Windows 10 Preview on Surface Pro 3

[sharpuser]

Willie.

 

[wynand32]

So, my opinion on where we're at: Windows 10 on the SP3 is excellent overall, with three exceptions.

1) Sleep just isn't reliable, particularly when closing the keyboard cover. I don't believe it's actually sleeping, I don't depend on it to be doing so, and so I use hibernate when I want the machine to be safe for travel and to be locked when starting it back up.
2) Battery life is okay, but not the best I've seen on Win8.1. I expect it to be improved when debug code is removed (along with general performance issues).
3) The biggest stability concern is with various Windows apps, including People and various 3rd party apps. I expect those to be fixed via Store updates once an RTM candidate is released.

But, in general: I like Windows 10 considerably more than Windows 8.1. It's comfortable to use as a tablet, and gets rid of those odd Windows 8.1 quirks that just got in their own way. It's not perfect, but it's an impressive stab at melding the traditional "desktop" OS with a functional mobile OS. It won't turn people off the way that Windows 8.1 did, but it offers real value going forward. And, it works for everyone--it's certainly the best traditional "desktop" OS I've ever used, beating Windows 7 and OS X (which right now is a hot mess of weird gestures and full-screen madness) hands-down. The only place it doesn't work very well yet is on my Dell Venue 8 Pro, but that's not necessarily the UI. It's just not terribly stable on that machine.

I think Microsoft did something amazing over the last year or so. They deserve some serious kudos.

 

[malberttoo]

...His music helped many a dude score.

LOL. +1 for outright honesty.

 

[EMINENT]

I packed it for work this morning from a full charge off power at 11:20 am and at 4pm I pulled it out for lunch. It's hot and of course it never went to sleep. Down to 10% battery.

Make sure yours is asleep before you stow it away or it'll be dead in 6 hers.

 

[wynand32]

I packed it for work this morning from a full charge off power at 11:20 am and at 4pm I pulled it out for lunch. It's hot and of course it never went to sleep. Down to 10% battery.

Make sure yours is asleep before you stow it away or it'll be dead in 6 hers.

I suggest turning on the option to show hibernate in the power button options, and hibernate whenever you're putting in a bag. Or, even, whenever you want to make sure it locks--quite often I close the keyboard cover and it doesn't go to sleep, and isn't locked (which I need it to be).

I just assume that sleep is non-functioning on the SP3 at this point, and act accordingly.

 

[Mhaddy]

On 10162 and I still have inconsistent results in tablet mode using my finger to touch in text boxes and the virtual keyboard does not pop up. Worse, you cannot click in the taskbar to make it pop up. Try launching OneNote then click in the page title -see if itworksfor

 

[wynand32]

On 10162 and I still have inconsistent results in tablet mode using my finger to touch in text boxes and the virtual keyboard does not pop up. Worse, you cannot click in the taskbar to make it pop up. Try launching OneNote then click in the page title -see if itworksfor

Do you have the option turned on to show the soft keyboard button on the taskbar? Right-click to select it, if not.

 

[MikeB]

Ok, I'm a little worried about this issue: I'm opening up the cover from my SP3 after half an hour or so, and it's not prompting me for a password. I've set it to ask for a password on wake after 15 min, and it's not. It does seem to work when it's shut down overnight. However, based on a couple of comments here, I suspect it's not actually going to sleep, so the password on wake isn't getting invoked. Anyone else worried about the lack of password on wake?

 

[wynand32]

Ok, I'm a little worried about this issue: I'm opening up the cover from my SP3 after half an hour or so, and it's not prompting me for a password. I've set it to ask for a password on wake after 15 min, and it's not. It does seem to work when it's shut down overnight. However, based on a couple of comments here, I suspect it's not actually going to sleep, so the password on wake isn't getting invoked. Anyone else worried about the lack of password on wake?

I'm not "worried" about it outside of the fact that it seems to indicate, as you suggest, that the machine's not going to sleep. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, I'm basically defaulting to hibernating when I want my SP3 to be locked (or, I guess I could lock it manually). I think the resolution here is for Microsoft to fix sleep on the SP3, and everything else will fall into place.

 

[Mhaddy]

Do you have the option turned on to show the soft keyboard button on the taskbar? Right-click to select it, if not.

Yup, I've got that checked and sometimes it works ... it's just inconsistent.

 

[lhauser]

I suggest turning on the option to show hibernate in the power button options, and hibernate whenever you're putting in a bag. Or, even, whenever you want to make sure it locks--quite often I close the keyboard cover and it doesn't go to sleep, and isn't locked (which I need it to be).

I just assume that sleep is non-functioning on the SP3 at this point, and act accordingly.

The SP3 boots so fast (though not quite as fast as under 8.1) I turn mine off when I'm not plugged in and not using it for a few hours.

 

[lhauser]

I'm really happy with Edge and wish we could have it in 8.1 RIGHT NOW.
It needs some improvement because you can only import bookmarks from IE and not from any other browser --- so far.

Otherwise it is FAST FAST FAST.
Pages such as ASUS.COM that take half a day to open and load in Firefox just pop open in Edge. I was amazed.

I've been a Firefox supporter since the old Mozilla days when they sold subscriptions. That goes back a long ways.

Wish they still did, then they could hire good programmers instead of relying on volunteers.

Chrome I dumped. Caused nothing but trouble and after you leave Chrome you can look at your processes and see it is mostly still running in the background using your cpu cycles and ram and NO WAY TO STOP IT other than clicking on each individual item you find still running in Task Manager and killing each one individually.

CHROME SUCKS

And don't say it doesn't because I see lots of people complaining about it and it is the source for much / many of the fan problems people complain about.

If your fan runs all the time.

REMOVE Chrome from the tablet / computer and see the difference. You can copy your bookmarks etc. etc. to another drive before you remove it and then it is easy to re-install if you decide to but I bet you won't because your fan problem with be gone.
============

I have to weigh in on this. I love Chrome. I've never had a problem with it. Yeah, it's a hog, but I expect that; it's hoggishness lets it do all I ask it to do. It doesn't make my machine run hot. Right now I have four tabs open, several other apps open (on a 4GB i5), Chrome is using about 800MB, my cpu is running at about 2%, and the back of the machine is as cool as can be.

Barry Manilow, though... well, he used to be great. Neil Diamond can't sing anymore either, and Debbie Harry sounds like she swallowed an Autotune machine.

Getting older sucks. Well, sometimes. I can at least yell at kids to get off my lawn...