
Building Microsoft Surface Pro 3 [video] - doczoidberg
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK3302
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tenfingers
The Surface Pro 3 is really sweet. Main reason: the stylus and high-quality
screen.

This is the closest thing to a digital sketchpad yet. I've been waiting for
the Sony A4 e-ink tablet forever (and several other e-ink products that never
materialized), and finally gave in to the Surface.

Unfortunately, despite being much better than what I expected, it's not great
to use outdoors or in bright light.

However it _does_ blow away the Galaxy Note and basically every "capacitive
pen" you can try. The Note in particular has a ridicolous pen: too small to
handle, horrid lag, missed strokes, very poor pen sensitivity and high screen
glare even with office lights. I re-sold mine just after a few weeks.

The Surface stylus feels just like a regular pen, which is great. There's no
space in the device for it, but if you see the depth of the tablet you realize
that you cannot possibly fit it in there without sacrificying the pen itself.
I'm _glad_ they didn't shrink the pen.

Unfortunately the Pro 3 uses an n-trig 256-pressure levels sensor, which has a
much lower resolution than the previous versions which were Wacom based. For
writing/jotting down is ok, but for drawing the difference is noticeable. The
lower sensitivity takes a toll when you try to customize the response curve...

I'm appalled why so many tablet vendors don't ship with a digitizer built-in.
Strip that useless rear-facing camera and put a digitizer in there! You could
go as far as selling without the pen by default, as long as there's an option
to buy one!

~~~
phaus
>Unfortunately the Pro 3 uses an n-trig 256-pressure levels sensor, which has
a much lower resolution than the previous versions which were Wacom based. For
writing/jotting down is ok, but for drawing the difference is noticeable. The
lower sensitivity takes a toll when you try to customize the response curve...

>I'm appalled why so many tablet vendors don't ship with a digitizer built-in.
Strip that useless rear-facing camera and put a digitizer in there! You could
go as far as selling without the pen by default, as long as there's an option
to buy one!

Supposedly implementing N-Trig over Wacom allows the device to be thinner.
This explains why Microsoft was willing to make the tradeoff. It also explains
why most vendors don't use digitizers. I wish they did, but everyone is
obsessed with making the thinnest device possible, even at the expense of
functionality.

~~~
DiabloD3
Unless you're some serious super-artist that does massively high res painting
and lives in Photoshop or whatever all day, their sensors are fine.

The guy that draws Penny Arcade dicked around with a Surface 3 Pro and now he
absolutely loves it and does a lot of art on it. No real issues reported (and
any issues hes reported has been fixed quickly by Microsoft, which, well,
Microsoft actually fixing issues promptly fills me with a kind of hope that I
haven't had in a long long time).

Microsoft kinda feels like... the Google I wish Google was. I'm not sure how
to actually describe this. A company that, yes, makes money, but also makes
cool shit and I want to throw money at them to keep making cool shit.

As opposed to the post-Gates Balmer era that drove all their products (sans
XBox) into the ground. Well, further into the ground. I'm not trying to flame
Microsoft here, but Windows 95 is why I converted to Linux on my desktop full
time, and Windows 2000 was the only sane Windows in my opinion between Windows
3.1 and Windows 8.x.

~~~
gcb0
Microsoft always was awesome on hardware... from keyboards to Xbox and now the
surface.

surface would be my killer portable platform of they ever have a mix of the 3
and pro 3... a small screen one with the ram and speed of the pro.

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x0054
I really love the discussion about making the friction hinge, it looks really
cool, though I think over engineered. I think the most elegant friction hinge
design I have ever seen was on my Panasonic CF-73. It's almost 14 years old
now, used every day for at least 10 of those years, and I still use it time to
time, and the hinge works perfect!

Here is an image of it:
[http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m8yCFI6LbAmeo1QDFT4iT...](http://thumbs4.ebaystatic.com/d/l225/m/m8yCFI6LbAmeo1QDFT4iTHg.jpg)

Simple, stupid, works :) Though for the surface, there is a requirement to
make easy to open at first, first 20 degrees or so, which requires complexity.

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hxn
Did somebody already install Linux on it? I think my next laptop will either
be a MacBook 12 inch or whatever this new very light apple laptop is called.
Or a Surface 3. I just need to be sure it runs Linux.

~~~
codeulike
There is a subreddit for this, although I'm not sure what the current state-
of-the-art is

[http://www.reddit.com//r/surfacelinux](http://www.reddit.com//r/surfacelinux)

Here's a thread specifically about the Surface 3 (non pro)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/35dmup/surface...](http://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/35dmup/surface_3_so_far_not_pro/)

~~~
hxn
So the short answer is that it does not work. Lots of fiddling and they dont
even get the native resolution working according to the posts.

~~~
jmgrosen
That's the Surface 3 (not the Surface Pro 3). Apparently, some distros work on
the Pro 3 fairly well (though not without issues).

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doczoidberg
there is another video about the design of the surface:
[http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK2326](http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Ignite/2015/BRK2326)

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myth17
Amazing talk! MSFT has done a great job with SP3.

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zachberger
I wish more of these types of videos had transcripts. Frequently I don't have
enough time to sit down and watch all of this however if there were a
transcript I could quickly scroll through it and find some of the highlights..

