Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

I own a Surface Pro 3.

Not too shabby. The onscreen keyboard sucks ass (worse than the Windows Phone 8 keyboard in every measurable way), and is a little buggy (e.g. typing a single letter into Chrome's URL bar causes it to close for no reason).

The keyboard cover is wonderful, no criticisms. The weight is acceptable. The pen works well but isn't "required" for a good experience (although I am at 200% DPI).

The thing gets worryingly hot (too hot to touch in places) and the fan doesn't kick on for quite a while. High network activity seems to result in excessive heat in particular which is strange (e.g. a 7 GB download in progress generates more heat than full screen YouTube).

Overall I'd likely get one again/recommend it. I just worry that the heat will eventually damage it internally...

PS - You cannot use it on your lap with the kick-stand. Just doesn't work. You can use it on your lap in "tablet mode" fine and the kick-stand works well for tables and similar. The kick-stand is great, but a laptop's rigid hinge is better on your lap/legs.

I wouldn't worry about internal heat damage so much. With the development of thin and passively cooled (i.e. chassis-as-heatsink) devices, human skin is becoming the temperature limiter[0]. Many chips are "...capable of running at up to 100°C without any reliability problems", but your skin is normally only 37°C!

WRT. YouTube vs. downloads, WiFi (all RF, really) produces more heat than you think and GPU's have come a long way in power/heat savings!

[0]: http://techreport.com/review/26377/a-first-look-at-amd-mulli...

I suspect the Chrome issue (which I've run into) is the slow rendering of Chrome's blank page. You touch to focus, type one character, and Chrome replaces the blank page with the rendered page, so the OSK shuts (or you lose focus)

Work has given me both a Surface Pro 2 and Surface Pro 3. We were always blown away by the performance of the Pro 2 how quiet it was and cool it stayed. The surface Pro3 with a newer processor (I think they have the same RAM) is much louder and gets much hotter. Watching the CPU when streaming multiple video streams, the performance is also much better on the Surface Pro 2 (in our examples we're capturing video from 4 USB cams). However, the screen size of the Surface Pro 2 I found almost unusable as a laptop. The pro 3 screen size is much better.

What they really need to do is sort it out so I can have two resolutions on different monitors, and auto-adjust the resolution on the surface screen depending on when I'm plugged into a monitor or not.

Hrm... I wonder if you're missing a fw update, perhaps?

I've got a SP3, and though it can get warm, it's not worryingly so. The fan kicks on when it should and does its thing.

No missing firmware updates.

I am on the i5/256 GB version if that makes any difference?

Can you use it as a laptop? And I mean, sprawled out on the couch. I can't use the machine that if I have to sit at a desk.

I really like to hook the kickstand over my knees sitting on the couch. I haven't had problems comfortably using it as a laptop, though laying down I generally use it as a tablet.

One difference between using a surface (I have a Pro 2, not 3, but the ergonomics are presumably similar) and a traditional laptop is that, when, like the OP mentioned, it gets hot, it's not the bit lying flat on your lap that gets hot. Possibly that's one reason they allow it to get hotter than laptop/tablet users are used to.

>The thing gets worryingly hot

Do you have an i5 or an i7? Did you buy it at the retail store or with someone else?

i5, Best Buy.

you can honestly probably go into the Microsoft Store and see if there is anything they can do. The i5's are not known for overheating

I have SP 1. I can zoom in with my hand only in IE and not chrome. Is it still the case?

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