Small things continue to kill the surface pro acceptance:
- The Surface site on the surface site hasn't updated with surface pro 3 info/pricing. The run way for this is long, why isn't the site updated or ready to go?
- Accessories are notoriously out of stock. Why are they hard to get? Docking station, keyboards, mice. Fix that.
- The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?
- Updates for firmware and drivers assume enterprise infrastructure. Without the infrastructure you need a manual upgrade using command line tools. The updates don't come through the normal windows update channel. You have to discover them on your own.
- The track pad on the type/touch cover is flaky . Its forever getting stuck in a fixed place and stuck on gestures you cant turn off or control. You end up having to disconnect the cover and reconnect. this is stupid for an elite/pro device.
Despite the gripes these devices continue to show promise and I see them more and more around airports and coffee shops.
>> The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?
> Dog slow as well, I suspect it's USB!
The weird thing is that the dock has USB 3 ports, which can easily support a GB LAN connection. I was going to buy one for my Surface Pro (gen1) until I saw that it was 10/100. You're better off buying something like a Plugable (plugable.com) USB 3 dock.
I've got a Surface Pro 1 (with Type Cover 2), and have never had problems getting firmware and driver updates from Microsoft Update. Have no idea what you're talking about regarding "manual upgrade" with CLI tools.
"This firmware and driver package contains drivers for all of the components in the Surface Pro device, as well as updates to the system firmware that have been released via Windows Update."
The Surface Store is also not trivial to buy from. I live in a country where Surface Pro isn't sold officially (a
blunder in itself, if you ask me) and I failed to buy from MS Store. I transferred funds to an American friend and they failed too! They even spent half an hour on the phone with useless MS tech support person, who doesn't acknowledge their fault: (it must a fault on be bank's, Paypal's site, but not MS') I gave up and bought on Amazon; still waiting for shipment (the issue with a particular seller).
I have mixed feelings with regard to this new release. I didn't expect MS to announce it that soon and it's kinda frustrating to have a new model be announced while you are still waiting for the previous one, but I'm not sure I would like the newer, larger form-factor, digitizer, design and color better. I own a 12" ThinkPad now, and I want to try switching to Surface in part because it is smaller, which ThinkPad is refusing to be over the years. Would it kill MS to make a newer, smaller, variant, along with the larger one? OTOH, I kinda expected MS to back away from what good it came up with, with their tablet. Microsoft is not known for sticking to their ingenious innovations, like Lenovo and Sony and unlike Apple.
It has been a pain in the ass to get PXE booting working on the Surface Pro 1 and well as Lenovo's Yoga and Yoga 2. Some of their USB-Ethernet adapters don't support PXE at all.
It's not that gigabit is too much, it's that 100mb isn't enough. Pulling a file from a server at 10 megabytes per second is dreadful compare to 50 or 60
- The Surface site on the surface site hasn't updated with surface pro 3 info/pricing. The run way for this is long, why isn't the site updated or ready to go?
- Accessories are notoriously out of stock. Why are they hard to get? Docking station, keyboards, mice. Fix that.
- The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?
- Updates for firmware and drivers assume enterprise infrastructure. Without the infrastructure you need a manual upgrade using command line tools. The updates don't come through the normal windows update channel. You have to discover them on your own.
- The track pad on the type/touch cover is flaky . Its forever getting stuck in a fixed place and stuck on gestures you cant turn off or control. You end up having to disconnect the cover and reconnect. this is stupid for an elite/pro device.
Despite the gripes these devices continue to show promise and I see them more and more around airports and coffee shops.