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Announcing the Surface 3

blog.surface.com

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Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#121

Post by mikeash »

dman wrote: post #77
Vexs wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't even use a computer that's less than 4 gb these days, especially once chrome gets it's grubby hands all over my RAM. Just running baseline I find that most windows systems take up about two GB of RAM, and after you load up chrome, word, whatever; it hits the 4GB+ range. I mean, we're starting to see phones with 2GB of ram, it's completely unacceptable for a modern tablet.

How much RAM does the Ipad have?

Current iPads have 1GB of RAM. They also constantly evict background applications and even backgrounded tabs in the web browser. Switching browser tabs on iOS is always a gamble as to whether it'll reload the page or not. This makes it impossible to, for example, write a comment in one tab while referencing some material in a different one with any kind of reliability.

iOS is extremely memory efficient but it comes at a cost which can be quite high for some.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#122

Post by slantyyz »

Someone1234 wrote: post #64
geerlingguy wrote: post #42

Actual product page: http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-3 And buy now page with tech specs: http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productI... Looks like $499 for 64GB storage and 2GB RAM, $599 for 128GB storage and 4GB of RAM (WiFi models; 4G LTE model pricing wasn't showing for me).

That 2 GB, 64 GB model just looks painful to use. I've seen a lot of Windows installs use up more than 64 GB, in particular as WinSXS grows as more updates are installed (thus more duplicate DLLs are stored). If anyone asked me, I'd describe 128 GB as the "minimum" storage needed for Windows. And even then you aren't storing much if any user data on it. 4 GB is the minimum I'd run anything newer than Windows XP on. T…

>> That 2 GB, 64 GB model just looks painful to use.

That really depends on your use case.

I've been using the Asus Vivotab Note 8 for several months (2gb/64gb), and I haven't even come close to feeling a need to put an SD card in it yet. I use it as a complement to my laptop. Mostly for consumption, communication and note-taking with OneNote. I don't think you'd want to do any heavy lifting on an Atom-based machine -- you'd be better off with a Pro in that case.

I'd love to see Microsoft release a Surface Mini with that Surface Pen. Having a Wacom pen on my Vivotab is great, except at the edges.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#123

Post by TheDong »

freehunter wrote: post #72
TheDong wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not related. HN is not your tech support forum. Especially not for trivially google-able issues.

It's not trivial. They give me 50 mp3s in a zip folder. The guy was talking about troubles downloading an mp3 to an iOS device. Please, feel free to send me a LMGTFY that has a result showing how to open a zip file of mp3s on an iOS device without having iTunes on a desktop.

"without itunes" is a pointless constraint that the parent did not have.

Searching "transfer mp3 to iphone" will give you hundreds of results telling you how to install iTunes and transfer the mp3s.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#124

Post by throwawaymsft »

Sealy wrote: post #94

Does anyone else see the glaring difference between how Microsoft markets its products VS how Apple markets their products? Microsoft: List 101 features. Tell everyone how amazing each new feature is. Remind everyone that there is a huge array of features. List them out again. Apple: Take a nice photo. Done.

Yep. Apple built up a reputation (over a decade) for creating high-quality products. You don't need to know the internals.

The Microsoft ecosystem didn't do this, to put it mildly. Which spyware/adware/bloatware is coming along with your PC purchase? Which plasticky parts? Which underpowered CPU? Which horrible battery life?

People see a Christopher Nolan movie just because he's involved. Interstellar didn't need a typical Michael-Bay style trailer to entice people to go.

It's all about the expectations people have going in. When you don't trust the chef, you want to see all the ingredients.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#125

Post by TheDong »

HCIdivision17 wrote: post #100
TheDong wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not related. HN is not your tech support forum. Especially not for trivially google-able issues.

You'd think it was trivial, but it's shockingly hard to do without using iTunes. For a person who frequents HN, that's extremely unintuitive. And iTunes is terrible, so that solution is out. It took me forever to realize that just because I can kinda-sorta interact with my iPhone as a storage device doesn't mean that it's even remotely going to actually behave as one. The whole process is infuriating if you go in exp…

iTunes is out? Well, that's a pointless constraint if I've ever seen one. Yes it's terrible software, but plenty of people run terrible software once in a blue moon because it's the only way to accomplish some task.

Also, you say "For a person who frequents HN that's extremely unintuitive"... are you implying HN users are incapable of using google? That HN users are not aware that a locked-down Apple ecosystem means there's no user freedom?

I'd expect the users of HN to be a large overlap with the people familiar with Stallman's views and how Apple is known to behave. I would not expect the regular man on the street to know what "walled garden" meant in terms of apps nor what "closed source lockin" meant, but I'd expect the average HN user to be very familiar with those concepts.

I find your claim that such a simple idea is unintuitive to an HN user demeaning towards all of us.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#126

Post by mikeash »

sz4kerto wrote: post #85
[deleted] wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Off topic, but karma is useless and you should not care -- standing by your opinion is worth more than imaginary internet points.

Seems like some people actively want to be oppressed, and what better to accomplish it than to delete your comment because unfriendly people are downvoting it?

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#127

Post by Spearchucker »

Someone1234 wrote: post #117
stinos wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

128GB minimum storage? You'd have to be installing like a lot of software then? Even my main development machines (2 Visual Studio versions, 2 Matlab versions, 2 Labview versions, Office and utilities) only take 70-80GB. I think a more typical user like my mom who only uses a browser, office and some utilities would be just fine with 64GB for Windows and software. Also a bare Windows 10 install uses about 1 GB of ram…

> 128GB minimum storage? You'd have to be installing like a lot of software then? Nope. Windows grows over time. So a Windows install that fit into 40 GB would grow to over 100 GB over a two or three years. Heck we had to pull an entire rack of servers because the idiots that set them up partitioned the drive into a 100 GB C: and a massive D:, and Windows consumed all the space on C: just through Windows Update and t…

Err I'm running Windows 8 on a 32Gb HP Stream 7. Heaps of music, and 3 movies, and the recovery partition and still have 17GB free. What causes your install to grow so much?

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#128

Post by slantyyz »

Vexs wrote: post #71
Someone1234 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 2 GB, 64 GB model just looks painful to use. I've seen a lot of Windows installs use up more than 64 GB, in particular as WinSXS grows as more updates are installed (thus more duplicate DLLs are stored). If anyone asked me, I'd describe 128 GB as the "minimum" storage needed for Windows. And even then you aren't storing much if any user data on it. 4 GB is the minimum I'd run anything newer than Windows XP on. T…

I really can't even use a computer that's less than 4 gb these days, especially once chrome gets it's grubby hands all over my RAM. Just running baseline I find that most windows systems take up about two GB of RAM, and after you load up chrome, word, whatever; it hits the 4GB+ range. I mean, we're starting to see phones with 2GB of ram, it's completely unacceptable for a modern tablet.

>> I mean, we're starting to see phones with 2GB of ram, it's completely unacceptable for a modern tablet.

I run Chrome with a lot of tabs open on my Asus Vivotab Note and I don't really feel the pain of having only 2GB. I'm one of those guys with bad habits about closing tabs.

The thing you have to remember -- Atoms are serviceable CPUs, but they're nothing like the Core series. If you're looking to do heavy lifting, you should probably go for a Surface Pro anyways.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#129

Post by chton »

Goronmon wrote: post #115
patja wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's puzzling is that in the "what's in the box" section of the product page, which is where I look for this kind of "gotcha", there is no mention or photo of the stylus being included. I'm sure it is, but it seems like a colossal marketing oversight to not explicitly state that the pen is included in the box. And in the tech specs it states there is support for the surface pen...but again nothing about a pen being…

I would assume that one of the pens would not be included then. Because it's specifically spelled out (and shown) as being included in the Surface 3 Pro.

That is the case. All the way at the bottom of that page: [6] Surface Pen sold separately.

Re: Announcing the Surface 3

#130

Post by ovis »

patja wrote: post #103
forgotAgain wrote: post #82

It's just sleazy that all of their advertising is centered on how the keyboard differentiates the device from other tablets and then the keyboard isn't included in the base price.

What's puzzling is that in the "what's in the box" section of the product page, which is where I look for this kind of "gotcha", there is no mention or photo of the stylus being included. I'm sure it is, but it seems like a colossal marketing oversight to not explicitly state that the pen is included in the box. And in the tech specs it states there is support for the surface pen...but again nothing about a pen being…

The pre-order page explicitly states that the stylus is not included. Tricky marketing!
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