Tolerating the Surface Pro
ozar.meI don't see battery life as being a small problem on a tablet. My ipad mini (with LTE) has become my primary communication device because I can use it intensively and forget to charge it for days at a time. 12 hours usage in addition to several more days of standby with all the features (push email etc) enabled means I go to my ipad over my blackberry that can't last a day or my mba that can't last a day. 3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic. It defeats the whole purpose of the form factor.
I don't see battery life being a small problem on a laptop either. Once you've experienced 10 hour battery life it's hard to ever give that up.
I found it pretty easy; I went from an asus transformer (14 hours real-world, and I did use it) to a samsung ultrabook-like (<4 hours). Just get in the habit of plugging it in; how much of the day do you really spend away from a power socket? It might not be for everyone, but it's been fine for me.
The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels.
People who work on the go need their 8h+ battery life, the more the merrier.
>The moment I need to bring the power cord and adaptor with me, portability goes to "desktop replacement" levels.
Surely you don't just carry a tablet in your hand when walking to the office? Once something's too big for pockets I resort to a messenger bag over my shoulder, in which it's just as easy to include the power. Given that tablets don't seem to come with cases, how else would one transport it?
Working in the office is not working on the go. Working on the go is finish up stuff and send it before boarding a plane, or work on that same plane, or during your train commute.
If you're going from home to the office and back, I don't see the point in carrying anything other than your smartphone. Talking about the general case, obviously, there are justifications for bringing a medium-sized laptop.
I get things done in all those cases on the setup I mentioned. Obviously if you're taking 8-hour flights then you need that much battery, but is that a common case?
It's a very common case that you have a hard time finding a socket in some places. It happens a lot to me that many others are working on their laptops and all sockets are taken, or even that there are no sockets at all in some trains.
Introduces an extra dependency.
My battery life is no where near that terrible. I'm not sure what he has running constantly, but I can GAME on my Surface Pro for 5+ hours without plugging in. It's still bad for a "tablet", but not any worse than my HP Elite Book with the same specs.
Same here. I just put a Surface Pro in one of my Customers' user's hands last week. I tried it out for a couple days as my primary machine and got 5 hours out if the battery the two times I elected to run w/o AC power.
“3-4 hours for a portable tablet device is just pathetic.”
True, but I wouldn’t call the Surface Pro ‘tablet portable’. It’s fairer to compare it with a notebook. With TypeCover, the Surface Pro is 2 centimeters thick, while a MacBook Air 11" has an average thickness of 1 centimeter. The Surface Pro is also a little heavier than a MacBook Air. Curiously, both devices have the same CPU, GPU, SSD, and RAM – but a MacBook Air 11" is $30 cheaper and has 5,5 hours of real world battery life.
If we were to compare Surface Pro with a 10" iPad, it would look even worse. The Surface Pro is twice as thick, 3 times as heavy, has one-third of the battery life, has a screen with a lower resolution, and it’s $300 more expensive.
The MBA 11" is 0.68" thick. The Surface Pro is 0.53" thick. The Type Cover adds .23"; the Touch Cover only .08".
It gets the same run time per charge.
It weighs less, not more; less than 2 pounds versus 2.38.
The difference is that you can snap off the optional keyboard in a split second if you really care about thickness -- well, that and the fact that it's a tablet with a touch digitizer behind the glass too.
> The MBA 11" is 19.2mm thick
No, it’s not: “Height: 0.11-0.68 inch (0.3-1.7 cm)” http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html
The body has a wedge shape, on average 10mm thick: http://imgur.com/Ung7IQ3
> It gets the same run time per charge.
No, it doesn’t. The Surface Pro gets 3,75 hours of battery life. http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/05/microsoft-surface-pro-rev...
For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness? I own an SP; it does not get 3.75 hours of battery life no matter what I do with it, and I could pull out a dozen review links to say that as well. Why are you trying so hard to make it look worse than it is?
“For what conceivable purpose would you want to compare average thickness?”
Along with length, width and depth, that’s what determines the volume of the object (=portability). The Surface Pro has 60% more volume as a MacBook Air 11". And yet, it gets hot, has loud fans, and has less battery life. That’s just bad engineering. As a replacement for a notebook and a tablet, it really should have at least as much battery life as an iPad. Given its volume, that would’ve been possible.
Surface Pro: 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.76" = 55.95 cubic inches
MacBook Air 11": 11.8 x 7.56 x 0.39" = 34.79 cubic inches
EDIT: in an earlier version I mistakenly wrote 'mass' where I meant 'volume'.
Weight and size are what determine portability for everyone else, not how much water it could hold if it were doubling as a canteen. That's not mass, it's volume, by the way. The MBA is longer, wider, taller and heavier -- yet you've contrived a way to label that as "more portable"... ridiculous on its face.
I'm not going to make this valueless discussion thread any longer, so to your reply: those numbers are made up. Larger screens make things less portable, not more.
The MBA is less than an inch longer and wider (because of the larger screen). It’s not as thick (‘tall’?) as the Surface Pro and it weighs less (2.38lbs) than a Surface Pro with TypeCover (2.55lbs).
That's 3.75 hours with a video continuously looping.
I get 6 - 7 hours on a low brightness with normal usage (web, email, visual studio, sql server, etc.)
When they performed the same test on a 13" MacBook Air, it held on for 6.5 hours. That jibes with Apple’s stated battery life of ‘Up to 7 hours wireless web’. Apple states the MBA 11" has battery life of ‘Up to 5 hours wireless web’, so it’s definitely more than 3.75 hours.
The surface pro is intended to converge tablets and notebooks. That's why you'd put up with the sub par keyboard and touchpad. If you're going to consolidate to one device, then the battery life matters more than it does when you augment a notebook with a separate tablet.
Brent the author here. I agree that battery life isn't a small problem - note that I put (?) next to "small" as a way of noting that the problems aren't nitpicking.
I don't know what he's doing to get that kind of battery life. I've had my SP for a few months now, and it consistently gets 5-6 hours of actual usage, even heavy things like streaming HBO. It's not 12+, but there's a Core i5 behind the glass, and my Core i5 laptop doesn't get half that running time.
Brent the author here. I'm doing basic productivity work while listening to music, doing email, and leaving Twitter & Hipchat open. Engadget and The Verge both noted sub-4-hour battery life in their reviews too. I'm glad you're getting more life though.
So the gist is "good hardware, really really unacceptably crappy software experience"
>I bought the Surface Pro to use as a backup laptop: a secondary presentation device in case my main laptop bit the dust. I make a living teaching people via PowerPoint. For a long list of reasons, I can’t really switch presentation tools, and the iPad doesn’t cut it as a secondary presentation device. The Surface Pro does.
This isn't a typical situation, and if this is the only justification one can have (or perhaps one of the few) in owning a Surface Pro, MSFT has a whole lot of issues on its hands.
Essentially, yes. I convinced work to buy me a Pro after around a decade of being Windows free... and I'm underwhelmed. I like the hardware. But having two entirely separate interfaces is really terrible. Like he pointed out, it's no longer intuitive how to interact with the device, you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
A big part of the Metro nightmare is that the built in apps (other than the core shell) suck.
For instance, Metro lacks a file chooser where you can easily find files anywhere in your system. If the Metro interface had a good file chooser, you wouldn't have to drop out to use the file desktop chooser to find a file on any filesystem.
If Windows 8.1 adds a good file chooser and if Microsoft addresses a few specific problems like that, life in Metro could get much better.
I hope Microsoft can get its branding straight -- I find it weird that I click on a music file across the network and it pops up in a pretty Metro app with the tag line "Xbox Music". There's also some thing (which has never quite worked for me) called "Xbox Games" which I'm not sure will do anything for me if I don't own an Xbox.
Or is everything that runs Windows 8 an "Xbox" of some kind? And how come I see tiles for all kinds of music except for the music that I've got in my own collection?
Step one for me was uninstalling all the default apps. Some of them have good replacements in the Market, others I just do without. The lack of quality is a serious issue. I'm not sure how they are going to fix that considering Microsoft themselves can't seem to make anything terribly impressive.
Why are you trying to work with files in the metro interface?
I'm having trouble coming up with a use case where I'd need the file chooser to do any of the things you'd want to do in the touch interface.
I can't speak to the music file thing because I haven't dealt with music files in years, it's always been an annoying and tedious experience for me (as is working with any large number of files with wonky metadata), so I switched to streaming and haven't looked back.
EDIT: That said, videos on my NAS just show up in the metro "Videos" app and I can watch them without issue. I haven't tried it with music but I can't imagine why that would be any different.
Videos and music based on a NAS do indeed show up automatically. I just don't need that part - I need the music and videos when I'm on the road. (Streaming doesn't work on most airplanes.)
It's fair to expect to write a document in Microsoft Word on the Desktop and then view the file, or a PDF copy, when it is in tablet mode.
A good file chooser enables that scenario and generally, maximizes the benefit that Windows 8 brings to a tablet OS, which is the Windows desktop. If Metro can stream, read from memory cards, view files from Desktop apps, etc. the high purchase price of these systems would be justified.
>you have to constantly switch between input modes which is extremely annoying.
I never switch modes unless I am switching tasks.
Desktop tasks (writing code, workign with office apps) all mouse/keyboard/trackpad
Consumption tasks (news, video) all use touch with keyboard folded out of the way
Drawing and taking notes I use the stylus.
I see this as having the right input mode available for each of my tasks, not some sort of "nightmare".
You're right. Honestly. The problem is, I've had this device since day one and switching between input modes still gets in the way. It is not a fluid experience. That's all I was saying. I am an "artist", writer, coder, consumer, and gamer. I carry the pen in my pocket and use it regularly. I have the cool little bluetooth touch mouse and enjoy it when gaming/coding. The on-screen keyboard is actually pretty awesome and I can touch type on it with surprising accuracy. BUT... I still have to consciously determine which input method I want to use for which app. If I'm on the desktop, and my Twitter app goes off, I switch back to Modern. I can continue using the mouse somewhat clumsily, or I can switch to touch input which works great. Then, I switch back to desktop and every darn time I'm still trying to use touch. Maybe I'm dense. Maybe I'm just hoping that one day the transition will be seamless... but, for me, it's not, and that is annoying (even if only mildly.)
I think the point he makes about hanging in to it in a hope that Microsoft is going to improve it is the key. Looks like with windows 8.1 they are making a lot of changes based on the feedback, and giving that release away for free. Microsoft better stick to this fast iterative update process if they want people to bet on the new OS.
The problem there is that the changes we're hearing about for 8.1 (bringing back the Start button, letting you boot straight to the desktop, etc.) are all changes that will move 8's center of gravity closer to the traditional Windows experience and farther from the new Metro experience. And from the article it sounds like the new Metro experience is the only one that really feels right on Surface.
Making it easier for people to skip Metro will only result in fewer developers writing Metro apps, not more, so it's hard to see 8.1 as a positive for Surface users. They need the Windows world to be more Metro, not less.
Exactly this. I actually like the Modern stuff. The interface has some flaws (lack of a notification bar) but overall, the experience is good and interacting with apps is fine. The issue comes when you switch to the desktop and try to work with it as a touch interface.
One example was at launch, Chrome's build didn't work well with touch. If you touched a dialog, the on-screen keyboard would not come up automatically. Scrolling with your finger was near impossible unless you flicked up first... which made no sense. The desktop side of Chrome has gotten better, but I'm not sure who to praise for that.
Especially considering that the RT fits that particular use case pretty well all on its own, and does have excellent battery life as well.
My only gripe about the RT is that even though I like the UI better, it's every bit as useful (and useless) as an iPad.
I had a lot of problems when I tried to use the Surface RT for that use case. Here was my review: http://ozar.me/2012/10/why-im-returning-my-microsoft-surface...
For $1,000 I would hope it's good hardware.
And, considering that it is coming from the world's largest software company, good software as well. It is surprising (although... not really) that Apple was able to ship a mobile version of their iWork suite for the first gen iPad, but Microsoft could not do so for the first gen of their own tablet.
All Surface reviews read like this. "It's pretty good, except for this long list of things that are terrible about it."
I switched to the Surface Pro as my primary development box. Surprised that I could get VS2012, SQL Express 2012 and IIS working with decent performance.
If you are using an SDXC card to supplement your storage and don't intend to eject it on a whim, you can get better performance by going to the device manager and changing the removal policy and the write caching.
Options for 256gb or 512gb SSD would have made this an easier choice for many.
Wow, glutten for punishment.
My primary development box is a fully loaded 17" laptop. Tablets are too small screen wise and performance wise when doing real work either in the OSS or Redmond realm. (I deal with tons of Data and run a few VMs as well.)
I carried a Lenovo W510 15" that was simply not workable on flights and heavy and clumsy for standing in line at security checkpoints. And "pro" systems like this don't play well with airline power systems. The surface has worked on Qantas, Air Canada and Lufthansa flights where I have had power. At my desk I project to a big monitor and it has worked out pretty well.
My biggest gripe is that you really need DPI scaling to use some desktop apps at 1920x1080 on a 10" screen, but half the apps I use don't scale well or at all (I'm looking at you, Chrome). I still use the SP on a daily basis and it was a worthile purchase for a few things:
1) It's a great tablet when you want a tablet. With no keyboard attached, it's a joy to read reddit and play games on in bed.
2) I throw it in the car with me whenever I leave home. I'm always on-call if a site/server goes down. The SP is a full computer with a hard keyboard, so there won't be any situation I need to drive back home to handle, even if it takes several hours to resolve.
3) It's a suitable desktop replacement for anything but hard gaming. I stick it on my desk, plug in a big monitor, and pair a bluetooth mouse. Now screen size and DPI scaling don't matter, and the Core i5 has all the power I could need for compiling software, photo editing, etc.
My boss uses a Surface Pro like a laptop and is happy with it.
Add a good quality wireless mouse and a USB 3 hub, leave the keyboard at the desk and you've got a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market.
That's interesting. How does he work around the high-DPI resolution problems when connecting an external display? I'm assuming he's using one - when you say "a docking station as good in practice as anything on the market", that usually means an external display.
I'll say that if you've been using Windows for years you get used to using Windows on strange screen systems, everything from 640x480 to video wall panels. If you adjust magnification factors, font sizes, and such for the apps you actually use to help out a lot.
One thing I found with Windows 8 is that it is even better to use keyboard shortcuts to access the shell. Instead of groping for the 'Start' button, I hit the Windows key and the same thing happens if I am running Win7 or Win8. So Win8 didn't cause me disorientation at all, it just trained me to do the right thing.
Yes, but then you're constantly switching magnification factors, font sizes, and such every time you plug into the desktop dock or unplug to hit the road?
Dual 22 inch monitors vs a 27 inch makes it less annoying.
"I end up using the finger very often, and not to touch the screen, either".
The author needs a laptop, possibly augmented with a Wacom tablet to draw during presentations. With the myriad of amazing laptop/netbooks available in the windows ecosystem a tablet would be my absolute last choice for his use case.
The other angle is to consider that Surface is but one choice. Other manufacturers make excellent tablet/hybrid Windows 8 devices. They are probably a far better choice for general business use.
I don't really get people who complain about, for example, not being able to use Excel with your fingers. I'm sorry, touch is not the best solution for every application. Using touch absolutely sucks for a wide range of applications. A on-screen keyboard is the simplest example. It sucks. Functional, but it sucks. I can't even think of the idea of using Excel with mi fingers on the screen. It would be ugly, cumbersome and slow, very slow.
Tablets have their place. Please don't complain if you try to force it into a non-ideal application.
I still own a ten year old little Sony mini notebook with a nice 10 inch display. It's about the size of an iPad and twice as thick as an iPad 3. I still have XP on it. It is absolutely wonderful for travel, even in the most cramped aircraft. It has a great physical keyboard. It is fantastic for PowerPoint presentations. Battery life is 6 to 12 hours. I have written tons of code on this thing in flight. I can run a Linux VM. And do web development, etc. I could go on.
Tablets have their place.
Brent the author here. As I stated in the article, I do indeed do have a laptop. However, carrying around a laptop, plus another backup laptop, plus a Wacom tablet is a little beyond what I'd like to travel with.
About Excel with your fingers - you'd be surprised. The touch experience is surprisingly compelling once you get used to it. I'm always surprised at how often I reach out to touch the display on my laptop after I've been using my iPad or the Surface, even just for a few minutes. (This is especially true when using the Surface because the Type Cover's trackpad is laughably small.)
Ultimately we all make the choices that make sense to us. I've travelled extensively in the US, Europe and South America conducting seminars and product demonstrations. I know the pain of carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment with you. Most memorable: picking up my large Pelican cases at Schiphol only to feel they were covered with yellow slime.
Anyhow, for business travel I would nearly always buy laptops in pairs. Really easy to clone them just before a trip and have true backup.
Two laptops and a Wacom are not going to be a significant departure from one laptop and surface. You can easily fit all of it in a laptop bag with room to spare. For convenience I eventually migrated towards wheeled laptop cases. You don't have to lug them around and they offer lots of room for gear and sometimes even a minimal overnight set of clothes, etc.
I am sure that eventually some tools will develop usable parallel touch UI's. I guess my point is that I can do everything I might generally have to do during a typical business trip on a ten year old notebook. Newer notebooks are far cheaper (I paid $3,000 for the Sony ten years ago) and far more capable. A tablet would be my absolute last choice as they are still really cumbersome and inconvenient to use.
Yellow ... slime?
I know it's not exactly on topic, but please do elaborate.
Funny story. Not at the time, but it was hilarious once I got to the hotel and wrote an email describing what I went through.
This was my first time going to Amsterdam, about twelve years ago. Last minute business trip. I had no choice but to carry about 400 pounds of equipment with me. I think the excess baggage bill was about $2,000. It consisted of a set of anvil cases and pelican cases with all manner of equipment, even FPGA prototyping boards. I effectively had fully finished product as well as prototype hardware in order to be able to work on code based on feedback and demonstrate it.
The ordeal started in Los Angeles when I didn't have all of the right paperwork, including the necessary carnet, etc. Mad rush to get it all sorted the week of the trip.
I planned ahead and designed a custom heavy-duty dolly out of 80/20 extrusions to be able to move all of this stuff at both airports and within the city/hotel. The dolly had large wheels and could be taken apart and stored in the pelican case. Pile it on with the gear and a couple of ratchet straps held it all in place. Great plan.
I arrive at Schiphol and go to the carrousel. These things were pretty heavy, 60 to 90 lbs per case. This meant that when I saw one on the carrousel I had to be "all in". There was no messing around. Grab and get your whole body into it to pull the thing off the carrousel.
I see the first anvil case come around. I setup to grab it. The plan was to rotate it quickly onto my leg and use that as a fulcrum of sorts to rotate the case off the carousel. When I go to grab the case one of the handles feels really slimy. I mean, imagine if you squirted it with motor oil or pudding, somewhere in between those two. I was committed, so I ignored it. I pulled hard with both hands, put it on my leg, then, supporting it with my chest I got it down. It sounds awkward but it was a very natural move. Think olympic dead lifting but not quite going over your head.
Then I realize I am absolutely covered in yellow slime. Again, think somewhere between oil and pudding. Not quite liquid but not quite solid. Yellow and cold. Didn't smell. A few expletives later I had no choice but to get the other cases. All four of them were covered to some degree with this stuff.
By the time I get my luggage I look like I had gone mud wrestling in yellow slime. I was both angry and laughing my ass off. What are you going to do? Just roll with it.
I literally sat on the floor to take a moment. I was wearing loose fitting exercise clothes to be comfortable during flight. Thankfully the slime didn't go through the fabric.
I couldn't leave all of that gear alone. There was no way to clean myself up at that time. I got my dolly out and assembled it right there. Loaded all of the slime-covered cases onto it and set out to find the Custom's office.
When you travel with a lot of gear like that you need to have this document called a "Carnet" signed just about everywhere you go. It lists what you are carrying so that you don't have to pay import duties everywhere you go.
I soon learned that the Customs office was three buildings away from my terminal. And, of course, the only way there was to use this walkway that ramped up between buildings.
By the time I get to the Customs office I was sweating like a pig and covered with yellow slime. I can't even imagine what I must have looked like.
When I entered the room it was like I was Moses and the water parted. I mean, everyone got the fuck out of my way. It was hilarious. I get to the counter and the customs officer just signs the paperwork without even attempting to look inside the cases. I guess she didn't want to play with yellow slime.
As I go back to the hallway a janitor is making the rounds with his cart. He sees me and takes a look at my pile of cases covered in yellow slime. Without either one of us uttering a single word, the guy grabs to large rolls of paper towels and a full bottle of cleaner (like windex) puts them down on the floor next to my gear and continues walking.
Again, laughing my ass off as the entire thing was surreal beyond belief. So, here I am, windex-ing the shit out of everything, including myself, in front of the Customs office. Of course, when it came to my clothes I got a lot of slime off but also ended-up smearing a lot of it everywhere. I mean, I looked like shit.
Now I had to make the trip back three buildings to get back to my terminal and go through the immigration area. Everyone was pretty nice. I was asked about the contents of the cases, my paperwork was checked but nobody was interested in opening the cases. Also, oddly enough, not one person asked me what happened or why I looked the way I did. Are the Dutch that polite?
Once out I was able to go into a bathroom and at least wash off some of the slime and sweat. I didn't change my clothes because I just didn't want to dirty another set. I did clean the cases to a reasonable degree.
Getting a taxi was a real challenge. Few seemed interested in carrying that much stuff.
When I finally got one the guy took one look at me and another look at the equipment and said "I have a bad back, sorry". So, I had to load all of the equipment onto the van. By this point in time I was absolutely exhausted. Under those conditions humor and a good attitude makes a good situation bearable and you just move on.
When I get to the hotel I found out that the hotel attendant also has a bad back. Throughout my stay in Amsterdam it seems I always managed to find people or taxi drivers with bad backs. Again, it became really funny after a while.
In talking to the airline I came to find out a shipment of some sort of lubricant was ruptured in the cargo area and, wouldn't you know it, all of my cases were located right next to it. They apologized and bumped me to first class for the trip back. Good deal.
It's funny how we don't remember the museum trips or the city tour but stories such as this one remain etched into your mind and actually become the kinds of stories you smile about when you remember and tell them.
Also, every time I think "CEO" I remember myself covered in yellow slime and sweat.
If you are trying to build spreadsheets on a touch device, you have an identity crisis, unless that touch device has a 42-inch screen. I would also throw demo-ing SQL server projects on a tablet in that category too.
Touch devices were not meant to replace laptops or desktops. In most cases, they were meant to fill a space that wasn't already filled.
I’m not sure what was happening with his MD file extension, but I don’t think it could be what he thought it was. Windows 8 has only one unified set of file type associations – there’s no concept of desktop versus “Metro” there. Probably the app just didn’t register for that extension?
That's a fair point. I know 7Zip has this same problem; no matter which computer I'm using, I have to manually tell Windows that 7Zip is the program to use to open a .7z file.
It's possible for a program to not register file extensions.
"On the regional jet I’m on now, even first class doesn’t have a tray big enough for the Surface." "In comparison, when I take my MacBook Pro or my iPad [...]"
I've had a surface pro since launch -- and all I can say is that I can't imagine using different portable right now (before that I was using a x230).
once I got used to the form factor and what it was designed for it's changed how I compute in subtle ways.
Last night for example.. rather then going to my desk .. I watched some lectures on the couch while using the pen to take notes in one note .. then docked it to do some work.
that's just one example of many; but for me personally i feel like i'm doing more with my computer then I was before
though, I've usually docked my laptops when doing any serious work .. and my mobile work is usually restricted to coffee shops for only 3-4 hours at a time ..
battery life I guess could be better .. I usually only get 4hours or so off power when streaming movies off amazon but it's not really bad IMO, but of course I'd like it to be longer .. my main worry when it comes to the battery is that it's not user replaceable honestly