Hi. First time on the forum.
My 13" laptop is getting old at the moment so I'm currently trying to find a replacement.
The Surface Pro 2 seems to be in the unique position of being a laptop replacement tablet, and I am looking towards it as the replacement.
So my question is regarding to the Fan noise.
How noticeable will it become under load and full throttle?
Here are couple of situations it'll face:
1) General day to day work (anything from spreadsheets to code editing)
2) Audio and Video editing (encoding, edits, etc.)
3) Light gaming (F2P games such as Warframe, minimum spec required at
https://warframe.com/faq )
I have very sensitive hearing, so I am quite agitated when it comes to audible fan noises.
Thank you for the input!:big smile:
I'm not the greatest expert, having owned an SP2 for just over a month. Actually I've had 2 machines, the first got bit by the Dec 10 firmware fiasco, but you've probably already read about that. Three days ago I exchanged that SP2 for another, untainted sample, and AFAICT so far the new SP2 is not showing the "bad behaviors" of my former SP2.
Fan noise wasn't noticeable even when my original SP2 had been abnormally revving up the CPU and the tablet becoming very warm. Unfortunately my hearing isn't as sensitive as it used to be, so I may not be the best critic in that respect. However, I did make an effort to get very close and listen carefully, and I didn't catch a hint of noise. (My wife hasn't complained of it either.)
Furthermore, in the default "Balanced" power mode, the CPU is usually clocked pretty low, usually hanging out at < 1.0 GHz, becoming higher under load depending on what's running. For example, when Hyper-V is enabled, CPU frequency tops out at a constant 2.65 GHz, but I suppose that's to be expected.
Running an editor, compiler, etc. does not seem to be especially taxing, at least with the 8 GB ram SP2. I also was doing some image editing (converting RAW photographic files, etc.) which the SP2 also seemed to take in stride. However, I don't have a lot of experience with these apps on the SP2, so just able to give my initial impressions.
Using the pen for image editing is a feature I'm hoping proves useful. I've tried it out a few times, and it's different vs. graphics tablet on a desktop workstation. Maybe it's getting used to the direct-to-image stylus manipulation, and small screen size, but my initial attempts were only marginally satisfactory. My comments here are quite preliminary, and I can't really offer much guidance.
I will say the MS photo viewer included with the SP2 (well, Windows 8.1), works very well with the tablet form-factor. The app has some editing capabilities, and if the program were "fleshed out" with a richer set of editing features (layers, area selection tools, etc.), it would likely be very effective.
Don't know how much help my comments provide, but I do think the platform has terrific potential. It's already quite nice, and as its quirks are rectified, I anticipate the experience will become even better.