Surface Pro 3 i5/256GB/8GB RAM - Help, please.

[TestudoAubreii]

Hello,

I recently bought and returned (today, actually) a Surface Pro 3 i5/256GB/8GB RAM. I bought it to replace my work laptop. I am a web developer/designer. I use it for Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver, and I also have multiple web browsers and browser tabs up and running, often at the same time. I also had it hooked up to an 20" 1680 x 1050 external monitor.

I tried it out and day 1 was pretty good. I ran it with everything listed above with relative ease. It was a little laggy towards the end of the day and it got pretty hot. Day 2, I ran it all day with the charger cable plugged in. It seemed to get pretty bogged down just after lunch and by the end of the day it froze up a bit when I tried to move inside my programs, move browser tabs and closing out of browsers and programs. It was also pretty hot on the right side of the Surface.

I don't know if all of that was from overheating and throttling, if it is just not powerful enough to run everything I need run at the same time or if I got a bad unit.

I really loved the idea of the Surface Pro 3. I loved the responsiveness of the touch screen and the pen. The type cover is not that bad when paired with a bluetooth mouse. The display is vibrant and great looking. I wouldn't even mind having it as just a straight up tablet, but it is way too expensive for me. I could justify the price if I could use it for work productivity, but I cannot just for the tablet.

So, I wanted to drop by here and see if I could get some help, suggestions and/or advice. Should I try a different unit? Would I benefit from the i7 model? For my needs, should I just look for a full on laptop? Should I just wait until the Surface Pro 4?

Sorry for the long post and all of the questions. I just would really like some input from those who know better than me in this matter.

Thank you in advance for all suggestions, advice and help.

Testudo

 

[GreyFox7]

Meh, really hard to deal with hypotheticals as nothing will work, you should have stopped by before you returned it.

Just from your description you had a memory leak and it became unresponsive just as any computer would.

 

[TestudoAubreii]

Meh, really hard to deal with hypotheticals as nothing will work, you should have stopped by before you returned it.

Just from your description you had a memory leak and it became unresponsive just as any computer would.

Thanks for your response. Although, I don't know exactly what you mean. Are you saying that I should have kept it? And, what of the memory leak? Is that something that I can fix, or is there anything I can do?

 

[megatronium]

I use Photoshop, Premiere, and AfterFX mostly simultaneously. I would THINK that those require more CPU/RAM than the programs you listed. I usually have no problems. When the unit gets too hot, I will occasionally get slideshow in the preview window of Premiere. My suggestion would be to get the i7 model and try it out. If it works out for you, great! If not, return it and get an expensive laptop. Driving an external monitor may be hampering your SP3, but then again the i7 has better CPU/GPU and may be able to handle that better. Also check to see if any automated Windows tasks were running in the background during the periods where you get slowdown. I haven't seen any drastic performance degradation as the day has worn on with my SP3 i7 but then again you have a different model so YMMV. Good luck!

 

[ProOrNo]

Ummm, I don't have an SP3, but things should not be causing lagging during the daily use.

Also, how on earth can you think you have evaluated something in a first-day trial? I suspect buyers remorse rather then real SP3 issues. Are you an apple-fanboi trolling here? If you were using a comparable i5 PC with 8GB and 128G SSD, before buying the SP3 and that didn't lag, then lag is not the issue.

IF it really is getting laggy, then you need to first understand why. It may be that some of your software is downloading updates etc. Maybe even windows itself could have spent most of the day updating in the background. Photoshop and anything Adobe are not well known for their underlying operational elegance.

Was that graphics software calling home, using the Cloud, or both? Was your Internet speed slow or fluctating? I have been programming for 30+ years so know a bit about what one should expect from hardware and software.

So, a suggestion: Get that i5 back and let it sit plugged into the power and online for a day with all of your preferred apps running. Let them do what they need for updates etc. Then, give it a fair trial for a week.

 

[TestudoAubreii]

I use Photoshop, Premiere, and AfterFX mostly simultaneously. I would THINK that those require more CPU/RAM than the programs you listed. I usually have no problems. When the unit gets too hot, I will occasionally get slideshow in the preview window of Premiere. My suggestion would be to get the i7 model and try it out. If it works out for you, great! If not, return it and get an expensive laptop. Driving an external monitor may be hampering your SP3, but then again the i7 has better CPU/GPU and may be able to handle that better. Also check to see if any automated Windows tasks were running in the background during the periods where you get slowdown. I haven't seen any drastic performance degradation as the day has worn on with my SP3 i7 but then again you have a different model so YMMV. Good luck!

Thanks for the response. Perhaps, I will try the i7 and see what happens.

Ummm, I don't have an SP3, but things should not be causing lagging during the daily use.

Also, how on earth can you think you have evaluated something in a first-day trial? I suspect buyers remorse rather then real SP3 issues. Are you an apple-fanboi trolling here? If you were using a comparable i5 PC with 8GB and 128G SSD, before buying the SP3 and that didn't lag, then lag is not the issue.

IF it really is getting laggy, then you need to first understand why. It may be that some of your software is downloading updates etc. Maybe even windows itself could have spent most of the day updating in the background. Photoshop and anything Adobe are not well known for their underlying operational elegance.

Was that graphics software calling home, using the Cloud, or both? Was your Internet speed slow or fluctating? I have been programming for 30+ years so know a bit about what one should expect from hardware and software.

So, a suggestion: Get that i5 back and let it sit plugged into the power and online for a day with all of your preferred apps running. Let them do what they need for updates etc. Then, give it a fair trial for a week.

Thanks for your response.

I am certainly not an Apple fanboy . I have owned a number of Apple products in the past, and honestly, I would only buy one today because I love Garageband . However, that would be way too expensive for that program.

I had it for about a week, but I gave it 2 full days of hell, meaning I ran everything I needed to and more with it plugged in and on battery. Also, the first day was on Wifi and the second I had it hooked up to a USB 3.0/Gigabyte ethernet hub.

If I get another one, I will check on the things that you suggested. I may have a bit of buyers remorse, but it is only because it is a lot of money for me and I really wanted it to work as a workstation and a tablet when not being used as a workstation. And, I really love all of the features. So much so that I think I may be having returners remorse.

 

[wynand32]

I'll second the first-day-post-purchase aspect of all this. Pretty much all machines are affected by the mass of updates and initial system tasks (e.g., disk indexing) that goes on the first few days after purchase or reinstall. Wait at least a week before judging any machine, SP3 or otherwise. Then, if it's still happening, see if you can find a problematic app (just look in Task Manager and sort Processes by CPU; anything that's causing slowdowns/overheating should show up there).

 

[TestudoAubreii]

Let me ask you all this: If I wanted to get a Surface Pro strictly for tablet usage, is the original Surface Pro still good? Do they have any problems with heat?

 

[Liam2349]

Let me ask you all this: If I wanted to get a Surface Pro strictly for tablet usage, is the original Surface Pro still good? Do they have any problems with heat?

The original Surface Pro has about half the battery life of a Pro 2, so a bit less than half of a Pro 3.

 

[grumpy]

Let me ask you all this: If I wanted to get a Surface Pro strictly for tablet usage, is the original Surface Pro still good? Do they have any problems with heat?

Unless you need the extra screen real estate the SP2 will likely serve you better (if you can still find one). Same CPU/GPU as the SP3 (i5 version) but the SP2 has superior heat dissipation resulting in less throttling. Also, the i7 is hobbled by the same poor thermal design, but the i7 can produce even more heat than the i5.

 

[bluegrass]

I hear similar stories from some of my users once in awhile. I go through what processes, apps, etc they have running. It usually just turns out to be they are leaving a lot of things open and running that they don't need to do their work.

I have been supporting computers for 45 year now and micro computers for the past 35 years. It is always best practice to only open and leave open apps that you need to for accomplishing what your trying to accomplish. I'm not saying your are, but people tend to get lazy about closing apps that aren't needed. Every app and every email that remains open is taking up precious memory and CPU resources. Hell, I've found people that don't even close an email when they're through reading it but open up another and another to where I've seen 7 or 8 occurrence's of Outlook open at the same time. Give me a break.

 

[ProOrNo]

Every app and every email that remains open is taking up precious memory and CPU resources.

Sorry, that's not even close to true. Just check the TaskManager (right-click the taskbar) and you will see what's using what. From memory, Outlook checks for new mail every 25-minutes and that takes about 3-seconds on a normal broadband link. If you have it set to just check headers instead of downloading emails each time.

I just opened TaskManager and I have 43 Background Tasks, plus 39 Windows' background tasks. I have 4% CPU load and 30% memory in use. Consider with that: As occupied memory approaches 65%, windows will page out to disk (PageFile) apps that have not been accessed in quite a while.