Surface 3 powered by cherry trail

That's just the pen. (Which you may or may not have to buy extra on the more expensive models.) The cheaper ones have a screen without the digitizer, rendereing the pen useless in the first place.

 

Oh, ouch, so configured with an active digitizer screen, it's actually even more expensive than the Surface 3.

I guess they must have the reputation among business customers (the target market for the Thinkpads) to command such a price premium. It also helps that up until the Surface 3, there weren't many quality Atom based tablets. And those that were good quality commanded really high prices similar to the Thinkpad. Those that sat in the 400 USD and under categories usually had some sort of compromise (lower resolution screen, 16:9 screen, no digitizer, worse build quality and materials, less battery life, or other things) compared to the ones commanding high prices.

In many ways, you can think of the Surface 3 as making premium build quality affordable for the masses, compared to the OEMs. Which is an odd way to think of it.

Regards,
SB

 

I acquired one of the Lenovo Tablet 2's (64GB SSD / 2GB ram) as a test device in my prior job. I also had a chance to play with the newer Tablet 10 (with digitizer) just before I left there.

The device itself was just fine for what it is, but even the Z37xx series Atom was still not fast enough to reliably keep a good polling rate on the digitizer interface. The cursor underneath would "lag" behind the physical placement of the pen on the screen with moderate speeds; fast handwriting was not always a great experience. Also, the little digitizer pen was little, it wasn't always comfortable for my hands -- and I do not have big (by men's standards) hands.

Still, one of the things they got right was the placement, and (at the time) they also got the thin and light right against the Surface Pro 2. The Pro 3 solved that problem, but at a much higher price tag. Now that the Surface 3 is out, I cannot fathom the Lenovo Tablet 10 surviving much longer.

Right before I left the last employer, we bought both a MBP 15" and also picked up a 30-day loaner SP3 i5 8GB/256GB package with type cover from our contact at CDW. That SP3 was sexy as hell, carried well, lasted a long time, "all the things."

After I left, they gave back the SP3 i5 and bought five of the i7 8GB/256GB models with the type cover. Jealous

 

Yeah, I didn't really pay much attention the SP2 slate, but it was amazing just how much of a sea change it was from SP1 to SP3. Although, I don't like the use of the NTrig pen versus the Wacom pen. But from what I understand, part of the reason for going NTrig was to make the slate slightly thinner and lighter with ever so slightly less power drain. With the Wacom you had to have the active digitizer layer sandwiched between the LCD and capacitive touch glass. With the NTrig it uses the capacitive touch glass to assist in positioning the pen input when in contact with the glass with the pen doing all the work (and thus more lag) when not in touch with the glass. Thus eliminating one of the layers allow for slightly less thickness and weight and allowing the pen to be that much closer to the LCD.

Anyway, they've done a lot and it's nice to see the Surface 3 inherit much of the lessons learned from the mistakes of SP1 and SP2. I didn't even bother to read up much on the SP3 up until the Surface 3 announcement. If I had, I might have gotten an SP3 last year. The device is very impressive.

And from many of the reviews and user experiences I've read, the new type cover that was introduced for the SP3 makes it work very well in the lap, and in fact many reviewers and users preferred it in the lap versus a traditional laptop despite the fact that the kickstand can dig into your leg a bit if you are wearing shorts. The thing most often mentioned is the complete lack of heat being dumped onto your leg making using it in your lap more pleasant versus a laptop where your legs are getting heated by the laptop.

Regards,
SB

 

Yeah, the SP3 is a great device, and is so much closer to what MS needs to provide in terms of delivering that awkward mux of tablet and laptop. I bought my wife an SP1 at TechEd2013 when Microsoft was selling them cheap (ignoring the cost of getting into TechEd, which my employer paid.) She enjoys the device, and while I also enjoyed it for what it was, it was still too thick and too heavy for a tablet, and yet still the wrong set of comprimises for a laptop.

I hate to be "that guy", but I'm still waiting for the graphics performance to step up just a little further. I'm not expecting to play GTAV at ultra details, but hey now that I mention it, I'd like to play GTAV at just playable framerates with at least a few of the sliders turned up beyond "absolute minimum."

SP4 may not get us there, but perhaps SP5 will. We shall see...

 

Some words in Dutch: http://nl.hardware.info/reviews/604...w-eindelijk-gewoon-windows-powermark-accutest

 

Nice, I can't wait to get mine. Ended up ordering mine through Amazon (Microsoft was the seller) as Microsoft would pay for 90 USD of it (via Amazon gift cards through Bing Rewards).

But won't get it until between the 11th - 15th of May.

Regards,
SB

 

http://www.afr.com/technology/microsoft-surface-3-tablet-is--disappointingly-good-20150427-1mrv41

 

^^ a more humorous review than I expected.

 

If love drawing, mischief should works awesome. I regret did not buy the pro version when it was discounted 20 percent.

Here hoping they did the discount again with MS

 

Heh...

Heh, nice to see an article written with a sense of humor. Shame that sites continue to use Chrome for battery life tests on Windows machines, however.

Regards,
SB

 

Yup, you could add close to 2hrs just by running the same test using Metro IE..

 

Ideally they'd benchmark using a variety of browsers so people would get an idea of how it'd be with their preferred browser. As well as to see if perhaps their browser of choice isn't the one to use if they are in a situation where battery life matters or if despite the lower battery life, it'd still suffice for their use case.

Regards,
SB

 

But IE is evil.

http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/review/microsoft/surface-3-windows-81-tablet/573653/

 

Checked that one out yesterday. It's full of factual errors, however, like...

You CAN use any micro-usb charger to charge the Surface 3. It's just that if it's a lower power charger, then it'll take longer to charge. It's so annoying when things like this slip into major publications and give readers incorrect information.

Regards,
SB

 

Argh, I just want to pull my hair out every time I read a Surface 3 review and they love it. But when they get to the battery life part always complain how the Surface 3 doesn't match the claimed 10 hours and is closer to 6-7. Of course, it's also Chrome they are using as it's their preferred browser. Never any mention of the fact that if you use IE - you can get up to 10 hours doing the same things.

Good job Google, neutering one of your competitors.

Perhaps when Windows 10 arrives, we'll finally see more reviews using the built in browser, Microsoft Edge (formerly Project Spartan) and the reviewers will suddenly be shocked and surprised that the Surface 3 (and Surface 3 Pro AND all other Windows portables) suddenly has good to great battery life. And then they'll likely complain about why Microsoft didn't do this for Windows 8/8.1 and why it took Windows 10 to give Windows portables good battery life? Argh.

And then Google will miraculously finally fix the bug in Chromium that makes it a power hog...

Regards,
SB

 

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ukschools/a...-surface-3-in-education-a-student-s-view.aspx

OK, that is cool as hell. When laptops first appeared, I never thought to myself, "I wish I'd had that when I was in school." As the whole thing was clunky compared to taking notes, drawing diagrams, or writing out equations that were required using pen/pencil and paper.

Looking at that, I can't help but think this would have been F-ing great in school.

I use One Note and it's always been at the edge of my mind about how good a Windows tablet would be for education compared to a laptop or tablet without pen input.

But that use case at the end where you take an off-angle picture of a white board, one note then automatically adjusts it back to square (facing you directly) and then puts it into One Note is just freaking amazing. I'd never thought to try something like that when using One Note (my phone is a phone, the only apps I use on it are the camera and GPS + offline maps), myself. But now that I've seen it, I think that'll come in quite nicely with making my workflow that much more efficient in some things.

Regards,
SB

 

what? you can take off angle whteboard and onenote auto fix it?