Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

[localzuk]

I've had a couple of Microsoft surfaces cross my desk as BYOD devices recently and can't believe how terrible they are.

 

No wonder they are fire sailing them again for education..

 

Its not really a fire sale is it? A small discount. Apple sell at a discount to education too, is that a fire sale too?

 

We have 30 of the Surface RT units here and I think they're very well made! The Pro versions are even nicer IMO. So I'm quite surprised that you find them terrible.

[VeryPC_Colin_M]

When you check the exchange rate, it isn't half annoying at how much the UK is charged for the same product.

 

For example; i5, 256GB in USA is $1289 for schools which would be £798+/- in GBP, yet the edu price for the UK model is £1097...

[zag]

Which ones? Surface RT, Surface 2 or Surface Pro 1, 2 or 3?

 

What don't you like about them?

 

Not sure which one I saw today(I've skipped the hardware and windows 8 here), but it was incredibly heavy, had terrible touchpad buttons, fingerprints all over the screen and a useless operating system version (windows 8.0). I couldn't even find the reboot button on it for about 5mins.

 

I'm guessing it was one of the early versions.

 

Sitting next to another students macbook air it looked quite ridiculous (to me anyway). The PGCE who brought it in had no end of complaints how it worked. She said it was so heavy she didn't even bring the keyboard around with her in day to day use.

Edited October 2, 2014 by zag

[abillybob]

When you check the exchange rate, it isn't half annoying at how much the UK is charged for the same product.

 

For example; i5, 256GB in USA is $1289 for schools which would be £798+/- in GBP, yet the edu price for the UK model is £1097...

 

Apple do the same though with their products. When my uncle went to America he bought all sorts of tech because he said it was so cheap compared to over here *sigh*

[Dos_Box]

It depends. Often US prices are shown without local sales tax added on which adds to the price considerably. You will also be surprised to learn that the UK has one of the most competitive electronics markets in the world. We go out there each year and often find nothing that we can't find either at the same price or cheaper here.

[Arthur]

Not sure which one I saw today, but it was incredibly heavy, had terrible touchpad buttons, fingerprints all over the screen and a useless operating system version (windows 8.0). I couldn't even find the reboot button on it for about 5 mins. I'm guessing it was one of the early versions. She said it was so heavy she didn't even bring the keyboard around with her in day to day use.

Yeah. It does sound like a first gen. Surface Pro. As with most things Microsoft make, it always pays to wait for version 3.

 

The PGCE who brought it in had no end of complaints how it worked.

She should have at least upgraded it to Windows 8.1 and installed the latest firmware updates. It's a shame MS didn't make the upgrade process easier because I see no end of laptops stuck on 8.0.

[Arthur]

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 is now available with a free Type Cover keyboard in the UK

[abillybob]

Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 is now available with a free Type Cover keyboard in the UK

 

IMO they should have done this to start off with or if they wanted to keep it an accessory don't make it so stupidly priced. I've recently bought a Samsung Tab S 10.5, I also bought a 64GB MicroSD Card, mini bluetooth mouse and keyboard and the official Samsung case, all cost me £378 and after rooting with things like XHalo Floating Window and the free apps like Hancom Office Suite it comes with it pretty much does everything I'd want a Surface to do anyway

[rich_tech]

bit poor you cant get the free cover on the cheapest model imo

[flyinghaggis]

Anyone on here bought or had a play with the new fanless 10" Surface 3 ? Tempted to get one to replace my old laptop but think I'll problaby wait a month and see how Windows 10 pans out before making a purchase. Edited June 3, 2015 by flyinghaggis

[snagrat]

Anyone on here bought or had a play with the new fanless 10" Surface 3 ? Tempted to get one to replace my old laptop but think I'll problaby wait a month and see how Windows 10 pans out before making a purchase.

 

Yes we have 50 of them.

Seem to work OK. We don't expect to being anything other than web browsing and Office on them due to the weaker CPU but nice machines

[Simcfc73]

Seems a lot of money to just do that but I suppose if your using office 365 a lot then its ok. £80 extra for 2 Gb of ram and a slightly bigger hard drive too seems a rip off... cant believe any spec would have less than 4Gb unless its to save energy

[Arthur]

New Surface Pro 3 released.

 

Microsoft Introduces A 128GB Version Of The Core i7 Surface Pro 3 « AnandTech

 

This weekend Microsoft introduced a new model of the Surface Pro 3. Like the existing two Core i7 models, this new version uses Intel's Core i7-4650U CPU. At $1299 in the United States, the new model is significantly cheaper than the next Core i7 model, which starts at $1549. In fact, it's the same price as the high end version of the existing Core i5 model.

 

The sacrifice you make with the less expensive Core i7 model is that it only comes with 128GB of internal storage, while the Core i5 version at the same price has 256GB of storage. However, you move up from Intel's HD 4400 graphics to HD 5000 graphics, which bumps the number of GPU EUs from 20 to 40. The Core i7 has a lower base frequency at 1.7GHz vs 1.9GHz on the Core i5, but it can turbo up to 3.3GHz which will outperform the Core i5's 2.9GHz in bursty workloads. Moving to the Core i7 also gets you 4MB of total CPU cache, instead of the 3MB in the Core i5.

 

The intended audience for this new model seems to be users who want more CPU and GPU power, but are able to survive within 128GB either by leveraging cloud storage or simply by not having many programs and files that they need to store. With this new model the Surface Pro 3 line has now expanded to six different versions. While there's still no option with 16GB of RAM, Microsoft now offers a different model to suit almost everyone's preferences.