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Probably Returning Surface 3

inmnbob

New Member
I decided to return the Surface 3. It disappoints me because I have wanted a Surface for a long time but didn't need the Pro power. I was really excited about the Surface 3 because of the form factor, full windows and pen. Have played with it since the launch following are the reasons:

1. When in portrait mode the sides of the screen where the speaker cut outs are are very sharp. My thumbs seem to sit perfectly in that area and causing small paper cut equivalents on my thumbs.

2. The Pen technology is good but the way the pen/palm rejection is implemented I am often finding my lifting the pen too high and losing the palm rejection. I am a heavy Pen and OneNote user and haven't had that problem with any Wacom Windows tablet. Until now I have been using the Asus Vivotab Note 8 and never noticed this problem.

3. Can't use iTunes with the screen off. I know I can overcome this with metro app but playlists never did sync correctly and limited to 100

If any of you have ideas on how to fix the pen and/or of you don't have sharp edges let me know. Maybe this is my units problem and not the Surface 3.
 
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jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
I decided to return the Surface 3. It disappoints me because I have wanted a Surface for a long time but didn't need the Pro power. I was really excited about the Surface 3 because of the form factor, full windows and pen. Have played with it since the launch following are the reasons:

1. When in portrait mode the sides of the screen where the speaker cut outs are are very sharp. My thumbs seem to sit perfectly in that area and causing small paper cut equivalents on my thumbs.

This can be overcome by moving your hand placement...

2. The Pen technology is good but the way the pen/palm rejection is implemented I am often finding my lifting the pen too high and losing the palm rejection. I am a heavy Pen and OneNote user and haven't had that problem with any Wacom Windows tablet. Until now I have been using the Asus Vivotab Note 8 and never noticed this problem.

This is overcome by getting used to using N-trig and it's quirks, Wacom has its own share of them but you're used to them so re-learning takes more than a week. I've used the N-trig technology for nearly a year and it took a couple of weeks but now using a Wacom Tablet drives me crazy because I;m trained to use N-trig

3. Can't use iTunes with the screen off. I know I can overcome this with metro app but playlists never did sync correctly and limited to 100

If any of you have ideas on how to fix the pen and/or of you don't have sharp edges let me know. Maybe this is my units problem and not the Surface 3.

Your Vivotab Note 8 uses the same S0iX Power State as the S3 so you run into the same issue with iTunes...

It takes some time to move from one tablet tech to another, I would give it more than a week.
 

GreyFox7

Super Moderator
Staff member
I do agree that the edge is sharp although not so sharp as to give me any cuts and it's not just the speaker cutouts the whole circumference around the glass is noticeably edgy although more so at the speaker cutouts. I generally don't feel it while using it though just if I *feel* the edges.
 

Pippin96

New Member
I can't get the charging figured out either. I was excited that I could charge through microusb and not have to carry around extra chargers. Now it looks like it'll only charge with the Surface 3 charger and very slowly. Another $40 if I want to have a charger at home and at the office. Not what I signed up for.
 

mtalinm

Active Member
I can't get the charging figured out either. I was excited that I could charge through microusb and not have to carry around extra chargers. Now it looks like it'll only charge with the Surface 3 charger and very slowly. Another $40 if I want to have a charger at home and at the office. Not what I signed up for.
Ditto.

And the battery life is nowhere near "all day".

Love the form factor but hating the battery/charging
 

New2ToMe

Member
If you are hell bent on returning stuff, you will always find excuses. The charging comments are a joke if you thought you could charge at the same rate frim any charger. As to carrying around more chargers just get one that will charge at better than 2.1A and there are zillions of those for around 10-bucks.

The whole idea behind msoft using a Micro-USB for charging was that you DID NOT need to have a $40 msoft charger.

Battery life is dependent on what you are doing AND what dumb apps you may have running that you don't really need. if you are running out of battery before YOUR day is up, then just get a carry around pack, 12,000mA can be had for under 20-bucks and with it's --- wait for it -- Micro-USB port, it can recharge your S3. Well, DUH!

I have to stop reading these threads. :)
 
OP
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inmnbob

New Member
It bugs me that on some on this topics that there are so many Fanboys that you can't express a concern. I get that lot of you are professionals who make a lot of money supporting Microsoft solutions in the field. But some of us are just plain old users.

I love the answer to my previous post--- If your getting cut on your fingers change the location of where you hold the screen--really. Compared to making a screen that isn't sharp.

If you don't like the pen just take it and deal with it.

THe fact that Window apps (iTunes) don't work -- they never worked response was also BS. The reason we got excited about this machine was it wasn't RT so I can run Windows apps.

To the gentleman above--- maybe you too need to stop reading these threads--better yet stop replying unless you can add value.
 

mtalinm

Active Member
If you are hell bent on returning stuff, you will always find excuses. The charging comments are a joke if you thought you could charge at the same rate frim any charger. As to carrying around more chargers just get one that will charge at better than 2.1A and there are zillions of those for around 10-bucks.

The whole idea behind msoft using a Micro-USB for charging was that you DID NOT need to have a $40 msoft charger.

Battery life is dependent on what you are doing AND what dumb apps you may have running that you don't really need. if you are running out of battery before YOUR day is up, then just get a carry around pack, 12,000mA can be had for under 20-bucks and with it's --- wait for it -- Micro-USB port, it can recharge your S3. Well, DUH!

I have to stop reading these threads. :)

feel free.

no one said they expected a cell-phone charger to speed it along as the same rate as the included charger. but microUSB was advertised as a big advantage given the plethora of chargers lying around; some of us are finding that most of those don't charge at all.

I can only imagine that the "all day" 10 hours of battery life was concocted with wifi & Bluetooth off, maybe typing into OneNote with the brightness turned off. I did that once with my SP2 and got nearly 11 hours, but it's hardly a realistic scenario. what bugs me is that it is no better in my experience (and from the powercfg -batteryreport) than my SP3.
 

jnjroach

Administrator
Staff member
It bugs me that on some on this topics that there are so many Fanboys that you can't express a concern. I get that lot of you are professionals who make a lot of money supporting Microsoft solutions in the field. But some of us are just plain old users.

I love the answer to my previous post--- If your getting cut on your fingers change the location of where you hold the screen--really. Compared to making a screen that isn't sharp.

If you don't like the pen just take it and deal with it.

THe fact that Window apps (iTunes) don't work -- they never worked response was also BS. The reason we got excited about this machine was it wasn't RT so I can run Windows apps.

To the gentleman above--- maybe you too need to stop reading these threads--better yet stop replying unless you can add value.
Sorry you feel that my post doesn't add any value, but every device has some adjustments that we need to make, the Samsung Tablets are slippery, the Windows 8" Tablets are low resolution and require adjustments it just part of the landscape.

If you are unsatisfied then by all means return it, I'm giving my experience to a thread with relevant information.
 

mogulman

New Member
I can't get the charging figured out either. I was excited that I could charge through microusb and not have to carry around extra chargers. Now it looks like it'll only charge with the Surface 3 charger and very slowly. Another $40 if I want to have a charger at home and at the office. Not what I signed up for.

I came from an Asus T100. Charging on that was actually slower than the Surface 3, so I find the Surface 3 to be better. Battery life on the Surface 3 isn't as good as the T100, but it isn't horrible for me. The T100 never hibernated though, so I guess I would have expected the Surface 3 to be better than it is though.
 
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