Microsoft: Surface Pro 3 Is the Most Productive Tablet on the Planet

[Grahamkracka]

. If MS can design the SP3 Power Cover to hold the display upright sans kickstand, it will be as perfect as battery and silicon tech allow.

Why? There are times when I use it to keep the screen upright without the keyboard, so I don't see why it's necessary to have a redundant part just for that. Laptops stay upright because all of the guts and battery are located underneath the keyboard, so there is a significant amount of mass there to keep it from tipping over. With the Surface, everything is behind the screen (since it is also functions as a tablet). So a keyboard that holds it up would either have a mechanism that would function similarly to the kickstand (which would be fucking stupid) or be heavy as fuck to counterbalance the tablet portion of the device...which would defeat the purpose of having such a light device in the first place. Eventually they will probably come out with a keyboard with a built in battery to extend the stock battery life (as they did with the SP2), but even then it wouldn't be heavy enough to keep it upright on it's own.

 

[Trigger]

I can confirm, I work in IT and I see a lot of people using Surface3 - lots of co-workers got their laptops replaced with S3 and lots of clients bringing them to meetings - have been quite surprised with how common they are. Gotta say good job Microsoft

 

[bman212121]

Why? There are times when I use it to keep the screen upright without the keyboard, so I don't see why it's necessary to have a redundant part just for that. Laptops stay upright because all of the guts and battery are located underneath the keyboard, so there is a significant amount of mass there to keep it from tipping over. With the Surface, everything is behind the screen (since it is also functions as a tablet). So a keyboard that holds it up would either have a mechanism that would function similarly to the kickstand (which would be fucking stupid) or be heavy as fuck to counterbalance the tablet portion of the device...which would defeat the purpose of having such a light device in the first place. Eventually they will probably come out with a keyboard with a built in battery to extend the stock battery life (as they did with the SP2), but even then it wouldn't be heavy enough to keep it upright on it's own.

I can confirm this. Having using the Dell Venue Pro with a keyboard dock accessory, the tablet portion being used as a screen is quite heavy. They put a second battery in the keyboard itself as weight so it doesn't tip over. That's fine when it's sitting on a desk but the balance of the device is off when you are holding it. I like to pick devices up by the corner and doing so on the DVP with the keyboard attached you can feel how it wants to roll backward out of your hand and it makes it feel heavier and harder to hold. Certainly not unusable but not quite as good as an ultrabook of the same weight.