Is This Finally the End for the Surface

[ctitanic]

What you are reading is about the problems some people have with their Surface. What you are not reading is about all the people who are not having problems, mostly because they don't have a reason to participate if everything is working. I personally know several Surface owners who haven't had problem 1.

If my customers had problems with their Surface tablets I would have been the first to hear about it. The only issues I have heard about were Windows 8/8.1 questions.

Totally agree. Usually you read about people that have questions and "issues". Any way in few months you can buy a Surface Pro 3 free of most of the issues that your have found here or in other forums. By that time I will have enjoyed already long hours using this device.

 

[ctitanic]

 

[jnjroach]

Dismal sales = significant losses to the point where major Microsoft shareholders are clamouring for Microsoft to get out of the hardware business altogether.

The loss was on Gen 1 devices and was based on Sinofsky's Regime, it was also based on discounts, marketing and R&D, and it wasn't a write off it was a write down a very different piece then reported by the press....

Institutional investors are looking specifically for shareholder value and dividends, this group of activist investors wants MS to become the next IBM or Oracle and abandon the consumer space completely....

 

[IlbeRevolution]

I've carefully read the entire thread and considered arguements from both sides, and my conclusion is this. It all comes down to what your needs are.

First, let me get this out of the way for those defending the SP3's performance. I've been running benchmarks all weekend (I have to ship my SP2 by this week, so I've been trying to do last-minute comparisons), and you can't deny some of the valid complaints that opposition has- SP3 has worse performance than the SP2. It's not just schizoid paranoids (nor "trolls") hating on SP3. Other review sites are pretty saying the same thing (Anandtech has a great detailed review: AnandTech | Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review), and the SP2 out performs SP3 by a huge margin under heavy workload scenerios (up to +/-30%).

Now, here's what I think though. For those of you who only need SP3 for what it was "designed" for (portable work house specializing on office works, light media sorting, watching videos, school work, taking-notes, etc...), this isn't a problem.
But you have to realize what it means when you define "what it was designed for". Microsoft made it sound like the SP3 was going to be your all-in-one personal computer that's suppose to be faster than any other ultrabooks out there.
It clearly is not. Specially for younger people like me, I consider light gaming a must for a device of this caliber.

Let's face it. The ultimate dream that we all had when SP3 was first announced was the possibility of having a single all-powerful device that can replace my mac book and a tablet.
Ultimately, the core-i series CPU in the SP3 is it's major selling point over the baytrail counterparts- because you can actually run programs that the baytrail counterparts cannot handle. And now, if you're telling me "SP line was never designed for gaming. It's a thin-light portable work device", then why would you spend tripple the cost of a baytrail counterpart, if all you need to run is Office, web browsing, watching videos?

Anyways, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I personally think the SP3 IS a better device (which is why I sold my SP2), but you can't just justify yourselves by denying a valid arguement that the counterpart has presented. I recently went back to the MS Store to verify that it wasn't just my SP3 that had thermal issues, and the sales rep already told me that MS acknowledges some of the throttling issues the SP3 has. Now, knowing MS, they'll probably provide a solution with some of the initial launch problems that we're seeing. We have to keep in mind that SP2 took ~6 months before being fine tuned. With the SP3, I'm sure MS's goal is to improve its' surface pro line, although I kinda feel like they could have waited 2.5 more months for broadwell launch. I'm not too sure if the SP3 will be replacing any MBAs out there yet, but with upcoming upgrades, I might expect more people buying the SP3 over MBA.

 

[EMINENT]

I've carefully read the entire thread and considered arguements from both sides, and my conclusion is this. It all comes down to what your needs are.

First, let me get this out of the way for those defending the SP3's performance. I've been running benchmarks all weekend (I have to ship my SP2 by this week, so I've been trying to do last-minute comparisons), and you can't deny some of the valid complaints that opposition has- SP3 has worse performance than the SP2. It's not just schizoid paranoids (nor "trolls") hating on SP3. Other review sites are pretty saying the same thing (Anandtech has a great detailed review: AnandTech | Microsoft Surface Pro 3 Review), and the SP2 out performs SP3 by a huge margin under heavy workload scenerios (up to +/-30%).

Now, here's what I think though. For those of you who only need SP3 for what it was "designed" for (portable work house specializing on office works, light media sorting, watching videos, school work, taking-notes, etc...), this isn't a problem.
But you have to realize what it means when you define "what it was designed for". Microsoft made it sound like the SP3 was going to be your all-in-one personal computer that's suppose to be faster than any other ultrabooks out there.
It clearly is not. Specially for younger people like me, I consider light gaming a must for a device of this caliber.

Let's face it. The ultimate dream that we all had when SP3 was first announced was the possibility of having a single all-powerful device that can replace my mac book and a tablet.
Ultimately, the core-i series CPU in the SP3 is it's major selling point over the baytrail counterparts- because you can actually run programs that the baytrail counterparts cannot handle. And now, if you're telling me "SP line was never designed for gaming. It's a thin-light portable work device", then why would you spend tripple the cost of a baytrail counterpart, if all you need to run is Office, web browsing, watching videos?

Anyways, I'm just playing devil's advocate here. I personally think the SP3 IS a better device (which is why I sold my SP2), but you can't just justify yourselves by denying a valid arguement that the counterpart has presented. I recently went back to the MS Store to verify that it wasn't just my SP3 that had thermal issues, and the sales rep already told me that MS acknowledges some of the throttling issues the SP3 has. Now, knowing MS, they'll probably provide a solution with some of the initial launch problems that we're seeing. We have to keep in mind that SP2 took ~6 months before being fine tuned. With the SP3, I'm sure MS's goal is to improve its' surface pro line, although I kinda feel like they could have waited 2.5 more months for broadwell launch. I'm not too sure if the SP3 will be replacing any MBAs out there yet, but with upcoming upgrades, I might expect more people buying the SP3 over MBA.

Broadwell won't hit till before holiday 2014 per Intel. Sorry.

 

[IlbeRevolution]

Broadwell won't hit till before holiday 2014 per Intel. Sorry.

Y SoC variants of broadwell will be shipping by september. Asus leak has products with Y series SoC BWs ready by school, and other rumors state Y/ULV aiming for back to school Q3 14, while desktop variants will launch by the end of this year. (http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2014/2014052001_Preliminary_launch_dates_of_Broadwell_CPUs.html), (Unapproved Link China Site Removed)

 

[DanL]

If I was going to use the SP3 for heavy workloads or gaming I would have ordered it with the i7. Not sure if that would solve the performance complaints here, but that would have been my choice if I was looking for better performance.

 

[Dim-Ize]

If I was going to use the SP3 for heavy workloads or gaming I would have ordered it with the i7. Not sure if that would solve the performance complaints here, but that would have been my choice if I was looking for better performance.

Is it possible that the i7 might have even further heat or throttling issues? I am still trying to sort all of it out...i7 and Broadwell compared to what is in this thread and my SP2 256/8.

 

[EMINENT]

Y SoC variants of broadwell will be shipping by september. Asus leak has products with Y series SoC BWs ready by school, and other rumors state Y/ULV aiming for back to school Q3 14, while desktop variants will launch by the end of this year. (Preliminary launch dates of Broadwell CPUs), (Unapproved Link China Site Removed)

Well, the T300 Chi will be a nice device, but it's not going to be anywhere near as powerful. A thinner machine with a full keyboard would be welcome by a lot of journalists, but gamers will still have to hold out for other Broadwell variants that have no eta.

 

[IlbeRevolution]

Well, the T300 Chi will be a nice device, but it's not going to be anywhere near as powerful. A thinner machine with a full keyboard would be welcome by a lot of journalists, but gamers will still have to hold out for other Broadwell variants that have no eta.

I think you're missing my point, but let's do a side by side analysis.
The Broadwell 53xxY series will probably perform on par with 4300U on SP3 under load due to much more efficient thermal managing on Y series VS the horrible load performance on SP3. The catch is, it has much lower TDP, silent computing, much better gpu performance, etc...but the selling point is that it's going to cost a fraction of what the SP3 costs.
Granted, you get the solid build quality with the SP3, and I'm all for that but you should realize what my point is- The SP3 which was marketed as the "one device that can replace and do everything", which was said to be the faster than 95% of ultrabooks out there is not what we're seeing. You can't even do light gaming on this machine. I think that it's fair for buyers to expect a machine of this caliber to be able to run simple games like LoL or WoW without their machine turning into a burning hot grill.
Going from SP2 to SP3, I think it's fair to say that we expected at least an equal performance, not a 30% drop in performance.
That being said, overall I do think the SP3 is an improvement over the SP2. I was just playing a devil's advocate in pointing out that MS failed to meet their originally set mission statements, and you can't just deny any valid complaints that we're seeing on this thread by dismissing them as being "trolls" or dressing up as MS fanboys. You might not have a problem with the SP3 because your needs might be different, but that doesn't mean others can't have any expectations. If anything, I'm optimistic about SP line, and calling it an end for SP line is stupid. But for what little mistake MS has made, they need to called out. All I'm saying.

 

[bradhaak]

Going from SP2 to SP3, I think it's fair to say that we expected at least an equal performance, not a 30% drop in performance.
That being said, overall I do think the SP3 is an improvement over the SP2. I was just playing a devil's advocate in pointing out that MS failed to meet their originally set mission statements, and you can't just deny any valid complaints that we're seeing on this thread by dismissing them as being "trolls" or dressing up as MS fanboys. If anything, I'm optimistic about SP line, but for what little mistake MS has made, they need to called out. All I'm saying.

I still don't get what people are talking about. I just reread the MS announcement for the SP3 and it talks about being more powerful than laptops, but it doesn't talk about speed or name any specifically, except for the Macbook Air which is a full featured laptop but is not very powerful.

I'm very happy with my SP3 but that has nothing to do with separating truth from hype.

And I did run into a problem the other day. I was using the pen and hit the hardware Windows button a couple of times, just like a number of reviewers have complained about. It was fairly irritating, so after the second time, I rotated the SP3 180 degrees so that the button was at the top of the device and didn't have anymore problems for the rest of the day.

As with so many other things, a little common sense solves the problem.

 

[godoftroll]

I still don't get what people are talking about. I just reread the MS announcement for the SP3 and it talks about being more powerful than laptops, but it doesn't talk about speed or name any specifically, except for the Macbook Air which is a full featured laptop but is not very powerful.

I'm very happy with my SP3 but that has nothing to do with separating truth from hype.

And I did run into a problem the other day. I was using the pen and hit the hardware Windows button a couple of times, just like a number of reviewers have complained about. It was fairly irritating, so after the second time, I rotated the SP3 180 degrees so that the button was at the top of the device and didn't have anymore problems for the rest of the day.

As with so many other things, a little common sense solves the problem.

Well, they did coin the SP3 being faster than 95% of laptops out there, and pretty much pointed heavily to MBA, calling it a device faster than highest-end ultrabooks, and 20% boost from the last-gen SP2.

I've been doing some digging, and that statement definitely is not holding up under load scenerios.