How are you enjoying your "Go"

[ClintRo]

I am converting from an iPad Pro because I cannot do any work on it, I bought the surface go 8gb and the surface pro i5 . I plan. on keeping one of them. This is meant to be a portable machine to travel with for a meeting, a day, or a week on the road and get work done, but I will still use it daily for various tasks. I feel like the Pro is faster and overall a step up, everything from battery to screen to speed but the go is much more portable I feel. I am not sure which one to keep as I keep going back and forth. I have a big 15 inch 16gb power lap top that is my home computer.
Does anyone prefer the Go to the Pro ...I would def keep the pro over it but the size is my deterrent but I don't want to get frustrated with a slower machine etc...I use internet, web, office and PDF pen edits a lot...love the pen features

I would suggest using the Go exclusively for a week and see if you can live with it. I am planning on doing that and selling my Pro 2017 model if I can live with the Go as my personal go everywhere device.

 

[HeyCori]

Hi, like the look of that keyboard, can you let me know the model/share a link please. Thanks.

It is the Microsoft Wedge Mobile Keyboard

https://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-U6...ag=hawk-future-20&ascsubtag=UUwpUvbUpU3757905

It's been out for a while but still works and feels great.

Microsoft also has a newer keyboard called the Universal Foldable Keyboard. It looks great but I've never used it. Don't think I'm ready to drop $100 on it either haha.

https://forums.windowscentral.com/e...-foldable-keyboard%2Fgu5-00001&token=b7aQnAtv

 

[Enza Knight]

Travelling in the USA right now and it's been great device on internal flights, hotels and airports. I have movies and music on SD card and using Office 365 in the cloud. For games I have only tried GT Racing but seems to go OK. I also connect to work via Team Viewer to do CAD work or access files if required. For the heavy lifting I still have my SB2 but the ease of portability makes this a winner. 8GB 128 And GB model.

 

[LibbyLA]

I prefer the Go to both the SP3 and the S3. I have both of those and they are just too big for me. I bought the S3 on release day after having the SP3 for only a few months and the S3 still wasn’t small enough, although it’s the one of the two that I used more often.

The iPad Pro 9.7 and 10.5 and the Go are my “sweet spot” for portable computing.

I’m even carrying the Go in the same sized Evecase case that I carried the S3 in but the Go feels different than the S3, in a good way.

 

[LibbyLA]

I have the MS foldable keyboard, haven’t used it much. It’s better than no keyboard at all, but I would need to put a lot more hours on it to be comfortable with it. It is compact and very portable, though. I’ve used it with both Android and iOS devices.

 

[Rann Xeroxx]

You can always update your files either with Office online or download and install the "mobile" apps. Would stay away from opening and editing with other software, you should always keep your edits with the software that created it.

 

[Grey66]

Perfect, thanks HeyCorl, don't think I could get on with the vertical gap in the foldable keyboard so will go for the Wedge one.

Cheers.

 

[Mike Buckhurst]

You would not believe how hard I've been searching trying to find the information you've outlined in this fantastic post, thank you.

I want to get a Go for a specific use case, I work in London as a software engineer and have an hour commute every day, an hour which i'd like to make use of doing some casual development. To do this I need a ultra portable device, which is able to run Visual Studio and VS Code, as well as SQL server. Now the Surface Go massively ticks the ultra portable box, but in terms of minimum requirements, it's only powerful enough for VS code (which I could live with), if it was a solid experience, problem is I have no way to prove it as outside of your post, information online has been very sparse.

My plan was to buy it and in the unfortunate event that it wasn't powerful enough to run visual studio return it, however John Lewis (UK) are saying there's no returns due to GDPR (this seems a bit off to me), which means I'd be going in blind, so posts like this one are extremely useful for me.

So for my benefit, I know you've outlined it in your post, but just to clarify further, you're happy having used both Visual Studio and Sql Management studio on your Go and would say the experience is good?

Yes I'm very happy, I reckon the load time is around 30% slower (compared to my i7 desktop) for both SSMS and Visual Studio, but in use I've not noticed any lag. That said, the DB isn't large and the visual studio projects I use are in the range 10-100k lines of code, so quite small. But of course your mileage might vary depending on the size of the SQL db and vs projects.

As was mentioned lower down in this thread, I have restricted SQL's memory to stop it swallowing the entire machine, but from experience, SQL can run really efficiently within a very small amount of memory, after all it's only a few years ago, this spec. would be high end for a server, lol.

If anything, it's the browsers and AV software, that eat the CPU and memory on the device.

 

[je mo]

Travelling in the USA right now and it's been great device on internal flights, hotels and airports. I have movies and music on SD card and using Office 365 in the cloud. For games I have only tried GT Racing but seems to go OK. I also connect to work via Team Viewer to do CAD work or access files if required. For the heavy lifting I still have my SB2 but the ease of portability makes this a winner. 8GB 128 And GB model.

Enza, how is the CAD performance via Team Viewer? Have you actually tried any CAD software installed directly on the Go? The Go seems like the perfect device, but need to see how Sketchup performs on it (8GB model). (And there's no MS Store where I am, so can't try it out)

Anyone out there have any performance reviews with the Go & CAD software. This wouldn't be my main PC, so would be using only fairly light to moderate modelling on it.

 

[Jcmg62]

I'm enjoying it so far. I expected the battery life to be better. It's not bad but I'm probably getting about 5-6 hours. I could squeeze out more if I did some simple battery saving techniques, but I'm never too far away from a charger. I'm extremely glad I got the pen over a keyboard. It has come in handy, especially for navigating certain parts of Windows. I even used it for taking notes at a meeting today which was cool. Eventually I'll load up some books to go along with the various sites I browse on a daily basis.

What ereader do you use? The ones available in the Windows store are terrible and we don't have the edge ereader/windows book store here in the uk

 

[HeyCori]

What ereader do you use? The ones available in the Windows store are terrible and we don't have the edge ereader/windows book store here in the uk

My options aren't much better. My local library subscribes to the Overdrive ebook service. The Overdrive app in the Windows Store is functional but the design and feature set is still from the Windows 8 days. Instead I use their "read in browser" option which supports digital bookmarks so usually it works out fine. I tried the Amazon apps but they were so bad that I haven't went back since.

 

[Jcmg62]

My options aren't much better. My local library subscribes to the Overdrive ebook service. The Overdrive app in the Windows Store is functional but the design and feature set is still from the Windows 8 days. Instead I use their "read in browser" option which supports digital bookmarks so usually it works out fine. I tried the Amazon apps but they were so bad that I haven't went back since.

With the lack e-readers in the windows store, it's really unfortunate that Microsoft haven't rolled out the Edge ebook reader/store to the rest of the world.

They announced the feature nearly 2 years ago and since then it hasn't made it out of the USA. That's poor. Really poor. And a big business failing on their part.

I get that MS can't force the likes of Amazon to make the Kindle app available, but knowing just how bad the e-reader situation is, they really should be doubling down on making the Edge e-reader a global priority.

I don't understand how they can release a device like the Go, which is aimed squarely at the education market, and not ensure that decent e-reader support exists. For a company that says education is important, it's pretty shocking that being able to read books on thier machines doesn't feature as a priority.

Satya Nadella writes a book that cannot be read on devices that his company builds. Bill Gates puts together an annual list of his favourite books that can't be accessed on a Windows device. Irony, thy name is Microsoft.

 

[HeyCori]

I finally had to put the final nail in the coffin for face recognition. It's definitely more miss than hit, at least if you wear particular type of glasses. Usually I either had to move my glasses forward or lift them up to get face recognition to work. Otherwise, it was almost guaranteed to fail. Eventually I realized it's be just as fast if I used the picture option for signing in. Shame we couldn't get a fingerprint sensor like my laptop.

 

[ClintRo]

I have noticed that in portrait orientation, even after additional setup in that mode, that it is not very good and is hit or miss. However in landscape mode it is fast and about 100% of the time.

Sounds like it might be a software issue.

 

[alansoon73]

I was so excited that I bought the 4 GB SG on the first day.

It was ok at first, and then it started sputtering. Everything took longer to load, text input was also lagging on several occasions as background processes took over. Part of the problem is that I need Chrome -- the extensions are important to me. I kept going back from Chrome to Edge, just to get a better performance, but that didn't work out. I tried Firefox, but that too was a bit clumsy.

Calendar, and even Email took too long to work. Multitasking was a chore. Tabs -- even when I had only 3 running -- were shutting off in the background. Gmail was cumbersome on Edge. CPU use would spike to 99%. Disk use would max out. And everything would just lag.

It just felt like a system with too many compromises for how I work.

So I sold it yesterday.

But I want badly to make this work -- I love the size and the fresh approach to computing. So I'm going to pick up an 8 GB today. I hope it makes a difference.

 

[ochhanz]

I was so excited that I bought the 4 GB SG on the first day.

It was ok at first, and then it started sputtering. Everything took longer to load, text input was also lagging on several occasions as background processes took over. Part of the problem is that I need Chrome -- the extensions are important to me. I kept going back from Chrome to Edge, just to get a better performance, but that didn't work out. I tried Firefox, but that too was a bit clumsy.

Calendar, and even Email took too long to work. Multitasking was a chore. Tabs -- even when I had only 3 running -- were shutting off in the background. Gmail was cumbersome on Edge. CPU use would spike to 99%. Disk use would max out. And everything would just lag.

It just felt like a system with too many compromises for how I work.

So I sold it yesterday.

But I want badly to make this work -- I love the size and the fresh approach to computing. So I'm going to pick up an 8 GB today. I hope it makes a difference.

, sounds like Google's software is just really demanding with ram (especially Chrome with certain extensions) and/or maybe doesn't play nice with windows. My guess is that something from Google eats away your ram (4gb is not much so that could really impact your system). There is also the possibility that windows update or some other windows process is using a lot of cpu. You can check both in the task manager (ctr+shift+esc).
I personally don't have a Go but have a Venue 7140 11 pro which is quite similar spec wise (also only 4gb ram) and it works very fluently. Firefox works great, Edge too. I can play some steam/gog games. I can multitask, though I don't have many background processes running (e.g. no email or calender).

Just tried Firefox and opened 14 tabs, they opened quite fast and displayed content normally but it did use ~1600 mb and 90% ram was used.

 

[anon(10524160)]

Bought a Go with 4ram and 128srrorage a few days ago.


I mainly use it when going into town to enjoy a coffee and meanwhile surf / read paper / email


It works great but I do have regular issues with the keyboard not popping up on website / windows / apps.

Example is the official app (Microsoft store) for WhatsApp.

I hope the keyboard bugs will be fixed soon.

But other than that I am enjoying the Go a lot and am happy with this new toy.

 

[Insti Gator]

I finally had to put the final nail in the coffin for face recognition. It's definitely more miss than hit, at least if you wear particular type of glasses. Usually I either had to move my glasses forward or lift them up to get face recognition to work. Otherwise, it was almost guaranteed to fail. Eventually I realized it's be just as fast if I used the picture option for signing in. Shame we couldn't get a fingerprint sensor like my laptop.

Just checking, but you did make sure to re-train the Windows Hello recognition multiple times in different lighting and with your glasses on/off/different positions? I've trained mine 3 times and it is probably 99.9% accurate on the first try..

 

[HeyCori]

Just checking, but you did make sure to re-train the Windows Hello recognition multiple times in different lighting and with your glasses on/off/different positions? I've trained mine 3 times and it is probably 99.9% accurate on the first try..

I did. Glasses on, off, at different angles, home and work.

 

[Zeem Frostmaw]

Never had to adjust my glasses to make Hello work, though mine very rarely slip anyway to be fair.