Tempted but they're not quite there yet

[bauerbach]

more battery life is always a good thing, but just a year or 2 ago, we were happy to get maybe 2 hours out of a laptop of this level, at any size, and the world kept spinning.

My phone gets charged every night... its just the ruitine I have fallen into, so I expect a phone to last me 18+ hours on a charge.

laptop, maybe just because I have not yet been spoiled by a newer ultrabook with 8 hour battery life, but I expect to need to plug it in during the day when its convenient to do so. I have never found myself with a dead surface for lack of outlet access.

That's just me though.

 

[Bobert_123]

I agree, the surface pro would be perfect if it weren't for that bad battery...

 

[kingbobyjr]

I agree, the surface pro would be perfect if it weren't for that bad battery...

I got through my work day today using OneNote, surfing the web, streaming tunes through Xbox music and playing a bit of Reckless Racing Ultimate, during my lunch break of course!!! And now I'm replying to this and have about 32% of the battery remaining. That is no worse than my wives Lenovo Yoga 13 and much better than my old Asus laptop.

 

[superlawyer15]

laptop, maybe just because I have not yet been spoiled by a newer ultrabook with 8 hour battery life, but I expect to need to plug it in during the day when its convenient to do so. I have never found myself with a dead surface for lack of outlet access.

That's just me though.

This is the very same reason why I don't mind the battery life

never had it die on me when i wanted to use it without an outlet nearby

 

[heed]

In all seriousness, does anyone know if there's a way to overclock the CPU a bit (like when it's plugged in)? What about a bios or soft clockmod?

 

[o4liberty]

I picked up a Asus 11.6 Vivo laptop a few days ago and side by side to the Surface Pro the Asus wins! For one I am not cheap but over $1000 when I spent half of that on the Asus laptop is crazy. You would think Microsoft would hold the price down to drive sales, don't get me wrong its a nice product but for the money and a better typing experience the laptop wins hands down IMO.

 

[anon(5370748)]

In all seriousness, does anyone know if there's a way to overclock the CPU a bit (like when it's plugged in)? What about a bios or soft clockmod?

I'm sure these guys will figure it out: Overclockers Forums - The Performance Computing Community .

Not sure it's such a great idea - wouldn't that be adding quite a bit of heat to the already claustrophobic insides? It's not like you can just rip the back off and attach a giant Zalman heatsink to it or anything.

 

[anon(5370748)]

I picked up a Asus 11.6 Vivo laptop a few days ago and side by side to the Surface Pro the Asus wins! For one I am not cheap but over $1000 when I spent half of that on the Asus laptop is crazy. You would think Microsoft would hold the price down to drive sales, don't get me wrong its a nice product but for the money and a better typing experience the laptop wins hands down IMO.

This one? Amazon.com: ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T 11.6-Inch Touch Laptop: Computers & Accessories

In which case, please let us know what metrics and tests you used to determine the winner.

 

[coolqf]

What apps make the surface pro a must have? So far, I have onenote, others?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[bauerbach]

This one? Amazon.com: ASUS VivoBook X202E-DH31T 11.6-Inch Touch Laptop: Computers & Accessories

In which case, please let us know what metrics and tests you used to determine the winner.

to those that are indifferent to an atom cpu, its a fantastic unit.

to those that have a need for higher performance demands, well... its just not an option.

 

[jpw21683]

more battery life is always a good thing, but just a year or 2 ago, we were happy to get maybe 2 hours out of a laptop of this level, at any size, and the world kept spinning.

I agree 100%. I've never had a laptop with more than 3hrs of battery life, because I require a machine powerful enough for Photoshop & video-editing. So the Surface Pro's battery life is an improvement, for me.

 

[anon(5370748)]

What apps make the surface pro a must have? So far, I have onenote, others?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

OneNote works fine on a Surface RT which even comes with it and is half the cost of the Pro. You'd get the Pro if you wanted to run full Windows 8 desktop apps like Photoshop or Counter Strike or the software that programs your universal remote that they stopped supporting and will never have a modern-style app for. RT is a consumer tablet that competes with the iPad and Android tablets. The Surface Pro is a Windows 8 laptop computer in a smaller form factor - that's what makes it a must-have for me.

 

[anon(5370748)]

to those that are indifferent to an atom cpu, its a fantastic unit.

to those that have a need for higher performance demands, well... its just not an option.

Re-read o4liberty's post. I was reacting to the language instead of the intent. The Asus is definitely a better device for o4's needs. Begs the question, though - what is s/he doing in a Surface Pro forum?

 

[pdch]

What apps make the surface pro a must have? So far, I have onenote, others?

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

Office 2013, SkyDrive app, Adobe CS6 (CSS), Civ V (amazing to play on a touch pc), Portal 2, and most of all - FRUIT NINJA!

I still can't believe how well CS6 works on this thing with only 4GB of ram. It has to be using a portion of the SSD as additional RAM.

 

[anon(5335877)]

OneNote works fine on a Surface RT which even comes with it and is half the cost of the Pro. You'd get the Pro if you wanted to run full Windows 8 desktop apps like Photoshop or Counter Strike or the software that programs your universal remote that they stopped supporting and will never have a modern-style app for. RT is a consumer tablet that competes with the iPad and Android tablets. The Surface Pro is a Windows 8 laptop computer in a smaller form factor - that's what makes it a must-have for me.

Don't forget the active digitizer + stylus.

 

[anon(5370748)]

Don't forget the active digitizer + stylus.

Right - no active digitizer on the RT, but a finger-replacement type of stylus should still work for the type of doodling you'd do on a consumption device like the RT. Unfortunately there's no pressure sensitivity in CS apps yet on the Pro, but that seems to be more of a driver problem between Adobe and MS which I've heard they're working on fixing.

 

[vertigoOne]

Right - no active digitizer on the RT, but a finger-replacement type of stylus should still work for the type of doodling you'd do on a consumption device like the RT. Unfortunately there's no pressure sensitivity in CS apps yet on the Pro, but that seems to be more of a driver problem between Adobe and MS which I've heard they're working on fixing.

Autodesk Sketchbook Pro is amazing with the Surface Pro stylus. Had my colleagues drooling over the Pro because of it.

 

[anon(5335877)]

So here we have a device that can be used as a full mobile OS as well as a touchscreen tablet. At first glance this should be a slam dunk. After all, nobody else really has anything like this yet. Apple is staying out of this game and continuing to offer MacOS on full laptops and iOS on tablets. Although it does appear now that Ubuntu is trying to get into this game (this is just my personal opinion but: there's a reason that Ubuntu desktop only has around 20 million downloads worldwide. I'll pass.)

The problem I have with it is that windows 8 Pro tablets are ready for hardware to catch up, but the hardware isn't ready for it Battery technology isn't ready to keep these puppies going for 10+ hours, and chips aren't ready yet either.

At a $1200-ish price point, you can get a regular laptop that will come with 500GB storage and 8MB RAM and be able to handle pretty much anything you can throw at it. Not so with the Surface Pro. At $600 and below you can get an ARM based tablet that will consume media just fine and last more than twice as long unplugged.

My opinion on these new x86 tablets is that they cannot perform as powerfully as a full laptop yet they cost just as much, and in many cases more, and they can't last as long unplugged as a tablet.

Do I think this is a brilliant idea though? Oh Heck yeah! But I need to wait until the CPU's and batteries catch up to this enough to offer at least 300GB storage, 6+MB of RAM, last as long as ARM based tablets unplugged, and have the processing power of regular laptops. Until that happens, I'll be using an actual PC for x86 Windows 8 media creation, and a separate ARM based tablet for portable media consumption.

Well what did you expect? If we had the technology to make "regular" laptops last as long as a tablet, wouldn't we have seen it already?

I know what you mean though, it seems like Windows 8 was created for hardware that doesn't exist yet. I think you're waiting for Haswell and the Bay Trail (next gen Atom), and I guess for SSD storage to become cheaper.

 

[coolqf]

I'm in the same boat.... Love the idea of the surface pro, but it doesn't have apps for it yet... I actually compare the surface pro to the zenbook touch. The 128gb limit is just too low for me and I have no interest in worrying about hacks to use microsd as additional storage for apps.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

[anon(5370748)]

I'm in the same boat.... Love the idea of the surface pro, but it doesn't have apps for it yet... I actually compare the surface pro to the zenbook touch. The 128gb limit is just too low for me and I have no interest in worrying about hacks to use microsd as additional storage for apps.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

You have over a hundred gigs of apps?

*edit* I'm wasting too much time in this thread - time to unfollow.