3 ms·

One year with the Surface Pro 3: The best computer I have ever owned

7 points by bane 11y ago

moron4hire 11y ago
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad Helix, which I think they built as a competitor to the Surface Pro 2. The battery life excellent, reasonably good performance, stays open on its own without needing to prop on something, touchscreen works great (to the point that I bought a 10-point touchscreen for my desktop because I missed it so), WiFi is always nice and strong (sometimes I can even get my condo's wifi from the outside park benches 3 stories down and 150 yards away), builtin bluetooth works flawlessly (have had problems on other machines), and $200 less than the comparable Surface Pro (at the time). But it has some issues. There is a weird splotchiness to the backlight, it doesn't open past 100 degrees (so I'm often using it at weird angles, especially at conference tables), the 12" 1080p display is either hard to read or doesn't display enough text (I've tried all of the DPI and UI scaling settings and I've hit a middle ground that is marginally crap in all dimensions, without being complete garbage in any one), stylus is unusable, keyboard layout really sucks (Fn where Ctrl should be, so I have it swapped in the BIOS, but that breaks the End key, so I have to Fn+End to get regular End instead of Insert), detachable tablet feature is mostly just a novelty, the trackpad is really stiff and uncomfortable, and the touchpoint drifts on its own if you press it for very long. Now, there are some obvious ways where the Surface line would do better than the Helix. The stylus is supposed to be beyond compare. That might actually make the tablet form more useful (and the Helix is not symmetrical in tablet form, which makes it a bit of a pain). And the quality of the display is much nicer. I wish I had just spent the extra $200 on the Surface Pro 2. But even if I had, man, I think I've gotten over the 12" screen size. One more inch doesn't seem like a lot, but I find myself much more relaxed on 13" screens these days (I guess I'm getting old). It's also another inch of keyboard real estate, which again doesn't sound like a lot until you start switching back and forth between two machines sitting next to each other. I think 15" is probably my ideal, mostly just because I don't think anyone makes a 14". I really wanted to like this form factor, but the Surface Pro 3 doesn't change the issues I have. After a year, I'm seriously considering replacing it. Almost did, until I realized just how large the 17" gaming laptop I bought actually was, and how terrifically awful NVidia Optimus is for the Oculus Rift.

7 points by bane 11y ago

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad Helix, which I think they built as a competitor to the Surface Pro 2. The battery life excellent, reasonably good performance, stays open on its own without needing to prop on something, touchscreen works great (to the point that I bought a 10-point touchscreen for my desktop because I missed it so), WiFi is always nice and strong (sometimes I can even get my condo's wifi from the outside park benches 3 stories down and 150 yards away), builtin bluetooth works flawlessly (have had problems on other machines), and $200 less than the comparable Surface Pro (at the time). But it has some issues. There is a weird splotchiness to the backlight, it doesn't open past 100 degrees (so I'm often using it at weird angles, especially at conference tables), the 12" 1080p display is either hard to read or doesn't display enough text (I've tried all of the DPI and UI scaling settings and I've hit a middle ground that is marginally crap in all dimensions, without being complete garbage in any one), stylus is unusable, keyboard layout really sucks (Fn where Ctrl should be, so I have it swapped in the BIOS, but that breaks the End key, so I have to Fn+End to get regular End instead of Insert), detachable tablet feature is mostly just a novelty, the trackpad is really stiff and uncomfortable, and the touchpoint drifts on its own if you press it for very long. Now, there are some obvious ways where the Surface line would do better than the Helix. The stylus is supposed to be beyond compare. That might actually make the tablet form more useful (and the Helix is not symmetrical in tablet form, which makes it a bit of a pain). And the quality of the display is much nicer. I wish I had just spent the extra $200 on the Surface Pro 2. But even if I had, man, I think I've gotten over the 12" screen size. One more inch doesn't seem like a lot, but I find myself much more relaxed on 13" screens these days (I guess I'm getting old). It's also another inch of keyboard real estate, which again doesn't sound like a lot until you start switching back and forth between two machines sitting next to each other. I think 15" is probably my ideal, mostly just because I don't think anyone makes a 14". I really wanted to like this form factor, but the Surface Pro 3 doesn't change the issues I have. After a year, I'm seriously considering replacing it. Almost did, until I realized just how large the 17" gaming laptop I bought actually was, and how terrifically awful NVidia Optimus is for the Oculus Rift.