Well today I got mine. I will have to use it for a while to really give you a good overview of it, but here are my initial thoughts:
- Having full control over what and how the device behaves and works and what software it uses - priceless!!!
- The screen is a full 1080p, which is really nice
- It is very responsive, and the stylus is also works as well as any tabletop mouse stylus pad I've used... and very precise at least in Paint (will try CS6 soon)
- I would say it isn't your typical carry everywhere tablet - its weight would deter you from that, as well as it's battery life. People say it gets hot, but I have found it no more hot than my iPad 2 on my lap while using for same amount of time. Will try more to see if it really gets down right hot
- Full OFFICE suite or any other software you like to run for general office collaboration - none of the half there mail systems that ALL tablets have been using to date
- Wireless does not start before login on some protocols on boot - pain if you never logged in before under a domain account or other external ACL source - have to log in locally, connect wireless, then log out and back in with new account. Not an issue after cached creds are completed
- Do not rely on VDI clients or Remote Desktops to do work related tasks - all my IT stuff can be done from the device, including anything requiring Serial like conductivity - thanks to USB 3.0 port and full OS
More to come the more I use.
I wonder how long until someone reformats one with a Linux distro lol...
I'm curious about battery life. From what I've read it's not an "all day" machine.
A lot of people were complaining about heat as well, I know my Xoom can get a little toasty streaming video for a few hours...
Apparently the BIOS isn't locked so you can turn secure boot off and load other OS on it.
We have one to play with in the office but I haven't had a chance.
Gabe over at Penny Arcade seems to approve.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/2013/02/25/the-ms-surface-pro
So... How much did this cost you? A grand plus tax (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/microsoft-microsoft-surface-pro-10-6-128gb-windows-8-pro-tablet-with-intel-core-i5-processor-dark-titanium-9ur-00002/10205743.aspx?path=3baadf81f713277effdb87b9a966ae89en02)? Did you buy the keyboard for another hundred twenty plus tax (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/microsoft-surface-microsoft-surface-touch-cover-keyboard-black-english-d5s-00022/10204279.aspx?path=45e86689dadd2e32f504ad4ae57e4e2aen02)?
I agree that it appears to be powerful when comparing against other tablets, but for that price I can buy two tablets with keyboards that each last twice as long. If compared to a full-featured laptop, though, it's a decent price and a great size although the storage is smallish and who knows how good the video subsystem is.
Congrats on the new toy, though.
Quote from: Thorin on February 25, 2013, 09:16:28 PM
So... How much did this cost you? A grand plus tax (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/microsoft-microsoft-surface-pro-10-6-128gb-windows-8-pro-tablet-with-intel-core-i5-processor-dark-titanium-9ur-00002/10205743.aspx?path=3baadf81f713277effdb87b9a966ae89en02)? Did you buy the keyboard for another hundred twenty plus tax (http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/microsoft-surface-microsoft-surface-touch-cover-keyboard-black-english-d5s-00022/10204279.aspx?path=45e86689dadd2e32f504ad4ae57e4e2aen02)?
I agree that it appears to be powerful when comparing against other tablets, but for that price I can buy two tablets with keyboards that each last twice as long. If compared to a full-featured laptop, though, it's a decent price and a great size although the storage is smallish and who knows how good the video subsystem is.
Congrats on the new toy, though.
Now do mine! ($1980 laptop + $200 256GB ssd + $100 16GB ram upgrade)
Uh, do what, look up the prices? You just specified them, silly.
Quote from: Thorin on February 25, 2013, 09:34:08 PM
Uh, do what, look up the prices? You just specified them, silly.
No, what you could buy that would be somewhat equivalent for the same price.
Yowza!!
Well I was lucky, work bought me it at my request. Spec wise, it is as powerful as the laptop work bought me, but $300 less (you are right the costs were $999+129+GST). The new Apple iPad 128GB version without Cellular option will be $799. So the price difference isn't much between the two, but functionality wise I think the Surface is by far more powerful than the iPad (both in specs and in usage - at least for me). The Apple App store does for sure beat out the Microsoft Store at the moment, but being able to install any software you want opens that up to even par IMO.
It definitely is a laptop in tablet form. And yeah you could buy two tablets for the cost of this one. No argument there. But business functionality wise, I am putting the Surface Pro higher than all the rest (and I've tried the RIM Playbook, Asus Eeee Transformer, and Apple iPad, each at length), but granted I have only been using the Surface Pro for a day!
I don't understand the appeal of the Surface Pro at all after having read about it now, it has all the weaknesses of a tablet but for the price of a more flexible laptop. I could have understood if they came out the gates cheaper than an iPad with the first generation and built a user base but they didn't and so this seems more like a niche device than anything else. A zero-upgrade laptop with a touch screen :-\
You may be right, it might only fit a select amount of people's needs (myself being one of them).
For me I needed a device that I could hold in my hand, work in the data centres and wiring closets with only wireless access and yet have all my tools. I couldn't do that with a laptop cause it wouldn't fit in one hand. I couldn't do it with a netbook cause it didn't have the computing power I needed for my tools. The iPad/Android/Playbook meant using a VDI for all that functionality which doesn't give me serial console access I need to some devices. This Surface Pro fits all those needs today.
Perhaps in the future something better will come along for me that would be better, but for now this device has all of what I need in one place.
But I say you are probably right... the Surface Pros aren't for the average tablet user, and cost more than the average person would want to spend.
I dunno, again to me it seems like a more expensive touchscreen enabled ultrabook.
But that's me.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on February 26, 2013, 08:14:04 AM
I dunno, again to me it seems like a more expensive touchscreen enabled ultrabook.
But that's me.
That's exactly what it is. A convertible ultrabook. Nothing wrong with that. But it's not for everybody.
I like a tablet because its lighter and has a more dedicated interface, and doesn't get in the way as much when doing simpler tasks. But I can definitely see the appeal of the convertible tablet.
I guess, I look at things from my perspective, I'd rather have a kick ass laptop that can be upgraded and a tablet or smartphone on the side for mobile stuff
I understand that. That's what I got :), just my mobile system is a bit more powerful than the average tablet.
Must be budget time again haha ;) (j/k)
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.
Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.
Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).
Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.
Business wise the surface should have the distinct advantage of running legacy enterprise apps and Office without the limitations of most tablet options.
It is for sure a small laptop replacement more than anything...
I figure it will be a very good option if they can improve the battery life a bit.
Well with normal to almost heavy use (although not constant) I've gotten 8h without needing a recharge (doing the software installs and setup). I have not used it as a desktop replacement yet though... which I suspect is where the 4-4.5h comes from in most reviews.
Larger hard drive would probably help as well, that will probably materialize in later versions though I guess.
Yeah probably... although I with the USB 3.0 Drive you could expand space that way. But I think 128GB is a lot for a business tool. Not so much if you are using it for a Desktop replacement though.
You get something like 85 GB free space out of the box, the rest is pre-installed software / OS
You can get SD cards as well to boost it, as well as external drives.
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 10:16:08 AM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.
Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).
Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.
10 hours? Doing what, though? Can you play Minecraft for 10 hours straight on it before the battery runs out? Or watch 10 hours of movies? How about if you have a development environment and a database server running on it?
Quote from: Mr. Analog on February 26, 2013, 10:47:14 AM
You get something like 85 GB free space out of the box, the rest is pre-installed software / OS
You can get SD cards as well to boost it, as well as external drives.
Yeah I saw that quote to in reviews... but I can tell you from real world experience you get 100GB of 128GB out of the box (although it will only show 110GB in Windows as some is reserved for the restore files - factory reset, video ram, and cache - at least so I am told). And it comes preloaded with software on it. So I'm not sure where those reviews were getting the 85GB/128GB.
I believe the 85 GB free was for surface RT (not pro) which ships with a special edition of Office installed.
...Microsoft?
Surface Windows 8 Pro:
The 64 GB version has approximately 29 GB free hard disk space.
The 128 GB version has approximately 89 GB free hard disk space.
http://www.microsoft.com/Surface/en-CA/support/storage-files-and-folders/surface-disk-space-FAQ
That is too funny. Mine had 100GB listed free. Should have taken a screenshot before I started my installs.
Quote from: Lazybones on February 26, 2013, 11:30:15 AM
I believe the 85 GB free was for surface RT (not pro) which ships with a special edition of Office installed.
Window RT has only 32GB and 64GB models today.
Well we all know it won't have any space after you run windows update for a year. ;)
LOL ain't that the truth
haha !
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:02:29 AM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 10:16:08 AM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.
Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).
Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.
10 hours? Doing what, though? Can you play Minecraft for 10 hours straight on it before the battery runs out? Or watch 10 hours of movies? How about if you have a development environment and a database server running on it?
You have to be in power save mode (which is the default when on battery), which clocks it down to 1.6GHz, and using the integrated intel graphics, so while you can play minecraft it won't be as nice as with the nvidia ;)
I'd say it'd get 10 hours with regular browsing, and productivity type work. I think it's supposed to get 4-8 when watching movies. I haven't looked at the reviews in a while, so I can't remember all of the different times. It's still pretty darn impressive that a workstation laptop can get 10 hours at all.
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it. If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours. Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it. If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours. Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
In the keyboard dock?
Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 01:59:38 PM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it. If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours. Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
In the keyboard dock?
Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.
Yes, the keyboard has a second battery in it that supposedly adds 5 hours to the 9 hour from the battery in the tablet itself. That means they're claiming 14 hours. It doesn't go that long when playing videos, but it can go 12 hours.
Don't all computers decode video using hardware?
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 08:52:13 PM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 01:59:38 PM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it. If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours. Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
In the keyboard dock?
Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.
Yes, the keyboard has a second battery in it that supposedly adds 5 hours to the 9 hour from the battery in the tablet itself. That means they're claiming 14 hours. It doesn't go that long when playing videos, but it can go 12 hours.
Don't all computers decode video using hardware?
Nope :P h264 decoding in hardware is somewhat new. My 8800 GTS doesn't even have hw video decoding on linux, because nvidia sucks. Good thing I have a radeon instead, that also can't use its hw video decode engine on linux because almost nothing supports AMD's acceleration api.
Barrel full of fun. But yeah, more than a few years old, all you get is hw mpeg1/2 (and /maybe/ divx) video decoding (even in windows), and that's not really all that useful these days.
Till I upgraded the gpu in my media box, it didn't have hw video decoding. :( some really crazy 1080p scenes would peg an entire core, even when using multithreaded rendering. With the new gpu, cpu use sits at a few percent. Which is nice :D
skipped the forum the last 2 days.
The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.
Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable
Quote from: Darren Dirt on February 27, 2013, 08:29:22 AM
skipped the forum the last 2 days.
The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.
Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable
We did Minecraft last weekend, started from punching trees phase right up to building a mob grinder / nether portal.
It's amazing what you can do in the game with the right number of people focusing on the same task.
Quote from: Darren Dirt on February 27, 2013, 08:29:22 AM
skipped the forum the last 2 days.
The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.
Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable
Obligatory Minecraft reference here:
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:02:29 AM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 10:16:08 AM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.
Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).
Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.
10 hours? Doing what, though? Can you play Minecraft for 10 hours straight on it before the battery runs out? Or watch 10 hours of movies? How about if you have a development environment and a database server running on it?
Bolded for old men's eyes. :) Just pokin' some fun at ya.
We've been trying to keep Minecraft talk in the Minecraft forums so you can ignore it at leisure, as has been your stated desire.
Quote from: Thorin on February 27, 2013, 11:32:15 AM
We've been trying to keep Minecraft talk in the Minecraft forums so you can ignore it at leisure, as has been your stated desire.
I thank you all immensely for that -- my post was just a bit of a joke, doing a blinking-stare comparison of the old days BEFORE I had myself removed from the Minecraft subforum, it was like a flashback, seeing in a short period of time 3 full pages (10 per page) of "new posts" all on the same subject, all in the same THREAD.
Well you've missed out on postings of some really neat builds and even a fireworks party video.
And we do occasionally discuss other topics. I think a lot of people here have switched to twitter/tumblr, though, for many of their postings that they would've put here back in the old days.
Comparing stats from last year to this we're pretty much on track, though I doubt we will come close to March/April/May of 2012 :)
Jan 2012: 62 new topics, 538 new posts, 87 new members
Jan 2013: 70 new topics, 730 new posts, 0 new members
Feb 2012: 63 new topics, 585 new posts, 200 new members
Feb 2013: 41 new topics, 472 new posts, 1 new member
March 2012: 108 new topics, 1408 new posts, 208 new members
I blame all the new members, those totally weren't spam accounts, right? ;)
Oh, and #2 most-viewed topic: Poker night at Dirtman's Thursday 15Nov2007 (reduced stakes) (http://forums.righteouswrath.com/index.php/topic,5763.0.html). 10,000+ views!
Quote from: Thorin on February 27, 2013, 01:06:00 PM
Oh, and #2 most-viewed topic: Poker night at Dirtman's Thursday 15Nov2007 (reduced stakes) (http://forums.righteouswrath.com/index.php/topic,5763.0.html). 10,000+ views!
well, it
was inserted into the forum outside of the "Edmonton-Area" section, so it makes sense that it gets "hit" so much due to the "P" word being in the thread title.
So back on topic (not to discredit your discussion, as I do find it compelling)... I've been on course all day with the Pro, and using my battery life tethered to my BB (no free wireless is really lame now-a-days). Still got 40% left from full charge this am. Thought for sure Blue Tooth was going to kill me today.
So conclusion on battery: Either the reviews with 4-4.5h battery life are using them heavily through the day or I'm really light with my use of the product (perhaps they were watching movies or gaming??). I would like to think as a tablet device (not a desktop replacement) my use of the Pro today is pretty much an average use case of the device in business life. I think this will fit my needs for business in terms of battery life (which is one of my largest worries with the device).
lol
Yeah, we're all thread hijackers.
Good to hear the battery's lasting ya. Has the screen been on the whole time, or are there large parts of the course where you're listening and the screen can turn off?
Unfortunately work can't leave me alone for a day so I'd put it at mostly on and in use. There were times that it did go to sleep but for the most part it has been on, in use or just a bit idle with a dim screen.
So yeah for me win on the battery life gamble!