Surface | Windows Touch & Tablet
Pete Vickers at GUi Innovations has written up a great report about Surface Pro 3 and external disc performance using the Surface Pro 3 Docking Station.
Read the article to see what he found.
External Disc Performance on the Surface Pro 3
Here are some more interesting things to explore.
I finally got my hands on a Surface 3. Here it is (red keyboard) beside my Surface Pro 3 (black keyboard) at the Microsoft Store.
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Keyboard and Typing Experience
You’ll notice that the actual keys on the keyboard appear to be the same size. The difference in width is in the border on the sides of the keys. That border is much slimmer on the Surface 3 keyboard. The Trackpad is about the same width, but not as tall. They trimmed some of the border between the top row of keys and the screen. Overall the typing experience seemed comparable to what you get with the Surface Pro 3 keyboard, and I like that.
Screen
As you can see the Surface 3 screen is nice and bright. I set both machines to Show more tiles on the Start screen. On the Surface 3 you get five rows of medium sized tiles. On the Surface Pro 3 you get six. At a glance the tiles look to be about the same size so if you can read the tiles on the Surface Pro 3, you’ll be fine with the Surface 3. I looked at several of the applications that I use daily and found that the Surface 3 is just as easy to read and work with as the Surface Pro 3. There’s just less to see on the screen, about 11% less. If you are routinely working at the edges of the screen of a Surface Pro 3 you might miss that extra content. But otherwise, you probably won’t.
If you are used to working at a 16:9 aspect ratio [1920 x 1080], the switch to the 3:2 aspect ratio [1920 x 1280] on the Surface 3 will give you 200 pixels more vertical space in which to work. This is a really noticeable difference and it’s a nice change.
Kick Stand
The three position kickstand gives you three very usable viewing angles. I would have preferred that the lowest of these was a little lower, but that’s because I do a lot of work with the Pen on my Surface Pro 3. Still I could see using all three positions and getting lots of productive work done. The lowest setting would be great at a conference where you don’t want your device to be upright like a barrier between you and the other people at the table.
Weight
The Surface 3 is just 1.37 pounds (622 grams). My most demanding application for it will be standing and walking and talking with it. I’ll be using the pen and not the keyboard. I do that now with my Surface Pro 3 and it’s great but from what I could tell, I’m going to really enjoy the Surface 3. It is 6.25 ounces (176 grams) lighter than the Surface Pro 3. That’s a noticeable difference, and I was glad to shed the weight.
Pen Experience
The Surface Team did a great job of carrying the Pen experience from the Surface Pro 3 to the Surface 3. I use OneNote a lot for cursive notes and this wall worked fine. There wasn’t time to test this with drawing applications though, but from what I saw, the experience should be similar.
Performance
I wasn’t expecting great performance with the Quad-core Intel Atom x7-Z8700 processor. I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the Surface 3 demo units with the modest 2 gigabytes of RAM were snappy and responsive. I tried watching some video over the net at full screen. This was really good, and I didn’t notice any lag or hesitation for any of the kinds of things I would do for casual or business use. I didn’t try any video editing or heavy duty graphics, but that’s not what this machine is designed to do.
Wireless Display Adapter
This is almost an after-thought for me, but I noticed and played with the Surface 3 connected to a gigantic monitor using the Microsoft Digital Display. This was a snap to connect and worked very well. I’ll be writing more about that in a few days.
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What do you think of Surface 3? You can read the reviews and most of what I’ve read is that it’s a brilliant little machine. There’s generally some balking at the price, but setting that aside for a minute:
I DO need an all-day full-Windows device. That is, something that will run legacy applications. Previous versions of Surface (not Pro) have given me the all-day experience, and the Surface Pros have given me full-Windows with support for legacy applications. It just seemed that I couldn’t have both.
When I need to be completely portable, and by that I mean walking around with my Surface (any model) in one hand here’s what I’m thinking:
The principle complaint I’m seeing in the reviews is the cost.
I think that the most expensive device is the one you don’t use. Second to that is a device that you need to supplement with another one.
I could use a Surface 3 for a lot things that I do every day. It looks like it will handle my most frequently challenging application (walking around while talking, writing) for hours at a time. And finally free of the nagging concern about battery life, this could be a great device for me.
What do you think? Is there a Surface 3 in your future?
Surface MVP Frank Garcia shared this review from wintablet.info
We Tested the Surface 3 (translation by Microsoft Translator).
Here are a few of the pictures that appear in the review.
Notice the size of the Surface 3 keyboard. The keys are the same size but the keyboard is a little smaller.
And here is a shot of the Surface 3 attached to and on top of a Surface Pro 3 keyboard. This gives you a pretty good idea of the size.
And here are the ports. Micro USB for charging and data, USB, and mini-display port.
Be sure to read the whole review. There’s lots of great first-hand impressions.
We Tested the Surface 3 (translation by Microsoft Translator).
And after you have read the review here are some more interesting things to explore.
Killer Application – a software application so compelling that it drives sales of the hardware.
The Killer Applications that brought me into the world of pen computing were things that let me use a pen, when really – only a pen would do the job. In the early days that was MindManager. It let me create Mind Maps in much the way that I had done for decades only faster and you could edit it later. It was one of the very first Windows (Tablet PC Edition) applications that was fully pen-enabled, and it remains today, one of the best.
Later I found Sketchbook. It’s primarily a tool for visual artists but I’ve been using it since it’s introduction as way to naturally express ideas both visual and conceptual. It’s super fast to learn; just like a pen on a paper napkin only it is pressure sensitive, has endless options for pens and colours, and layers. Just last night I was trying to help a friend understand sound dispersion in a horizontal plane. After waving my arms around for a couple of minutes it was clear that I needed to approach this in a different way. I switched modes and pulled out my Surface Pro 3 and drew a simple sketch of the concept in under a minute. He understood immediately.
OneNote is another tool that was pen-enabled from the start. say that the pen and paper model is dead and with that, so too is the idea of notebooks and tabs and pages. Well I don’t see OneNote as an analog to paper based notebooks of past, but as a natural form of organization. With that you get all the benefits of linking, embedding, and editing that you expect. In addition you get to do annotation with the pen, and amazingly, you can search and find key words and phrases that you wrote with the pen.
Killer Applications are the ones that make me reach for my Surface Pen. These are the applications I use daily, and I just glanced down and noticed that all them are pinned to my Taskbar.
Do you have any Surface killer applications?
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Okay – you might be expecting a side by side comparison of Surface 3 to Surface Pro 3 or Surface 2. I might do that later, perhaps in May when they are shipping. For now you can join me as I look at this picture and try to imagine how much smaller the Surface 3 will feel compared to the Surface Pro 3.
Back to Side By Side
I’d like to think about working two-up: that is working with two machines side by side. I like to work with multiple screens. I do that now with my Surface Pro 3 and my Surface Pro 2. I run Mouse Without Borders (a virtual keyboard and mouse sharing application) that gives me most of the utility of running a single machine with an external monitor, AND I have both processors working for me. This is great when I’m doing solid heads-down work at a remote location. Usually I’m doing research or viewing outcomes on one machine and creating content on the other. I can imagine using the Surface Pro 3 and Surface 3 side by side. Assuming that I won’t have to think about power management with the Surface 3 I’d probably use the keyboard on the Surface 3 and use the Power Cover with the Surface Pro 3. That should get me through a very long day of remote work.
I don’t want to suggest that the Surface 3 or Surface Pro 3 are not up to the task of productive work alone. It’s just that I really like to have a couple of screens going for certain kinds of work. The portable monitors that I’ve seen are expensive, heavy, and have much lower screen resolution than I want for this application. To get anything comparable to the Surface 3, you’d have to spend nearly the same money, and then you’d still just have a monitor not a second computer.
I’m thinking that a Surface 3 would make a great companion for my Surface Pro 3 for those side-by-side applications. I would get much longer battery life than I get with the Surface Pro 2 I’m using now. And how nice it would be that they use the same Pen.
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I have my Surface Pro 3 and I recently picked up a couple of Surface Battery Covers. Each one of these gives me a couple more hours of run time away from AC power. And while it’s great to be able to do that it doesn’t mean that I get to relax and forget about the battery life issue. It just means that I get to think about it in a different way. I have to charge up the Battery Covers and I have to think about when I will carry them around.
One of the great things about the Surface and Surface 2 was the battery life. Hours and hours or worry free computing. And I’ve often wished that my original Surface had a Pen and could run legacy applications. Surface 3 addresses all three of these concerns: run-time, full Windows with support for legacy applications, and the Pen.
Weighty considerations
When I know that I’m going to be working away from AC power I take my Surface Pro 3 and one or both of the Power covers. Now here’s food for thought. The Surface 3 weighs just a little over 3 ounces more than the Power Cover. Could I take a Surface 3 instead of the Power Cover that I use do extend the run time of the Surface Pro 3?
On days when I need very long run time I could carry both Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 and use the Surface 3 for all but the most intensive applications and fire up the Surface Pro 3 when I need the processing power.
Would I really carry both? Not all the time, and for those situations where I’m primarily in consumption mode (reading music, doing research, writing documents) I’m thinking that the Surface 3 will do the job.
I use OneNote for a lot of my note taking and music related tasks. And for other applications I use OneDrive. Keeping files synchronized is easy.
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Silence is Golden
No fan! I want to see how well the Surface 3 performs for one application where silence is golden: audio recording. I found that the original Surface Pro, Surface Pro 2, and Surface Pro 3 were all fine for audio recording using high-end external microphones and USB interfaces, but for critical recordings you can’t have even the whisper quiet fan of the Surface Pro units in the background.
Aspect Ratio 3:2 and 200 pixels.
Surface 3 will have the same as 3:2 aspect ratio as Surface Pro 3 and for the 1 0.8” inch screen the resolution: 1920 x 1280 should be a good fit. The Surface 2 was 1920 x 1080 so we’ll be getting another 200 pixels of usable screen height. That’s more reading and writing without scrolling. This is a much more natural aspect ratio when working in portrait mode. It’s much more like working on paper. The comparison to paper may not seem relevant but it makes a difference when reading documents (and sheet music). I noticed a huge jump in my productivity with the 3:2 aspect ratio and I’m very happy to see this in the Surface 3.
I was concerned about the 3-position kickstand compared to the continuously variable kickstand of the Surface Pro 3 but from the pictures that I’ve seen it looks like the lowest position will work fine for using the Pen – and that’s very important to me. 
That also looks like the angle that I use when I’m doing presentations on a podium. I think that’s going to work just fine.
More ideas about how I work with the Surface Pro 3 and how the Surface 3 might have a bearing on that over the next few days.
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Just announced today, the Surface 3 and I’m excited.
Click the picture to read the announcement on the Surface Blog.
My first inclination was: I don’t need this – I have the Surface Pro 3 with Intel® Core™ i7. But as I thought about it, there is something very appealing about a smaller, lighter, long-running device that can run full Windows AND use the Pen. The Pen is for me the killer-application of this type of device. I know it’s not an application but the Pen is the reason that I will take a Surface Pro (any model) over other portable computing devices. And for me, the Pen is the make/break aspect of the Surface 3. And thank you Microsoft for making it the same Pen as the one I use with my Surface Pro 3.
I have some very specific applications where size, weight, and battery life are bigger priorities than the raw processing power or storage I have with my Surface Pro 3. So I’m really looking forward to using the Surface 3.
This looks like it will be a great device for students and for people who are looking for a long lasting productivity device that can run legacy applications (full Windows 8.1-10 and legacy applications). I was concerned about the Atom processor but this is the Quad-core Intel® Atom™ x7 processor that is supposed to deliver 80% of the processing power of the Core i3 found in the entry level Surface Pro 3. This should be plenty of power for a lot of what I do: working in Office, writing, browsing the web, using the Pen for Mind Maps, mark-up and drawings.
Check back in over the next few days as I’m thinking out loud about the Surface 3.
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I just picked up a couple of Surface Power Covers. They were on sale and it seemed to be good value to get them now. I run long Skype sessions with screen sharing and these chew up battery life. The Surface Power Covers help with that.
If you follow the instructions and remove the warning label on the connector, the Surface Power Cover works with Surface Pro 3 as well as the Surface Pro 2, Surface Pro, and Surface 2. It will work as a keyboard only for a Surface (RT) – the original.
You have to do a Windows Update to install the drivers that allow you to see all the battery information described in this article.
The typing experience is pretty much the same as the original type cover and that’s a good experience. The overall experience is better with the Surface Pro 3 type cover with the bigger touch pad. But when battery life is a priority, I’ll make the sacrifice.
The early reports about usability of the touch pad have been alleviated by firmware updates that work on both Surface Pro and Surface Pro 3. That is, you can:
This pretty eliminates my need to use the buttons on the bottom of the touch pad except when I need to do a right-click drag.
I was concerned about the weight, but if I need longer battery life, I’m probably stationery. Walking around in tablet mode is a secondary concern. Traveling around I’ve found that the weight is no more a burden than carrying the power supply and it fits better in my carrying case. It’s a relief not to be looking for power outlets before I stake out territory in a room
The Power Cover can charge the Surface while the Surface is in sleep or standby mode. That means that if I’m in an all day session where I need to walk around with the Surface, when I’m on a break, I can snap on the Power Cover and charge the Surface just like I would take those opportunities to connect it to a charger, only now I don’t need to find an AC outlet.
Here’s an excerpt from the article above describing the charging sequence.
Charging sequence
The Surface and Power Cover batteries are charged and discharged in a sequence designed to keep most of the charge on the Surface battery. Understanding the sequence makes it easier to predict how much charge to expect on each of the batteries.
Which battery gets charged first?
Once Surface is 80% charged, it starts charging the Power Cover. Then, when Power Cover is 80% charged, Surface finishes charging. When Surface is fully charged, Power Cover finishes charging. Power Cover will charge as long as Surface is turned on (sleep is fine) and connected to a power source, and Power Cover is connected to Surface.
How the batteries charge.
Which battery is used first?
When you’re using Surface and Power Cover and the Surface isn’t connected to a power source, Surface draws power from Power Cover first. When the Power Cover battery is drained, Surface switches to its own battery.
Power Cover continues to charge your Surface while it is in sleep or on standby. If Surface is turned off and unplugged, or the Surface battery is completely drained, it can’t detect the Power Cover or draw power from it.
If the battery on the Power Cover is completely drained, you can still use it as a keyboard.
So far, I’m very pleased with the Power Covers.
I have the Surface Pro and Surface Pro3 docking stations. It’s easy to connect the Power Cover to the Surface while docked, and that’s convenient for charging the Power Cover as long as the Surface is in sleep or hibernation mode. It doesn’t charge when the Surface is off.
Battery Life?
From what I can see using BatteryBar, it looks like the Power Cover offers about 29 mWh to the 42 mWh to the internal battery in the Suface Pro3 for a total of about 71 mWh. I haven’t had occasion to exhaust the system to find out how long that actually lasts, but from what I’ve seen that should be more than enough to get me through 7 or 8 hours of connected work. That’s pushing hard.
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