I've condensed day 2 and 3 together, as I recently travelled back home (to the great north), and had quite a bit of socialising to do... Anyway, back to the Surface.
I've managed to find out ways to fix the niggling issues I was facing from the beginning, which I will list at the bottom of the post for anyone interested or facing similar issues, and since fixing those issues my experience has been honestly quite excellent.
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| My little office in my favourite tea house. |
My trip up north was a great opportunity to test out the device, as I had a 2+ hour train journey from London to fill, with a very limited amount of space in standard class seats. Not to worry, the Surface works perfectly in this situation and neatly fit on my lap, and wasn't so biog that the screen was touching the seat in front, I got the full and comfortable viewing angle, with the Type Cover rested on my lap as well - Mobility - TICK!
My experience with previous mobile devices, so far included a Macbook Pro (way back in the day) and a Windows gaming laptop, is that the battery life would very quickly be dipping into the 'I really ought to find a plug socket' range by the end of the 2 hour train journey. Not so with the Surface Pro 2. Running in 'balanced' power mode, I had been doing a power writing session on Google Docs, and as my train pulled into Manchester Piccadilly my battery was still over 70%. Safe to say that the machine can last long enough to do anything I need to do on the move, without having to worry about finding an outlet. I'm currently writing this blog from my favourite tea house, and I didn't even bring the power cable. I've been using the device here now for just about an hour, and am still sat on 93%, still in balanced mode.
The Type Cover 2 is awesome to type on (my girlfriend also agrees). As a veteran user of the old 2009 model Macbook Pro - the one with the gel-type keys, not the solid black plastic ones. This keyboard makes me think a lot of that. The feedback on the keys is surprisingly deep, and they key taps register without having to press too hard. Most important of all, I don't find myself accidentally typing the wrong letter every few taps, it's very natural to type on. I'm afraid I can't really speak for the Touch Cover keyboard though... My friend tells me good things about that too though (he uses it for all of his uni work, including his essay writing, which has to count for something).
Now as you probably already know if you're reading this article, the Surface Pro 2 has an active digitizer, which is the main reason I bought it, and it fails to disappoint. The device registers very light strokes, and has a much wider range of sensitivity than my Wacom Bamboo used to. 1,024 compared to the previous 512, and you can really tell, particularly at the lighter end of the pressure spectrum, which dropped off quite sharply on the bamboo.
The device works perfectly with Sketchbook Pro 6, which was designed for tablet devices, moving onto Photoshop I had an issue with compatibility, which I had been dreading after reading other reviews. No Microsoft haven't fixed it yet, but you can download a driver update from Wacom and it's all go again. Now the UI in Photoshop is clearly not designed with tablets in mind, the buttons are tiny but useable, the main problem is a problem I did not consider... There no keyboard shortcuts on a tablet surface. So scrolling, zooming, colour picking become slightly more tedious... Which I intent to fix by purchasing a new Bamboo Feel pen, and map the Alt and Space modifier to the pen buttons (the Surface pen only has one button). But overall the software worked as I expected, and it's awesome to use full-featured productivity software from anywhere. Creating professional level, FULLY finished work, on a mobile device. The key reason I wanted a full Windows 8 device, and I am NOT disappointed at all.
And just to clarify, no, there is no pen lag at all in Sketchbook Pro, though there is noticable lag (and sometime downright awful lag) with some of the dynamic brushes in Photoshop, but none with the basic brushes, which I use. My Surface spec is the i5-4200U, 4gb RAM, 128gb model.
Now onto the issues I spoke about:
Trackpad
Well, it's still to small, it's tiny. But after just a day of use I have got accustomed to using the trackpad for editting text, and my finger for pretty much everything else. Dragging movements are tricky, but then the pen is great for that.
On-screen keyboard
Issue was that it was popping up when I 'touched' inside any text box, even with keyboard attached. An annoying issue. I fixed this by hitting Win + S, searching 'services', choosing 'view local services', scroll to 'Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Panel Services', double click to open the properties, and disable. Now it's worth noting that this FULLY disables the on-screen keyboard, even clicking the button wouldn't force a pop-up, and after attempting to browse the net in tablet mode I realised this wasn't an option for me. I have since re-enabled the service, and learned to edit text with the keyboard arrows and trackpad instead... Not an issue any more, but still deserving of a fix from lazy Microsoft.
No pen holster / slot.
Still an issue... I've had the Surface 3 days now and have almost lost it on at least 10 occasions. The magnet is strong but not that strong... A knock in your bag will dislodge it, and it's very easy to not realise you haven't fully engaged the pen in the slot. I'm aware that the Surface is pretty packed full, but I'd be able to live with an extra cm on the side for an internal pen slot... And a better pen while you're at it Microsoft! 2 buttons is all I ask for, just 2! Or some hot-keys along the edge of the display if you're really feeling on the ball.
Pen and driver issues.
The new WinTab update, did indeed bork my pen a little... I lost a lot of the low-level sensitivity levels. Googling the issue provided no problems, but re-calibrating the device a few times seemed to fix the issue. I fixed the problem by calibrating the pointer to be down and right of where my pen sits, which brought the sensitivity right back... I think the WinTab update throws off the default Microsoft calibration (which was FANTASTIC)... Don't install the WinTab update unless you really can't live without Photoshop sensitivity.
That's everything for now, I'll hopefully get more time to practice the productivity software soon, mostly I've been using it for word-processing and sketching, will do a full finished project in the next few days and see how that goes.
You can view my first day here: http://matfrench.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/surface-pro-diary-day-one.html
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