The Pros and Cons of a Surface Pro 3

I wasn’t planning on replacing my no-longer-so-trusty laptop the same month as I forked over big bucks for a fancy new smartphone. But there I was with my no-longer-so-trusty laptop doing the stall and crawl all over the place. Between the clients, the Pink Slip, and the bit of volunteer work I’m doing, I really can’t be without, so…

I had already decided on a Surface Pro 3, the combo tablet and laptop that would bring me into the tablet world (ooh, aah) and could also double as my workhorse. Two trusted technology advisors – my brother-in-law John and my old friend Peter – both have Surface Pros and like them. (Like me, they’re both pretty much non-Apple folks. Hell, John used to be anti-Microsoft, even. He was the last person I knew who actually used OS/2.)

A couple of weeks into it, here’s my take on the Pros and Cons:

Pros
It’s cool looking. I really like the overall look, and I really like looking technology current. A lot of my clients are really young, and not lugging around a laptop anvil makes me appear a bit more on trend. (Of course, the biggest favor I did myself there was getting rid of the Blackberry. As I’ve said, it had gotten to be one step above a Bakelite rotary dial.)

It’s lightweight. Seriously, it doesn’t weigh all that much more than my new smarty-smartphone. It fits in a pocketbook, and it’s easy to use on a plane, even if the person in the seat in front of you has his seat reclined further back that you might have thought was physically possible. (Of course, since pretty much everything in life is a tradeoff, the tradeoff for featherweight is that the keyboard feels a bit tinny. But it’s worth it.)

It’s a bird, it’s a plane. Although I’ve pretty much just used my Pro in full PC mode, the keyboard detaches and turns this into a nifty little tablet. Not that I really care to have a tablet, mind you. It’s just that now I do. And being as it’s a tablet, it has those fun tablet characteristics, like swooping around with your finger. And it comes with a pen that, once I get used to it, will make up for one of the major cons: cursor and mouse instability.

Cons
The mouse plays cat and mouse. I’ve gone through pretty much all the techniques available that are supposed to solve the mystery of the disappearing mouse, but the mouse is just wild. Completely erratic and all over the surface. I set it up so it’s large and black, but in order for you to see that it’s large and black, it has to be visible. But now you see it, now you don’t. I set things up so that, when the mouse goes missing, I just need to hit the Ctrl key to show me where it is. The problem is that it’s invariably hiding in the upper-left hand corner. It’s coaxing it out of its hidey hole that’s the problem. The cursor is similarly flaky, at least when using Live Writer (the application I blog with). You think you’re at Point A and start typing, but you’re really at Point B. I think that once I get a better handle on using it,the pen will prove mightier than the mouse. We’ll see. (I did buy an optional external mouse, which is Bluetooth. It’s not working at the moment…)

It runs hot (and makes a whirring noise while it’s at it). From what I’ve read, this is either a problem that goes away with time, or it’s a problem related to a certain batch of the devices. I have until the end of June to get a new one, so we’ll see if it’s still running hot at that point. If it is, I’ll make sure they don’t replace it with another one from the bad lot. (When the hot stuff goes away, it will take the whirring fan with it.)

Too many tiles. I’m sure I can figure out how to rid the screen of at least some of these suckers, but for now they’re there, and I’m just not liking them. Too much look and feel for my tastes. Then again, I’d be just as happy to run apps from the command line. (Don’t tell any of my young clients about it. They won’t even know what the command line is.)

It ain’t cheap. I knew going into things that I was not going to end up paying the get-you-in-the-door price. Still, I was a bit sticker-shocked. (Probably good practice for my upcoming reno projects.) The one thing I ended up cheaping out on is the carrying case. I could have sprung for the cool Kate Spade one – which is what I did for my new Galaxy 6S – but that just seemed like a waste, when there were perfectly good options included in the package that I bought. So I chose one which looks like the portfolio that the Bulgarian Minister of Agriculture would have carried in 1982. Sigh… But I just can’t go back and get the Kate Spade. Not until I find out how much the tiles I’ll be putting in my renewed bathrooms are going to run me.

The Bottom Line
I’m happy with my Surface Pro 3, and would do it again. (This assumes that there aren’t flames coming out of it the day after the 30 day on-the-spot replacement period ends…)