Buy Surface Pro 3 now or wait for 4
- Thread starter Pack3028
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Telstar1948
Active Member
Now THAT'S a DEAL!
Do you have any issue with heat with the i7? I read some people saying the SP3 i7 overheats or has there been an update that addressed that? whichever version I get it will be at least 256gb and 8RAM.
dstrauss
Active Member
Sage advice (ok Strauss - back away and leave the poor guy alone). In all seriousness, there is almost no chance of an SPro4 release ahead of Windows 10, but they may be close together DEPENDING if the Broadwell chipset is available. Then you get the "tock" to the SPro 3 "tick" = same shell, screen, keyboard with the following possibilities:
1. More or different ports (new reversible USB 3 high speed anyone, anyone)
2. A 512GB i5 model
3. A 1TB i7 model (one can dream, or is that hallucinate)
4. No fan and more battery (talk about hallucinating)
5. Thunderbolt! (just kidding)
This advice/commentary is worth exactly what you are paying for it, but I am willing to bet 1, 2, and 4 are strong possibilities.
PS - Microsoft - if you are listening - PLEASE GO BACK TO WACOM - pretty please - yea, I know, a near impossibility (probably both 3 & 5 above will happen before that) but it would be so helpful.
Personally, I'm a much bigger fan of N-trig if only for the fact that I can write without any issues right next to the bezel. They need 1024 point N-trig I think.
dstrauss
Active Member
I am a diehard Wacom fan. My N-Trig gives me fits every couple of days with disconnecting, or not writing in OneNote, or the latest, neither the eraser nor select buttons worked and Microsoft had me do a Refresh (what a POS - sure your data isn't blown away, but say good bye to every non-Metro app you own) to recover. And no, they have confirmed it is not hardware, it is ALWAYS software/firmware issues. Reminds me of the bad old days of the HP Slate 500...
If you can wait, get the SP4. But you are betting for a end of the year release, which doesn't look like will happen mostly due to Intel delays. So probably Q1 next year. Definitely not January or February. These 2 months, people tend to not buy anything. So expect late February or March. So expect that much waiting.
The SP4 will have (that is pretty much expected), longer battery life, a bit faster CPU and faster GPU, due to the new Intel CPU (that is assuming that the rumors of that are correct). It will also be more polished device. MAYBE 2 USB ports (I expect full size USB 3.1 and the new TypeC USB). All depending on the space saved from the new Intel CPU, due to the integration of components.
Expecting a low end Nvidia or AMD GPU inside, while possible (a ~5W Nvidia GPU can be done, in fact that is what the Nvidia Tegra K1 ARM based processor, has that beats Intel best offering), I would highly doubt it. There is currently no market or interest dedicated GPUs. So while cool, and awesome for many, it's probably not a selling point for most, so it won't be in.
Thunderbolt is a possibility, but it's expensive to implement, unless Microsoft can get a deal like with Intel, like with Apple, to have it cheap. And really nothing uses Thunderbolt. Well you have, but nothing that can't be accomplished with USB 3.x. All I can think about is external graphics card, but:
1- the enclosures cost 1000$ for starting, you need a power supply and graphics card.
2- It's equivalent to PCI-E 4x. So not fast enough to have something worthwhile, especially that 1000$ starting price tag.
3- You need an external monitor, you can't have it feed back the image, back to the Surface Pro device
4- Driver support is not there.
The SP4 will have (that is pretty much expected), longer battery life, a bit faster CPU and faster GPU, due to the new Intel CPU (that is assuming that the rumors of that are correct). It will also be more polished device. MAYBE 2 USB ports (I expect full size USB 3.1 and the new TypeC USB). All depending on the space saved from the new Intel CPU, due to the integration of components.
Expecting a low end Nvidia or AMD GPU inside, while possible (a ~5W Nvidia GPU can be done, in fact that is what the Nvidia Tegra K1 ARM based processor, has that beats Intel best offering), I would highly doubt it. There is currently no market or interest dedicated GPUs. So while cool, and awesome for many, it's probably not a selling point for most, so it won't be in.
Thunderbolt is a possibility, but it's expensive to implement, unless Microsoft can get a deal like with Intel, like with Apple, to have it cheap. And really nothing uses Thunderbolt. Well you have, but nothing that can't be accomplished with USB 3.x. All I can think about is external graphics card, but:
1- the enclosures cost 1000$ for starting, you need a power supply and graphics card.
2- It's equivalent to PCI-E 4x. So not fast enough to have something worthwhile, especially that 1000$ starting price tag.
3- You need an external monitor, you can't have it feed back the image, back to the Surface Pro device
4- Driver support is not there.
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Deryl McCarty
Active Member
Ok guys, there is a simple solution here. There is an old military saying that goes like this: When given a set of conflicting orders do both. The corollary is that when given choice of two pretty damned good computers (though in the case of the SP4 that is partly conjecture) buy both - one now and one next year.
The price of SP3 will of course drop when SP4 releases, but that doesn't bother me.
Surface is a core part of my life. If my Surface broke, I don't really know how I would get through the day - probably with a lot of frustration. As the device is core to my life, I feel that whenever a new one releases, it's well worth it for me to upgrade - I get a lot of use out of my Surface.
So I don't concern myself about which one to buy, I'll just get the next one when it releases.
InspectHerGadget
Active Member
Such is life.
The important thing is to buy something that sets your needs. If the SP3 does then buy it.
The SP3 is a tool not an investment.
My SP3 does what I need it to do so really there is probably not much incentive to replace it when the next model comes out.
