Recent SP2 64GB Buyer Questions/Comments

[AGDZ]

Hello all,

I'm a Mac user of 5 years jumping ship to Microsoft's exciting new world of Surface. I've been keeping my eye out since i first saw the great looking device in the wild and have been chomping at the bit to get the second iteration since release. Now, I have received mine!

I initially set out to purchase the 256Gb as I do music production and I need the RAM, but I couldn't afford the heavy price tag at the moment and needed a new computer for school. I love the device so far, but I have run into a few qualms I wanted a second opinion on.

The annoyance of having to have two separate IE browsers open sometimes aside, I've noticed that having only 4 tabs open shoots memory usage to over 50%, and I've had cases where I've had to wait for Windows to catch up. Granted I am doing school work so I'm bouncing between a few open tabs, Word and Reader. I guess I'm just surprised at how much this seemingly simple tasks eat up memory quickly. Does this sound normal?

Have I made a mistake in purchasing the 4Gb? I thought it would be 'enough' even though I would have been happier with 'ideal'.

Should I just grin and bear it? Or perhaps use another desktop browser?

Thanks.

 

[Philtastic]

Since at least Windows Vista, Windows tries to preload things into RAM to make regularly used applications potentially faster (to be honest, I'm not entirely certain if that is still in Win8). The idea is that we have all of this RAM there so we might as well use it until something big needs the RAM, at which point, Windows will clear apps/anything preloaded to make space in memory, thus you shouldn't interpret high total RAM usage as necessarily running out of memory. I guess what we'll need to know is what you mean by waiting for Windows to "catch up"?

 

[chmsfor]

Its weird .. I can do the same thing on my old windows xp machine ...Something must be wrong...I can open quite a lot of things on my surface pro 2 which has 8gb ram ...But my win xp is only 3gb ram ... Maybe you've got something else running ...is your sd card in? there is a bug with high cpu with that. ..

 

[AGDZ]

Since at least Windows Vista, Windows tries to preload things into RAM to make regularly used applications potentially faster (to be honest, I'm not entirely certain if that is still in Win8). The idea is that we have all of this RAM there so we might as well use it until something big needs the RAM, at which point, Windows will clear apps/anything preloaded to make space in memory, thus you shouldn't interpret high total RAM usage as necessarily running out of memory. I guess what we'll need to know is what you mean by waiting for Windows to "catch up"?

There are times that screen taps don't register, or a prompt will appear (like if I'm downloading a file from the internet) and I'll have to wait 10 seconds for 'yes' to let me select it, while cancel is ready immediately. Or Word or IE will randomly stall and have the (Not Responding) along the header and have me wait. It's just a hiccup but why? I've had things freeze and take minutes to register pen taps, do nothing then show all my taps move across that do nothing across the screen like a video of my frustration with having to wait play before me. That has only happened twice

Some of this could be impatience, but with a brand new device I'm not asking the world of, it can be unpleasant.

 

[jnjroach]

Much of this RAM spike happens due to 3rd Party Ad Servers that use a technique that is flagged by IE 11 as a cross-scripting attack, sends that web part of the page into a loop trying to serve up or track whatever it was programmed to do, one workaround is disable Tracking Protection (this is a war between IE and the third party Ad Services - read Google).

 

[Philtastic]

Hmm, that does sound odd. On every Windows machine I have ever used, that generally doesn't happen unless something is running in the background eating CPU cycles. You can try opening task manager and sorting the processes by CPU to see if something is eating your CPU cycles when the hangs/freezes occur. Also check the Performance tab to see if your CPU is being heavily used even if you aren't doing anything.

Do you have an anti-virus running? Windows 8 has its own pretty good anti-virus, thus you don't really need to install another one unless you are really bad about going to sketchy websites or opening bad attachments

 

[MickeyLittle]

Have you rebooted it recently? We have had a lot of updates and every time you get an update it is suggested to at least do a reboot/restart. I actually shut it down, wait about 10 seconds, and then press the power button to restart the tablet.

As Philtastic has mentioned I am using the Windows Defender package that is one of the apps already installed on the tablet as my antivirus program and to me it works great without bogging the system down like Norton/McAfee can surely do!

 

[AGDZ]

Hmm, that does sound odd. On every Windows machine I have ever used, that generally doesn't happen unless something is running in the background eating CPU cycles. You can try opening task manager and sorting the processes by CPU to see if something is eating your CPU cycles when the hangs/freezes occur. Also check the Performance tab to see if your CPU is being heavily used even if you aren't doing anything.

Do you have an anti-virus running? Windows 8 has its own pretty good anti-virus, thus you don't really need to install another one unless you are really bad about going to sketchy websites or opening bad attachments

The CPU is fine. Only thing that is high is memory but as you said, it is reasonable to use the RAM if the computer has it. The big issues I had could have been caused by installs I was doing in the background, but I left my device alone for the most part while that was going on. I suppose it is pretty regular performance, the program I have been running in desktop beside Word is Stellarium for an Astronomy class. Nothing too tasking but could have contributed to some of the minor hiccups as I was going from Word, to multiple tabs which were probably pretty demanding. Some of the online classes have pretty developed interfaces now, and I can imagine its a lot to process.

Thanks for the help everyone.

Now, my portable hard drive I used for my iMac has to be reformatted before I can use it with my Surface as I understand it. Is this correct? I have to find a Mac and upload some things to SkyDrive to get the files I need. That is the only workaround I can think of.

 

[jefhart]

Now, my portable hard drive I used for my iMac has to be reformatted before I can use it with my Surface as I understand it. Is this correct? I have to find a Mac and upload some things to SkyDrive to get the files I need. That is the only workaround I can think of.

It depends how the hard drive is currently formatted:
The best ways to format an external drive for Windows and Mac | How To - CNET

You could also try using a thumb drive if you don't have too many files.

 

[munakib]

I have the 128gb, 8gb ram version using chrome and having multiple tabs is not having an impact on my SP2. Maybe test a few different browsers and check what works for you the best.