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Microsoft Announces Intel Atom-Based Surface 3 With Windows 8.1 for $499

2IS said:
Your post was worded in a very negative light which seemed to suggest anyone who decides to buy a windows device will be in for a world of hurt and so lost that they wouldn't be able to navigate their way around the OS. I felt it necessary to clear the air. I mean, if you had THAT much trouble with Windows 8, and I didn't, then the difference is with the operator. I doubt your copy of windows 8 functioned differently than my copy of Windows 8.
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Nah, my post didn't suggest anything. I spoke of how Windows is/was. And you're so defensive over Windows. And it's painfully obvious you didn't really read what I wrote. So tell me Sir, what exactly did I say about Windows 8 in terms of it giving me trouble? NOTHING. Go back and read before you accuse me of not knowing how to operate the system. All I said was I didn't care for the tiles. Are they are not there? Good gracious. This forum...:rolleyes:
 
ThisIsNotMe said:
In terms of what I quoted, this offers professional users no added productivity over an iPad other than screen size.

The target market is the same regardless of it running 'windows' apps. Its not like you are going to be running pivot tables on a 1 million row Excel file on this thing.
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No added productivity? How about multitasking? Ubiquitous file system? Or even the ability to add attachments to an email reply?

How many iPad users who are professionals do NOT have a laptop?
 
Pro User?

ThisIsNotMe said:
In terms of what I quoted, this offers professional users no added productivity over an iPad other than screen size.
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There does appear to be a lot of confusion regarding the Surface line-up and who it caters to. I thought I'd chime in with my own tale.
Just to get this out of the way, I'm no MS fan. I've been an Apple boy since 2005.

I work in Game/Web dev. In the past I've had to rely on my Macbook Air with wacom tablet, pen etc for remote working, working on a plane etc - and I spend a lot of time on planes.
It's been a pain in the arse to use that set-up in limited space but you get by.
Since the iPad was released I've wanted it to become more than a content device. I've tried every App, stylus etc to work that way but it's never going to happen.
It's just not that type of machine.

Zip forward to Dec 2014 and after a month of research I decided to try a Surface. If it didn't work out, refund and no harm done.
Since purchasing my Pro 3 (i5, 128Gb, 4Gb Ram) I've yet to put it down. My MacBook Air is gathering dust and my iPad has been relegated to a Kindle / Netflix tablet.
Why?
It runs Photoshop, C++ IDE - Now Visual Studio, Reason, Monkey, Texture Packer, Tiled, DropBox etc. without any hiccups at all. No crashes, no driver issues and at the end of the day that's all I need.
The Pen and Photoshop is the dream team for me. Granted it's not wacom excellence but it's still incredible. It's totally changed the way I work. Add OneNote to that for jotting down ideas, sketches on the fly and the Surface has become the only device I put in my bag.

Few niggles. Windows. I've not used it since XP. From all the horror stories I've heard it's fine. It works. It runs the apps I need to do my job.
No iPad is ever going to do that.
No MacBook will ever replace a wacom tablet.

Microsoft have made (and I dearly hope will continue to make) these amazing devices. If they'd just package it with the damn type cover already!

So next time anyone is wondering who the Surface line-up is aimed at, take a look at the Pro Creative types that Apple has been quietly neglecting for years.
 
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2IS said:
You're either doing something wrong, or this is a made up story. I've never seen 8.1 being almost unusable with 4GB of ram.
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It just part of the litany of surface/windows fabalism. I am impressed to see
some positive reponse to the surface here. Its a preyy good product--especially if you need digitizer pen
 
2IS said:
You're either doing something wrong, or this is a made up story. I've never seen 8.1 being almost unusable with 4GB of ram.
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Heck it runs pretty damn smoothly on 1gb of RAM. Lol even the iPhone 6 stutters with 1gb RAM, it's a bit comical that a full windows OS runs smoother than iOS on the same amount of RAM. Don't even get me started on how many internet tabs I can have open with that measly 1gb of RAM.
 
SAIRUS said:
So 64 gb is how much of actual formatted user space? OSes are starting to take up more and more space. Even you iOS 8.

(Yes I know, its bound to)
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The smallest hard drive on any MS tablet has more space leftover with a full OS than the ipad with its 16gb drive and a mobile OS
 
2IS said:
Your post was worded in a very negative light which seemed to suggest anyone who decides to buy a windows device will be in for a world of hurt and so lost that they wouldn't be able to navigate their way around the OS. I felt it necessary to clear the air. I mean, if you had THAT much trouble with Windows 8, and I didn't, then the difference is with the operator. I doubt your copy of windows 8 functioned differently than my copy of Windows 8.
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Don't trouble yourself too much. Some on here are just very nasty for some reason, we don't have any insights into anyone's personal lives or what drives them and that's probably a good thing. It's odd to me that someone just doesn't say "I don't like X or Y" and leave it at that, instead having to intersperse how they are being persecuted when really they are the ones who relentlessly fight an enemy who doesn't even exist.

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ani4ani said:
The smallest hard drive on any MS tablet has more space leftover with a full OS than the ipad with its 16gb drive and a mobile OS
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Don't forget WIMboot that will be used with Win10. Don't quote me, but a full windows installation this way will take about 4gb. I might be wrong, but doesn't iOS8 take about 4gb of space as well? It's fascinating to me that MS continues to move forward in almost every space, yet Apple remains the same in many of them.
 
I will seriously think about this. I do wonder if the pen works the same way as the pro line. (pressure sensitivity)

Black Magic said:
The problem with Microsoft is the fact they keep clinging to old technology and wants everyone to use computers the same old way. Basically, they won't give up on Windows and alter in ways it needs to be. Perfect example is the fact that this model will come with 64 GB or so but the fact that over time Windows updates will hog up all the space. The WinSXS folder will keep piling up with monthly patches until someone with technical experience cleans it up for the end user.

Microsoft still doesn't get it and never will.
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Why would they give up something that works?
 
Minimum RAM for Photoshop is 2GB, but 8GB is recommended, so PS won't be optimized by a long shot on this unit.

Probably would be fine for lighter weight fare such as word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, etc. Plus internet consumption, of course.

Storage not overwhelming but external would make it usable for business application.

Not bad looking but seems to me kind of an ambiguous product. If you love Windows, though, it would be a good alternative to IOS.
 
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paulsdenton said:
Minimum RAM for Photoshop is 2GB, but 8GB is recommended, so PS won't be optimized by a long shot on this unit.

Probably would be fine for lighter weight fare such as word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, etc. Plus internet consumption, of course.

Storage not overwhelming but external would make it usable for business application.

Not bad looking but seems to me kind of an ambiguous product. If you love Windows, though, it would be a good alternative to IOS.
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Photoshop works fine for light use on the previous generation Baytrail. I don't think very large files would work well, but I never tried. But I have done plenty of work in PS on my windows tablets over the years. It works surprisingly well.
 
the fact it showed the Surface running Minecraft says it all... even with 4GB of Ram you would struggle with the amount of processing power and local memory on offer.

I demoed Need For Speed on the Surface Pro 3 when it launched and that even began to skip and have input lag, this would stand no chance.
 
I dont deslike windows but I´ve been using macs since 2001 and I like very much the ecosystem MacBook Air/Ipad/Iphone/AppleTV but I love photography and the champion of mobile phone photography is(was) Nokia and I had a Lumia 1020 and just replaced with Lumia 930 and I really like the windows OS. Its fluid and fast and straight foward, live tiles. Of course there are some down sides like every other OS. The câmera is superb. Rich zoom. One Drive integration is amazing. Skype is going to be integrated on the new Windows Mobile 10 messaging native app. One of the things that holds me to IOS is that my whole family have iphones and I live in Europe and we do FaceTime everyday!!!
 
Makosuke said:
It's an impressive price, but it looks incredibly chunky compared to an iPad.
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Perhaps we need to look back at posts here, about the 1st few iPad Models, and see if everyone here was complaining about how "Incredibly Chunky" they were as devices.
 
Nevaborn said:
the fact it showed the Surface running Minecraft says it all... even with 4GB of Ram you would struggle with the amount of processing power and local memory on offer.

I demoed Need For Speed on the Surface Pro 3 when it launched and that even began to skip and have input lag, this would stand no chance.
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I've been impressed with the SP3 and PC gaming. I've ran tomb raider 2014, elder scrolls online, bioshock, minecraft, etc smoothly with low to medium settings. The SP3 has an Achilles heel that it throttles down the GPU, the games still run smoothly but oddly enough not as smoothly as the SP2 which doesn't throttle.

I actually ran some decent games on Baytrail as well, I was very impressed even though it had a shared memory GPU. Still though gaming on Atom is an experiment at best. I previously read that Cherrytrail was supposed to bring significant GPU advances so I'll have to research a bit more and see if it truly does.

Here is a great reddit thread for gaming on the SP3: http://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/2hpj9m/what_games_relatively_run_smoothly_on_the_surface/
 
The 4GB 128GB model will be mine, it will be my laptop replacement, and will sit alongside my nice 8" Sony Android tablet.
I'll also use it for some PC games like Crysis 1 and Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3, and yes it WILL run those fine as the last gen quad core Atom could do that, this is the brand new top of the range Atom CPU in this new Surface 3 :cool:

Hmm now all I need is the spare 4 grand for my Mac Pro then my setup will be complete.. hmm one day I'll get there.

Here is an 8" last gen Atom powered Windows tablet running Crysis 1:


Won't set the world on fire but it's still pretty good for a small tablet!
 
Good to see some innovation on the more-of-the-same tablet market. I hope that this will drive Apple to improve their stagnating iPad line.
 
Woyzeck said:
Good to see some innovation on the more-of-the-same tablet market. I hope that this will drive Apple to improve their stagnating iPad line.
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I'm hardly convinced this new line will drive Apple to improve their "stagnating" iPad line. There's no innovation in the first place. This is just a new line of Surface tablets at lower price points and with lower specs for that matter.
 
The only thing I see in this thread are people REALLY overestimating how much computing power they need these days.

As for me, I'm hanging in the Apple ecosystem by a thread at this point. Already transitioned off a iPad to a 1st gen Surface Pro. AppleTV and iPad Pro will make or break my Apple purchasing this fall, including mobile devices.
 
HenryDJP said:
I'm hardly convinced this new line will drive Apple to improve their "stagnating" iPad line. There's no innovation in the first place. This is just a new line of Surface tablets at lower price points and with lower specs for that matter.
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The new Surface is not lower specced at all? It's a much better and higher specced one over the Tegra 4 version it replaces.
You need to remember their is the Surface range and the Surface Pro range, only the Surface range was updated today.
 
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HenryDJP said:
I'm hardly convinced this new line will drive Apple to improve their "stagnating" iPad line. There's no innovation in the first place. This is just a new line of Surface tablets at lower price points and with lower specs for that matter.
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I've been saying this since Surface 1, and was lambasted for it at the time. :D This is Microsoft's tablet computer, nothing more. Yes, you can get a pen and keyboard as additional peripherals, but you can get that for any other tablet as well, no big deal.
 
Looks good, sounds good, price is good... but it's still Windows.
No way am I using that for a minute when I don't have to.
 
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