EeeSlate stopped recognizing my wireless keyboard, and I don't know which one to blame

Technology is meaningless unless it works work you need it to.   And Eee Slate failed to recognize my Microsoft ARc Keyboard right in the middle of my business meeting.  I had to use a fallback solution by typing on the display with soft keyboard.

I continued trying to fix the problem, and eventually gave up.  I really don't know if it's the problem of that Arc Keyboard, or if that's the problem with EeeSlate.  All I know is that, from now on, I will only carry a wired keyboard if I need to use EeeSlate.

Disk error on Windows 8.1 (in MacMini)

Just when I thought everything at home started to run fine, one of my desktop machine, a MacMini (Last 2009 model) has a disk error booting.  And since the internal DVD drive also failed to work, I had to use my external DVD drive to boot up a Windows 8.1 Update 1 disc, and start to repair process.  In fact, as of now, the repair is still going on.  The screen says "Repairing disk errors.  This might take over an hour to complete."  Oh joy.

In fact, I need to remind myself how to get to that repair screen, cause after I booted up, I got an option to Repair computer.  But then it show me options of refreshing the machine by resetting everything.  So I had to explicitly choose the "Advance Option", and then choose "Repair Bootup" to fix just the boot up part.

Well let's hope that I have some good news at the end.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 5

I spent like 2 to 3 hours trying to get Android development environment working on ThinkPad Yoga.  This is not Lenovo's fault at all.  I just found it annoying that every time I put aside Android development (either due to being busy or because ... yes, busy), I have to set up an Android development environment all over again.  But now that it's done, I feel good.  Hopefully this will encourage me to do more casual Android development.

Just when I start to feel comfortable about keeping this ThinkPad Yoga, something popped up last night and irritated me: Plugged in, not charging.  For instance, like now, I have 96% battery available, and when I roll over the mouse on the battery indicator, I saw this message: "96% available, plugged in, not charging".  As someone OCD like me, the last thing I want is when I DID something, and that something DOESN'T  yield any result.  If I already plugged in, why can't it start charging right away?

Of course, with situation like this, Internet is always the rescue.   I search online, and found this forum message.  It seems like that there's a battery feature exist to make sure your machine is not overcharged.  So I unplugged the power adapter connector from my Yoga, left the battery drained from 96% to 93%, and reconnect the connector again, and sure enough, the battery charging happened after I connected the charging plug at 93%.  Right now reaches 98% and still charging.  So the issue seems to be a non-issue .... or WAS IT?  I will keep my eye on this charging situation.

Next challenge for Thinkpad Yoga: Virtualization.

I installed VMWare Workstation 10 and tried to run some VMs, including Windows Server 2012 R2 and OSX.  I then realized that Virtualization on BIOS was NOT turned on by default, so I got into the BIOS and turned on that setting.  Sure enough my VMs were loaded and running properly.  But then, with only 8Gb of main memory, I don't expect these VMs to run smooth.  This is more or less just a test to see if the machine is capable enough to load and run VMs.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Return

After multiple attempts in trying to make the digitizer accurate using calibration technique, I finally decided to give up.  There's no way I can make the digitizer work as smooth as I want.  In fact, 75% of the Eee Slate screen doesn't a better digitizing job than ThinkPad Yoga.  It's a shame cause it's so close, but I can't accept getting such inferior digitizer after putting down US$1500.

So I going back to using EeeSlate as the portable drawing device, and use Wacom tablet with my desktop PC when I am drawing at home.

It's a shame as I was enjoying using ThinkPad Yoga so much that even considered bring Wacom tablet with me to compensate the problem digitizer.  The problem of that screen is that if not all areas are perfect, then I will get distracted and frustrated as I draw at one spot and the line shows up at another spot.  I even tried to focus on the crosshair instead of the stylus tip when I draw, but then I was like, doesn't that the same experience as using Wacom tablet board, PLUS the confusion deal to my eyes seeing things that does NOT match with what my hand tried to do?  It's destroy my drawing experience, which was the main purpose of getting the tablet.

In addition, I found that I really didn't use laptop much.  When I am in the office I can use office laptop.  When I am at home I have 2 desktop computer on my desk, one Mac one PC and they are more than sufficient for my need.  And when I am outdoor, Eee Slate with mouse, keyboard and USB 3.0 harddisk seemed more than enough to do all I need to do.  Come to think of it, I didn't really use ThinkPad Yoga much even though I brought ThinkPad Yoga to the office every day.

Another problem: even after I calibrate the screen in landscape mode, touch points got off after I turned the machine in portrait and rotate landscape mode.  I tried both lock orientation and without, and  I still got the same problem.

So I am resetting the machine now and will head out to return the machine.  So long, ThinkPad Yoga.

So what other options do I have?  None as of now.  SP3 won't work for me even with i7.  Sony Viao Pro 13 has good potential as many reviews praise the accuracy of the digitizer, but the fact that Sony is phrasing out all their inventory tells me that I won't get much support with Viao, and I had a lot of horrible experience with Viao.  I also don't want ANYTHING that I can't try locally at store, so it shunted out a lot of options.

So as for now, I'll just go for Eee Slate, until someone some company figure out a way to serve graphic artist customer properly.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : digitizer problem may force me to return ThinkPad Yoga

I am pretty happy with almost everything about ThinkPad Yoga, except ONE thing, which bugs the hell out of me: digitizer.  In fact, use the computer as a portable sketchbook is the whole reason I brought this ThinkPad Yoga in the first place.  So the digitizer has to be good enough for my artistic need.

I tried the 273 test point approach a few times, each time I got better result, but still not the perfection I wish I can be.  Someone also suggested the Wacom Feel driver.  I tried and it does NOTHING to me.  So I uninstalled that driver and was back to the 273 test point approach.

I just did around round of 273 point calibration, and seems like I got a better result this time.  So let me try it out today, and, base on the result, decide whether I should keep the machine or not.

By the way I tried the advice here and calibrate different orientation using the 4 point calibration AFTER the 273 point calibration, and found that it seems to MESS UP the the calibration on my main orientation (landscape), so I go back and just do the landscape one.  Or maybe I should try calibrate on certain orientation before using .... need experiment...

ScummVM and save game

I moved ScummVM and games (on the same folder as ScummVM) to my Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, and found that the save game I made before wasn't there.  Later I realized that the save games were stored in :

C:\Users\{my user name}\AppData\Roaming\ScummVM\Saved games

After I moved those file to my Yoga, I can load save states that I saved.  Plus, the full screen mode (ALT-Enter) works great on Yoga with proper screen display ratio.

Looking forward to continue having fun on ScummVM !

Getting old school: playing classic point-and-click adventure games

Back in the good old days, when I was a kid fascinated by all the powerful stuff my computer, a Apple ][e clone, does, there's one thing I really love to play: point-and-click adventure game.  The experience of enjoying a story in an interactive style fascinated me.  Sadly though, because of my lack of English skill, I wasn't able to finish a lot of these days.

Now flash forward to tens of years later, I felt like I want to re-live that past, and see if I can finish these games that I couldn't finish.  Of course, with all the walk through and hints on internet, I know I can definitely finish these days if I have time.  Yes, the grown up pain: that now I have all the power, money and energy, I don't have time.  Sad.

OK, back to playing oldie games.  So I have 2 games that I particularly want to finish:

• Days of the Tentacle (Maniac Mansion 2)
• Tass Times in Tone Town

It turns out that play Days of the Tentacle is super easy.  All I need is download a free software ScummVM from here, and then download the game from here.  In no time I was playing the game.  The ScummVM even supports saving state, so I can save and load whenever I feel like.  This is awesome.

Playing Tass Times in Tone Town, on the other hand, is more challenging.  First I tried downloading the DOS version and run it on my desktop PC.  On my Windows 8.1, the exe refused to execute.  So I loaded up a Windows 7 32 bit edition VM and load the exe there.  I got a message saying "the machine does not support full screen mode" and then refused to run.  So seems like there's no go on doing the DOS way.  Plus the DOS version seemed lame since it only has 4 colors.   So my next plan is to play the game on Amiga emulator.

So I read some info about the game, and even found the walkthrough, was about to start finding emulator and whole 9 yard, until I found this message about potential problem playing the game on Amiga.  

Still, I thought I'll just move on UNTIL I found this video of playing the game from end to end.  

I spent 20 minutes to watch the whole video of someone played the game Tass Times in Tone Town from end to end, and at the end, I was THANKFUL that someone did that, and I was glad that I DID NOT play the game myself.  After watching the video, I found the game, stupid, nonsense, and if I were to play this game myself, I brought won't be able to finish it because all these command I was supposed to enter does NOT make any sense.  Great that I didn't waste my time on this.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 4

While I continue to use ThinkPad Yoga, I found a few use cases that makes using the Yoga mode (flip the screen to the back and made the laptop form a inverse V shape) very useful, that includes watching video on bed, use it as a touch only presentation device, and so on.  The more I use it, the more found this machine nice in all areas.

The machine stay cold most of the time when I do my web browsing, text editing, IM, Facebook status update and so on.  I expected that since those are netbook oriented tasks.  But then, netbook will never have the kind of smooth and fast processing experience I have.  Everything running on the machine got done fast.

I also found that recharge time being very short.  It took about 2 hours to recharge the machine back to full, which provides me 6 hours of real world work battery life.  It's not like super impressive, but works great enough for me.

Using Photo (Windows Store app) to browse images in local network

I know that by using "Open As..." from desktop,  I can use the Windows Store app "Photo" to browse photos on a folder.  But I want more than that.  I want to be able to browse a whole shared directory in my local network.  In fact, without that kind of feature, Photo app is useless to me.

Eventually I found a way to make a local network shared folder showing up in Photo app, but the process is so clumsy that I doubt any regular user will do the same.  Nevertheless, I did it and made it work.

Goal: Add network folder in Libraries/Pictures folder

The basic idea is including the network folder you want to browse in the Pictures Libraries folder of your machine.  No HomeGroup is invovled.  You can do that by:

• Right click on "Pictures" of "Libraries", and select properties.

• 
  
• 
  
  
  
  
• 
  

• Click [Add...] button, and then select your network folder, and click [OK] to commit.

You would hope that things can be this simple.  Unfortunately, after you click that OK button, you will probably get:

In order to add a network folder, it has to be indexed.  The help file instruct you to make a folder "Always Available Offline" by right click on a folder on Windows Explorer, and select ""Always Available Offline".  That DID NOT work on my newly brought Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga, as the system will tried to process that and at the end prompt you a dialog box saying the "Offline Files" system service is not running, and prompted you to restart the machine.  And for me, no matter how many time I restarted, I still couldn't got the same error message.

So I look under the Local Service MMC, and found the service "Local Files".  I tried to start the service, and got the error message saying: "Cannot start the service Offline Files on local computer.. Error 0x80070003: The system cannot find this path."

Then I found this post, and in that post, I found the following instruction to reset the CSC database:

1) Open Schedule tasks under Administrative Tools

2) Right click in 'Task Scheduler' and select 'Create task...'

3) Name: {Any Name}

User Account:

Click 'Change user or group' and type SYSTEM in the text box, clicking OK.

4) In Actions, Click New.

5) In 'Program/script', type:

c:\windows\system32\cmd.exe

6) In 'Add Arguments', type:

/crd c:\Windows\CSC /s /q

7) Click 'OK'

8) Click 'Task Scheduler Library' to be able to see the created task

9) Right click in that task and select 'Run'.

10) Restart machine.

So I reboot, I found the Local Files service running properly, and I was ABLE to set a network folder to "Always Available Offline".  After then, I can add that network folder to Pictures Library.  With that I can browse photo of that network folder in Photo app.

All seems well, except that there's something you HAVE TO DO:  You have to:

• Right click on the folder you previous set to "Always Available Offline", and UNCHECK the "Always Available Offline" setting so that the folder isn't available for offline browsing anymore.

The reason of doing that is because from the beginning we DO NOT want that network to be "always available offline", because that actually means the Sync Center of your computer will keep a local copy of ALL THE FILES in that network folder on your computer.  If your shared network folder has 1Tb of content, .... well, you get the idea.  All will did was force the computer to index that network folder, and thus trick Pictures Library to allow adding this folder in it.  Once we done the trick, we need to stop this file sync process continue.

In fact, by the time you do that, there's always files synchronized.  So the next step is to remove these files.  You an check that by going to "Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Sync Center\Offline Files" .  In the you should file the folder you previously marked as "always available online".  Right click on that entry and select "Stop Sync ...." and that should stop the synchronization for good.

The final step is removing those files that already been synchronized into your local offline files folder.  For that, you select "Manage Offline files" on the Control Panel page, and in there you click on "View your offline files".

In there, you should open the "Computers" icon, and then keep navigate until you reach your shared folder.  With that, you right click on the file and select "Delete Offline Copy", that should delete all the copy from your local machine.

And with that, you can finally use Photo app to navigate your photos using a touch friendly UI.  Why Microsoft can't come up with a better way to provide this functionality is .... a mystery.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 3 - Part 2

I tried Daz Studio 4.6 on ThinkPad Yoga and it worked great.  In fact, I used to have problem installing both DAz Studio and Microsoft Office 2013 on the same machine, and I DIDN'T have problem this time.  Interesting.

I also just solved my Toon Boom Studio problem with ThinkPad Yoga.  To enable pressure sensitivity on drawing, simply go to the Preferences window, under "Display" tab, check OFF the "Use Qt Wintab Support (Need Relaunch)" item.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 3 - Part 3

Some good news and bad news about using ThinkPad Yoga:

Good News: found a good remote desktop solution

I found a way to make my remote desktop experience much better on Yoga.  Up until now, I use the build in remote desktop application (tried both desktop version and Windows Store version), and found that the remote desktop does not honor the high dpi setting on my Yoga, result in tiny screen in small window, and made remote desktop almost useless.  Then I ran into this post talking about a newer remote desktop software from Microsoft called Remote Desktop Connection Manager 2.2.  I tried to suggestion and was very happy with the result.

Bad News: Painter X3 doesn't do pressure sensitive

Just tried Corel Painter X3 and found that pressure sensitive DOES NOT work with ThinkPad Yoga, or at least not Yoga out-of-the-box.  I remember that in good old days, I have to explictly install Wacom TabletPC to make drawing programs like Photoshop and such to work.  But now that I found almost ALL the software I used recognize the pressure sensitive setting in this like of Wacom tablet, it's kind of unforgiving to not support Wacom tablet in these tablet PC devices like ThinkPad Yoga.  So, NO, I am not installing crazy Wacom Tablet PC driver.  Instead I will uninstall Painter X3.

Luckily, another much cheaper natural painting app Art Rage 4 works great with Yoga with proper pressure sensitive support.  It's nice to have options.

I also tried a lot of different emulator on Yoga, including NES, Super NES, Gameboy, GAmeboy Advance, Genesis, and they all worked fine.  Sure they are not resources intensive apps, but I still want to make sure that they work properly.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 3

All that apps

I installed tons of application yesterday, including all the business and development apps that I use:

• Visual Studio 2013
• Microsoft Office 2013
• Microsoft Visio 2013
• SQL Server 2014 (Express) with Management Studio

And they ran very well.  So I know for sure that this machine will be capable enough to handle my business need.

For graphic design, I tried Sketchbook Pro and it works well.  The pressure sensitive range is much better than Surface Pro 3.  And the less glassy screen makes drawing better.  In fact, it almost reminded me the days I draw on the Lenovo X60T matte screen.

Heat and Screen

However calibration issue still concerns me.  Using the 260 plus point calibration trick, I was managed to have a pretty fine digitizing screen and give me nice sketching experience.  The problem is that even after you calibrate every spot properly, when you flip the screen around (in "yoga" mode, with the screen being upside down), all the spots shift and thus you don't get the perfect drawing spot you want.  So that means that I am pretty limited to the up front mode for sketching, or maybe a little bit of portrait mode.  So yes, it's indeed a bit compromising here.

Also the auto rotate actually irritates me, so eventually I turned it off from the display property screen.

The heat issue still irritates me. It's not as horribly annoying as SP3, but when I put the machine on my laptop, or turn it flat so that I can hold is on my arm, rest the front edge on my lap and sketch, I can sense heat from certain spots at the back of the machine.  Still, most area of the screen stays cold, and only the spot at the lower side of the screen stay warm.  Let me keep trying and see if it can accept it (hope Stockholm Syndrome doesn't kick in.

Game, game, game

I tried a bunch of game on this machine and the result was great.  The gaming experience is definitely better on this machine than the i5 Surface Pro 3.  I don't know if it's because of the i7, or the fact that the GPU drives less pixel here in ThinkPad Yoga.  All I know is that games like "Killer is Dead" ran sluggish on SP3 runs smoothly on this machine.

Here's the games I tried and my comments:

• Broken Age: works great on mouse and keyboard mode; does not work on touch screen mode, which is fine with me.
• Contrast: I got "Graphic Card is unsupported" error.
• Gone Home: works fine as mouse and keyboard game.  When I turned the screen quality to Max, it rans very slowly.  Lower the graphic to 1280 x 720 dramatically increase the respnsiveness.  At the end, I settled with: 
• Graphic Quality: Medium
• Resolution: 1280 x 720
• Motion Blur: On
• Killer is Dead: Great performance, unlike running it on SP3 which was sluggish.
• PacMan Champion edition: super smooth, and love the game.
• Final Fantasy 3: works fine, doesn't have the control problem I had in SP3
• BioShock 1: Doesn't work ... hmmmm ...
• Limbo: I have problem starting it up at first, but at the end the system seems to pick up the problem, fixed it, and now I can launch it properly.  Awesome game and runs great.
• Need for Speed Shift: Got "can't start because PhysXLoader.dll" and didn't care enough to reinstall the game.
• Pacman Museum: runs great
• Portal 1: I have to run the game in Windows mode (instead of full screen), and XBox360 controller doesn't work.  Other than those, the game ran fine.  I ended up using these screen setting:
• Aspect Ratio: 16:10
• Resolution: 1400 x900
• Run in a window
• Portal 2: Works great, smooth performance, works with XBox360 controller, keyboard and mouse.  Love the game.
• Street Fighter vs Tekken: Once followed my own instruction, everything went well.  Smooth operation.  BTW, I was surprised that the tutorial was hided inside [Challenge][Tutorial].  Not the place that I would expect.

P.S. Love it when games keep the save data in the same folder of the executable:

including but not limited to:

• Broken Age
• Killer is Dead
• Limbo
• Portal 1

Sound

Sound is just fair.  There's zero bass, and once you crank up the volumn higher than 60, sound starts to crank up at bit.  It's OK for casual usage, but don't expect much.  

BTW, love the volumn control button at the side, makes changing volume very handy.

Screen

The screen is nice at all angles, orientation and direction.  

Graphic Design Apps

Here's my experience with graphic design realted apps on ThinkPad Yoga:

• Sketchbook Pro 6: works great, not much complain.
• Photoshop CC 2014: All the menus are tiny, and when I use the Experimental UI feature, everything becomes too big.  So I have to live with tiny menus and icons.  Features and pressure sensitivity on stylus work fine, though.
• Manga Studio 5: works fine AFTER I set the Perference setting to "Tablet PC".  Just like SP3, I lost gesture support on the screen, but got back pressure sensitivity on drawing.
• Blender: fine ... well, it's a desktop app after all.
• Toon Boom Studio 6: No pressure sensitivity.  But then my version is old, so maybe the newer one works better.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 2

Today I brought my ThinkPad Yoga to my work place, and see how good Yoga fit into my busy worklife.

The bluetooh mouse still works great with my Yoga, and I found myself constantly going back to my mouse even thought there's this touch screen, trackpad and red mouse stick as the pointing device options.

One feature on Yoga I realized this morning was that it came with a security lock hole, which is important to me since it's corporate policy to to lock work machine everywhere I go.

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 1 (follow up)

After complained about the digitizer, I found this post that talked about a trick which I used with my Eee Slate before.  I tried it and found that it does dramatically improve the accuracy of the digitizer.  So now I have hope to continue testing this computer.  Still, why can't it be accurate in the first place?

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga i7 : Day 1

Surface Pro 3 made me realized that it's impossible to have a light weight tablet like device, running i5/i7 Intel CPU and running x64 app Sketchbook Pro 6 and still stay cool on the screen.  So I went for the second best: a reasonably light weight ultrabook computer with pressure sensitive stylus and screen support, running gen 4 i7 CPU, with a nice keyboard, with good battery life, and cost less than US$1700.  And I HAVE to be able to try it before buy it, and it has to be easy to return in case something goes wrong.

My search led me to Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga i7 at a local Microsoft Store.  So I went there, tried it enough to convince me that it has potential, and brought it.  To tell you the truth, the display unit has digitizer accuracy problem, and that got me worried for a while.  But I thought, maybe the machine I got didn't have the problem.  So I gave it a chance.

After opened up the machine, I turned it on and connected the machine to home WiFi.  As usual, it requires Windows update.  Like, A LOT OF Windows Update.  I was fine with that.  No big, just the usual experience of using Windows OS after all.

There are some neat features on the machine that I didn't realize, like the backlit button.  Nice,

The palm resting area on the right side of the keyboard get a bit warm about using the laptop for more than 1 hour, but I find it acceptable.  What cto alarm me was that the lower left side of screen also gets hot.  But then it's not on the screen area, so it's not like SP3's "omg, must return this device!!" level.

Here's what really got me concerned: the accuracy of the digitizer with styles was a bit off in quite some areas, and calibration does NOT seemed to resolve the problem.   I am a bit tired now so I'll probably try some more tomorrow, but this really getting me worry.

Surface Pro 3 : Afterthought

I just returned the Surface Pro 3 I brought.  I so wanted it work, and felt like my dream of having a light weight high quality digital sketchbook has been shattered.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am reluctant to try out another machine with similar specification, for the following reasons:

• High density display dilemma:  One reason why I was attracted by Surface Pro 3 was the high dpi display.  The idea was that I can sketch in higher precision as the tiny movement on my stylus can turned into more refined lines or strokes on the screen.  However, high dpi display also means that a lot of application will not work well, as those UI elements will become too tiny to be useful.  In fact, until more applications got rewritten to accommodate high dpi screen, I will not consider buying a laptop with high dpi display again.
  
• Intel x32/x64 in tablet format does not work: my biggest problem with the device was because of overheating.  It was overheating because I was running Sketchbook Pro 6, which was a x32/x64 appliaction.  On the other hand, I didn;'t experience the same hear problem with the Windows Store app FreshPaint.  Of course the feature set of FreshPaint ain't going to satisfy me.  So until creative design software rewritten to require less CPU/GPU power, running x32/x64 graphic app on a tablet device will still be bad idea.  Ironically, my low CPU power Asus EeeSlate has an edge of avoiding the screen head problem thanks to the slower CPU.
  
• If not even Microsoft can do it right ... : SP3 is supposed to be a flagship product, and they even approach artists and ask for endorsement of advice of Surface Pro series.  Yet SP3 is still a big disappointment to me.  That makes me wonder who else can do it right.   Sad.  So sad.

I am so glad that I didn't buy SP3 through mail order in order to avoid sales tax.  Returning SP3 to to mail order company will be more troublesome than returning it to Best Buy.  I really need to remind myself NOT to buy any laptop from mail order forever.

Surface Pro 3: Final Day

An hour ago, I gave Surface Pro 3 a final chance to prove it's worthiness (to me, which was what I cared the most as I was about comment US$1400 on this device).  It failed me.

The final test is to check and see how good this device is as a portable sketch book, which is my orginal and ultimate purpose of getting a active stylus computer device.  So I brought the Surface Pro 3 to outdoor at around 5:30 pm.  I already expected the glossy screen could be an issue, and it was, but then I could kind of live with it, and with the brightness turned to the max, the device was pretty usable.

I had hard time trying to disable the screen orientation feature as I really wanted to use the device as a digital paper, and sometimes I would change SP3's orientation in order to sketch at certain angle.  Eventually I gave up.  But that's not the biggest problem.

The biggest problem is STILL the whole heat issue.  After using it for 10 minutes, I found the surface right side of the screen boiling my palm up to a uncomfortable level.  I had to stop.

To make sure that I was not biased, I tool my old school Asus EeeSlate outdoor and did exactly the same thing. After sketched for 15 minutes, the screen of EeeSlate still stays cold (as it SHOULD BE).  Only the upper left side on the screen turned slightly warm.

With that, I finally decided that I had enough.  So I used the Windows 8.1 "update and recovery" feature, and triggered the "Remove everything and re-install Windows" feature.

Bye bye Surface Pro 3.

Surface Pro 3 Experience - Day 4

Using Surface Pro 3 in my regular work day didn't work as smooth as I hope it would be.

For start, press power button to turn on the machine didn't work properly and consistently enough.  That got me into some embarrassing moments during meetings.  Later I spent some time to fine the power button setting, and eventually I just gave up on it.

I then experienced a bit problem with company WiFi, but eventually it seemed to be resolved by itself.

And then experienced some problem with my bluetooth mouse, but later on found that it's just a out of battery issue.

Still, the power button issue is annoying enough that I don't want to rely on that device during important meeting.