Microsoft Introduces Surface Pro 3 Docking Station

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Want to do a little more with your Surface Pro 3 but are limited by the number of USB ports and other missing connectors? Microsoft has your back. Surface Pro 3 Docking Station is now available for online purchase directly from Microsoft.
 
No thunderbolt? Sad SP3 owner :(.
Thunderbolt or PCIe built into the $200 dock would've increased the appeal of a SP3 as a single device that can do it all, including gaming.


Battery cover really needs to be a legitimate hinged design so the SP3 can sit on your lap without the kickstand in confined spaces. I think this has a moderate chance of happening, the Surface team has heard the criticism long enough, and shown a willingness to respond to other physical design issues. The battery cover is the perfect accessory to finally make the SP3 a macbook air beater. It sits on your whiny tech blogger's lap in a crowded press event and has 50% more battery life than the MBA? Win.
 
Kueller said:
No thunderbolt? Sad SP3 owner :(.
Thunderbolt or PCIe built into the $200 dock would've increased the appeal of a SP3 as a single device that can do it all, including gaming.


Battery cover really needs to be a legitimate hinged design so the SP3 can sit on your lap without the kickstand in confined spaces. I think this has a moderate chance of happening, the Surface team has heard the criticism long enough, and shown a willingness to respond to other physical design issues. The battery cover is the perfect accessory to finally make the SP3 a macbook air beater. It sits on your whiny tech blogger's lap in a crowded press event and has 50% more battery life than the MBA? Win.
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Macbook Air Killer? Hardly. The Air has real keys for starters, not a flimsy piece of plastic with "keys".

In any case the keyboard should've been subsidized and bundled with the SP3 from the get-go, since the advertising everywhere tries to portray it as a laptop replacement and shows it with the keyboard. Lost opportunity.
 
Yes, actually make your SP3 useful by plugging it into a dock, which then provides you with a very anemic, non-upgradable, non-user-serviceable "desktop" of sorts, with a teeny-tiny screen.

Q: If you want a tablet, why not just get a tablet to use when you need portability, and be nice to yourself with a decent desktop at home which you can service and upgrade yourself when the need or desire arises?

A: Beats me...;) Transferring data back and forth is as simple as a USB cable, and a desktop is just so much more in terms of performance and capability than a SP3 + dock, (imo, certainly...;))
 
DPI said:
Macbook Air Killer? Hardly. The Air has real keys for starters, not a flimsy piece of plastic with "keys".

In any case the keyboard should've been subsidized and bundled with the SP3 from the get-go, since the advertising everywhere tries to portray it as a laptop replacement and shows it with the keyboard. Lost opportunity.
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Unless you're thinking of the Touch Cover which is pretty crappy and was dropped the Macbook Air has chiclet keys which is comparable to the Surface Type 3 keyboard but they're both not as premium as Thinkpad tactile keyboards and the Touchpoint nub is superior to any touchpad. Also, Macbook Air has shitty resolution so the SP3 with touch and pen is a better than Macbook Pro 13". $650 edu deal for the i3/4GB/64GB pretty much obsoletes the iPad Air, Macbook Air and Macbook Pro in one swoop.
 
DPI said:
Macbook Air Killer? Hardly. The Air has real keys for starters, not a flimsy piece of plastic with "keys".

In any case the keyboard should've been subsidized and bundled with the SP3 from the get-go, since the advertising everywhere tries to portray it as a laptop replacement and shows it with the keyboard. Lost opportunity.
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The flimsiness of the cover goes away with the power cover since the battery provides the stiffness. Surface actually pretty even with the Air with the cover in both battery life and functionality. The power cover really is that much better to type on imo.
 
I love typing on my Surface Pro 2 (yeah not the 3, yet). Love all the Surface hate. The device is pretty sweet!
 
WasntMe said:
I love typing on my Surface Pro 2 (yeah not the 3, yet). Love all the Surface hate. The device is pretty sweet!
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I still think my SP2 was one of the best purchases I have made recently. I have gotten 1000 times more use out of it than I did my android tablet. the SP will actually run my enterprise apps with ease.
 
WasntMe said:
I love typing on my Surface Pro 2 (yeah not the 3, yet). Love all the Surface hate. The device is pretty sweet!
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I love my Pro 1. Excellent for college classes and does pretty much everything. Grabbed the power cover too. I don't understand all of the hate.
 
The Surface Pro is getting more and more of my attention every day.

Now if it just came with discrete graphics so I could satisfy my Civ5 addiction on the road...
 
It's a nice idea, but they really need to make a docking station that includes a battery, keyboard, and touchpad that can open and close like a laptop before the Surface can become a useful PC. That docking station doesn't even support changing the angle that the screen is tilted at to get rid of glare on it's revoltingly glossy, finger smudge magnet screen. They'd be doing the working world a huge favor by getting rid fo the gloss and touch capabilities and then just building it into a keyboard and touchpad base that can fold closed to protect the screen from scratches while making it easy to actually type. :(
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
It's a nice idea, but they really need to make a docking station that includes a battery, keyboard, and touchpad that can open and close like a laptop before the Surface can become a useful PC. That docking station doesn't even support changing the angle that the screen is tilted at to get rid of glare on it's revoltingly glossy, finger smudge magnet screen. They'd be doing the working world a huge favor by getting rid fo the gloss and touch capabilities and then just building it into a keyboard and touchpad base that can fold closed to protect the screen from scratches while making it easy to actually type. :(
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>Docking station

I see what you did there. But you know, people don't get the Surface if they don't have a need for the stylus and the touch capabilities.
 
Kueller said:
No thunderbolt? Sad SP3 owner :(.
Thunderbolt or PCIe built into the $200 dock would've increased the appeal of a SP3 as a single device that can do it all, including gaming.
Click to expand...

Exactly, they could have sold me on thunderbolt docking station. That would have allowed an external high end video card for gaming. Maybe the SP4 will get it right.
 
DPI said:
Macbook Air Killer? Hardly. The Air has real keys for starters, not a flimsy piece of plastic with "keys".
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If one has to use the MBA keys for more than 10 minutes at a time one can quickly figure out just how much the MBA keys suck for prolonged usage. I got an MBA from work and it sucks monkey balls, shitty resolution (pre "retina" <~~ lolbranding, shitty keyboard), work paid like 2.5k for that POS. Can't wait to dump in in Nov when it's 3 years old and get a decent Samsung instead.
 
What's the point of chaining an ultrabook to a external brick that's useless when unplugged? Just build a self contained SFF for gaming and you don't have to worry about physically plugging/unplugging all the time.
 
Why do most people seem to think the dock has to be your computer in its entirety? I am pretty sure most people who buy the dock are going to primarily use a secondary monitor. Who wants to work on a 12 inch monitor anytime? Nobody, people only settle for that in mobile situations because they want the small size. The whole point of the dock is to have a very quick way to drop the surface into a pro configured desktop configuration. Where you most likely have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor all hooked to the dock. This is and always has been the main market for docks for all laptops.

Second most of you clearly have not a single bit of experience in the real world based on your comments. The vast majority of people will never build a PC. Many of them have no interest or don't even know how to manage 2 separate computers and synchronize their files. If this wasn't true very few people would ever waste $3k on higher end laptops. These people just want 1 device they can learn to use that has all their programs on it and all their files without thinking oh gosh does program X allow me to install it on 2 devices, and do I know how to get company Ys cloud to sync this or that file or program. For more tech savvy people yes a desktop plus mobile device is a better deal. But that is not what the massive of the world can work with.

My biggest complaints with the dock are simple. First we should not have ever needed a specific dock for SP3. MS should have designed the SP2 dock to work with SP3, SP1 and all surface pros. Second is price. $200 just for a dock is pretty steep. It just adds a lot to the price of an ultrabook that will be pretty pricey anyway if you want it to have the keyboard, and various proprietary adapters you need to hook up to projectors and so on.
 
I meant to add, it would be worth it at $200 if they had added a port for 2.5 inch hard drives so people could have extra and back up storage built right into it.
 
mi7chy said:
What's the point of chaining an ultrabook to a external brick that's useless when unplugged? Just build a self contained SFF for gaming and you don't have to worry about physically plugging/unplugging all the time.
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This. What Surface can benefit from is a slate battery type cover with integrated USB and video outputs. I have to resort to sling around this USB port with me, and it's not the most elegant solution. Basically something similar to what you see on the Helix.
 
Reimu said:
This. What Surface can benefit from is a slate battery type cover with integrated USB and video outputs. I have to resort to sling around this USB port with me, and it's not the most elegant solution. Basically something similar to what you see on the Helix.
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This is kind of stupid, if you want a hard hinged battery cover then you don't buy the surface. You buy one of the other ultrabooks from Samsung, Lenovo, HP, etc... That come with this. If the helix is what you want buy it.
 
rudy said:
This is kind of stupid, if you want a hard hinged battery cover then you don't buy the surface. You buy one of the other ultrabooks from Samsung, Lenovo, HP, etc... That come with this. If the helix is what you want buy it.
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I wanted the Helix, but that thing was never released with Haswell in it. There are times when I need something like that, but I mostly use the Surface as tablet. It's kind of a 20% use case situation.
 
What about the multiple other options surely at least one has haswell. Also its a heck of a lot easier and more reasonably to complain to Lenovo about adding haswell, a no brainer upgrade to helix than it is to ask MS or any other company do redesign or bandaid on a solution that was never meant to be.
 
rudy said:
This is kind of stupid, if you want a hard hinged battery cover then you don't buy the surface. You buy one of the other ultrabooks from Samsung, Lenovo, HP, etc... That come with this. If the helix is what you want buy it.
Click to expand...

Sorry for double post, but your comment made me think of Lenovo's Yoga pro. Yoga pro is closest to the old-school flipscreen convertible tablets that I used to use, and it really got me interested. Having said that, the tablet form factor wins out when it comes to snapping images while notetaking.
 
rudy said:
What about the multiple other options surely at least one has haswell. Also its a heck of a lot easier and more reasonably to complain to Lenovo about adding haswell, a no brainer upgrade to helix than it is to ask MS or any other company do redesign or bandaid on a solution that was never meant to be.
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I tried a few, such as Sony's slider Vaio duo 13.
I guess I am greedy. The way how the Surface's connector works would allow for such a slate battery dock to be made, but it does go against what MS has had in mind for Surface. It's kind of too bad that there's no Helix 2 yet, since that thing can have integrated 4G module as an option.
 
Forget Thunderdolt. A10-7850K is perfectly capable of light gaming such as BF4 at high 40 fps at 1080p low. Just give me a Surface Pro 4 with 14nm AMD APU and battery keyboard cover with 14 hour productivity or 7 hour gaming battery life and I'll be happy.
 
mi7chy said:
Forget Thunderdolt. A10-7850K is perfectly capable of light gaming such as BF4 at high 40 fps at 1080p low. Just give me a Surface Pro 4 with 14nm AMD APU and battery keyboard cover with 14 hour productivity or 7 hour gaming battery life and I'll be happy.
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AMD 14nm? Heh, maybe for the Surface Pro 6, if Microsoft doesn't kill the whole project due to continued losses (nice hardware didn't save the Zune).
 
Kueller said:
AMD 14nm? Heh, maybe for the Surface Pro 6, if Microsoft doesn't kill the whole project due to continued losses (nice hardware didn't save the Zune).
Click to expand...

Here's to hoping that Samsung or someone else would step up the plate
 
WaltC said:
Yes, actually make your SP3 useful by plugging it into a dock, which then provides you with a very anemic, non-upgradable, non-user-serviceable "desktop" of sorts, with a teeny-tiny screen.

Q: If you want a tablet, why not just get a tablet to use when you need portability, and be nice to yourself with a decent desktop at home which you can service and upgrade yourself when the need or desire arises?

A: Beats me...;) Transferring data back and forth is as simple as a USB cable, and a desktop is just so much more in terms of performance and capability than a SP3 + dock, (imo, certainly...;))
Click to expand...

You don't seem to get it at all.

rudy said:
Why do most people seem to think the dock has to be your computer in its entirety? I am pretty sure most people who buy the dock are going to primarily use a secondary monitor. Who wants to work on a 12 inch monitor anytime? Nobody, people only settle for that in mobile situations because they want the small size. The whole point of the dock is to have a very quick way to drop the surface into a pro configured desktop configuration. Where you most likely have a keyboard, mouse, and monitor all hooked to the dock. This is and always has been the main market for docks for all laptops.

Second most of you clearly have not a single bit of experience in the real world based on your comments. The vast majority of people will never build a PC. Many of them have no interest or don't even know how to manage 2 separate computers and synchronize their files. If this wasn't true very few people would ever waste $3k on higher end laptops. These people just want 1 device they can learn to use that has all their programs on it and all their files without thinking oh gosh does program X allow me to install it on 2 devices, and do I know how to get company Ys cloud to sync this or that file or program. For more tech savvy people yes a desktop plus mobile device is a better deal. But that is not what the massive of the world can work with.
Click to expand...

Bingo! I got an SP2 not long ago by trading a Laptop I had. I didn't really "need" the SP2 so I got the idea to replace my wifes aging C2D desktop. She's been getting into Photography so I also gave her my Asus PB278Q. The SP2 with the docking station (setup with KB/M and monitor) is an excellent setup for her, she now has portability and desktop option all rolled into one.

My mother (who travels a lot for work) visited from out of town last week, liked my wife's setup so much that she immediately bought a SP3, then ordered the same Asus monitor, and SP3 docking station. This setup will be immensely more useful for her.
 
Red Falcon said:
Once again, Microsoft is waaaay late to the game.
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waayyy late? Who else even remotely has something to the surface? Let me answer that, nobody. How are they late when there is no real competitor to the product?

As for the other comments, its absolutely obvious the negative commentors don't have a surface. FYI the dock for the pro 3 allows 2 Display port connections which means dual monitors i.e it is a desktop solution. You dont have to use the type cover, you can very easily use a USB keyboard/mouse or hell even blutooth.

The type cover for the pro 3 is == to the MBA keyboard without a doubt
 
VladDracule said:
waayyy late? Who else even remotely has something to the surface? Let me answer that, nobody. How are they late when there is no real competitor to the product?
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Dell has some x86 Windows 8.1 tablets (huge 17" ones at that) with docking stations, but those docking stations are a freaking joke, as they are USB only. (don't even have power, as I recall!)

Decent docking stations are the norm on business laptops, but outside of that, they aren't. This - to my knowledge - is the first decent docking station on a x86 tablet. Way to go MS :p
 
VladDracule said:
waayyy late? Who else even remotely has something to the surface? Let me answer that, nobody. How are they late when there is no real competitor to the product?
Click to expand...

Um, Apple has been selling iPads since forever. There are tons of wannabe iPad copycat tablets that use Google's spyware Android OS. Those 3COM people made adorable, cute little pocket sized tablets like the Palm IIIxe which used AAA batteries and didn't need any lame-o rechargeable stuff. Oh, and Fujitsu and Toshiba made tablets that used Windows 95 so tons of other companies have been doing the tablet thing for far longer than Microsoft has with their totally useless, overpriced Surface.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Um, Apple has been selling iPads since forever. There are tons of wannabe iPad copycat tablets that use Google's spyware Android OS. Those 3COM people made adorable, cute little pocket sized tablets like the Palm IIIxe which used AAA batteries and didn't need any lame-o rechargeable stuff. Oh, and Fujitsu and Toshiba made tablets that used Windows 95 so tons of other companies have been doing the tablet thing for far longer than Microsoft has with their totally useless, overpriced Surface.
Click to expand...

Completely clueless. Use one then get back to me. You think the surface is useless and you mentioned it in the same sentence as IPad LOL
 
WaltC said:
Yes, actually make your SP3 useful by plugging it into a dock, which then provides you with a very anemic, non-upgradable, non-user-serviceable "desktop" of sorts, with a teeny-tiny screen.

Q: If you want a tablet, why not just get a tablet to use when you need portability, and be nice to yourself with a decent desktop at home which you can service and upgrade yourself when the need or desire arises?

A: Beats me...;) Transferring data back and forth is as simple as a USB cable, and a desktop is just so much more in terms of performance and capability than a SP3 + dock, (imo, certainly...;))
Click to expand...
This is 2014, you don't need a USB cable even to syncronize data. That can be done over the network with ease. Tablet w/ 4G connection is fine.

Don't get me wrong, I'm big on consolidation of devices. Buying a whole bunch of redundant shit means wasted resources and compromises.

But I'd go with a phablet for on the go that has a magnetic charging dock for use in your car as a headunit/GPS, and for at home get yourself a proper powerful desktop that's also a home server/NAS. Voila. Two devices to do everything.
 
VladDracule said:
Completely clueless. Use one then get back to me. You think the surface is useless and you mentioned it in the same sentence as IPad LOL
Click to expand...

Well Mister Grumpy Goth, they're both just computers and there really isn't anything that one does that the other can't. They have word processors, web browsers, check e-mail, play or stream media, and there are lots of companies out there that even have VPN client access for iPads.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
Well Mister Grumpy Goth, they're both just computers and there really isn't anything that one does that the other can't. They have word processors, web browsers, check e-mail, play or stream media, and there are lots of companies out there that even have VPN client access for iPads.
Click to expand...

Try to run vcenter or system center VMM on an iPad and get back to me :)
 
k1pp3r said:
Try to run vcenter or system center VMM on an iPad and get back to me :)
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That would matter if there were enough use cases like that to sustain sales of the SP3. There aren't, and as such it's stuck in niche device obscurity.
 
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