Surface Pro 3 (5/20/14)

CEpeep said:
Guys, it was a rhetorical question. heatless knows what's up though:
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The lack of mobile apps on Windows 8 and Phone is by far the greatest weakness of those platforms relative to iOS and Android. However there is a great deal of flexibility in Windows 8 with tablets because of the desktop and there are lots of practical reasons in having a single device that can utilize both mobile and desktop apps. ChromeOS will now support Android apps, so the idea of hybrid computing is here to stay and will probably grow over time.
 
mi7chy said:
Because our school system is incompetent, corrupted by the tenure system, it's too easy to pass on the mistakes to taxpayers and there's no oversight. Wasting taxpayers' money on iPads is not only stupid but it doesn't prepare students for the real world. Just take a look at the financial system which is the backbone of a country. Peek through the windows of any bank or credit union and you see zero iPad. So, students fresh out of school with iPad exposure end up working at fast foods while students from smarter districts with Windows experience work bank jobs.
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Okay, now it's pretty clear that you really are just trolling.
 
Aurelius said:
Okay, now it's pretty clear that you really are just trolling.
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He does have a point though. Knowing how to use an iPad and its apps isn't much of workplace skill. The world of productive business work on the client is still dominated by Windows and desktop apps. Tablets can be great tools in education but they aren't really productivity tools.
 
heatlesssun said:
He does have a point though. Knowing how to use an iPad and its apps isn't much of workplace skill. The world of productive business work on the client is still dominated by Windows and desktop apps. Tablets can be great tools in education but they aren't really productivity tools.
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No, mi7chy really is trolling:
So, students fresh out of school with iPad exposure end up working at fast foods while students from smarter districts with Windows experience work bank jobs.
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iPad exposure -> working at fast foods
Windows experience -> work bank jobs
 
heatlesssun said:
I said he had a point.
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So you want to stretch his point? Did you forget that most students are exposed to other computers while at school now? Unless a school is so poor it can afford iPads, but not other types of computers. Is that right?
 
KENNYB said:
So you want to stretch his point? Did you forget that most students are exposed to other computers while at school now? Unless a school is so poor it can afford iPads, but not other types of computers. Is that right?
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I really don't know much about secondary school IT these days. I don't have any kids so I don't have much contact with schools. I work at a mega bank and while the comment about the iPad is certainly troll bait, yeah, the place is full of Windows computers. Virtually the whole back office ops of the place is people in front of a Windows computers. We do use a lot of Linux on servers, but all the clients are Windows 7.

It just strikes me at times when I see folks, especially kids, with their heads practically planted in an phone or tablet, but when it comes to actual work everyone has their head planted in laptop or desktop. I guess I always thought the whole notion of tablets replacing PC as rather stupid. Of course for consumption tablets and phones are great devices and they do have uses beyond that. For out in the field business IT needs they are great.

But it's not a zero sum game. Unfortunately I think too many in the IT media have tried to portray tablets and smart phones as the enemy of the PC and that's just not really the case. Certainly tablets and phones have a significant place in our lives for our most common IT needs. But PCs also have a significant place as well when it comes to doing work, being creative and even having fun on bigger screens with more powerful apps that can be driven by mobile devices.
 
In my experience, schools primarily use iPads to provide textbooks, communication and (mostly for younger students) activities. It's not the software itself that you're learning; the iPad is just a delivery mechanism.

As for jobs, it depends on the field and the demands.. You'll see hospitals (including ones in my area) give doctors and nurses iPads so that they can chart patients or get medical records more easily. Square Register is practically tailor-made for it. Also, most airlines that have gone digital with their crew charts are using iPads.

I'm actually curious as to how the Surface Pro 3 helps in the workplace, since it's the first Pro model light and thin enough that you'd conceivably be willing to cradle it for more than several minutes while standing. The tricky bits are mainly the price ($799 isn't cheap) and getting developers to write touch-native Windows apps for specific tasks.
 
Aurelius said:
As for jobs, it depends on the field and the demands.. You'll see hospitals (including ones in my area) give doctors and nurses iPads so that they can chart patients or get medical records more easily. Square Register is practically tailor-made for it. Also, most airlines that have gone digital with their crew charts are using iPads.
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As I said, tablets have a lot of utility for in the field business IT use.

Aurelius said:
I'm actually curious as to how the Surface Pro 3 helps in the workplace, since it's the first Pro model light and thin enough that you'd conceivably be willing to cradle it for more than several minutes while standing. The tricky bits are mainly the price ($799 isn't cheap) and getting developers to write touch-native Windows apps for specific tasks.
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One advantage I think Windows tablets have in the business space where Windows is already deployed is custom apps. It's actually become a lot easier and cheaper to sideload modern apps with 8.1 Update 1. And it's much easier to use desktop C# code in sideloaded apps, and there's a great deal of that in business IT. Not only that, not all touch friendly apps have to be modern apps. In some cases, retooling a desktop UI to work better with touch can save a lot of cost of a total app rewrite while getting tablet utility and even having the app remain keyboard and mouse friendly.
 
Aurelius said:
You'll see hospitals (including ones in my area) give doctors and nurses iPads so that they can chart patients or get medical records more easily. ... Also, most airlines that have gone digital with their crew charts are using iPads.
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That's outdated data. Airlines, hospitals and other industies are dumping iPads for the reason quoted below:

The iPad was the tablet of choice among doctors when the cool factor was the most important criteria. Now the need to actually get work done has taken top priority and Microsoft is aiming to make Surface the tablet of choice.

Read more: http://medcitynews.com/2014/06/upmc...access-ehrs-surface-pro-3-roll/#ixzz35ipjO2Vs
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http://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-picks-samsung-not-apple-2013-3

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/27/delta-airlines-to-distribute-surface-2-to-pilots-after-ipad-trial
 
mi7chy said:
That's outdated data. Airlines, hospitals and other industies are dumping iPads for the reason quoted below:



http://www.businessinsider.com/american-airlines-picks-samsung-not-apple-2013-3

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/27/delta-airlines-to-distribute-surface-2-to-pilots-after-ipad-trial
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A few weeks ago I went to a hospital to congratulate someone with her newborn.
I knew from the last time all nurses used ipads... (2 years ago) Now I didn't see ANY Ipad with the nurses and 1 doctor with a Surface Pro (don't know if it was 1 or 2).
 
Henri108 said:
A few weeks ago I went to a hospital to congratulate someone with her newborn.
I knew from the last time all nurses used ipads... (2 years ago) Now I didn't see ANY Ipad with the nurses and 1 doctor with a Surface Pro (don't know if it was 1 or 2).
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In places with lots of Windows infrastructure which is common in hospitals, Windows tablets can be a better fit than iPads. And a digital pen does have use in the medial field.
 
Recently our federal office has distributed a small amount of Ipads to our staff for work purposes.


50% of them use it to view funny youtube videos.

I haven't seen anyone else use an Ipad for work.
 
State of Colorado is using both ipads and windows 8 tablets for various functions. My old department got windows 8 tablets my new department is getting ipads and honestly I'm pretty dead set against it because the amount of notes I take in court and in the field. Having a pen to write with and then transcribe the notes into word or excel was pretty efficient. None of the ipads are getting pens or a keyboard to work with.
 
Here I thought I was going to read some user experiences with the surface pro 3... Oh well.
 
I had a chance to see one hands on at the store yesterday. The screen looks fantastic and I really like the new thinner design.

I ended up buying a Samsung Galaxy S 10.5 though because it is so light (almost half the weight of my Surface Pro). So far doesn't get hot when watching youtube which was something that bothered me with my surface pro...

I really love the surface pro but none of my various home automation related apps never made the jump to Windows 8 which I found very dissapointing. I still havent come across any apps that are worth using in the Windows Store... I'm still happy to use my surface pro for things I need a laptop for though, I really like the form factor.

I'd like to see all iPads at work replaced with surface pro 3s with touch covers and docking stations. The commercials tell the story how it is in my opinion... The tablet that can replace your laptop...
 
thelead said:
Here I thought I was going to read some user experiences with the surface pro 3... Oh well.
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These are the [H]ard Forums, most of us are waiting for our i7 versions. Come back early August. Also did anyone else squeal like a school girl when they moved the i7 launch date from Aug 31 to Aug 1?
 
Canon said:
I ended up buying a Samsung Galaxy S 10.5 though because it is so light (almost half the weight of my Surface Pro). So far doesn't get hot when watching youtube which was something that bothered me with my surface pro...
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What browser are you using on the Surface Pro? I know if it's IE or Chrome it uses Acrobat/H.264 hardware decoding which is very low CPU utilization and power. Fan doesn't even spin up on my SP3 playing 1080p. If hardware acceleration is disabled or it's decoding HTML5/VP8 then I can understand utilization and power being higher. This is where Broadwell will gain an advantage with VP8 hardware decoding or the x86-64/FPGA hybrid hinted at where things like hardware decoding can be added without a CPU upgrade.

On a side note, battery life on the SP3 seems to be getting longer and longer doing full recharge/discharge cycles which is letting it charge up to 100% then discharge to 6% (at 5% it gracefully shuts down to prevent data loss).
 
I usually run IE. I wouldn't say CPU utilization is too high as you usually can't hear the fan, but the back does get warm. I'm betting the new models have somewhat reduced this issue due to their lower power consumption.
 
drstk said:
Anyone running VMs on the SP3? VMware or VirtualBox?
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I'm just using VMware Player. I use it to run my work stuff (R, octave, LaTeX) in Ubuntu. The Unity interface runs just fine. I was worried about the high resolution with all of the desktop bells and whistles, but isn't hasn't felt any worse the the SP2 I was using.

I keep the VM running all of the time and just fullscreen it when I need to. I tried using the Hyper-V virtualization (with the SP2) before VMware and got nowhere because lots of the hardware wasn't supported very well in Linux. But VMware has been perfect for me.
 
How are games on this thing? I saw a few pages back someone got Android games to run, but what about vanilla windows games?
 
SoltanGris42 said:
I'm just using VMware Player. I use it to run my work stuff (R, octave, LaTeX) in Ubuntu. The Unity interface runs just fine. I was worried about the high resolution with all of the desktop bells and whistles, but isn't hasn't felt any worse the the SP2 I was using.

I keep the VM running all of the time and just fullscreen it when I need to. I tried using the Hyper-V virtualization (with the SP2) before VMware and got nowhere because lots of the hardware wasn't supported very well in Linux. But VMware has been perfect for me.
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Good to hear. Thanks for your input. I'm use to VMware, so I'm going that route.
 
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