Surface- The issues

[stewpeanut]

Nope the camera is only 1mp

that's strange considering so many reviews and the unit i 'test drove' at the pop up store were able to be set to 2mp (front) and 8mp (rear).

 

[mikroland]

My issues:

1. Touch Cover is not very responsive - track pad on touch cover not that great. Type cover = much better than touch cover
2. Some apps do not re-orient when the screen is rotated 180 degrees
3. Screen rotation is sluggish when device is rotated 90 degrees
4. Speaker volume very low
5. Overall performance is sluggish

Temporarily disable windows defender. Probably wasting CPU and disk time. See if that helps.

I permanently turned mine off.

Performance is great on mine, just make sure you don't leave a ton of applications running (espically desktop ones). Remember to close an app in Metro, swipe it out of the task bar and swipe it down and it will kill it....

 

[Jaybotics]

Temporarily disable windows defender. Probably wasting CPU and disk time. See if that helps.

I permanently turned mine off.

Performance is great on mine, just make sure you don't leave a ton of applications running (espically desktop ones). Remember to close an app in Metro, swipe it out of the task bar and swipe it down and it will kill it....

how do you disable windows defender on the surface rt?

 

[kane4fire]

how do you disable windows defender on the surface rt?

I haven't looked, but I would think a good place to start would be to go to the start screen and start typing defender, then clicking "settings" and I'm sure the options will be there.

 

[Jaybotics]

I haven't looked, but I would think a good place to start would be to go to the start screen and start typing defender, then clicking "settings" and I'm sure the options will be there.

Their isn't, I had to close it in Task Manager. Not sure if I noticed an improvement in performance yet.

 

[theseusperse]

Their isn't, I had to close it in Task Manager. Not sure if I noticed an improvement in performance yet.

Won't it just restart immediately if you do that?

 

[ken800]

I love a lot about my surface and true keyboard. There are just as many nags, however.

Likes:

-wide format - on screen keyboard and attached keyboard are usable and not cramped. Video looks much better. Typing a word document works much better on the wider screen.
-Stand is awesome
-Keyboard is the best portable keyboard I've ever used - period.
-Microsoft Office on a tablet. Zing!
-I like the overall windows 8 feel

Dislikes:

Overall speed is noticeably slower than my ipad 3. MS should have either gone in $100 under the ipad or put in a better cpu/gpu combo.

Software is clearly not "finished" as there are a lot of small details left out that show lack of user testing. Examples:

-Slowdowns and lag in some apps.
-There's no date, clock, or battery gauge on the start screen. WTF? that's basic stuff.
-The store isn't exactly user friendly. The system will let me install an app that is already installed. There's nothing on the app to say "purchased" or "installed" under an app when you are looking.
-Calendar integration with google won't show delegates which is incredibly disappointing. Hopefully a good calendar app comes along soon to fix that.
-I can't find a good alarm app that will go off even when the device is sleeping. As much as I hated my ipad, this is one thing there were plenty of. Oh yeah, and night mode.
-The buttons in many areas don't always respond to the first touch.
-Crackly speakers
-Most of these are usability issues and hopefully will improve with time, but I am somewhat underwhelmed overall, considering the $$$ spent on the device.

I may reconsider and get an ultrabook with a touchscreen before my 14 days are out but I really want a hybrid tablet with a legit keyboard.

 

[toekramp]

-There's no date, clock, or battery gauge on the start screen. WTF? that's basic stuff.
-The store isn't exactly user friendly. The system will let me install an app that is already installed. There's nothing on the app to say "purchased" or "installed" under an app when you are looking..

- i actually like how that is, all you have to do is swipe from the right and it pops up, and then hidden again.
- whenever i open any app that i have, it says 'you own this app' right on the left hand side. right below the price

 

[Jaybotics]

Just out of curiosity, how long do I have if I want to return this device? Someone here mentioned 14 days, and I've read elsewhere that I have 30. Can anyone clarify?

I love my Surface, and i'm hoping that Microsoft will issue an update soon because the lag just really irritates me.

 

[PerseusPrime]

So far no problems on my end. This thing is made in china so expect some devices to be faulty.

 

[RedLine78]

So far no problems on my end. This thing is made in china so expect some devices to be faulty.

FYI, many things are made in China now. Even iPhones and iPads are made in China.

 

[RedLine78]

that's strange considering so many reviews and the unit i 'test drove' at the pop up store were able to be set to 2mp (front) and 8mp (rear).

I believe the unit you test drove at the store is Asus Vivo RT tablet. Not Microsoft Surface RT. I can confirm Asus RT tablet has 8mp (rear) and 2mp (front). I already talked to a Microsoft Store techinician and he said Microsoft advertise the camreas (Front and Rear) to be 720p camera. I tested some in-store Surface RT tablets and they all show 1MP in the Settings. I think Surface RT only come with 1MP camera both front and back.

BTW, Asus Vivo RT tablet's camera seem to have Auto-focus feature too...

 

[Nataku4ca]

-Crackly speakers

this part, I have to ask because I get the crackle sound if i crank up the volume (if i don't the volume is just too low) is the crackle normal? or should i get it exchanged? the reason i ask is because my left speak sounds fine, the right one is the one that makes static noise and occasionally crackle, does it exist on all Surface (so i guess it's normal if that the case) ?

i love the thing though, showed my family and they loved it, my sis was pushing my mom to get one lol

haven't had any other problems that the other posts have been suggesting though, i've tried sending all sorts of things to XBox and worked fine, only thing that was annoying was if i use ie on xbox through smartglass i can't enter foreign language on surface's keyboard

 

[GoodThings2Life]

My first unit had a faulty internal speaker/microphone. I took it back to the Microsoft Store and had it replaced. It took a half hour including them validating the problem and setting up the new one and testing before I left. Easy.

New unit runs perfectly. Surface isn't perfect though... I would like to see Silverlight support, and to have SIMPLE control over the Flash whitelist (since I know of a complicated way of controlling it).

I'm sure they could release updates to address any performance issues that people are seeing. I haven't encountered very many yet, but I've seen a few buggy apps and lag updating the People Hub.

Overall, I'm happy I bought it, and I feel it will satisfy 75-80% of my computing needs... work and personal. The Surface Pro will no doubt get me to the 100% mark.

 

[VidJuhEffex]

first off, I LOVE the Surface. One of the best devices ever owned by me. That said:

-I get a weird drone sometimes from the speakers, like lag or something

-No music/video metadata fixing (this thing really just needs Zune, the old interface was plenty touch friendly and was a no compromise approach) Overall, the music/video experience is the worst part of the tablet which it shouldn't be because (IMO) Zune was the best media management app I had used and they have full ability to make that same program.

-no podcast support (slapdash is badass though)

-apps going into their snap view is slow, ripped music for which I previously got a neat zune experience now can't even get me a cool background when playing.

-mouse part of touchcover can be a bit weak. two finger scrolling has a tendency to stop working

-live tiles for music are pretty bland, no excuse considering how well they work on the phone.

-AND I HATE THE INABILITY TO DO SINGLE COLUMNS. the tile dragging is awful, I should be able to leave gaps if I want, have 3 columns if I want, it's not flippin' rocket science here and it turns organizing your tiles into a game more complex than Braid.

 

[BotanicalStig]

I've been using my surface as my only computer since launch, I love it.

There have only been a select few games that still lag after performing updates; dodo gogo, and cut the rope, for example) and yet, games like hydro thunder work perfectly even at full settings... I don't think the surface is underpowered. I also don't get lag or speaker crackle with multiple apps open in the background (or in a any other instances)

The device works really well, very few quirks. My wish list:
Touchcover auto correct. Come on. Computers have been doing this for years (the on screen even does it for gods sake). Why can't the touch cover fix my mistakes?
Smooth trackpad scrolling. It isn't awful, but it needs improvement. I want my long web pages to continue sliding when I flick the trackpad. And fix the curser lag after scrolling.

That's about it on my end, I haven't really been experiencing any other annoyances.

 

[AngryNil]

It's running on a Tegra 3. I consider that a crap chip for phones, no idea why Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to run the Surface on it.

 

[xirsteon]

Ok so I figured I would start a thread of known issues here that I have read either here or on other forums. If anyone knows a fix or has experienced this they can post their stories.

1. Touch cover not working. ( I have only had this happen once so far)
2. Micro SD. Surface does not always read the card.
3. Sending media to other devices doesn't seem to work.
4. When the screen is off, the surface will not properly play music.
(if you let surface sit while playing music and the screen goes black. It will start skipping and or stopping music all together. Screen must be forced to stay on the entire time.)
5. Xbox music App randomly shuts down.


Besides these issues. I have still loved my overall experience with the surface. While I feel most issues could be fixed with patches. The SD reader issue I am not so sure if it is hardware or software.

2. Follow this guide to get proper SD card support (http://lifehacker.com/5788839/how-to-add-unsupported-removable-drives-to-windows-7s-libraries)

>> Get flash on any website. instruction here (Flash on Any Website in IE10 Metro Browser (WIN 8 & WIN RT) - xda-developers)

 

[anon(5335877)]

It's running on a Tegra 3. I consider that a crap chip for phones, no idea why Microsoft thought it would be a good idea to run the Surface on it.

They should have put in a Qualcomm S4 Quad core, but I presume it wasn't ready or available during the Surface's development.

And Samsung's Exynos, that only goes into Samsung devices.

 

[JeremiahAtNETNaz]

Have been using my Surface for a couple of days now and no complaints.

Hey guys, just thought I'd throw my two cents in and just let you all know that I love this little bugger (my Surface with blue TouchCover). I have been surfing the web, browsing my SkyDrive docs, played with a few apps, and only a couple of times have I had to wait more than three seconds for something to happen. I've been reading around the interwebs that video playback is not good and music is junky but I just got done watching GoPro's latest video in 1080P and it was smooth as butter (GoPro HERO3: Black Edition - Smaller, Lighter and 2X More Powerful - YouTube).

Also, it may seem small to most but when I got home on Friday I remembered that I needed to print some stuff for the upcoming election and noticed that my Surface already had my wireless printer and Blu-ray players setup and ready to go. I just clicked print within Word and sure enough it just worked. I have a TF300T Asus tablet and that thing looks like a brick compared to my Surface.

I must say that I'm really impressed and if this is the first generation device, I can't wait to see what a fourth generation device looks like (in whatever manifestation it may be such as ARM, x86, or Super-Jelly-Rocket-Pockets). Two thumbs up in my book, not to mention the wave of Apps that are going to come to Windows just due to the sheer size of the Windows ecosystem.

Regards,

Jeremiah N.