Thoughts on price cut for Surface Pro 3 in the next month?

[KeithTalent]

Hello friends. I am thinking of buying one for a friend for their birthday, but figured if there were imminent price reductions I would hold out for a few weeks.

I'm in Canada, so any one-off Black Friday sales or anything like that are not of interest to me.

I saw rumour of a Pro 4 coming soon, but with no date, so not sure if that would impact anything. Anyone have any thoughts? Also, is the 256 i5 sufficient for someone just doing office stuff and surfing, plus some Netflix?

Thanks in advance for the assistance.

KT

 

[ImDonly1]

No one is even speculating about a SP4. If anything it won't be released until May (when the SP3 was unveiled).
Your best bet is getting one with a student discount (if possible).

 

[KeithTalent]

No one is even speculating about a SP4. If anything it won't be released until May (when the SP3 was unveiled).
Your best bet is getting one with a student discount (if possible).

Well I was reading a rumour about the SP4, but yeah, nothing but a rumour and you are probably right, I doubt it comes out until next year.

No chance of a student discount, so I guess I should just go ahead and buy it. Any thoughts on my second question? Is there a huge difference between the the different offerings?

KT

 

[ImDonly1]

AFAIK there isn't much difference between the i5 and i7 offerings on mobile. Not sure about the i3. The mobile i5 and i7 are both dual core and performance isn't much different. It isn't like desktop i5 vs i7. I think AT did a full review of the SP3 check benchmarks there.

The i5 / 256GB version is probably what I would get for myself if I was going to buy one.

 

[quikah]

Also, is the 256 i5 sufficient for someone just doing office stuff and surfing, plus some Netflix?

Probably overkill. I have an hp omni 10 (atom processor), works fine for surfing, word, Netflix and light gaming.

 

[KeithTalent]

Cool, thanks guys. I may just go with the 256 i5 so it doesn't feel underpowered in a couple of months. Should feel peppy for at least a year or so.

KT

 

[zerogear]

Probably won't see a SP4 until Broadwell. But then, I was sure they wouldn't come out with SP3 until Broadwell either

There is some throttling issues on i5 and i7 -- more severe on the i7 since it bottlenecks to i5ish speeds when running higher demand things. The general consensuses is that i7 isn't worth the price jump, unless you're willing to attach a fan on the back of it to cool it down during high CPU use...

 

[arandomguy]

Canada actually does have Black Friday deals as well. Part of it is to much the US due to cross border shopping. MS Store in Canada was actually rather aggressive in terms of deals last year throughout the holiday season all they way to past boxing day.

It's a bit too late now but Staples does generic 10% off customer appreciation days but they just did one so it won't appear again likely in your time frame.

You don't actually need to be an active student to technically qualify for the 10% off at the MS Store by the way. If you have some sort of education/post-secondary e-mail account access you just need to confirm via an e-mail sent to that address. Alumni e-mails have been reported to work.

Also not sure where you are specifically in Canada but I believe they are opening another MS Store location in Toronto (or Ontario somewhere) later this month. They've typically done some sort of door crasher related deals.

 

[KeithTalent]

Probably won't see a SP4 until Broadwell. But then, I was sure they wouldn't come out with SP3 until Broadwell either

There is some throttling issues on i5 and i7 -- more severe on the i7 since it bottlenecks to i5ish speeds when running higher demand things. The general consensuses is that i7 isn't worth the price jump, unless you're willing to attach a fan on the back of it to cool it down during high CPU use...

That makes sense, thanks. Definitely not going to be attaching an extra fan.

Canada actually does have Black Friday deals as well. Part of it is to much the US due to cross border shopping. MS Store in Canada was actually rather aggressive in terms of deals last year throughout the holiday season all they way to past boxing day.

It's a bit too late now but Staples does generic 10% off customer appreciation days but they just did one so it won't appear again likely in your time frame.

You don't actually need to be an active student to technically qualify for the 10% off at the MS Store by the way. If you have some sort of education/post-secondary e-mail account access you just need to confirm via an e-mail sent to that address. Alumni e-mails have been reported to work.

Also not sure where you are specifically in Canada but I believe they are opening another MS Store location in Toronto (or Ontario somewhere) later this month. They've typically done some sort of door crasher related deals.

Ah right, they are opening a Microsoft store in the Eaton Centre (a few blocks away from me) soon. Completely forgot about that, so maybe they will do something. Definitely worth checking out since they will probably want to make a bit of a splash. Thanks for the reminder.

KT