I want a Surface 3 but...

[WindowsGirl]

Hello,

since the first Windows 10 event I'm following the events and I want to test it out myself. Therefore I want to buy a cheap computer thinking about a Surface 3. Why? Because It's under a 1000 Euro, it's lightweight and it looks gorgeous. To be honest, the last 20 years I wasn't very much into the Windows World.
Now to my questions will the cheapest model keep up the next few years, because I'm a student and I have a feeling that I gonna study for a long time. I'm thinking about the 2GB RAM which is very little for caching applications. Is there a Microsoft Office suit included? I want to use it for notes and papers. Lastly I want to know how much space is effectively available if I would buy the 64GB version?

 

[michail71]

Office 365 for one year is included.

I have about 33GB free after getting Win 10 and most of my apps installed. It's not a lot but I have my desktop and 1 TB one OneDrive.

I have he 2 GB model and I wish I hade more but it is the only model AT&T offered here for their LTE model. I've noticed the processor seems to be more of the bottleneck compared to the ram. It's not a device you want to heavy multi-task on. So just running a couple apps at a time seems to be ok with the 2gb.

If you go pro you'd want the docking station for the ability for the PC experience it's capable of.

I would say the Surface 3 is more of a tablet that you can use as a PC. I rather enjoy using it that way too, which I wasn't expecting. With the keyboard cover it automatically switches modes in Windows 10 depending on how you flip it.

The desktop version of OneNote with the pen is fantastic! The new Win 10 OneNote app is kind of garbage (for some reason the messed it up from the 8.1 version) so you want to make sure you get the real thing from 365.

 

[lookingforward]

I think it is definitely worth getting the 128/4GB model. I bought this model with keyboard and pen at Costco for $700. My RAM usage is sitting at 2.3GB and that is just with IE, Tubecast, Mail, Xodo PDF reader, and Slacker Radio running in the background. File Explorer says I have 44GB free of 110GB. I think some space is reserved for a system restore. I only have a few desktop apps installed: Adobe Lightroom, MS Office 2016 Preview, MPC-HC, and my niece installed a couple games (Elsword and Roblox). Elsword takes up about 4.15 GBs. The 64GB storage model would be an exercise in frustration for most users and shouldn't even be offered for sale IMO. I know money is tight, but try saving up a little more and you will be rewarded with a much more enjoyable experience.

 

[michail71]

Yeah, although I have 2GB I think it's a crime against technology to ship a system with less than 4 GB these days. Windows will often use up a good portion of whatever is installed for performance gains. At least with SSD storage swap files shouldn't be too bad.

But most of the time if my Surface gets slow it's the CPU.

 

[Narse77]

Yeah, although I have 2GB I think it's a crime against technology to ship a system with less than 4 GB these days. Windows will often use up a good portion of whatever is installed for performance gains. At least with SSD storage swap files shouldn't be too bad.

But most of the time if my Surface gets slow it's the CPU.

The Surface 3 isn't SSD it's eMMC, it's maybe a bit faster than a 7200 rpm drive. I have the 4gb model and rarely run into CPU bottlenecks that are more than minor sluggishness and I multitask like mad. At work I generally have 3 tabs in Edge, 1 in IE, the CMrcViewer open connected to one or two PCs and SCCM Console.

 

[michail71]

Didn't realize eMMC was that slow. All in all it's surprisingly fast considering. But when it comes to running a Windows 10 upgrade my desktop is significantly faster.