I don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic. It defeats the whole purpose of the form factor.
My battery life is no where near that terrible. I'm not sure what he has running constantly, but I can GAME on my Surface Pro for 5+ hours without plugging in. It's still bad for a "tablet", but not any worse than my HP Elite Book with the same specs.
“3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.”
True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life.
If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.
Brent the author here. I agree that battery life isn't a small problem - note that I put (?) next to "small" as a way of noting that the problems aren't nitpicking.
I don't know what he's doing to get that kind of battery life. I've had my SP for a few months now, and it consistently gets 5-6 hours of actual usage, even heavy things like streaming HBO. It's not 12+, but there's a Core i5 behind the glass, and my Core i5 laptop doesn't get half that running time.
So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience"
>I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does.
This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.
Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
I switched to the Surface Pro as my primary development box. Surprised that I could get VS2012, SQL Express 2012 and IIS working with decent performance.
If you are using an SDXC card to supplement your storage and don't intend to eject it on a whim, you can get better performance by going to the device manager and changing the removal policy and the write caching.
Options for 256gb or 512gb SSD would have made this an easier choice for many.
My primary development box is a fully loaded 17" laptop. Tablets are too small screen wise and performance wise when doing real work either in the OSS or Redmond realm. (I deal with tons of Data and run a few VMs as well.)
My biggest gripe is that you really need DPI scaling to use some desktop apps at 1920x1080 on a 10" screen, but half the apps I use don't scale well or at all (I'm looking at you, Chrome). I still use the SP on a daily basis and it was a worthile purchase for a few things:
1) It's a great tablet when you want a tablet. With no keyboard attached, it's a joy to read reddit and play games on in bed.
2) I throw it in the car with me whenever I leave home. I'm always on-call if a site/server goes down. The SP is a full computer with a hard keyboard, so there won't be any situation I need to drive back home to handle, even if it takes several hours to resolve.
3) It's a suitable desktop replacement for anything but hard gaming. I stick it on my desk, plug in a big monitor, and pair a bluetooth mouse. Now screen size and DPI scaling don't matter, and the Core i5 has all the power I could need for compiling software, photo editing, etc.
My boss uses a Surface Pro like a laptop and is happy with it.
Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.
That's interesting. How does he work around the high-DPI resolution problems when connecting an external display? I'm assuming he's using one - when you say "a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market", that usually means an external display.
The author needs a laptop, possibly augmented with a Wacom tablet to draw during presentations. With the myriad of amazing laptop/netbooks available in the windows ecosystem a tablet would be my absolute last choice for his use case.
The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use.
I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow.
Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application.
I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on.
Brent the author here. As I stated in the article, I do indeed do have a laptop. However, carrying around a laptop, plus another backup laptop, plus a Wacom tablet is a little beyond what I'd like to travel with.
About Excel with your fingers - you'd be surprised. The touch experience is surprisingly compelling once you get used to it. I'm always surprised at how often I reach out to touch the display on my laptop after I've been using my iPad or the Surface, even just for a few minutes. (This is especially true when using the Surface because the Type Cover's trackpad is laughably small.)
If you are trying to build spreadsheets on a touch device, you have an identity crisis, unless that touch device has a 42-inch screen. I would also throw demo-ing SQL server projects on a tablet in that category too.
Touch devices were not meant to replace laptops or desktops. In most cases, they were meant to fill a space that wasn't already filled.
I’m not sure what was happening with his MD file extension, but I don’t think it could be what he thought it was. Windows 8 has only one unified set of file type associations – there’s no concept of desktop versus “Metro” there. Probably the app just didn’t register for that extension?
That's a fair point. I know 7Zip has this same problem; no matter which computer I'm using, I have to manually tell Windows that 7Zip is the program to use to open a .7z file.
It's possible for a program to not register file extensions.
"On the regional jet I’m on now, even first class doesn’t have a tray big enough for the Surface." "In comparison, when I take my MacBook Pro or my iPad [...]"
I've had a surface pro since launch -- and all I can say is that I can't imagine using different portable right now (before that I was using a x230).
once I got used to the form factor and what it was designed for it's changed how I compute in subtle ways.
Last night for example.. rather then going to my desk .. I watched some lectures on the couch while using the pen to take notes in one note .. then docked it to do some work.
that's just one example of many; but for me personally i feel like i'm doing more with my computer then I was before
though, I've usually docked my laptops when doing any serious work .. and my mobile work is usually restricted to coffee shops for only 3-4 hours at a time ..
battery life I guess could be better .. I usually only get 4hours or so off power when streaming movies off amazon but it's not really bad IMO, but of course I'd like it to be longer .. my main worry when it comes to the battery is that it's not user replaceable honestly
rayiner|12 years ago
MatthewPhillips|12 years ago
Random_Person|12 years ago
Samuel_Michon|12 years ago
True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life.
If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.
BrentOzar|12 years ago
dangrossman|12 years ago
hkmurakami|12 years ago
>I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does.
This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.
Random_Person|12 years ago
steverb|12 years ago
My only gripe about the RT is that even though I like the UI better, it's every bit as useful (and useless) as an iPad.
mtgx|12 years ago
nextstep|12 years ago
mikerg87|12 years ago
If you are using an SDXC card to supplement your storage and don't intend to eject it on a whim, you can get better performance by going to the device manager and changing the removal policy and the write caching.
Options for 256gb or 512gb SSD would have made this an easier choice for many.
xradionut|12 years ago
My primary development box is a fully loaded 17" laptop. Tablets are too small screen wise and performance wise when doing real work either in the OSS or Redmond realm. (I deal with tons of Data and run a few VMs as well.)
dangrossman|12 years ago
1) It's a great tablet when you want a tablet. With no keyboard attached, it's a joy to read reddit and play games on in bed.
2) I throw it in the car with me whenever I leave home. I'm always on-call if a site/server goes down. The SP is a full computer with a hard keyboard, so there won't be any situation I need to drive back home to handle, even if it takes several hours to resolve.
3) It's a suitable desktop replacement for anything but hard gaming. I stick it on my desk, plug in a big monitor, and pair a bluetooth mouse. Now screen size and DPI scaling don't matter, and the Core i5 has all the power I could need for compiling software, photo editing, etc.
PaulHoule|12 years ago
Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.
BrentOzar|12 years ago
axus|12 years ago
robomartin|12 years ago
The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use.
I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow.
Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application.
I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on.
Tablets have their place.
BrentOzar|12 years ago
About Excel with your fingers - you'd be surprised. The touch experience is surprisingly compelling once you get used to it. I'm always surprised at how often I reach out to touch the display on my laptop after I've been using my iPad or the Surface, even just for a few minutes. (This is especially true when using the Surface because the Type Cover's trackpad is laughably small.)
frogpelt|12 years ago
Touch devices were not meant to replace laptops or desktops. In most cases, they were meant to fill a space that wasn't already filled.
contextfree|12 years ago
freehunter|12 years ago
It's possible for a program to not register file extensions.
kwinzman|12 years ago
http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/3ufht1/
ninetenel|12 years ago
once I got used to the form factor and what it was designed for it's changed how I compute in subtle ways.
Last night for example.. rather then going to my desk .. I watched some lectures on the couch while using the pen to take notes in one note .. then docked it to do some work.
that's just one example of many; but for me personally i feel like i'm doing more with my computer then I was before
though, I've usually docked my laptops when doing any serious work .. and my mobile work is usually restricted to coffee shops for only 3-4 hours at a time ..
battery life I guess could be better .. I usually only get 4hours or so off power when streaming movies off amazon but it's not really bad IMO, but of course I'd like it to be longer .. my main worry when it comes to the battery is that it's not user replaceable honestly