Disappointed, but hopeful

[mapexvenus]

First off, I am a technology addict and not a ****** of any brand. That said, I was (still kinda am) rooting for Microsoft on this one. I pre-ordered the Surface as soon as it became available, and when MS screwed up my order, I stood in line to buy a Surface. I - really - want - this - to - be- a - revolutionary - device.

That said, I feel that MS has let me down. Or maybe I am the exception, but allow me to elaborate:

- Performance is extremely sluggish in some apps, like the mail app (of all the things, yeah I know). Performance is so poor that the mail app is almost unusable when I want to quickly compose and reply to emails. I reinstalled the app many times and that didn?t work.
- I finally did a 'PC refresh' and was in the process of applying updates, when the process hung and I had to restart the device and go through everything all over again.
- Applications sometimes exit unexpectedly
- Games stutter and are not smooth
- IE is terrible. Text boxes in forms are weird and composing is a nightmare because the text seems to disappear in the left margin.

I don't care that the app store is still starting to grow and that all my favorite apps have not yet been written for RT. Those will come in time. My problems are platform specific. If the platform isn't solid then nothing will stand on it.


I am still going to hold on to my Surface and hope that between advice I get on the forums and software updates from MS, things will get better.

 

[conanheath]

I'm with you on this one. I am not completely discouraged yet, but the lag on loading is a little more than I would expect from a $700 device. Not a big gamer, but Jetpack Joyride was impossible to play, deleted. I'm still of the belief MS rushed a lot of the software to get it out and updates will improve performance over time. We can always hope.

 

[Thryon]

Not a big gamer, but Jetpack Joyride was impossible to play, deleted.

While the game is not as smooth as on my Quad-core i7 processor with 16GB of RAM, I have been playing this game on my Surface without much problem. Sure there is a big of sluggishness, but it is playable. Adera on the other hand is frustrating on the Surface.

Having said that, Hydro Thunder is very smooth and quite fun. So this tells me it is a coding issue and not hardware limitation. Hopefully this will be fixed in an update.

 

[inteller]

I've not experienced ANY of these sluggishness issues I keep hearing reports about. IE only slows down on poorly written sites. I just use code inspectors on my desktop to see how badly written they are. Games are improving with updates. Jetpack Joyride is a perfect example where an update fixes ALL the strange lag and framerate issues.

I'm with you on this one. I am not completely discouraged yet, but the lag on loading is a little more than I would expect from a $700 device. Not a big gamer, but Jetpack Joyride was impossible to play, deleted. I'm still of the belief MS rushed a lot of the software to get it out and updates will improve performance over time. We can always hope.

that's just silly....you should have got the update for it.

 

[berty6294]

I agree with most of what your guys are saying except for some reason I have never had the slight bit of lag in jetpack joyride. like none at all! I get it with people, video, music, store, everything else, but never have I had a jetpack joyride lag! ....

I think yall using it wrong ;D lol

 

[NickA]

No slow downs for me either. I saw in a video someone duplicated the slow down by letting some things run in the background, as the OS does not suspend the app. But I normally have a half dozen things running and never notice a lag.

And like @inteller said; web sites that do not conform to standards, or are poorly written, will be slow. Same thing for apps.

 

[DougB541#CB]

Mail app is the only thing i agree with. I have been nothing but pleasantly surprised with IE10.

jetpack joyride will drop frames every now and then but to say its "unplayable" is just a lie. Have had a few app crashes, but nothing out of the norm of android or iOS.

 

[Oldmajor]

The mail app does suck, buit they acknoledge that and I believe are recoding it. The only bad experience I have is with MetroTwit, that thing crashes all the time

 

[VagrantWade]

Do all of you people with slowness in ie have ads blocked with a tracking list like you should?

 

[will25u]

Check out this video. Even an i5 samsung series slate lags in those same games as the RT. This leads me to believe its the poorly optimized apps that is the problem.

Microsoft Surface RT vs Samsung Series 7 Slate - 3 - YouTube

 

[berty6294]

Do all of you people with slowness in ie have ads blocked with a tracking list like you should?

IE is fast compared to iPad. Idk if people here are saying slow in comparison to the iPad or to a desktop browser

 

[rOIVAz]

I haven't had any issues with games [Adera/Jetpack Joyride] but definitely prefer to log onto Outlook.com than use the Mail app. Also when I first loaded the Music app with GBs of content from an SD card, it really struggled. Now that all the album info is synced etc, it's a little bit slow but nothing massively problematic.

I did notice an update come through for the Music app last night so that possibly also helped the lag. Here's hoping the Mail app gets an update sooner rather than later.

 

[dkp23]

I want to like this, but he more i use it, the more it is not out of the box friendly.

I had to do some of the tweaks to get IE10 working smoothly and not loading websites slowly like doing the ad block stuff and other settings tweaks, im not a techy guy so without websites like this, id' have no clue.

The microsd storage thing is annoying having to do all this stuff to get the library to recognize. Im sure this is normal procedure, but for me, annoying.

apps tend to crash a lot, the bing apps mostly and the people app. People app not showing all facebook feeds.

My connection goes to limited, i have to turn off wifi and back on to reconnect.

I still enjoy the tablet, the games seem to work fine for me, jetpack game had no issues with lag or the cut rope one like people were saying. Overall, it is a average tablet with a lot of potential, hopefully an update will be pushed out to improve the stability of the apps and also more relevant apps as well.

 

[DougB541#CB]

I want to like this, but he more i use it, the more it is not out of the box friendly.

I had to do some of the tweaks to get IE10 working smoothly and not loading websites slowly like doing the ad block stuff and other settings tweaks, im not a techy guy so without websites like this, id' have no clue.

The microsd storage thing is annoying having to do all this stuff to get the library to recognize. Im sure this is normal procedure, but for me, annoying.

apps tend to crash a lot, the bing apps mostly and the people app. People app not showing all facebook feeds.

My connection goes to limited, i have to turn off wifi and back on to reconnect.

I still enjoy the tablet, the games seem to work fine for me, jetpack game had no issues with lag or the cut rope one like people were saying. Overall, it is a average tablet with a lot of potential, hopefully an update will be pushed out to improve the stability of the apps and also more relevant apps as well.

This happens on Windows Phone to because Facebook treats those apps like 3rd party apps so privacy settings by people can block 3rd party apps.

its annoying but i honestly just find facebook.com easier until Facebook makes an app.

 

[dkp23]

This happens on Windows Phone to because Facebook treats those apps like 3rd party apps so privacy settings by people can block 3rd party apps.

its annoying but i honestly just find facebook.com easier until Facebook makes an app.

Windows phone did have this issue, but it was eventually fixed earlier this year somehow. Not sure if it as on the facebook side or MS side that fixed it.

If you are going to have a people app, it should work properly, i just hope the 920 doesn't have this issue, the 900 didnt.

 

[DougB541#CB]

Windows phone did have this issue, but it was eventually fixed earlier this year somehow. Not sure if it as on the facebook side or MS side that fixed it.

If you are going to have a people app, it should work properly, i just hope the 920 doesn't have this issue, the 900 didnt.

I am not sure if this was fixed to be honest...i have a windows phone but its not active currently but i can double check.

The facebook app proper worked fine though.

 

[dkp23]

I am not sure if this was fixed to be honest...i have a windows phone but its not active currently but i can double check.

The facebook app proper worked fine though.

i can confirm, i had both the samsung focus s and 900, i sold both of them at this point though.

the focus S had this issue until maybe January or February, then it was fixed. Had no issues with 900 from April on through when i sold in october. It was fixed based on 1st hand experience.

I've done people hub to facebook app comparison when i twas fixed, didnt miss anything. The only thing i did miss was some of the app notifications from my friends, which i dont care if they did stuff on farmville anyway. When it came to updates pictures albums, no issues.

 

[yaoye78]

Mine works great out of box. IE is very fast too. Maybe you should try to do a clean reset...

My only complain is the Mail app being too limited in functions. Outlook.com is much better.

I want to like this, but he more i use it, the more it is not out of the box friendly.

I had to do some of the tweaks to get IE10 working smoothly and not loading websites slowly like doing the ad block stuff and other settings tweaks, im not a techy guy so without websites like this, id' have no clue.

The microsd storage thing is annoying having to do all this stuff to get the library to recognize. Im sure this is normal procedure, but for me, annoying.

apps tend to crash a lot, the bing apps mostly and the people app. People app not showing all facebook feeds.

My connection goes to limited, i have to turn off wifi and back on to reconnect.

I still enjoy the tablet, the games seem to work fine for me, jetpack game had no issues with lag or the cut rope one like people were saying. Overall, it is a average tablet with a lot of potential, hopefully an update will be pushed out to improve the stability of the apps and also more relevant apps as well.

 

[stewpeanut]

i haven't experienced many slowdowns or much sluggishness. most of my issues have been with quirky workflows, or missing/strange functionality. most of these issues i expect to be worked out as updates are released and the device/platform matures.

that said...the mail app could be decidedly better...and i wish links in message stayed as 'links' when i was replying to a message instead of reverting to plain text.

 

[Gken]

Well once I updated everything it all ran very smoothly. I don't know what kind of sites you are going to but yeah, ad block, and poorly written code for websites always slow it down. Even on my Laptop i7 sandy with 16gb of ram slow down on some really poorly written sites and games. SO again it needs updates, and this is the problem on early adopters, probably should get used to it. I know the surface is not a cheap product but give it a few more weeks the thing just came out like 2 weeks ago haha.