Question regarding purchase

[tgienger]

I am very interested in ordering a new Surface next week. My dilemma is which one to get for my $750 budget. With the student discount on the MS Store I could get the Surface 3 with the keyboard and pen for $701 (4gb ram, 128gb drive) OR I could get the i3 version and squeeze a pen in as well.

I'm not extremely concerned with performance at this point, however I would like as much as I can get for the money. Obviously. My questions to the community are, what are you opinions on the performance of the i3 Surface and how bad is a 64gb drive?

Drive capacity scares me for sure. I'm just not sure the boost to the i3 would be worth the sacrifice of the drive + waiting for the keyboard. Thoughts?

edit: if I purchase the i3 version used I could get it + a new keyboard and pen.

thinking out loud: I'm seeing the i5 version with 4 gigs of ram and 128gb ssd for under $700. Could be the way I go.

 

[hughlle]

Bare in mind that windows takles up a goodly amount of space. I think MS have some small print on the product page saying how much free space is available, but i think windows is around 25-30gb or so. But you do have the micro sd card slot so can quite easily and cheapy add anything upto 128gb of additional storage.

Also, while you have to buy a pen with the surface 3, the pen is included with the surface pro 3.

Also worth baring in mind that you will be able to find a second hand surface pro 3 much cheaper, you don't necessarily have to buy new.

I have the i5/128 and i love it. Certainly don't need anything more for my needs, but for my needs i wouldn't have gone with the i3 and definately not the surface 3. It really depends on what you need it for. If it is nothing more than media, office, and the internet, then surface 3 will happily do all that. But if you want to play games or anything, then i'd suggest the surface pro line.

 

[Johnny365]

I got a used i5/128GB for under $400 on Amazon, so it's possible to find cheaper, but if you want new and have those two options as a budget, I'd go for the i3 version. The screen size is better and you don't have to worry about the Atom CPU not keeping up in the future.

 

[tgienger]

Bare in mind that windows takles up a goodly amount of space. I think MS have some small print on the product page saying how much free space is available, but i think windows is around 25-30gb or so. But you do have the micro sd card slot so can quite easily and cheapy add anything upto 128gb of additional storage.

Also, while you have to buy a pen with the surface 3, the pen is included with the surface pro 3.

Also worth baring in mind that you will be able to find a second hand surface pro 3 much cheaper, you don't necessarily have to buy new.

I have the i5/128 and i love it. Certainly don't need anything more for my needs, but for my needs i wouldn't have gone with the i3 and definately not the surface 3. It really depends on what you need it for. If it is nothing more than media, office, and the internet, then surface 3 will happily do all that. But if you want to play games or anything, then i'd suggest the surface pro line.

Yeah, I'm leaning toward a 128g i5 right now for price / performance. Mind if I ask what kind of "heavier" applications have you ran on yours?

 

[hughlle]

Yeah, I'm leaning toward a 128g i5 right now for price / performance. Mind if I ask what kind of "heavier" applications have you ran on yours?

I'm just a business psych student so not running anything like photoshop etc, the most taxing stuff i've run is the likes of counter strike source, battlefield 1942, southpark stick of truth. Games basically. Fan ramps up and the thing gets hot but it manages them pretty happily Not sure if compressing 50gb files counts as heavy usage, sure takes a while though 128/4gb seems the sweetspot for me though. Couldn't justify the price hike to get the bigger ssd. No need for 8gb of ram if you ask me unless there is a specific application or usage case that warrants this kind of memory.