S3 for uni

[hughlle]

Well, over the summer i felt it was a slow device but would be fine for onenote. Having just started my first day back at uni I can now say it won't be coming back in with me. Painfully slow. Just printing a lecture to onenote from edge takes me about 5 minutes. Waste of my time. Bring on the SP4, SP3 for now though

 

[GreyFox7]

I need to see a performance graph for 3 of 5 samples
I find the S3 to be erratic sometimes not bad but other times slow or worse. In many ways I feel the S2 was better, definitely more consistent, although not as fast as the S3 when it works good. Sometimes I wonder if I got a bad unit or if it's just flakey drivers. I keep hoping an update will come through to fix some or all the issues but with everything else going on it seems like fixes will be a long time coming.

So was this from PDF in Edge? Or a straight HTML web page? if PDF would it make any difference if you downloaded the PDF then printed to OneNote? How about copy & paste ... just curious if this was perhaps network impaired or would it be as slow locally from a Word Doc or PDF?

 

[hughlle]

I need to see a performance graph for 3 of 5 samples
I find the S3 to be erratic sometimes not bad but other times slow or worse. In many ways I feel the S2 was better, definitely more consistent, although not as fast as the S3 when it works good. Sometimes I wonder if I got a bad unit or if it's just flakey drivers. I keep hoping an update will come through to fix some or all the issues but with everything else going on it seems like fixes will be a long time coming.

So was this from PDF in Edge? Or a straight HTML web page? if PDF would it make any difference if you downloaded the PDF then printed to OneNote? How about copy & paste ... just curious if this was perhaps network impaired or would it be as slow locally from a Word Doc or PDF?

Yeah, my S3 is very much a love hate relationship. One moment it is working great, and the moment I actually need it to work great i'm sat in the middle of a lecture doing restarts and this and that. It was a lecture pdf from the uni site (edge still doesn't have save as ffs!) and the store was refusing to download any pdf software, just sat telling me "working" and for some reason IE and edge were downloading at a snails pace and the lecture would be over before foxit had downloaded, so i was forced to print to onenote from edge. Took about 5 minutes before onenote would give me the normal popup, and then about 5 minutes to insert a 15 page black and white very basic and small pdf. Then onenote 2013 (win 10...) gave me lots of inking fun so i tried to sync it so i could move over to MUI onenote and it just sat there saying it was syncing. This part could be more to do wth win 10 than the S3, but 10 minutes to get a pdf from the web then imported into onenote was unworkable. I don't have internet at home so don't have the luxury of just missing the first 10 minutes of the lecture while i get the info downloaded and ready to work on.

For reference i also downloaded a pdf for the following lecture, and it took just as long to insert into onenote. I then downloaded the same size lecture but in a powerpoint format and it took only about a minute and a half to import.

I love the size and weight and lack of fan but the SP3 will be coming with me tomorrow.

Interestingly, and off topic, but today was the first time i opened up onenote and had the pen at hand, and it was only after using the pen in onenote 2013 that i then experienced all these issues everyone else has talked about such as persistent right clicking. Until i got that pen out, i've been using the S3 at home as a tablet and it has been almost utterly perfect. Now it is a wreck.

Not in a very good mood. Not how i wanted to start the year.

 

[Gus]

I use Drawboard that came with my surface to annotate pdf's. Have you tried that?

 

[hughlle]

I bought the Sp3 and S3 for a reason. And that reason was OneNote. I do not annotate on pdfs, I annotate in reams alongside them. Starboard doesn't allow this, OneNote allows me infinate space per page/slide to annotate.

S3 is now relegated to bedside tablet, and am back on the Sp3 and will be replacing it with the 4 upon release.

Lesson learned. Better to have the power and not need it than need it and not have it

 

[Turbo4AWD]

Uhhhh, dont get it. Isn't a Surface Pro 3 ALSO a bedside capable tablet??? I don't get it. If I had a Surface Pro 3 I wouldn't even look to a Surface 3. Its redundant. Laptop power in a tablet by the bed. Why would I want a slow Surface 3 when my Pro is above and beyond a Surface 3 AND its a tablet size!! Doesn't make sense.

 

[stufried]

First of all there is the size issue. I have my Surface in a leather case similar to many of the iPad ones and it is great for reading. The weight difference with a SP3 is real. In my messenger bag, the S3 takes no space. Then there is the LTE and the brick. I wanted a device that took very little space for travel, court, etc. The SP4 when factor in the bricks and a hotspot really does take more. I also wanted to be able to charge it in coach on plane and still run into a fair amount of planes (e.g. Virgin coach) with only USB in coach. I also like the fact that I can have charging cables. For example, I'm using a 10 foot Anker braided USB cable which gives me a long cable without having carry the Surface Brick, plus an extension cord, plus the hotspot. Respectfully Turbo4AWD, it is not that clear.

This is not my main machine. This device is a companion device for me and I think the 3 fills that void better. What I would really like better is a Surface 4 with its current size, CoreM, USB-C charging, LTE, and an SSD drive. Again for me, it wasn't the price, but the form.

Stu

PS: Another funny thing I've run into is that one court that I practice in does not require prior judicial permission to bring or use a tablet in court, but requires special permission for "laptops." My Surface 3 slides through courthouse security perfectly and I have no problem using it in tablet format without special permission.