Surface Pro as a desktop replacmenet

[lparsons21]

I'm coming late to this particular thread.

I'm contemplating switching from all Mac to mostly Windows. My usage these days is just a few internet things, my checkbook and using Sibelius to do music engraving.

The apps I use to do most of these things are already licensed to use on both Windows and OSX with the exception of PocketMoney, so from an app standpoint I should be good to go.

My testing setup is a Surface Pro (1st gen), Type Cover , Logitech T650 touchpad and a Sony PS3 3D display. Things are working good but I'm finding some minor irritants. I need to keep both the internal and PS3 displays on which is one of the bigger ones. The internal display gives me the touchscreen that is so handy for many things, but if I mirror I find my eyes wandering between the two screens.

So I"m thinking maybe a touchscreen monitor. Any one know of some that are reasonably cheap in the 24" approximate size? And how do they connect to the SP?

I have noticed some lag with both the keyboard and the T650, not sure just what is causing that.

I figure I could either make the switch and sell my late 2012 MacBook Pro w/Retina display as it will have the highest resale value, or stick with the Mac and sell the SP. Comments welcome on this.

I've also got an ASUS T100TA hybrid that I use solely as a tablet since the keyboard sucks so bad.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

 

[CrippsCorner]

Regarding the lag on the keyboard and mouse, what frequency are you connecting to Wi-Fi on? If 2.4GHz that could be the cause, I'd suggest going with 5GHz if possible.

 

[scottysize]

I'm not a fan of the Surface Pro 3 as a replacement for my Surface Pro 2 because the Surface Pro 3 is too big for my taste.

Having said that, I have to investigate some more but the SP3 might be faster than my 2010 iMac with an i5 quad core, and if that's the case then I might buy it to replace my MacBook, iMac and Surface Pro 2 (although grudgingly for the latter).

I'm not sure how this will work out. Any serious work or gaming on the Surface results in immense heat, my SP2 has gotten up to 60C which suggests to me that a SP3 as a desktop replacement might end very badly under heavily daily use. The SP3 is supposed to run cooler than the SP2 (I think), but I don't know if this will make enough of a difference to matter.

Edit: apparently my iMac from 2010 outshines the SP3 so I might not buy it now, not unless OS X runs well on it anyway: Intel Core i5-760 vs i7-4650U

tldr; under heavy use the Surface heats up quite a lot, if you're uncomfortable with that don't use it as a desktop replacement.

So, you're now not thinking about replacing your 2010 MacBook Pro with a SP3? Because that's where I'm at. I can still get a good $500-600 for my Mac, and I was planning on buying the biggest and fastest; IE: $2000+ after adding the keyboard.

 

[scottysize]

I'm coming late to this particular thread.

I'm contemplating switching from all Mac to mostly Windows. My usage these days is just a few internet things, my checkbook and using Sibelius to do music engraving.

The apps I use to do most of these things are already licensed to use on both Windows and OSX with the exception of PocketMoney, so from an app standpoint I should be good to go.

My testing setup is a Surface Pro (1st gen), Type Cover , Logitech T650 touchpad and a Sony PS3 3D display. Things are working good but I'm finding some minor irritants. I need to keep both the internal and PS3 displays on which is one of the bigger ones. The internal display gives me the touchscreen that is so handy for many things, but if I mirror I find my eyes wandering between the two screens.

So I"m thinking maybe a touchscreen monitor. Any one know of some that are reasonably cheap in the 24" approximate size? And how do they connect to the SP?

I have noticed some lag with both the keyboard and the T650, not sure just what is causing that.

I figure I could either make the switch and sell my late 2012 MacBook Pro w/Retina display as it will have the highest resale value, or stick with the Mac and sell the SP. Comments welcome on this.

I've also got an ASUS T100TA hybrid that I use solely as a tablet since the keyboard sucks so bad.

Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Same boat. I'm thinking about selling my MacBook Pro and iPad Air for the SP3. I'm kinda of tired of having both devices and this seems to be a good alternative...

 

[lparsons21]

Regarding the lag on the keyboard and mouse, what frequency are you connecting to Wi-Fi on? If 2.4GHz that could be the cause, I'd suggest going with 5GHz if possible.

The keyboard is the Type Cover. The Logitech T650 uses a USB dongle to communicate with,no idea of what frequency it uses but there isn't a choice for it.

More I look at it, it seems that on my 4Gb RAM configured SP I may have too many things open which causes some of the lag. Of course, I could be totally wrong...

 

[lparsons21]

The keyboard is the Type Cover. The Logitech T650 uses a USB dongle to communicate with,no idea of what frequency it uses but there isn't a choice for it.

More I look at it, it seems that on my 4Gb RAM configured SP I may have too many things open which causes some of the lag. Of course, I could be totally wrong...

Aha, I missed your comments direction!!

My wireless networking is a dual-channel Airport Extreme, so both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz are available, but I have no clue how to see what the SP is connecting to.

 

[lparsons21]

OK, figgered it all out. Ran the airport utility on the Mac to see what was connected to which unit and at what speed. Both the SurfacePro and the Asus T100TA were connecting to the 2.4Ghz side of things. So after doing some research, I set a new name for the 5Ghz side of things on the TimeCapsule and Airport Extreme and then connected to that new network. All was good, or at least I thought so.

The Mac wasn't thrilled with the 5Ghz side!!

No longer saw the TimeCapsule's internal or external drive, or even showed the damned thing being there. Somehow Finder changed a setting to show the MBP, once I stuck that back in all was good. The only thing not so good is that the MBP is very much slower at attaching to the 5Ghz network. All works fine once it does, it just takes a significant amount of time to do so, about 1.5 to 2 minutes.

 

[dannyshane]

I'm set up to do this also.
Im using the pluggable 3900 dock, two asus 23" monitors, wireless mouse & keyboard of course, audio and external harddrive all connected to the 3900 dock.
I feel like the sp2 is getting pretty hot at times. but im not sure if it is acceptable or if I should be worried.

 

[zokstar]

Get a temp monitoring app and check it out!