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Forbes Revisits the Surface Pro 3, Which May Face LG Competition
Forbes writer Marco Chiappetta revisits Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 half a year after its U.S. debut, and finds the tablet-laptop hybrid has held up pretty well, but suffers some dings worth knowing about before jumping at holiday sale prices, pointing out a number of scenarios where a full-fledged notebook, even if it’s roughly the same size, will be the better choice. I’ve found that the Surface Pro 3 is ideal for users that will likely fire the machine up when sitting at a desk or when in a conference room-type environment that has a table. The Surface Pro 3’s performance is plenty good for everyday computing and office applications, and the screen is top notch. Using the Surface Pro 3 as a notepad with its stylus is also very useful. In fact, over the course of the device’s life, Microsoft has issued a number of firmware, driver, and OS updates that have improved the overall responsiveness and usefulness of the Surface Pro 3. For those who want a laptop, though for actual laptop use, the Surface is an awkward fit. However, a thin, tablet-convertible, touchscreen laptop may appear soon from LG, as well.
The quality of posts on Slashdot has really crashed in recent years but those on this story really are the very bottom of the barrel.
Not so much news for nerds any more, more like the ramblings of the under-educated and over-opinionated.
I could feel the loss of IQ points from just reading their drivel
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
The SP3 doesn't use a Wacom digitiser... it uses one from N-Trig.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
I'm having trouble understanding what the point of this product is. What useful niche does it fill?
In a fully managed enterprise environment, using OneNote to take handwritten notes in meetings - including creating quick To-Dos to send to Outlook, using handwriting to mark up Excel, Word, or PowerPoint files stored on a collaboration server so everyone's changes are synchronized, then go back to your desk and dock it so you have a full keyboard, mouse, external monitors (I have two), auto-switch from corporate WiFi to corporate LAN without losing mapped drives. In the enterprise space its competition is likely a Lenovo Helix model, not a Miix. For home users, it's probably overkill, unless maybe you do a lot of docking-and-undocking at home, but that's likely a niche market.
But if your company, like mine, allows a certain degree of personal use of the corporate device and allows you to take it home evenings and weekends, it's a lot lighter to carry and more fun to use than a traditional laptop. It's my laptop at work and my tablet at home (and yes, I know how to encrypt and back up my personal data in case my job suddenly disappears, and I still have a home PC as a second unit). It's the most satisfying and seamless personal computing experience I've ever had, and I've been in the business since the 1980's. This feels like the computer I've been waiting for all my life.
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I used a Surface Pro 3 for about a week before deciding to return it. I took it back because it didn't quite fit my needs, and I found it to be just an awkward device.
I had mostly hoped to replace an aging Macbook Pro and have a mobile sketchpad. The device works well as a laptop, although I found it tiresome to have to extend the kickstand every time as opposed to just opening a laptop lid. I did not find it a good device for sketching; the interface in Photoshop CS5 (my usual painting program) was absolutely tiny and a pain to navigate around in with the stylus. You often have to switch between the brush, zoom, pan, and layers menus while working in Photoshop, and it quickly became clear that this setup wasn't going to work. This isn't a failure on Microsoft's part, just evidence that mobile sketching either needs to be on a dedicated app - such as the included OneNote (not quite up to snuff) - or on some old tried-and-true pen and paper.
That said, it is incredible what sort of power they've managed to pack into such a thin device. I just think the whole "jack of all trades, master of none" schtick is the wrong route to take.