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Tolerating the Surface Pro

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Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#21

Post by [deleted] »

BrentOzar wrote: post #18
dangrossman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what he's doing to get that kind of battery life. I've had my SP for a few months now, and it consistently gets 5-6 hours of actual usage, even heavy things like streaming HBO. It's not 12+, but there's a Core i5 behind the glass, and my Core i5 laptop doesn't get half that running time.

Brent the author here. I'm doing basic productivity work while listening to music, doing email, and leaving Twitter & Hipchat open. Engadget and The Verge both noted sub-4-hour battery life in their reviews too. I'm glad you're getting more life though.

[deleted]

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#22

Post by Samuel_Michon »

dangrossman wrote: post #17
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.” True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBo…

The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08". It gets the same run time per charge. It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38. The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.

> The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick

No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html

The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3

> It gets the same run time per charge.

No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#23

Post by Random_Person »

smacktoward wrote: post #14
YeahKIA wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem there is that the changes we're hearing about for 8.1 (bringing back the Start button, letting you boot straight to the desktop, etc.) are all changes that will move 8's center of gravity closer to the traditional Windows experience and farther from the new Metro experience. And from the article it sounds like the new Metro experience is the only one that really feels right on Surface. Making it easier fo…

Exactly this. I actually like the Modern stuff. The interface has some flaws (lack of a notification bar) but overall, the experience is good and interacting with apps is fine. The issue comes when you switch to the desktop and try to work with it as a touch interface.

One example was at launch, Chrome's build didn't work well with touch. If you touched a dialog, the on-screen keyboard would not come up automatically. Scrolling with your finger was near impossible unless you flicked up first... which made no sense. The desktop side of Chrome has gotten better, but I'm not sure who to praise for that.

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#24

Post by BrentOzar »

PaulHoule wrote: post #19

My boss uses a Surface Pro like a laptop and is happy with it. Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.

That's interesting. How does he work around the high-DPI resolution problems when connecting an external display? I'm assuming he's using one - when you say "a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market", that usually means an external display.

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#25

Post by PaulHoule »

Random_Person wrote: post #6
hkmurakami wrote: post #4

So 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.

A big part of the Metro nightmare is that the built in apps (other than the core shell) suck.

For instance, Metro lacks a file chooser where you can easily find files anywhere in your system. If the Metro interface had a good file chooser, you wouldn't have to drop out to use the file desktop chooser to find a file on any filesystem.

If Windows 8.1 adds a good file chooser and if Microsoft addresses a few specific problems like that, life in Metro could get much better.

I hope Microsoft can get its branding straight -- I find it weird that I click on a music file across the network and it pops up in a pretty Metro app with the tag line "Xbox Music". There's also some thing (which has never quite worked for me) called "Xbox Games" which I'm not sure will do anything for me if I don't own an Xbox.

Or is everything that runs Windows 8 an "Xbox" of some kind? And how come I see tiles for all kinds of music except for the music that I've got in my own collection?

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#26

Post by dangrossman »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #22
dangrossman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08". It gets the same run time per charge. It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38. The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.

> The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3 > It gets the same run time per charge. No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...

For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness? I own an SP; it does not get 3.75 hours of battery life no matter what I do with it, and I could pull out a dozen review links to say that as well. Why are you trying so hard to make it look worse than it is?

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#27

Post by muyuu »

lmm wrote: post #8
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels.

People who work on the go need their 8h+ battery life, the more the merrier.

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#28

Post by revscat »

mtgx wrote: post #7
hkmurakami wrote: post #4

So 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.

And, considering that it is coming from the world's largest software company, good software as well. It is surprising (although... not really) that Apple was able to ship a mobile version of their iWork suite for the first gen iPad, but Microsoft could not do so for the first gen of their own tablet.

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#29

Post by contextfree »

I’m not sure what was happening with his MD file extension, but I don’t think it could be what he thought it was. Windows 8 has only one unified set of file type associations – there’s no concept of desktop versus “Metro” there. Probably the app just didn’t register for that extension?

Re: Tolerating the Surface Pro

#30

Post by robomartin »

The author needs a laptop, possibly augmented with a Wacom tablet to draw during presentations. With the myriad of amazing laptop/netbooks available in the windows ecosystem a tablet would be my absolute last choice for his use case.

The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use.

I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow.

Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application.

I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on.

Tablets have their place.

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