Surface Pro 3 experience

I've been waiting for a device that allows me to do sketching whenever I go at ease.  Lenovo X60T gave me the first taste of that experience, but the weight of that device was just too heavy, and the keyboard was so hot that it almost burned my hand.  Asus EeeSlate was lighter, but the digitizer was simply horrible as only small region of the screen can accurately map the point my stylus touched the screen and the pixel on the display.  It took me years to tune the accuracy.  In addition, the performance of that device was simply terrible, has problem working consistently with my Bluetooth devices.  Yeah I still kept trying to make it work.  I even think that I developed a Stockholm Syndrome situation with that device.

And now I got Surface Pro 3.  I tried it long and hard at both Microsoft Store and BestBuy with Paint Brush and FreshPaint, and I really hope that this device would work for me.  Still, being burned for multiple times, I took a skeptical view on it.  I told myself, if I was not totally satisfy with this device, I will send it back to BestBuy 12 days later and get a full refund.

In fact, I was so skeptical that I decided to NOT get the latest version of SP3 keyboard, and simply use my Surface 1 Type keyboard.  I worked without any problem.

Let me be clear about one thing:  I was planning to use it mainly as a sketching device, so a few criteria MUST be satisfied:

• It has to be cool enough for me rest my palm on the screen for HOURS because that's what I use it for: as a sketching device.
• It has to work well with my main sketching application: Sketchbook Pro 6.2.5, a x64 based application
• it has to have at least 6 hours of battery for my non stop drawing.

The day one experience ain't good.

After I unboxed the device, I set up the machine and did what I would do to any new Windows machine I got: apply all the Windows update.  With that process kicked off, I found myself starring at a black screen with words like "please wait for update" for ... more than 15 minutes.  The right side of the screen is getting really hot.  Eventually all update got applied.

To gave SP3 the benefit of doubt, I closed the machine (in sleep mode now) and let it fully charge until the battery was full.  I went to bed in the meantime.  So yeah I was sleeping while the SP3 was sleeping and charging too :-D .

The next morning I found SP3 fully charged.  With that I unplugged the charger, and let me machine cool off.  I did realized that the right side of the screen (the side where the charger hook up to) was warm.  So ONCE AGAIN, I let the device cool off before I tested it.

Here's a few things that I found really FRUSTRATED ME:

• The responsiveness of the stylus is terrible.   Because there's no way to adjust the sensitivity, I found myself either drawing too light, thus no brush stroke was drawn on the screen, or the stroke being too thick.  I used the "Stylus Responsiveness..." and "Steady Stroke ..." to adjust the setting and managed to make it workable.  But I still didn't like the fact that I had to compromise after spending US$1400.
  
• Heat problem: this is the BIGGEST PROBLEM I experienced so far.  I started the machine from icy cold stage.  After using Sketchbook Pro 6.2.5 for 10 minutes, I found the fan of the device kicked in, and the right size of the screen already got pretty hot.  That was just terrible, because even my crappy EeeSlate when generate as much heat on the screen after I drew for less than 15 minutes.  Sure the fan stopped after a few minutes, but the right side of the screen still stayed warm enough to be uncomfortable for sketching.  If I couldn't find a solution for this problem is the coming a few days, I will definitely return this product.

I will continue documenting my experience on SP3, but for what I want it to do, it failed, and that makes me depress, as I so wanted it to be awesome.

To be continue ....