is no where near that terrible. I'm not sure what he has running constantly, but I can GAME on my Surface Pro for 5+ hours without plugging in. It's still bad for a "tablet", but not any worse than my HP Elite Book with the same specs.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#6So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience" > I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does. This is…
Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#7So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience" > I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does. This is…
For $1,000 I would hope it's good hardware.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#8I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours f…
I don't see battery life being a small problem on a laptop either. Once you've experienced 10 hour battery life it's hard to ever give that up.
I found it pretty easy; I went from an asus transformer (14 hours real-world, and I did use it) to a samsung ultrabook-like (<4 hours). Just get in the habit of plugging it in; how much of the day do you really spend away from a power socket? It might not be for everyone, but it's been fine for me.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#9I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours f…
Brent the author here. I agree that battery life isn't a small problem - note that I put (?) next to "small" as a way of noting that the problems aren't nitpicking.
Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro
#10So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience" > I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does. This is…
Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
I think the point he makes about hanging in to it in a hope that Microsoft is going to improve it is the key. Looks like with windows 8.1 they are making a lot of changes based on the feedback, and giving that release away for free. Microsoft better stick to this fast iterative update process if they want people to bet on the new OS.