Microsoft Surface Pro 2

#41

Got the wacom bamboo feel pen yesterday for the surface. It feels way better than the surface pen and tracks much better as well. The only downside is the pen button is absolutely terrible and hard to press. Wish they made it stick out a bit instead of completely blending into the pen.

#42

Hey sheep you still getting the 256/8gb one? Isnt the 128/4gb enough?

I was hoping to upgrade my sp1 128/4gb but apparently the sp2 2568gb is out of stock! I have some friends going to new york for christmas but it seems there’s no way MS will refill their stock in time!

Ive been using photoshop and zbrush alright with the 1st gen, but 8gb would be awesome!

What do you think?

ps: feels kind of lame upgrading just for haswell, but it seems it’s the only option!

#43

The 4gb runs everything perfectly fine. I am mainly upgrading for the increased ssd space.

#44

8.1 got leaned down, but it’s still a bit of a hog space wise, so IMO 256 will really make a difference in the long run. On top of that even hacked 64 bit apps capped at 4GB (ZBrush) will use that on top of what the system and other running tasks take up.

There’s a good reason if the 256/8 is the only one out of stock. IMO it’s totally worth waiting for. I know I am (waiting for it to come back in stock) since it’s out of stock across the whole bleeding planet apparently.

#45

The thing is when you install the wacom drivers so you can get pressure in photoshop, for example, it overrides the default pen calibration and leaves with that crappy 4 point calibration. That s* can only calibrate well for the center, but the corners suffer from lack of points.

What I mean is maybe even if you try other units, as soon as wacom drivers kick in, you will lose some precision near the edges.

Yep, so I found that uninstalling the wacom drivers results in accurate corners and center. So basically we are waiting for a driver update from Wacom :S
It really sucks that they can’t work on this together straight from day one considering they are sharing chipsets.

Continuing my unbiased review… I actually returned my S2P 128 hoping to get a 256/8gig but none were in stock… I explained the corner accuracy problem and got an exchange very easily.

I ended up exchanging to an iPad Air as I needed a dev kit for an upcoming project. Since having it I discovered “Procreate” and started using it together with the Wacom creative stylus (has a bigger rubbery tip rather than a nice classic wacom nib).

The good things about the iPad:

  • Battery life (3 days of use and still havent charged it)
  • Procreate app (exclusive to iPad)
  • Speed
  • Lower cost than surface 2 pro
  • On-screen keyboard is perfect
  • Productivity apps are fantastic
  • Cameras are far superior to the god awful surface 2 pro front/back cameras
  • featherweight
  • made for touch (surface2pro feels like you are screwed without a keyboard/mouse in several instances)
  • Retina Resolution (very crisp thin lines when drawing)
  • Quiet and no heat generation
  • Comes with Pages/Numbers/Keynote… stuff you have to pay for on the surface (office etc)
  • Completely possible to create good artwork… just a different approach and possibly more strain until palm rejection works properly.
  • Cheap apps compared to windows equivalents (no open source stuff though)

The bad things about the iPad:

  • Palm rejection feels 50% working
  • Stylus tech is still pretty crappy… Requiring bigger nibs and no feedback when you lift off the screen
  • None of my Adobe CC stuff works on it
  • Photography trips require lots of space… the surface has USB3. iPad has Lightning connector and no easy way for me to pair it with cameras etc
  • Lightning connector. Pretty much have to carry cable everywhere as its not widely adopted yet
  • No Zbrush :frowning: I would be happy if pixologic just released a zsphere and zsketch functionality app.

I’ll see how they go with fixing the drivers, I just wanted the opportunity to try both worlds and find what suits me best as each artist is different.
There are rumors of an iPad Pro, Although I’d happily even settle for a wacom companion if the price dropped to 1.2k

Anyway I want to be clear that I loved the surface 2 pro, it was incredible to finally have a cintiq experience but there’s a lot of work to be done on the OS. There were too many frustrating menu-button-window-closing-where-is-my-cursor-why-is-it-not-working moments.

#46

Well in my case I’m not really planning on keeping the sp2 on the LONNGGG run. As soon as the other big-screen contenders settle, I´ll probably get one of them, like the thinkpad yoga or the fujitsu q704. I really like the surface but that screen gets me mad sometimes.

#47

hopefully some of you held off on the surface 2 because its getting a speed bump to 1.9ghz

http://www.engadget.com/2014/01/02/surface-pro-2-tablet-gets-a-quiet-speed-bump/

#48

Alternatively, if you’re in the US… the Surface Pro 1 (128GB SSD w/ 4GB RAM) is being sold for $599 through both BestBuy and the Microsoft online store. BestBuy has a 5x Reward Points deal for this Friday and Saturday. If the in-store price is MSRP just show them a copy of their website’s price and they will pricematch. BB and Microsoft have a 10% EDU discount as well:

Microsoft Online:
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Pro/productID.275287300

BestBuy:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/surface-pro-with-128gb-memory/7952262.p

BestBuy via Ebay:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Microsoft-Surface-Pro-with-128GB-Memory-/200998270636

Also CowBoom is selling the same model used for $439 after a 20% off coupon ( NUEVA20 ). Be mindful of the condition value assigned to each unit:
http://www.cowboom.com/product/1354754

Here is a Surface Pro 2 ‘In-Stock’ tracker:
http://www.nowinstock.net/computers/tablets/microsoft/surface/

#49

Just pulled the trigger on a Surface Pro 2 256GB today! There’s been a total shortage of them here in Australia and they’re finally back in stock on the Microsoft online store. Should be here by Friday. Looking forward to being able to go full portable AND be able to draw and sculpt with a stylus. This is going to be awesome for onsite video editing as well!

#50

i’ld be interested to know how your battery life holds up…

#51

SheepFactory mentioned earlier that he’d used it “non-stop” for drawing, sketching and sculpting and it had lasted around 7-8 hours which is quite impressive. I’ve seen a few youtube videos where they’ve said in only lasts 2-3 when playing a graphically intensive game, but for CG and video work it seems that it will definitely hold up for all day, away from desk work. But I can post my own impressions once I’ve had it for a couple of weeks. I’m planning to use it in conjunction with my iPad 4 and the ‘Actions’ app which allows me to create custom buttons on the iPad that can be associated with keyboard shortcuts and even string commands together so it’ll be interesting to see if I can go completely keyboardless for CG/Video/Photo editing work.

#52

The Power Cover which extends the Surface Pro 2’s battery life by 60% is available for preorder in the US, Canada and Japan from the Microsoft Store:

 [http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.298465700/pgm.87981000](http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/productID.298465700/pgm.87981000)

/edit: Forgot to mention that many Surface Pro owners use the Intocircuit Power Castle PC26000 external battery along with Mikegyver’s modded power connector to boost the SP2’s runtime by an extra 1.25x (or 18 hours total). The unit is slightly smaller than the Surface Pro itself but may be attractive to those who are out in the field for a long period of time:

http://www.amazon.com/Intocircuit%C2%AE-PC26000-Compatible-Thunderbolt-Connectors/dp/B00BB5VQCE

The cable is near the bottom of the page for $29:

http://www.mikegyver.com/Surface-Battery-Car/

#53

hi guy’s, a little off topic but did anyone had a chance to check the new Wacom Creative Stylus 2 on a regular touch enabled capacitive Window 8 tablet/laptop (like for ex. lenovo yoga)

and if so if anyone stumbled upon a driver for the stylus that would enable the touch sensitivity on the PC, it’s a bluetooth device so it’s should be a problem … it’s probably not in wacoms best interest to enable the full functionality of the pen on the PC since it would undercut companion sales, but maybe anyone found some “unofficial” drivers?