wowowow Surface Pro review

[Whiskey16]

...(don't need to play games just do homework/browse web/email, basic stuff) I will sell the iPad and grab one.

Honestly, the Surface Pro is overkill for you and you'd likely be quite happy with a current Clovertrail (Atoms are not what they were, particularly upon an efficient OS such as Windows 8) tablet such as the Acer W510 or from ASUS, Samsung, etc. Fanless and a much better battery life than any the current Core based tablets. Or wait until the summer for the next releases of power efficient processor from Intel and AMD.

I've got the W510 with the keyboard dock and am quite happy. Though I was lucky not to pick up one of the first manufacturing runs with the defective touchpad. ~8 hour battery life with the tablet undocked and quite snappy with multiple pages open, Office, OpenCPN (marine chart plotter), etc.

For smooth 1080p video, Clovertrail is new and therefore some programs still need to be updated to properly enable full video DXVA2 decoding, but it can be done as Potplayer can already hardware decode every mp4 stream that I've thrown at it with a maximum CPU load pegging at around 32% for a peaking 21000 kb/s 1080p stream.

With the W510 I also find a the dimension to be ideal for a tablet than the larger 11.6" systems.. Though I would prefer a 16:10 ratio screen that any Windows 8 OEM has yet to release. The keyboard is a bit small -- but it is a keyboard and a extra battery dock that provides a tablet stand nearly akin (won't bend back a full 180 degrees, but can nearly reverse to 140 to get the keyboard of the way and directly face the tablet screen) to the flexible Lenovo Yoga.

 

[Whiskey16]

Same. To me the ideal tablet is between 7-8".

A tradeoff. Cannot have a practical keyboard dock with dimensions that small.

 

[Red Storm]

A tradeoff. Cannot have a practical keyboard dock with dimensions that small.

I wouldn't consider ~10" tablet keyboards to be practical either though. I've tried prolonged typing on them and it's just too cramped.

 

[Chrono]

That's a good 2 1/2 weeks. Not that bad.

 

[Whiskey16]

I wouldn't consider ~10" tablet keyboards to be practical either though. I've tried prolonged typing on them and it's just too cramped.

Yet I can adapt and prefer a compromise for a not too large of a tablet and not too small of a keyboard.

The original Asus Transformer pegged it and presented an idea who's hardware has come and a market for many who appreciate and desire such a hybrid.

- fanless
- long battery life
- not too large
- not too small

 

[Midwayman]

I think we're still a year or two away from these tablet/computers being powerful enough to be really desirable. A surface RT on tegra4, or exynos 5... sounds interesting. A pro on haswell.. interesting. Right now... either laggy, poor battery, low resolution or all of the above. The idea is great it just needs a little more time to cook.

 

[Chrono]

So I went to best buy and checked out the surface rt... so the surface pro is the same 10.6" size? I thinkthat is pretty damn small. The Samsung Ativ PC/tablet looks likea good size and from what I have seen it is already available in a "pro" version. Hm... something to think about... The Samsung also has a stylus/pen as well too.

 

[dagamer34]

So I went to best buy and checked out the surface rt... so the surface pro is the same 10.6" size? I thinkthat is pretty damn small. The Samsung Ativ PC/tablet looks likea good size and from what I have seen it is already available in a "pro" version. Hm... something to think about... The Samsung also has a stylus/pen as well too.

It's about 30% thicker.

 

[Sheep]

BOOM goes the dynamite...along with any interest I had in the gen 1 Surface Pro.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8

Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet, due on February 9th, will have a smaller amount of storage space than expected. A company spokesperson has confirmed to The Verge that the 64GB edition of Surface Pro will have 23GB of free storage out of the box. The 128GB model will have 83GB of free storage. It appears that the Windows 8 install, built-in apps, and a recovery partition will make up the 41GB total on the base Surface Pro model.

I get that 64GB is never 64GB of usable space but this is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe no one at Microsoft brought this up when the machine was being developed. Or if they did, clearly someone over-ruled them on it.

It's like they want to fail.

 

[Ns1]

BOOM goes the dynamite...along with any interest I had in the gen 1 Surface Pro.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8



I get that 64GB is never 64GB of usable space but this is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe no one at Microsoft brought this up when the machine was being developed. Or if they did, clearly someone over-ruled them on it.

It's like they want to fail.

WTF!?!?!? system files takes up 64% of the storage space for the 64gb version!?

will the pro at least have some type of SD slot or something!?

 

[Red Storm]

BOOM goes the dynamite...along with any interest I had in the gen 1 Surface Pro.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8



I get that 64GB is never 64GB of usable space but this is absolutely ridiculous. I can't believe no one at Microsoft brought this up when the machine was being developed. Or if they did, clearly someone over-ruled them on it.

It's like they want to fail.

Yeah that's ridiculous. Not that it's 41GB taken, but that they would take 41GB of the baseline 64GB model. Should have shipped with 128GB at the minimum.

 

[iahk]

WTF!?!?!? system files takes up 64% of the storage space for the 64gb version!?

will the pro at least have some type of SD slot or something!?

Yea, microsd slot.

 

[Roland00Address]

BOOM goes the dynamite...along with any interest I had in the gen 1 Surface Pro.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/29/3929110/surface-pro-disk-space-windows-8

You can move the recovery partition to a flash drive. Moving the recovery partition for the surface rt frees about 4gbs of space. Moving the recovery partition for a windows 8 laptop usually frees about 10 to 15 gbs of space. Flash drives are now cheap, if you can afford a $900 dollar laptop you can afford a 12 dollar flash drive.

There is also a sdxc slot that can take up to a 64gb sdxc card. Name brand 64gb sdxc such as patriot and kingston go for about $45 to $50 dollars. Sandisk 64gb go for about $60.

Yes you are going to spend about $70 dollars for additional storage but we are talking about, 30 gbs of free space (after you move the recovery partition) + 64 gbs of sdxc / personal data. As someone who has been on the ssd bandwagon for years (late 2007 for the celeron/linux asus eee pc, mid 2009 for my indilinx 64gb ssd) the amount of space you are getting is absolutely roomy compared to what I have worked with in the past.

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And if you need more than space than the 64gb model can provide there is always the 128gb model for a $100 more.

 

[Sheep]

You can move the recovery partition to a flash drive. Moving the recovery partition for the surface rt frees about 4gbs of space. Moving the recovery partition for a windows 8 laptop usually frees about 10 to 15 gbs of space. Flash drives are now cheap, if you can afford a $900 dollar laptop you can afford a 12 dollar flash drive.

There is also a sdxc slot that can take up to a 64gb sdxc card. Name brand 64gb sdxc such as patriot and kingston go for about $45 to $50 dollars. Sandisk 64gb go for about $60.

Yes you are going to spend about $70 dollars for additional storage but we are talking about, 30 gbs of free space (after you move the recovery partition) + 64 gbs of sdxc / personal data. As someone who has been on the ssd bandwagon for years (late 2007 for the celeron/linux asus eee pc, mid 2009 for my indilinx 64gb ssd) the amount of space you are getting is absolutely roomy compared to what I have worked with in the past.

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And if you need more than space than the 64gb model can provide there is always the 128gb model for a $100 more.

Good luck getting the average PC user to do all of that. Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't aiming this product solely at techies like you or me.

Microsoft should have thought this out more. Advertising 64GB or 128GB of space while the machine has half of that usable (even after removing the recovery partition) is mind-blowingly STUPID.

 

[Roland00Address]

Good luck getting the average PC user to do all of that. Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't aiming this product solely at techies like you or me.

Microsoft should have thought this out more. Advertising 64GB or 128GB of space while the machine has half of that usable (even after removing the recovery partition) is mind-blowingly STUPID.

They could have always not put the hidden partition in the device and instead included a flash drive (which would have lowered their profit by unit by about 5 dollars). The problem with this is that people lose flash drives, especially if given for free. Then when they called tech support wanting to know how to reset the unit, the customer would be out of luck unless microsoft gives the customer an option to order a new restore unit for an additional cost. If microsoft allows the user to make their own flash drive then they have simple restore for the non techies and the option to remove the partition for techies who want more space.

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As for #2 ) are you saying it is difficult to purchase an sd card and placing it in the slot?

 

[destrekor]

They could have always not put the hidden partition in the device and instead included a flash drive (which would have lowered their profit by unit by about 5 dollars). The problem with this is that people lose flash drives, especially if given for free. Then when they called tech support wanting to know how to reset the unit, the customer would be out of luck unless microsoft gives the customer an option to order a new restore unit for an additional cost. If microsoft allows the user to make their own flash drive then they have simple restore for the non techies and the option to remove the partition for techies who want more space.

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As for #2 ) are you saying it is difficult to purchase an sd card and placing it in the slot?

What they should have done is rather simple:
two on-board eMMC "drives" - one holds the entire OS/system data, the other is all user storage.
Advertise only the storage capacity of the user storage space.

 

[Midwayman]

What they should have done is rather simple:
two on-board eMMC "drives" - one holds the entire OS/system data, the other is all user storage.
Advertise only the storage capacity of the user storage space.

Ideally all tablet makers would do that, but they all advertise total space. I think its a case of "Hate the game, not the player."

 

[destrekor]

Ideally all tablet makers would do that, but they all advertise total space. I think its a case of "Hate the game, not the player."

Yeah I know, but there are certain distinctions that warrant a change in these cases.

It's a full x86/x86-64 OS on a device with, apparently, 64 or 128GB of storage space.
Those storage sizes are somewhat common, but the typical tablet OS takes up less than 10GB between OS and other system reserves, if not less than 5GB or so.

Most times, the lowest storage we see offered on a full x86 device is 250GB these days.
Well, I guess there were the early days of SSD drives, and early early high-capacity laptop drives, where roughly 64 and 120GB drives were common. OS storage space was typically around the 20GB mark - sometimes a system partition took more away, but it wasn't the rule.

 

[Sheep]

Ideally all tablet makers would do that, but they all advertise total space. I think its a case of "Hate the game, not the player."

Microsoft's not even playing the game properly by that definition. For most devices it's ~15% inaccessible for OS and system files, not 50-60%. I have a feeling this is going to come back and bite them in the ass in the form of returned units.

 

[KentState]

Good luck getting the average PC user to do all of that. Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't aiming this product solely at techies like you or me.

Microsoft should have thought this out more. Advertising 64GB or 128GB of space while the machine has half of that usable (even after removing the recovery partition) is mind-blowingly STUPID.

This device is market at the techies. I doubt the average user would see value in this over a cheap laptop or an iPad. Did people really think that a full Windows OS with page and hibernate file would take up a few gigs?

 

[Ns1]

This device is market at the techies. I doubt the average user would see value in this over a cheap laptop or an iPad. Did people really think that a full Windows OS with page and hibernate file would take up a few gigs?

Yes. Most certainly less than 41. Hell even 20gb sounds reasonable next to 41!

 

[blurredvision]

Good luck getting the average PC user to do all of that. Last time I checked Microsoft wasn't aiming this product solely at techies like you or me.

Sure, the average user won't be able to properly free space on one of these tablets, but the average user also isn't going to look at or care how much free space there is. They will buy it and surf the net, that's pretty much it.

Let's be honest, yes, this is a stupid decision by Microsoft. Just has poor PR written all over it. However, if we're still being honest, if you're reading this thread, or reading the technology subreddit, or reading Engadget/Verge....you're going to have the capability of removing that recovery partition and deleting any extra bloat (Office 2013, if you don't want it). Should you have to? Of course not. But let's not be silly.

 

[AkumaX]

are there people here justifying the 60% used space (23GB usable to 59GB, after converting from 64GiB)?

MS should have had a 32GB/40GB SSD alongside in there.. inaccessible to normal users, then used the 64GB/128GB as user space (heck, you can even justify keeping the recovery partition on the 64GB/128GB)

 

[Sheep]

Sure, the average user won't be able to properly free space on one of these tablets, but the average user also isn't going to look at or care how much free space there is. They will buy it and surf the net, that's pretty much it.

If all a user is going to do is surf the web and check email, why in the world would they purchase a Surface Pro over an iPad considering the price premium? The Pro is being touted as a device that can potentially replace a laptop that also has tablet functionality and is aimed squarely at users who need more functionality than an iPad offers.

 

[dagamer34]

I just don't understand the outrage since computers have been doing this since 2000. And the people that would actually care about getting every since bit of free space are also the same people that should be able to create a recovery drive and slim down the install down to exactly what they might need.

I also think that anyone who quotes the 45GB number doesn't know much about computers since a 128GB drive isn't, hasn't, and never will give you 128GB of free space after being formatted. It's 119GB when formatted.