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My Day with Surface at the American Psychological Association

Feoen

Member
Greetings from the APA, and Washington DC! I'm sitting down a corridor on the second floor, waiting for an ceremony that will happen to have food... ;)

I am a doctoral student in clinical psychology, and one of my goals when making the decision to purchase the SP3 was to better integrate technology in my work with patients. Whether it be through signing consent documents electronically (but with pen!), accessing my electronic patient database on-the-go, or just needing my library of scholarly articles at-a-click, the SP3 has been performing brilliantly. While I have owned my SP3 since release, and I have used it in multiple contexts, today is the first day I've really went "on the road" with it.

Today I went to five symposia, one training workshop, and one small-group meeting. I inked my notes into OneNote throughout each. One of the biggest aspects of technology that I value is how well the technology "gets out of the way" and lets me do my work. As someone completely foreign to inking until today, I must say that the SP3 excelled beyond my wildest expectations. It was like writing on paper for which the supply will never run out. I just took out the tablet, pressed the top of the pen, and started writing.

I had a number of other professionals ask about my tablet, as they've never seen anything quite like it. To avoid derailing the topic, I won't focus too much on the number of people who said "My iPad can't do that!", but I am fairly sure that I generated a few more sales for the SP3 to people who were unaware of its existence.

I will be providing a poster presentation tomorrow, and I plan to utilize my SP3 similarly such that I can note questions, criticisms, and concerns about my research that other attendees may propose.

As an added bonus, I've been going from 8 to 5 today using my SP3 and it is at 40% battery. It is worth noting that I had the brightness at 20% and wifi was off (I turned it on when I needed it, such as finding a map to another area where a meeting was being held). Regardless, the battery life in this "real-world usage" scenario was excellent and any concerns I had about it were dashed.

I know that this forum is not a blog, but I all-too-often see such negativity posted about this tablet that I figured a little self-reflection might be worth it. Please let me know if you have any questions about my experience using the SP3 today in this setting!
 
Thank you for posting about your experience, real world scenarios really make the SP3 shine, versus I can't do crazy video editing or play games threads over and over again. You are using the SP3 as it was designed to be used, at least that's how I think it was meant to be used.

Now go get that free food! Hopefully they have a free happy hour too :D
 
:(
Stop trying to tempt me to buy an sp3! I've been drooling for it since it first came out. Thought if I sleep on it for a few weeks it would go away. It hasn't gone away and I'm still drooling for it.
My thoughts exactly. I've actually been eyeing the Surface Pro since #2. #3 is almost what I want but not quite. However, posts like these make me want to pull the trigger... I don't plan on doing crazy video editing or gaming either. For me, games will always be meant for arcades.
 
My thoughts exactly. I've actually been eyeing the Surface Pro since #2. #3 is almost what I want but not quite. However, posts like these make me want to pull the trigger... I don't plan on doing crazy video editing or gaming either. For me, games will always be meant for arcades.
If I get one, or some kind soul buys one for me :D I'd mainly use it for programming and work. I'm an engineer, so I use heavy duty stuff like microstation and autocad a lot.
 
Good job and smart too, efficiently using the device and battery to your best advantage, but then you are that smart. Its so easy when you know how. Negative Nick never notices nothing nice.
 
Thanks for your real life review on this.

I would echo your battery life experience. I have used my SP3 at home on weekends and at work and have run it with wifi and decent screen brightness and it performs for hours and hours on end, something that I would not have had with my old laptop.
 
Thanks for the real life review. Really interesting reading how you found the SP3 as real work device.
 
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