Surface Pro screen cracked, need something new

StoleMyOwnCar

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 30, 2013
Messages
2,981
This first gen model has been serving me well (got it at BB for 500 bucks years ago, absolutely no regrets), but the screen cracked. Top 3rd is unusable =(. ... Honestly I have no idea how it even happened. It didn't drop or anything, and it seems to have happened while I was asleep. I'm not a particularly thrashy sleeper, either. I don't snore and I think I tend to lie pretty still, even during nightmares. Sometimes I tend to flop into the bed so maybe I did an elbow attack on it without knowing when I flying into bed.


Anywayyy... I'm looking for something new. Maybe not necessarily another surface pro. I just got my work bonus so price doesn't really matter much, but the cheaper the better.

Priorities this time around:
- Battery life. Seriously, my SP only lasted like 1-2 hours browsing, I'd like 4-5 out of this one, but if that's not possible oh well
- Compact
- Tablet mode is practically a necessity
- Needs full windows (no RT BS)
- I'd like a keyboard attachment to it this time that's more solid, if possible. Not like those crappy attachable "keyboards" the SP1 had...
- I want to be able to downgrade it to 8.1 if it has 10 (don't start any crap about that here, please; I just don't want 10, period)
- 1080p and up would be nice.

That's about it. My goals are as follows:
- Web browsing
- Visual novels (text based games with pictures)
- Maybe very light gaming (talking like Maplestory, if it can even do 3D games like Diablo 3 on lowest settings that's a plus)

I don't follow this market much so I'm curious to see what's available.
 
I can't speak for the new ones... But I have an old Lenovo Twist tablet/laptop hybrid with win10 full and Mint Linux running on a separate partition. It has done me well over the years and has battery life around 4-5 hours of basic browsing. Heavier video and such drops it to about 3 hours but drop the brightness a little and you can get it to last a while
 
I've already kind of decided on something. At the very least I am trialing it.
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Touch-W...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B01NH2Z5MX

I got this from Microcenter for about 599. Costco has it for 499, but it's using the older gen i5. I wanted the newer generation because the GPU performance between 6th and 7th gen gets a huge bump, which means that if I do decide to do some light gaming on the go, it's kind of a big deal. Not dissatisfied with that decision, either. I tested out playing WoW on this notebook and it played it very competently, and not at totally minimal settings. For light and even semi-moderate gaming it certainly seems to be an unexpected winner. Doesn't get very hot, either. The cooling solution is a little on the louder side, but it's not an annoying sound.

Few major cons though:
- More than minimal backlight bleed near the hinges depending on the angle. This is a big deal to me, and kind of almost made me want to return it. The screen otherwise has very good contrast ratio.
- Touchpad appears to... get stuck? I'm not sure whether this is happening or not. Either way I don't really like this type of touchpad. I like the dedicated buttons. Plus the lower left seems to be kind of clacky. I'm worried that it will break or something. Like it's not on the defective end of things, but there's definitely some sound I get when I tap on it before I actually get to the point of actuation. That actually seriously bothers me as these tiny little things spiral into a huge issue down the line.
- Windows 10, and I probably can't downgrade it. I hate Windows 10. I've had to do so much crap to this POS just to get it to maybe stop phoning home. And the automated updates. What the hell's with that "eh we'll just automatically restart you at this time"? I had to go and change some values in the group policy management and then set permissions on some file and then do all this crazy crap just to get rid of unwanted features. Which in turn made it so I couldn't change my lock screen, and had to go into the registry for some more fun hacking.


Frankly the biggest dealbreaker is Windows 10, followed by the backlight bleed, but all three of those combined are compelling me to do a quick exchange today. I'm going to reset it to factory settings and then go cart it back and see if a new one is any better. Really at first I was okay with the BLB to an extent, but when I noticed that the touchpad kind of clatters on the left side, I was like "I'm sorry buddy, but you're going back". Microcenter tends to be quite painless with exchanges, so I will post results on the new one. I kind of doubt the BLB will get any better (and I hope it won't have any dead/stuck pixels in exchange, because this one had none), but we'll see.

Overall it's a good product. Very competitively priced, and it has all the features I wanted. Obviously the main selling point is that it's like half the price of comparable products with all the stuff I wanted. I don't care about a higher resolution at this screen size, too. Pointless.
 
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I've already kind of decided on something. At the very least I am trialing it.
https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Touch-W...=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B01NH2Z5MX

I got this from Microcenter for about 599. Costco has it for 499, but it's using the older gen i5. I wanted the newer generation because the GPU performance between 6th and 7th gen gets a huge bump, which means that if I do decide to do some light gaming on the go, it's kind of a big deal. Not dissatisfied with that decision, either. I tested out playing WoW on this notebook and it played it very competently, and not at totally minimal settings. For light and even semi-moderate gaming it certainly seems to be an unexpected winner. Doesn't get very hot, either. The cooling solution is a little on the louder side, but it's not an annoying sound.

Few major cons though:
- More than minimal backlight bleed near the hinges depending on the angle. This is a big deal to me, and kind of almost made me want to return it. The screen otherwise has very good contrast ratio.
- Touchpad appears to... get stuck? I'm not sure whether this is happening or not. Either way I don't really like this type of touchpad. I like the dedicated buttons. Plus the lower left seems to be kind of clacky. I'm worried that it will break or something. Like it's not on the defective end of things, but there's definitely some sound I get when I tap on it before I actually get to the point of actuation. That actually seriously bothers me as these tiny little things spiral into a huge issue down the line.
- Windows 10, and I probably can't downgrade it. I hate Windows 10. I've had to do so much crap to this POS just to get it to maybe stop phoning home. And the automated updates. What the hell's with that "eh we'll just automatically restart you at this time"? I had to go and change some values in the group policy management and then set permissions on some file and then do all this crazy crap just to get rid of unwanted features. Which in turn made it so I couldn't change my lock screen, and had to go into the registry for some more fun hacking.


Frankly the biggest dealbreaker is Windows 10, followed by the backlight bleed, but all three of those combined are compelling me to do a quick exchange today. I'm going to reset it to factory settings and then go cart it back and see if a new one is any better. Really at first I was okay with the BLB to an extent, but when I noticed that the touchpad kind of clatters on the left side, I was like "I'm sorry buddy, but you're going back". Microcenter tends to be quite painless with exchanges, so I will post results on the new one. I kind of doubt the BLB will get any better (and I hope it won't have any dead/stuck pixels in exchange, because this one had none), but we'll see.

Overall it's a good product. Very competitively priced, and it has all the features I wanted. Obviously the main selling point is that it's like half the price of comparable products with all the stuff I wanted. I don't care about a higher resolution at this screen size, too. Pointless.
Looks pretty nice and decent specs to.
 
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