Surface Pro 3

The Dell Venue 8 Pro kept me company for quite a while — probably the electronic device I’ve used most in recent years, second only to my MP3 player. I watched videos on it, browsed the web, played all sorts of visual novels. But as my needs grew, the god-awful performance, the unsatisfying resolution, and the rough build quality started to bother me. So I sold it and picked up a Surface Pro 3.

I’d read online that the i3 version’s performance might actually be worse than an Atom, that battery life was bad, and that while the US version was cheaper, the domestic warranty had been cancelled. So I gritted my teeth and bought the China-market i5 128G.

Reviews are everywhere online, so I’ll just talk about the stuff that tends to get overlooked.

Heat:

The Surface Pro 3 still has a fan, which means it needs cooling, which means there are cooling problems. A lot of people say their Surface Pro 3 gets burning hot, but I haven’t felt it. If there’s really a hot spot, it should be concentrated in the top-right corner. I only noticed the fan during the first round of patch updates; after that, probably because I’m a light user, I never heard any obvious fan noise again.

Battery life:

Right now the big battery killers on Win8 tablets are Chrome and a whole pile of crappy domestic software. I don’t use any of that, so when I’m not playing visual novels the battery life is a surprising 7–8 hours, and even while gaming it holds at 5–6 hours. That’s actually better than the old Atom boards — my V8P felt like it only lasted about 4 hours.

As for video, I don’t really watch Niconico anymore; using clients like Netflix and the like, there’s almost no heat and no obvious battery drain. I do watch the new-season previews on Niconico lately, but I haven’t felt any noticeable heat while watching. Maybe it’s because I use Firefox.

Screen:

This was my biggest reason for buying, and in practice I’m very satisfied. The high-res screen is just good, nothing but good. Win8.1’s DPI scaling works fine in Firefox and the common software I use; even Photoshop, in the latest CC 2014, has an experimental 200% scaling option — I feel like that was made for the Surface Pro 3. Someone on Chiphell said the screen’s grayscale is bad and anime looks all mosaic-y. I suspect they were watching 720p on this screen…

Even in visual novels, DPI scaling is basically a non-issue. Almost every game I play adjusts to the DPI, and Alcot’s games in particular support direct full-screen upscaling — absolute saints.

The problems are with old software: cross-platform stuff like pidgin, and tumors like TM2013. Luckily I don’t use those much, so whatever.

Peripherals:

I used a Surface RT before, and the Touch Cover back then wrecked me body and soul because it was so hard to use. The Type Cover that comes with the Surface Pro 3 saved me — it feels like what a keyboard should be.

The key travel is short, but it’s usable and not even unpleasant. The touchpad on it is also decent, except it’s a bit sluggish when detecting two-finger scrolling.

Microsoft demoed the new kickstand on the Surface Pro 3, but it’s not universal either. It only works well when you’re sitting upright with your thighs low; other situations don’t work, like in bed. Even so, it’s good enough — I mean compared to the Surface 1 and 2.

The stylus bundled with the Surface Pro 3 switched to N-Trig. It’s less prestigious than Wacom and has lower pressure sensitivity, but I find it perfectly usable. Double-clicking to launch OneNote is especially great. Shame there’s nothing on Linux that syncs OneNote directly. Drawing with this pen is also not bad — with Photoshop’s brush settings, I can get smoother results than with the Wacom tablet on my desktop. After all, you’re drawing directly on the tablet, which beats the blind-man-touching-an-elephant feel of a drawing tablet.

Software:

Like the Dell V8P, the Surface Pro 3’s Win8.1 can be upgraded straight to Pro with a key bought on eBay. Without Pro you don’t get Remote Desktop, which is fairly important. Funny thing is, even though I chose 128G, compressing the C drive only freed up 40G — maybe that’s the limit.

The China-market Office suite came with a student version, no expiration date given, maybe permanent?

Software under the Win8 UI is still weak. Most of the time I’m still browsing in Firefox. Worth mentioning here: you must use the 64-bit Waterfox build of Firefox. Using Nightly like before causes weird problems with the Surface Pro 3’s touchscreen.

Early on the Surface Pro 3 had some small issues, including sleep-of-death and Wi-Fi dropping, but those were fixed in the September firmware update. At least I haven’t run into them — actually, I never ran into them from the start.

After being idle for more than 2 hours, the Surface Pro 3 goes into hibernate to save power. To wake it, press the power button once and wait about 5 seconds for the screen to light up. Whatever you do, don’t press it repeatedly out of impatience. Microsoft doesn’t mention this either — I found it on Reddit.

N-trig and Intel have released standalone drivers for the Surface Pro 3. I recommend installing them: the former strengthens pressure sensitivity, the latter improves battery life and 3D performance. I tested both and they do work.

Installing Linux:

Actually, the Surface Pro series already has decent Linux support, and kernel patches for the touch keyboard have appeared — I’m sure they’ll be merged into the main branch soon. Installing Linux is simple: make a USB install drive, boot straight into it. I remember the Surface’s default BIOS prioritizes USB over the hard drive. The install guide is here; the key point is to install that patched kernel, otherwise the keyboard won’t work.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/2fnanu/ubuntu_1404_gnome_surface_pro_3_report/

Installing Linux means giving up the monthly Microsoft firmware updates, because every update wipes out your grub… and fixing it again seems like a real pain.

There are still problems, like the volume keys not working under Linux. If you don’t care about that, it’s basically perfect.

Other:

I have to say the Surface Pro 3 is a great computer. The experience is excellent, the build quality is good, the battery and performance satisfy me, plus the excellent screen and the lightweight body. But — but — it runs Windows, and it’s heavily customized for Windows, and aside from using tablets I haven’t touched Windows in a long time.

Maybe it’d be good for running Linux? But then wouldn’t buying it mean I can’t play visual novels?

Lastly, here’s a Rin-chan I drew on the Surface Pro 3. The last time I drew was in elementary school. Looks like if I practice, maybe someday I can draw pictures people jerk off to…