10 months with Microsoft Surface Pro 3. The Stuck , the Akward and some portable thoughts
I have Microsoft Surface Pro 3 for about 10 months. I bought it in the last week of January 2015.
It was attractive idea at the time but let start with reasoning why:
I had old laptops forever. After certain point in time my laptop become ancient and i was happy camper until internet advertising killed it. Literally. I open 4 tabs and that's it. no more browsing for you my friend (pronounce it with Robot Bender like voice). Website of interest is autoblog.com.
So i needed new hardware. Why Surface? I liked idea from Surface which later become Surface 1. It seemed so cool and contemporary. You havebest parts of both worlds...
Reasoning number two was my occupation. I was college instructor/professor. So imagine (if you saw "Cool Runnings" movie it will help) it is Alberta, Canada and winter time. I just surprised myself by getting out and crawling through the snow at -30C waiting for a bus, getting on the bus, going to work and finding all my fingers intact and working. At my desk there is bunch of assignments and lab reports. I did not wanted to carry them. Whole bag, I don't like wasting trees. Imagine , you get all papers in electronic form. You go back home with small device and you mark these papers with stylus on your device. By the end of the term you proudly claim title of two tree savior and travel only lightly burdened by modern marvel of engineering. For more you can reed Microsoft press materials and slew of quick reviews.
So, i was interested in device. There are ton of positive glowing reviews out there and it can make my life easier with exact distinctive features like pen , small size and touch screen.
I got Surface Pro 3, i5 , 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD. Red type cover was complementing name of the city Red Deer.
Nice. That how it started.
Few days ago i posted review on Microsoft website in product review section.
"
Right now my Surface is at Microsoft service center and awaits it's fate.
So let me set it straight. I loved the essence of the concept. I thought it will fulfill my needs. I broke my knees on hard asphalt of bad software design and some low quality Quality Control in Software and Hardware .
Let talk physics. Device should find a way to spill out at least 15W. Due to nature of software firmware and Intel chip design it works in a following way: under load starting high way into 2.6 GHz and sustaining it as much as possible (nominal is 1.9) . While normal clock speed is about 0.9 GHz. It all rosy at 0.9 but not so fast after 5 minutes at overclocked speed. It throttles. Surface 3 Pro design is not build for dissipating heat at 2.6 GHz. Device heats up to 80-85C and outer shell is pretty unpleasant to hold to . You can't work around this obstacle it either fast and hot or slow and cool. I personally not going to trust even single word from folks stating this surface (or any ultrabook for that matter) is powerhouse capable of 3D rendering , heavy 3D Autocad etc...
It possible to build it with better cooling system , just i never herd about such thing. For a sake of truth and overall prospective my 6 years old Lenovo Thinkpad T500 is in same boat. I rather say they are on mainland of similar designs and a good ones are flying above them on the plane. All MacBooks are land dwellers too. In the land of chipmaking someone made executive decision of making chips which are unable to sustain long 100% CPU tasks , but instead can jump high for a short periods of time. When you notice amount of scripts and video/advertisement junk on so many sites ... Well , it was wrong solution , but it helps to claim ludicrous battery life.
I not going to talk about Windows 8/8.1 and some pesky legacy filtered into Windows 10. To have two sets of control panels, two calculators and list goes on... it kinda bipolar disorder. You have Mr Hide and Mr. Jekyll and you need both in order to operate machine. Again it not Surface 's fault it just another piece of legacy.
So where it leaves MS Surface Pro 3? Is it a cool device or it's a dead meat? It kinda both. It not powerhouse, IT CAN'T BE. So don't buy i7 models with tons of RAM and SSD. They overheat and under perform in a long tasks because they build this way. This is a concept and you can't comfortably breeze of heat from few cubic centimeters of internal space. On the other thought is it cool device you can carry in your folder and type on it on you laps? Make some notes and browse some less intrusive sites, see beautiful photos and do myriad of other tasks? Well, YEAH! (if you happy with 12" screen ).
Am i happy? No. would i suggest it to my friends? May be if i feel it suits them , but as second choice and only if they have extra money burning in their pocket.
It was attractive idea at the time but let start with reasoning why:
I had old laptops forever. After certain point in time my laptop become ancient and i was happy camper until internet advertising killed it. Literally. I open 4 tabs and that's it. no more browsing for you my friend (pronounce it with Robot Bender like voice). Website of interest is autoblog.com.
So i needed new hardware. Why Surface? I liked idea from Surface which later become Surface 1. It seemed so cool and contemporary. You have
Reasoning number two was my occupation. I was college instructor/professor. So imagine (if you saw "Cool Runnings" movie it will help) it is Alberta, Canada and winter time. I just surprised myself by getting out and crawling through the snow at -30C waiting for a bus, getting on the bus, going to work and finding all my fingers intact and working. At my desk there is bunch of assignments and lab reports. I did not wanted to carry them. Whole bag, I don't like wasting trees. Imagine , you get all papers in electronic form. You go back home with small device and you mark these papers with stylus on your device. By the end of the term you proudly claim title of two tree savior and travel only lightly burdened by modern marvel of engineering. For more you can reed Microsoft press materials and slew of quick reviews.
So, i was interested in device. There are ton of positive glowing reviews out there and it can make my life easier with exact distinctive features like pen , small size and touch screen.
I got Surface Pro 3, i5 , 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD. Red type cover was complementing name of the city Red Deer.
Nice. That how it started.
Few days ago i posted review on Microsoft website in product review section.
"
I have it for a nine months. So it's not a quick review. Bottom line i always was regretting this buy.Problems started from day one.It did not accepted office 2013 64 bit i purchased. Asked every time to enter key. I was advised to refresh device. It was stuck in boot screen for 12 hours before i shut it down. Had to reinstall whole windows from USB.Annoying popping sound in headphones. It was in all surfaces 123 and related to power saving in realteck driver. No solution till now. Purchased external USB sound card.It was remembering my login in ie11 whatever you do privacy is unheard thing. I had to restart it few times in order to see firmware updates as installed and few times it was stuck in boot or restart screen. Again long press on power button is my friend.It was not going into power save mode not with power button not with typecover. Brought it to ms store and after 3 days it was fixed. Sort of.It lost type cover from list of devices. It appears to be disconnected. Only solution is to rub power volume up combo. It can loose bluetooth on the way. Brought it ms store and will do it again. I just feed up.Pen..... it crushes ms word. It was lost from time to time from list of connected devices or lost it input as i used it. Ms store did not provided solution. Don't use it because of such loses.It useless in heavy tasks. Heats up like crazy. Throttles . Cant hold it in my hands even while playing solitaire .Modern apps... they horrible in mass but even ones provided by microsoft kept crushing and had sub par quality. Mail was opening junk mail. I had to reinstall many of them to keep them working. After windows 10 kicked in it still schizophrenic system with no full functional support in touch interface.On a good side... screen is good. Size is good.but i can't see it as my only device. It unreliable and i can't put my trust into it since day 2. It dwarfs any other pc i had in terms of number of issues i had. You know one is ok. But whole list....
I got it back with :
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Microsoft Store
After 10 months i found use for a device as night stand companion, travel thing and occasional skyping device. It nice. It small and has beautiful screen. It definitely faster that 6 years old laptop (not a victory you going to brag about, but it fulfilled one of my needs). By the end i even like it for what it is. Just i had so much bugs it calls myth busters and fly powered plane exercise to mind.I not sure which guideline i crossed , my guess will be on publishing negative review.
Right now my Surface is at Microsoft service center and awaits it's fate.
So let me set it straight. I loved the essence of the concept. I thought it will fulfill my needs. I broke my knees on hard asphalt of bad software design and some low quality Quality Control in Software and Hardware .
Let talk physics. Device should find a way to spill out at least 15W. Due to nature of software firmware and Intel chip design it works in a following way: under load starting high way into 2.6 GHz and sustaining it as much as possible (nominal is 1.9) . While normal clock speed is about 0.9 GHz. It all rosy at 0.9 but not so fast after 5 minutes at overclocked speed. It throttles. Surface 3 Pro design is not build for dissipating heat at 2.6 GHz. Device heats up to 80-85C and outer shell is pretty unpleasant to hold to . You can't work around this obstacle it either fast and hot or slow and cool. I personally not going to trust even single word from folks stating this surface (or any ultrabook for that matter) is powerhouse capable of 3D rendering , heavy 3D Autocad etc...
It possible to build it with better cooling system , just i never herd about such thing. For a sake of truth and overall prospective my 6 years old Lenovo Thinkpad T500 is in same boat. I rather say they are on mainland of similar designs and a good ones are flying above them on the plane. All MacBooks are land dwellers too. In the land of chipmaking someone made executive decision of making chips which are unable to sustain long 100% CPU tasks , but instead can jump high for a short periods of time. When you notice amount of scripts and video/advertisement junk on so many sites ... Well , it was wrong solution , but it helps to claim ludicrous battery life.
I not going to talk about Windows 8/8.1 and some pesky legacy filtered into Windows 10. To have two sets of control panels, two calculators and list goes on... it kinda bipolar disorder. You have Mr Hide and Mr. Jekyll and you need both in order to operate machine. Again it not Surface 's fault it just another piece of legacy.
So where it leaves MS Surface Pro 3? Is it a cool device or it's a dead meat? It kinda both. It not powerhouse, IT CAN'T BE. So don't buy i7 models with tons of RAM and SSD. They overheat and under perform in a long tasks because they build this way. This is a concept and you can't comfortably breeze of heat from few cubic centimeters of internal space. On the other thought is it cool device you can carry in your folder and type on it on you laps? Make some notes and browse some less intrusive sites, see beautiful photos and do myriad of other tasks? Well, YEAH! (if you happy with 12" screen ).
Am i happy? No. would i suggest it to my friends? May be if i feel it suits them , but as second choice and only if they have extra money burning in their pocket.
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