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Just received my surface pro. Puzzled.

resle

New Member
So, I've just received my surface pro. 128gb, type cover, etc.

What puzzles me is a quick comparison of stylus input with my previous tablet pc: a Fujitsu Stylistic 5010ST which I still own today.

The Stylistic is hardware from the distant year 2005, sporting 1gb ram and a pathetic single core pentium M 800mhz, and a GM Intel chipset. Specs that are somewhat inferior to a modern smartphone. In time I upgraded this machine to Windows 7 and, recently, to Windows 8.

Well, even with those specs, the Stylistic is still much, MUCH better than the surface pro in terms of stylus input. Precision, pressure sensitivity, and most important of all input lag - all are incomparable using Sketchbook pro, note taking software, or even just clicking around.

If there's some other tablet pc veteran here, am I having some issue with my Surface Pro, or is your experience the same?
Thanks

r.
 
I tried the Pro in an MS store and I loved the response of the pen and its feel. There was no lag and it was very accurate. Much better than what we have on the RT of course. If you find you have lag and it's not accurate I would say that something might not be OK with yours. But again, I only tried the Pro in the store and own the RT. Hope a Pro owner can shed some more light onto this for you. good luck, hope you can get it fixed soon.
cheers
 

tonyz3

New Member
I had a fits q702 before the pro and my pro is better. I did like the q702 but it lack necessary drivers. Have you tried calibrating the pen.
 
OP
R

resle

New Member
I had a fits q702 before the pro and my pro is better. I did like the q702 but it lack necessary drivers. Have you tried calibrating the pen.

I did several rounds of very careful calibration but, nothing.

Mind well: the surface pro is excellent. Lag is very low.
But still uncomparable to the near-zero lag of my old old old stylistic...
 

machistmo

Active Member
Quoted from Dartesian in a different thread:

You might try:


Reset any existing calibration in Tablet PC settings.

Press Win key, type "Run"

Copy and paste the following into the Run window:

tabcal lincal novalidate XGridPts=10,60,110,360,660,960,1260,1560,1860,1910 YGridPts=10,60,170,330,490,650,810,970,1020,1070

Run the command, allow permissions, go through the calibration. This makes for near perfect pen accuracy, but it's never going to be perfect. Corners will still be messed up, but that's how it works, apparently. More X and Y points can be added to the lists for even more precision. Each number just corresponds to the X or Y coordinate of a pixel on the screen.

Source: Improved Pen Accuracy with a 100 Point Calibration Grid : Surface


This fixed all my problems I held the stylus normally and it works perfectly in every part of the screen (minor corner issues seem to be unavoidable)​
 
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resle

New Member
Thanks for the suggestion. It helped a lot, precision has improved dramatically. Lag is still present - I've been told on another forum that this is due to the adoption of a capacitive rather than resistive digitizer, and that the latter allows for greater responsivity. So be it :\
 

machistmo

Active Member
The forum in my above post may also have some more detailed information. I am pretty sure that the lag you are feeling is due to the nature of what you are trying to do with the Surface. I am not sure I was designed for the applications you want to use. That being said, lets hope a driver update can get some more responsive behavior out of it. I've seen some videos of the surface being used for inking and it seemed pretty responsive but I could see how someone that used a professional drawing tablet and a PC might find it sluggish. Beats finger painting on the iPad though right?
 

TagsxA

Member
Beats finger painting on the iPad though right?

...or even painting with an iPad "stylus". I've spent around $100 on styli for my iPad 3rd gen and none have lasted longer than a few weeks. My problem is that unless I diligently clean the surface of the iPad, the rubber-tipped styli just soak up any and all hand residue and then cause the tip to have unnecessary drag across the screen. Sooooooo frustrating :(
 
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resle

New Member
The forum in my above post may also have some more detailed information. I am pretty sure that the lag you are feeling is due to the nature of what you are trying to do with the Surface. I am not sure I was designed for the applications you want to use. That being said, lets hope a driver update can get some more responsive behavior out of it. I've seen some videos of the surface being used for inking and it seemed pretty responsive but I could see how someone that used a professional drawing tablet and a PC might find it sluggish. Beats finger painting on the iPad though right?

Well, the Stylistic wasn't designed for that kind of applications either - infact, it was even made 2 years before Sketchbook Pro existed (and I also run Sketchbook Pro 2011 + Windows 8 equally greatly on it). It's the comparison which sounds strange to me, as the Stylistic is literally dwarved by the Surface Pro, but performs much better in terms of stylus input. 8 years older (!!!). So, its advantage must be in the touchscreen technology, there is no other explanation..
 

Tom T

New Member
I also used to have a good pen based tablet and the main difference was it was dedicated to pen input, rather than a digitizer layer mated to a capacitive screen. Really my old tablet had a very high resolution digitizer, and I don't believe this is the purpose of the Wacom Feel IT technology. For what it does though I love this new tech.
 
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