Surface 3's

[Sheridan]

We're looking at possibly grabbing some of the last available Surface 3 Edu bundle for a mobile classroom. One thing that concerns me though is that they come with W10 Pro on, which in Microsofts crazy world means we can't use Applocker.

 

Now I regard SRP or Applocker as essential so its either reimage them with W10 Edu, or look elsewhere. Has anyone here deployed Surfaces like this, have you stuck with Pro and used SRP, or imaged them with Edu/Ent versions?

[glen_j]

We image ours with education version, however i would advise against surfaces as we seem to be sending one back every couple of weeks. They don't appear to be tough enough for a school environment although it is a mix of hardware failures and damages.

[rrrrr]

90% of staff had surface pro 3's. reimaged them out the box to win 8/10 ent/edu. Worked fine.

Biggest issue i had with surface pro's what did not become apparent during testing was the underpowered usb ports. I think this is typical on ultra mobile devices, to save battery life.

Usb ports did not have enough power to run usb cd drives and struggled with interactive whiteboards due to the long usb cable

[Sheridan]

Thanks, I do feel they are a litle bit fragile for education, but they give the Windows desktop the staff want in a compact size - for once they don't want ipads!

[Iain.Faulkner]

We've got 110 Surface 3's (100 of which were purchased on the EDU bundle). Staff, in general, seem to really like them as a teaching tool. We haven't given any to students. We've not had any issues with the Surface themselves *touches wood* however we are having a number of chargers dying on us :-(

[rrrrr]

The surface pros are quite well built for tablets, the problem i found is some staff have little respect for devices that are not theirs, and end up getting damaged through miss treatment.

Also, the usb ports can become damaged through constant plugging in and out.

I tried to make as much as possible bluetooth/wireless to minimise this, but staff will be staff!

[3s-gtech]

I have one Surface 3 (not Pro). Lovely machine, but the wifi is totally unuseable and this is a problem that several of us have found on here (and online). It just disconnects all the time, with our users that means they have to restart the machine when it does so as they lose folder redirection. It was returned to MS, came back the same. Glad I only bought one. It now sits on a shelf.

[Sheridan]

We've decided to grab a handful, put Edu on and give them a try. For the price and size they tick all the boxes. It doesn't matter what we buy as they won't be cared for so I'll see how long they last!

[ICT_Pro]

Hi Everyone

Just a bit same question, we are looking 2 in1 tablets for staff but most of them we looked HP/Dell don't have ethernet port. How you are deploying image to tablets without ethernet?

[rrrrr]

Usb ethernet. Had to use microsoft ones for surfaces as 3rd party ones did not support boot to network

[ICT_Pro]

Thanks, Does USB adptor work with MS MDT or you are using something else for image? If not than this will be a bit trouble because we are looking to buy around 100.

[rrrrr]

Used with mdt fine. Just get one to test is best

[TechMonkey]

We got the Surface 3s in the end as they seemed to be the only tablets we could find that would take 64bit image. Others we, eventually, found out had a 32bit chip, even though the processor was 64bit, that stopped building 64bit images. COuld have been to do with UEFI, so watch out. We got an official Surface dock and just built them all through that with SCCM and had no problems.

 

Ohh and buy covers. We have had 2 dropped on a corner and the screen snaps leaving them unusable. Luckily MS are repairing for free so we were sorted.

Edited November 8, 2016 by TechMonkey