Surface Pro 3 i3/64GB owners: is it enough?

[Wilbur Schitzel]

Anybody that owns the i3/64GB Surface Pro 3, I'd love to know what your impressions are so far. Does the i3 have enough horsepower for your work? Are you ever pulling your hair out because of the lack of hard drive space?

I've got a chance to get one with the keyboard from a friend for a mere $500. Tempting, but the i3 and 64GB concern me.

 

[xandros9]

64 GB Pro 2 here. As long as games and heavy things aren't tossed on it, it'll be fine.
I have an SD card for my games, and the main drive took Illustrator and a lot of OneDrive files. Still a bit cramped, but as long as it isn't a main PC, it'll be fine. (although if something like a 128 GB card came into play, that would change it)

Havent touched an i3 since the Pro 2 only came with an i5 model.
However, I did use the weaker, fanless Atom (Bay-Trail, so current gen) on another device. It worked well, was speedy enough for my Office and gaming needs (Starcraft II ran surprisingly well) but I didn't really push it with much other intensive activities like video editing.
I imagine the i3 to be perfectly adequate for casual use.

 

[Harrie-S]

Please also see this thread it may help. http://forums.windowscentral.com/mi...ng-i-have-unlimited-onedrive-plus-hds-sd.html

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

I read that thread, but there where no actual owners of the device. I'm looking for actual users, not what non-users assume.

Now if the guy who posted that thread bought the i3/64GB and could comment...

 

[maflynn]

I think you're going to run into issues with storage.
For instance, I used the DU command on my C drive (part of the Sysinternals Suite). The results are below

Du v1.5 - report directory disk usage
Copyright (C) 2005-2013 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

11 c:\$RECYCLE.BIN
359,785 c:\$Windows.~BT
76,347 c:\acroldr
27 c:\Intel
7,158,196 c:\Program Files
4,101,077 c:\Program Files (x86)
2,653,412 c:\ProgramData
218 c:\temp
1,076 c:\uninstall
24,832,201 c:\Users
11,894,882 c:\Windows
Files: 148330
Directories: 35312
Size: 52,306,259,005 bytes
Size on disk: 52,424,326,944 bytes

This is not including the 5GB of space used for recovery partition (which you obviously can remove) and you're talking about 57GB of used storage.
I have office, PS and Lightroom and a couple of other apps installed. That's it.

My point is, you don't want to spend a lot of money on a brand new computer only to be dealing with constrained storage from day one and onward.

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

I'm using a laptop with a AMD A10 Quad-Core right now and I'm happy enough with it. I'm assuming the i3 will give me similar performance as the A10 is from 2013 and it spec'd well below the 2013 i5.

So I guess the main issue is the storage capacity. I won't use PS or Lightroom, bit will add Office Pro to it. I just re-installed Win8.1 +Office on my old laptop and it took 30GB. So based on maflynn's numbers, that leaves me 27GB left. Hmmm...

 

[pgg101]

Anybody that owns the i3/64GB Surface Pro 3, I'd love to know what your impressions are so far. Does the i3 have enough horsepower for your work? Are you ever pulling your hair out because of the lack of hard drive space?

I've got a chance to get one with the keyboard from a friend for a mere $500. Tempting, but the i3 and 64GB concern me.

I'm very happy with the speed of my SP3. As for storage, a bit of an issue I guess, but not a huge deal due to OneDrive, SD Card, and an external drive that I have connected to my router. I use it for MS Office, some financial industry related software, and Sonos.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android on my BlackBerry Passport

 

[onlysublime]

It just depends on how long you plan to keep the machine and how much work you do on the machine.

If you want to keep the machine for a very long time and want to use it as your primary machine, then 64 GB is definitely not enough. But if it's a secondary machine or a light work machine (i.e., you only use Word), then it's fine. Remember that Modern apps can only be installed on drive C. A memory card will not help. Install things like games (some Modern games can take 2 GB each, let alone traditional Windows games which can take multiple GBs even though traditional Windows software can be installed on other drives besides C, Adobe software, etc., and that space will disappear quickly.

If you're using it as a lightweight computer or as a tablet where you're okay with constantly installing and uninstalling software over time, then you could live with a 64 GB machine. People with tablets kind of treat software as disposable. People with computers tend to focus on certain software and keep it forever.

Get what you can afford now if you plan on keeping the machine a long time. It's not like you can swap out the SSD storage on the SP3. What you get is what you'll have forever. The microSD on the SP3 maxes out at 128 GB (though technically Microsoft certifies it for 64 GB because of the unreliable nature of microSD cards at higher capacities), and again, you can't install Modern apps on the memory card.

OneDrive helps things out a bit but you need a great connection to make it feel seamless or smooth. I back up a lot to OneDrive, including videos. People complain to me the videos I share on OneDrive buffer a lot or take time to get sharp (you know, it's kind of blurry until it's buffered enough to be sharp) compared to the other services I use (though I stick mostly to OneDrive and Youtube for video storage due to the vast capacities I have on those).

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

Thanks to all who replied. I've got a lot to think about.

 

[Harrie-S]

Thanks to all who replied. I've got a lot to think about.

Please see this post.
http://forums.windowscentral.com/ma...pro-3-128gb-keyboard-pen-excellent-shape.html

 

[Coreldan]

i3 owner here. The SDD space makes for a bit of "thinking". It hasnt really been a huge problem. With a fast enough MicroSD card you run quite a bit of software just fine if you want to avoid installing to the SDD. I typically just keep most stuff saved in the cloud to also save space (and obviously so that they're available on all devices).

Horsepower has definitely been enough and even much more. I constantly keep wondering how sometimes the SP3 outpaces my gaming PC sporting 3,5ghz hexcore. The SSD does a lot, though. But I don't do any heavy software like.. CAD or Photoshops and whatnot, so I guess it largely depends for that. What comes to the PC usage of vast majority of people, the SP3 i3 has enough power and ALOT to spare.

I do wish it would've had that 128gb of SDD space so I wouldn't have to worry that much about not installing much on the SDD, but you kinda have to ask yourself if you can go around the "challenge". If for whatever reason you need a lot of software installed and a lot of local files, maybe you need more space at least, but once again a higher class MicroSD card often comes cheaper than bumping up to next SP3 model.

EDIT: Skimmed over some other posts here and figured I mentioned that for me the SP3 is my PC and laptop on the go while my home PC is what I use at home for the most parts. Don't own other laptops/tablets so the SP3 is in that way my secondary machine, but honestly, I don't think I own anything that I'm as fond of as my Surface Pro 3. I've had it for quite a while now and I still just find myself staring at it and going like "damn, this thing is so awesome". I use it regularly as laptop, regularly as tablet, regularly as touch enabled laptop and the pen everywhere with me and the SP3, it's an integral part of the experience! Love it!

I've had mine since august last year I think, still have 26gb free SDD space. But it's true that you kinda have to think about the available storage from day one and some don't want to do that. That said, filling up 128gb isn't much harder.

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

Thanks for your input Coreldan. I decided to take the plunge with the i3/64GB. Couldn't pass up $500. Typing on it right now as a matter of fact. Hopefully in 6 months I'll still be a happy camper.

 

[Vistaus]

Forme, the i3 is plenty fast! No matter what I throw at it: games (though I must admit I'm not a 'real' gamer), Office or lots of Windows Store apps. It's only when I ran Chrome for a while last year that there was freezing and lagging and stuff. But once I plunged Chrome, nothing has ever slowed it down so far. As for the 64 GB: I keep all of my documents and photos on OneDrive, most of my music on a MicroSD card (inserted into the SP3 MicroSD slot) and other non-important stuff on my external HDD. I just open up documents and photos from OneDrive (through Office 2013, Explorer or Modern UI apps). So plenty of room for apps and games on that 64 GB, more than enough for me

 

[3earnhardt3]

Make sure to update your thread in 6 months or so with the answer to your original question! IMO, the i3 series of processors are very underrated. Most people think they are low-end, but forget that the intel series goes i7>i5>i3 and CoreM>Pentium>Celeron>Atom.

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

I'll try my best to remember. I really haven't had too much time with it, but so far it's a bit snappier than my HP laptop that I had. It had an AMD A10 w/ 6GB RAM and 240GB SSD HD. So far I'm pleased with the i3, but only time will tell. Although the Surface takes longer to boot if its turned off. The HP would boot in 6 seconds flat. The Surface takes about 10-12. Not that 10-12 seconds is slow...just thought it would be a quick as the AMD.

The HD space is another issue. We'll see. So far I'm still giddy.

 

[Grodelj]

So, what are your thoughts now after half a year?

 

[pgg101]

So, what are your thoughts now after half a year?

Still happy with mine. 20gb of space left. No issues or lag with Win10. Battery life is not as good as it once was but not terrible either.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android on my BlackBerry Passport

 

[Grodelj]

Still happy with mine. 20gb of space left. No issues or lag with Win10. Battery life is not as good as it once was but not terrible either.

Posted via the Windows Central App for Android on my BlackBerry Passport

Thanks for the info, my surface 2 died, so I'm going for SP3 i3 probably.

 

[Wilbur Schitzel]

So far so good. I've really enjoyed it... although there was one time that I was jonesing for a little extra HD space. I wanted to dual boot Win10, and just didn't have the capacity to do it with the 64GB. Just gave me a lesson in patience waiting for Win10 to release.

 

[vodda]

Just a quick question for those that have i3 CPU in their SP3...

How is the web surfing, office and visual studio experience? I've read it might have some problem handling such a big screen resolution? I currently own asus T100TA, but the screen size is too small and dont wanna overdo on the SP3 so thinking of getting a nice cheap used i3 model...