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I would pay $1000 for a Surface 3 if...

It's not a bad thing, but it can be when you are still trying to establish yourself in the market. I wouldn't say no to a high power 10" surface (pro) or whatnot, but it doesn't seme like it's in microsofts best interests right now imo. When they get to the point where they can't keep the things on the shelves, then it would be feasible to take the samsung approach, again, imo.
They're a far cry from Samsung's approach, more like the other end of the spectrum. Keep in mind MS had visions of grandeur with Surface RT and that's still where large potential exits but to win you have to be better than the other guy and offer things they cant, not just float a me too entry. RT was crippled by marketing because they were afraid of what it might mean if it succeeded. You cant have this feature or that feature because we are holding it back for the other product. Dumb! and it cost them. They are on the verge of making the same mistake again.
 
i might wait until October. I was reading about Skylake. Wow. By Christmas, Broadwell devices will be discounted and the new Surface Pro 4 will be on sale. I wonder if they'll split the line into M and U variants.

I doubt if the Surface 3 will get any upgrade though.

I think Microsoft would be nuts not to release a more compact Surface running Core M Skylake.

Apple always considered cannabilising your own product lines a good thing. A sale is a sale.
 
So really what Op wants is a Surface Pro with a smaller screen and presumably Micro USB charging. For all we know that could very well be Surface Pro 4!
 
So really what Op wants is a Surface Pro with a smaller screen and presumably Micro USB charging. For all we know that could very well be Surface Pro 4!

The SP4 will be the same size as the SP3 for accessory compatibility.
 
When I was talking to the folks at the Microsoft Store, they said that there is a "commercial" version of the Surface 3 available that allows for more memory and a larger hard drive, however, you have to prove that you have a business, or the company you work for has to purchase it. Or something like that. You might wanna hit up a Microsoft store to see what that's all about.
Not true. The 64GB model just comes with 4GB RAM instead of 2GB. There is no model with more the 4GB RAM or more than 128GB storage and the storage isn't any faster.
The commercial model also gives you Windows 8.1 Pro instead of a free year of Office 365.
 
I was concerned about the storage size but I have found it workable for me. All my essential files are on the main drive synced with Dropbox. Media including music, and lots of movies on 128gb mSD card which lives in the slot. I recently bought a Samsung T1 SSD 1Tb drive which is amazingly small and light (and expensive). I've put my entire iTune library on there which is 750gb and it easy to carry around in my bag. Not sure how much more storage you need?
 
I was thinking about performance today as I converted 250 photos, about 5GB out of Lightroom down to 2MB size and then onto OneDrive. It was only using 5.5G of RAM to do this and I haven't seen my computer use more than 8G RAM while using Lightroom and Photoshop. It did it in no time but having a hex core i7 -5820 desktop overclocked to 4GHz probably helped...LOL

I think that the Surface 3 is capable of doing this but obviously very slowly. At least it doesn't get hot like the SP3 would.

I'm just making the point. Desktops still rule for doing big jobs. I could do this on my Surface Pro 3 but would only consider it if my desktop was not available such as when on holiday and I had a lot of photos to do.

The Surface 3 with 4G is I would think just fine. The complaints on the forum are it would be nice to have Core M and nice to have an SSD, as eMMC speeds are a tiny fraction of what an SSD/PCIe device is capable of. I personally don't think 8G would make that much difference as the performance is severely limited in other ways and Windows works well in 4G even with programs such as Lightroom.

Well under $1000 will buy the Lenovo Yoga 3 11 inch but it isn't a Surface, isn't as compact and the build quality, while high, is not quite as good. It does, however, have the Core M (although it severely throttles on sustained tasks) and a very fast M.2 SSD.

The Surface 3 is unique though if you take into account the supreme build quality and compactness. It remains to be seen with the Surface 4 in a year's time or likely the SP4 at the end of the year will deliver it all. There is no perfect device.
 
I was concerned about the storage size but I have found it workable for me. All my essential files are on the main drive synced with Dropbox. Media including music, and lots of movies on 128gb mSD card which lives in the slot. I recently bought a Samsung T1 SSD 1Tb drive which is amazingly small and light (and expensive). I've put my entire iTune library on there which is 750gb and it easy to carry around in my bag. Not sure how much more storage you need?

Well depends on what you use it for. To you your 750gb library is important to you so you need an additional 1tb of storage on top of the 128gb micro sd. For me, i have 4tb of media that if i had the choice i would take with me when i'm travelling, but it just isn't convenient.
 
I was thinking about performance today as I converted 250 photos, about 5GB out of Lightroom down to 2MB size and then onto OneDrive. It was only using 5.5G of RAM to do this and I haven't seen my computer use more than 8G RAM while using Lightroom and Photoshop. It did it in no time but having a hex core i7 -5820 desktop overclocked to 4GHz probably helped...LOL

I think that the Surface 3 is capable of doing this but obviously very slowly. At least it doesn't get hot like the SP3 would.

I'm just making the point. Desktops still rule for doing big jobs. I could do this on my Surface Pro 3 but would only consider it if my desktop was not available such as when on holiday and I had a lot of photos to do.

The Surface 3 with 4G is I would think just fine. The complaints on the forum are it would be nice to have Core M and nice to have an SSD, as eMMC speeds are a tiny fraction of what an SSD/PCIe device is capable of. I personally don't think 8G would make that much difference as the performance is severely limited in other ways and Windows works well in 4G even with programs such as Lightroom.

Well under $1000 will buy the Lenovo Yoga 3 11 inch but it isn't a Surface, isn't as compact and the build quality, while high, is not quite as good. It does, however, have the Core M (although it severely throttles on sustained tasks) and a very fast M.2 SSD.

The Surface 3 is unique though if you take into account the supreme build quality and compactness. It remains to be seen with the Surface 4 in a year's time or likely the SP4 at the end of the year will deliver it all. There is no perfect device.
Lenovo hasn't done a particularly good job implementing Core-M in the yoga. As for throttling it could be better but the point is, running flat out the Atom stays plenty cool but doesn't provide the horsepower while Core-M at max might be too hot for the heat dissipation but to get better performance than the Atom you have to use Core-M SDP which is just another term for throttling. In fact throttling IS a good thing and allows you to achieve the max performance for a given thermal profile. People will harp/rant on throttling and to an extent a bad implementation will throttle more that a good one but unless there's a perfect part for the heat dissipation capability of the design throttling is the only way to get to maximum performance out of the design otherwise you're leaving performance on the design table.

Note: overclocking is just throttling up.
 
The Lenovo is getting good reviews. It works fine for most tasks but if you try some task like batch photo conversion, it would quickly throttle down but then so would my SP3.

The SP4 will come with Skylake which will be even better and more efficient. Broadwell was delayed and looks to have the shortest product lifecycle of any Intel CPU. It is also why I'm not biting on the Lenovo, they'll be on clearance once Skylake comes out in September.

I've been very happy though with my i7 SP3. The SP4 will be for my wife or maybe I'll get the Lenovo. We also get 2 year warranty here in Australia on the Surface so mine is covered until December 2016. The Surface 2 is still covered until the end of this year.
 
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