The Pros that most reviewers miss regarding the Surface Pro 3

trainplane

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Even though it is really an old technology so to speak, people don't realize how valuable having side by side and multiple windows on-screen is a huge time saver, especially when do copy-and-paste between apps or when you want to reference a website while writing. It's why things like the iPad and Android are mostly consumption devices. Getting real work done is a huge choir.

Also, I won't say the Surface is good on the lap, but at least it has a kickstand for when you want to put it on the table. With all other tablets, you need to buy a holder, which often has only one angle to choose from. I'd say the Surface is more table-able than lap-able.
 

Citizen X

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Wall iPhone

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I watched boredatworks review on youtube of the Surface 3 PRO, and the front camera looks great.
The Verge didn't mention the camera in their review, but gave the camera a 6 on their scale. I wrote a comment on the Verges review mentioning that the camera actually looks great and should deserve a higher grade as they gave the iPad an 8 for its camera. They deleted my comment and gave me a warning, seriously..
 

anon(5445874)

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I watched boredatworks review on youtube of the Surface 3 PRO, and the front camera looks great.
The Verge didn't mention the camera in their review, but gave the camera a 6 on their scale. I wrote a comment on the Verges review mentioning that the camera actually looks great and should deserve a higher grade as they gave the iPad an 8 for its camera. They deleted my comment and gave me a warning, seriously..

That site has never been good. It's not news, it's propaganda. Not sure how many people know, but they are owned by AOL.
 

Jan Tomsic

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How about the fact that it's running a x86 OS and Samsung and iPad don't even come close to productivity of the surface?
In engineering school you probably use some weird programs from 1997 that were written to interact with devices trough RS232 port, good luck setting that up on Android or iOS. Window snapping has also been available since Windows 7 (or was it Vista?), and ubuntu quickly copied, OSX not so much, let alone iOS.
I'm also the most productive on mouse and keyboard. Touchscreens are nice and all, but they are not very accurate, I'll take a mouse and a keyboard anytime over a touchscreen. Okay you can plop the logitech nano reciever in any tablet and control it with mouse and keyboard, but no mobile OS is really deisgned with keyboard shortcuts in mind. Plug the reciever in Surface (directly, not trough OTG cables), and snap windows with Win+arrows, show desktop with Win+d, use all the keyboard shortcuts that you already do on your PC. Yes, there is even an official keyboard cover, I hear it's pretty cool, but I don't know if it's really worth that kind of money.

Before I got my 2012 Nexus 7, I though that I NEED a tablet and it will make taking notes much easier and everything, the truth is I still take notes with a PENCIL and notebook (not even a binder) and a RUBBER, you just can't beat that. A tablet does make studying easier though, we get our materials in long pdfs that would cost a small fortune to print, so it's nice to have a little screen you can hold directly, but 16:10 ratio is not ideal for this task. Now that I have a tablet, I realized it's really just a toy, and it until it runs a mobile OS it will never be a professional tool, because it's just too limiting and finger optimized touch screen makes it hard to take notes on even though you could scribble equations and sketches with one of those thick 'styluses'. So ever since the surface pro 1 was released I knew this was the only tablet I want. I'll stick to my N7 until it dies for watching movies on the go, you can't beat the portability of nice 7" tablet with all-day battery life, and I won't be investing in surface pro anytime soon either because I have a powerful desktop PC and a cheap laptop already. Once the time comes to replace all of these, I may get the surface 5 or whatever will be available then :)

Oh yes, and dock! You can come home, plop the SP in the dock and enjoy your dual 23" screens with a mechanical keyboard and a comfortable, big mouse, external speakers and gigabit ethernet as well as 2TB external hard drive that you use for backup and movies. Show me a tablet that can do all that out of the box.

12" is a bit big for me for on-the-go though, and I'd use external screens at home anyway, so I'd be just fine with SP2 :)
 

Chregu

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I also took folders of notes during my studies. They are all standing in my book shelf and I never touch them. If I ever need the space I will just throw them out.

I might have spent 20 $ on them, not 800 $ ;-)

However the Surface 3 Pro is a nice device, if you have to buy a laptop and don't mind typing on the this cover thingy (that doesn't have great reviews), I see why people would prefer a S3P. As a reviewer, I also wouldn't make such a big deal out of it though.
 

someoneinwa

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Thanks for the rant, I was having similar thoughts about the early reviews I've read. But I will add another element to those reviews. At least these first, early reviews are coming from the Mac Book Air using bloggers who were at the Microsoft event and were handed the SP3. I would have been stunned, and so far I'm not, had any of these guys written a review that concluded the SP3 was better than the device they personally carry. We all have our biases and I hope Microsoft is sending some review units out to people who weren't at the event as well and who don't carry their Apple credentials on their laps, because that will be the only place they get more honesty in the evaluations.

This isn't to say that all of the early reviews have been terrible as they all praise the design and quality of the SP3. What drives me nuts is how they shift their standards from feature to feature to make sure the SP3 is always close, but not quite up to Apple's devices. For example, most reviewers have noted the SP3 is lighter than the Mac Book Air, but then they immediately compare it to the iPad Air and say how because of the weight of the SP3 compared to the iPad Air, it will be difficult to hold the SP3 in tablet mode for very long. Really. The iPad Air was released a year ago. Prior to that the iPad weighed about the same as the SP3 before it went on its (truly remarkable) diet. I never read complaints from any of these same bloggers that the first generations of the iPad were difficult to carry for long. In fact, they routinely gushed about how wonderful it was to be able to carry it around all day. The vast majority of iPads out in the wild today are not the Air but the heavier early versions. How are all those people coping?

The SP3 is an amazing piece of technology. With enough research I bet I could find earlier reviews by every one of the bloggers who have reviewed the device so far in which they say something like "if only the SP or SP2 had this or that or was thinner, lighter, faster, etc, etc, it would be perfect." Now, it is all of those things and yet it still isn't good enough because it isn't a real laptop or it isn't a real tablet or weighs more than the iPad Air, etc, etc. Microsoft, you won't win with these guys. It is like getting a UCLA grad to do an honest review of USC.
 
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_Emi_

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I also took folders of notes during my studies. They are all standing in my book shelf and I never touch them. If I ever need the space I will just throw them out.

I might have spent 20 $ on them, not 800 $ ;-)

However the Surface 3 Pro is a nice device, if you have to buy a laptop and don't mind typing on the this cover thingy (that doesn't have great reviews), I see why people would prefer a S3P. As a reviewer, I also wouldn't make such a big deal out of it though.

wow... your comment it's just wow.

1. Surface pro 3 or any surface pro, is not only to take notes... yeah that's a good thing you can do, but did you forget you can run any windows program you want? a videogame? skype? something?.... did you forget it doesn't only have onenote and you are ready to go?

2. you don't even know the name of the cover it's TYPE cover, and where did you get "doesn't have great reviews"? did you know there is TYPE and TOUCH cover? the one that never got good reviews was TOUCH because sometimes some people didn't know how to press good enough so the key would register, with TYPER cover is different because you feel the press of the keys just like a keyboard. understand?

3. "as a reviewer" well... then why would you review something you know "it's not a big deal" for you then? it's clear you don't even understand the technology behind having a surface pro 3, and it looks like you don't even need a new device, so why would you even consider getting a surface pro or any other device if you think "oh I spent $20 taking notes, so I don't need a surface" like if it was just meant for that..... because you know, I'm sure anyone getting a SP3 when they are in college (or anywhere), all they want to do with such an "expensive" device it's to take notes, even if it can do anything they want :)
 

Chregu

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wow... your comment it's just wow.

1. Surface pro 3 or any surface pro, is not only to take notes... yeah that's a good thing you can do, but did you forget you can run any windows program you want? a videogame? skype? something?.... did you forget it doesn't only have onenote and you are ready to go?

2. you don't even know the name of the cover it's TYPE cover, and where did you get "doesn't have great reviews"? did you know there is TYPE and TOUCH cover? the one that never got good reviews was TOUCH because sometimes some people didn't know how to press good enough so the key would register, with TYPER cover is different because you feel the press of the keys just like a keyboard. understand?

3. "as a reviewer" well... then why would you review something you know "it's not a big deal" for you then? it's clear you don't even understand the technology behind having a surface pro 3, and it looks like you don't even need a new device, so why would you even consider getting a surface pro or any other device if you think "oh I spent $20 taking notes, so I don't need a surface" like if it was just meant for that..... because you know, I'm sure anyone getting a SP3 when they are in college (or anywhere), all they want to do with such an "expensive" device it's to take notes, even if it can do anything they want :)

Oh come on, calm down.

I was referring to the OP of course, complaining about reviewers not mentioning the advantage of students taking notes with it. Not about the capabilities of the S3P in general. Hence my remark about getting it instead of a laptop.

And don't be so picky about the name of accessories, it really doesn't matter what it is called.
 

manicottiK

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Here's benefit that I have not seen mentioned: Surface Pro 3 is usable during all stages of flight. By weighing less than 2 pounds, the SP3 is viewed by the FAA as a piece of "small personal electronics" that can be used during taxi, takeoff and landing.

Being allowed to use SP3 below 10,000 feet adds about 45-90 minutes of extra productivity time per flight segment (depending on taxi-out and taxi-in time). For a quick-turn business trip with connections in each direction, that's likely 3-to-6 hours of found time. Sure, I could get that time by carrying a computer and a tablet, but they'd weigh more, take up more space in my luggage, and I'd have to switch between them twice during each flight and suffer a loss of work continuity during those swaps.

Having uninterrupted access to my full computer, with its normal software, all of my files, and a good pointing device that makes it usable in hand is worth a lot. A business paying someone $100K/yr with a benefits load of 30% is spending $62.50/hour. If they have that person flying 100 segments a year and the person can get back the minimum 45 minutes per segment, that's 75 hours/year, or $4,688. Even if the employee only exploits the "usable below 10,000 feet" feature 20% of the time, the "found productivity" more than pays for the device in two years.

This feature is total non-factor for most users, but for people who fly a lot (and the people who pay them), Surface Pro 3 is possibly a Godsend.
 

Mercule

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I'm not sold on the SP3 being a great note taking product. I think I can write faster, and more legibly with pen and paper then with the stylus and SP3.

I tried this on an iPad and it failed miserably, though I acknowledge the iPad isn't designed with a stylus and the precision was lacking. I'm a pretty fast typist as well, so that may work out better as well :)
I think there's some personal preference, in this one. Handwriting is one of the few things that stuck from my engineering classes, but it's slow. I like OneNote because I can then convert my (faster) cursive scrawl into "typed" text. I don't want to read my penmanship, weeks, months, or years from now; I want something I can copy/paste and reorganize to fit my new needs. This is also why I get so extremely frustrated with the narrow screens and lousy precision of the current crop of Surface Pro devices. Three words to a line (between being narrow and having to write large enough that an "e" looks like an "e") makes for hideous notes. C'mon, my 2003(?) Gateway convertible was great for taking notes, other than being kinda heavy. Why is this any harder 10 years later?

As far as taking notes on the iPad goes, I didn't mind the act of taking notes. There just weren't any apps that really gave me any advantage over paper. While there are a number of fine apps, they tend to be proprietary and don't sync well with a PC or anything that can convert to text.
 

mozman68

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That's a bad review?

Didn't seem to be a review at all...just an overview of the device as presented at the event. And I thought it was pretty thorough.
 

sakai135

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I used to use my ThinkPad X41T for note taking in college. OneNote (desktop) with the ability to search handwritten notes was a lifesaver for me.
 

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