*** The Official Microsoft Surface Thread ***

How much of an improvement is the pro 2 over the original pro?

I don't care about battery life, all I want is a nice tablet/ultra book and to be able to edit videos via premiere and maybe light gaming, specifically league of legends.

This is a great price and I'm very interested this.
 
The kick stand is a good upgrade on the Pro 2.

Apart from battery life there is very little in them.

Performance wise they are quite close, the Pro 2 has better graphics but I think a slightly slower clocked CPU.
 
ravl585 said:
How much of an improvement is the pro 2 over the original pro?

I don't care about battery life, all I want is a nice tablet/ultra book and to be able to edit videos via premiere and maybe light gaming, specifically league of legends.

This is a great price and I'm very interested this.
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If battery life is irrelevant then I'd see no reason not to save your money and go for the Surface Pro rather than the 2. The cost difference is now so great as to make pretty much anything short of a total design flaw meaningless, IMO.
 
I mistakenly purchased an Android tablet last year, which has had the least use of any technological gadget I've ever purchased, as it's slow, unresponsive, and had a shocking battery life!

I have a decent Android phone (S4) which can do the "on the go" stuff kind of OK, but I don't always want to carry around my full laptop with me for doing proper stuff.

The Surface Pro always looked good to me - a proper processor, a decent amount of memory, and most importantly, running a proper operating system.


This current offer, putting the 64gb one at £359 (less if Quidco tracks) is quite crazy, and it's worth considering...

I guess my question (after this rambling) is whether the MicroSD card slot can be utilised properly as additional storage for apps/games, and what kind of speeds could I expect?

I would have some things I'd like on there permanently, but the ~30gb usable space available might be limiting... Else, I'd be looking for a small but fast USB3 drive I can leave plugged in - but that then limits the usage of the USB port for anything else.
 
Well I have ordered the £359 64GB one as I have been after a tablet / laptop for ages. I also bought a small Android tablet and was very disappointed in the speed, responsiveness and the touch screen. It has basically sat around doing nothing.

Other than slightly low battery life, the surface pro looks perfect, especially for the price. My quidco has not tracked yet which is a little disappointing, but even without the £50 from quidco, £359 still seems very reasonable.
 
satchef1 said:
The Asus T100 runs an Atom Z3740. The Surface 2 runs Tegra 4. Benchmarks put both machines on a fairly equal footing (each wining a few benchmarks while drawing on the majority). Battery tests rank the two machines around the 10 hour mark. The biggest differences are the price (I got my T100 for £300 with keyboard dock, while the Surface 2 is £359 without keyboard), quality of materials (the Surface trounces the Asus - better screen, better build quality) and OS (Windows 8.1 vs Windows 8.1 RT).

Why write the Asus off just because Intel attached the Atom brand to the CPU? It's quite a capable machine - Source games run without bother, and I've had a couple of games of Civ V on it without much trouble. It's able to keep pace with the Surface 2, yet is more flexible on account of being able to run full Windows programs.

I wouldn't be surprised to see the next Surface running a Cherry Trail chip rather than an ARM-based processor. If Bay Trail is the sign of things to come then Windows RT is dead. It is rendered pointless by Intel being able to compete on power-per-watt.
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Actually you're looking at 12-14 hours for the surface 2. It's currently at the top of the leaderboard on engadget with about 14.5 hours, about an hour more than the iPad and about 3-4 hours more than the best of the rest.

As you mention, the surface trounced the Asus in build and screen (screen especially!) And that's a major factor for a lot of people, me included. As an aside are there any atom tablets with 1080p+ screens around?
 
Amp34 said:
Actually you're looking at 12-14 hours for the surface 2. It's currently at the top of the leaderboard on engadget with about 14.5 hours, about an hour more than the iPad and about 3-4 hours more than the best of the rest.

As you mention, the surface trounced the Asus in build and screen (screen especially!) And that's a major factor for a lot of people, me included. As an aside are there any atom tablets with 1080p+ screens around?
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There's one that's 330 quid, baytrail quad, 1080p.

Think it's the Omni 10.

Build quality won't touch surface though.
 
I'm on my new Surface Pro now. It's excellent in Metro mode but I have had quite a few issues with poorly scaling desktop apps so far. The battery life is noticeably poor but considering the price it's hard to quibble :)

I can see myself getting a successor as my next main machine at this rate. Impressive stuff!
 
Just picked up a 64Gb Surface RT for $210 from the MS store here, figured with the kickstand it'll make a great Skype tablet for my in-laws to stay in touch while the wife and I are in the UK for the summer.

Is there a way to disable the desktop completely I wonder? They are total n00bs so will likely just have 4 or 5 icons (all metro) on the start screen and zero need to drop to the desktop. I'll remove the shortcut of course but they might still manage to get there and I'll get a call of how to get back :p (press windows key ofc but...)
 
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Well so far so good. I have now got the Surfgace Pro and as a bonus it did eventually track on Quidco as well, so that is looking promising.

The Surface itself is lovely, and the Pen is a nice feature, not too sure about the touch cover, I will give it some more time but so far I am not too impressed. It does work but it is not that good. And I do miss my function keys. I wish those keys worked in the normal manner and you had to use the “Fn” key to access the secondary functions.

One other slight annoyance is that once you install a browser other than IE and make it the default you lose the metro IE as well. This seems a little bit of an odd choice as when I am using it as a tablet it makes more sense to use IE in metro mode than any other browser.

Other than those slight annoyances it seems very good so far. It is very quick and responsive, boot time is very impressive and overall it is very slick.
 
Amp34 said:
Actually you're looking at 12-14 hours for the surface 2. It's currently at the top of the leaderboard on engadget with about 14.5 hours, about an hour more than the iPad and about 3-4 hours more than the best of the rest.

As you mention, the surface trounced the Asus in build and screen (screen especially!) And that's a major factor for a lot of people, me included. As an aside are there any atom tablets with 1080p+ screens around?
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Apologies. The figures I was looking at were from a review on Anandtech. Still, your original point was that Atom tablets are pointless. They clearly aren't. There's a decent amount of power on offer with battery life well within 'acceptable' limits. There's definitely room for improvement were quality of materials are concerned, but is that really any surprise given the manufacturers that are producing them? Dell, Asus, Acer, Toshiba and HP are renowned for their 'race to the bottom' mentality.

I'd be willing to put money on Surface 3 or Surface 4 being Atom powered. It just makes no sense to continue working on Windows RT if OEMs have abandoned the platform and Intel is supplying similar performance-per-watt. It's an unnecessary expense and a solution that offers less value to consumers.
 
Porkie said:
The Surface itself is lovely, and the Pen is a nice feature, not too sure about the touch cover, I will give it some more time but so far I am not too impressed. It does work but it is not that good. And I do miss my function keys. I wish those keys worked in the normal manner and you had to use the “Fn” key to access the secondary functions.
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Yeah, I am also unsure about the touch cover. Oddly I think I find the on-screen keyboard easier to type on - it seems more sensitive!!

One other slight annoyance is that once you install a browser other than IE and make it the default you lose the metro IE as well. This seems a little bit of an odd choice as when I am using it as a tablet it makes more sense to use IE in metro mode than any other browser.
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Yep, I've run up against that too :p I use Chrome on the desktop but would prefer to have IE in Metro, at least until Chrome supports it properly. The default browser behaviour must be a bug as it's pretty illogical. Hopefully they'll fix it soon!

Right now I've got the tablet connected to a USB keyboard and mouse and an external monitor, and it's pretty similar to using a laptop other than where programs have issues with the Windows 8 multi-monitor support. It's not without flaws but on the whole I like it :) Particularly for the price! :cool:
 
satchef1 said:
Apologies. The figures I was looking at were from a review on Anandtech. Still, your original point was that Atom tablets are pointless. They clearly aren't. There's a decent amount of power on offer with battery life well within 'acceptable' limits. There's definitely room for improvement were quality of materials are concerned, but is that really any surprise given the manufacturers that are producing them? Dell, Asus, Acer, Toshiba and HP are renowned for their 'race to the bottom' mentality.

I'd be willing to put money on Surface 3 or Surface 4 being Atom powered. It just makes no sense to continue working on Windows RT if OEMs have abandoned the platform and Intel is supplying similar performance-per-watt. It's an unnecessary expense and a solution that offers less value to consumers.
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I guess the big question is going to be whether atom is going to be affordable relative to ARM. At the moment the cost of Atom tablets are about the same as the surface 2 but are significantly poorer built, that would indicate to me that costs are higher elsewhere, whether that be a full Windows licence cost over RT (not sure what the costs are) or underlying hardware costs (such as the Atom processor and MB). Personally I think they missed a trick with the RT software, it should have been more tablet centric (ie no desktop view) to properly distinguish it from the pro.
 
It arrived this afternoon. They must have a warehouse full of unsold Surface Pros - the lot code indicates it was made in May 2013. The battery was flat as a pancake, and the system clock was consequently massively out so it was refusing to get Windows Updates until I twigged what it was.

It boots very very quickly, performance is excellent. Touch cover is better than I was expecting.

No idea on battery life yet as it's still charging!

Firmware updates are on, now time for Windows 8.1...
 
arty said:
I'm on my new Surface Pro now. It's excellent in Metro mode but I have had quite a few issues with poorly scaling desktop apps so far. The battery life is noticeably poor but considering the price it's hard to quibble :)

I can see myself getting a successor as my next main machine at this rate. Impressive stuff!
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With regards to poor desktop scaling, have you upgraded to Windows 8.1 as the scaling did improve with that I believe.
 
Amp34 said:
I guess the big question is going to be whether atom is going to be affordable relative to ARM. At the moment the cost of Atom tablets are about the same as the surface 2 but are significantly poorer built, that would indicate to me that costs are higher elsewhere, whether that be a full Windows licence cost over RT (not sure what the costs are) or underlying hardware costs (such as the Atom processor and MB). Personally I think they missed a trick with the RT software, it should have been more tablet centric (ie no desktop view) to properly distinguish it from the pro.
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It's certainly a question, though there's not a lot of insight to be had in comparing RRPs. The PC OEMs are renowned for setting unrealistic RRPs and then slashing prices as supply increases. It is a tactic that they are certainly maintaining with Bay Trail tablets. Where supply is good, the actual retail price of these tablets are way below the price Surface 2.
 
Lucifurr said:
With regards to poor desktop scaling, have you upgraded to Windows 8.1 as the scaling did improve with that I believe.
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Yes, as far as I know I'm on the latest now. Even in some MS programs I get strange behaviour, like blurriness and taking over the screen in desktop mode now and then.

It feels a bit like a beta desktop OS, but I really like the Metro interface. The multitasking panes are such a good idea :)
 
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