Microsoft Surface Pro 2 (64,128,256,512gig)

[shepardG]

Welp, just got one of these today. I paid 999.99 at AAFESS. It's the 128g version with 4g of ram Just thought i'd start a thread with a bit of my experience since us BG'ers usually (for the most part) have similar computing purposes in mind. (Square enix crap, Vidya in general, media, etc.)

I went into our BX here at Osan AB, in South Korea, looking for a 300-500 dollar laptop i could carry with me all day (my main PC right now is my sager 16lb laptop which is... to big to carry all the time lol)

So i was hoping i could find some cheapo 15.6 incher with a decent enough graphics card to play League of Legends, some lower graphical steam games (terraria, rogue legacy, etc.) and maybe FFXIV or wildstar on med settings.

As i'm parusing their wares, (be tee dubs, that's a real word i just made up) and i notice a surface RT sitting behind the counter on a cart. So I ask the guy if they have any PS4's (great segway hunh) He says no but they have Xbox one's (litterly there are like 40-50 of them strewn throughout the store some at the entrance some in electronics some near the registars....nobody wants that shit)
So i sorta say: so he see's me looking at the chrome book and he's like, "no good, no good" (He's korean btw, and speaks broken english)
I knew this after reading about it before i went in, I was just trying to see how it felt, and the weight and size of it and i reply: "Do you guys have the Surface pro 2" and he sorta smiles and says: "Yeah yeah, came today "

long story short, i blew my budget but got something that i had been debating since september before i even got to korea.

Aight the review shit that your all here for anyway:

The packaging and all the jingly janglies inside:
It comes in a roughly 15'' x 8'' white box (like that satiny cream texture shit that's popular cause stickie's stick but won't like stay stuck) with a 3/4 black slip cover with all the specs and shit.
This is attached by a single piece of tape with a convient pull tab. (i fucking nut over that shit) Slip the cover off and you have this white tombstone looking thing that simply says "surface" and guess what, ANOTHER SINGLE PIECE OF BUDDY TABBED TAPE. I was getting my hair cut as i discovered this and almost blew a load in the waiting area.

So pull that tape off and the cover of this oblong white tombstone thing opens up and hinges from the right side, and the SP2 sits there all wrapped in that plastic shit they litterly spent millions of dollars on to protect it from... something that might get through the cardboard but would be stopped by this plastic somehow... and moisture it aint, cause the plastic is like 5 pieces of plastic all intricately wrapped around the thing with little gaps here and there...

however... the SP2 is ALSO BUDDY TABBED SO YOU CAN REMOVE IT EASILY... and this right there is pure hand joy to me.

The power supply a satin black block about 4''x2.5''x1.5'' is on the right and also covered in this million dollar plastic.

anyway, the things fully charged, and the entire box probably weights somewhere on the 4.5lb side of the house. The stylus that it comes with is under the tablet and so are the few paper inserts explaining to you just how smart of a person you are that you just popped out a grand to aquire this little bit of joy.
You get:
- 200gigs of skydrive for free for, what i assume, is a year which normally i think costs like 80$ or something
- a year of unlimited worldwide skype calling, which for me is pretty damn awesome, being in korea away from the wife and the family and shit.

Windows 8.1 and your hotmail account and the first couple of hours:

So i get back to work and were all chilling on the couches watching the cowboys get the shit beat out of them and i'm playing away.
I made the plunge with my 9390 Sager and opted for windows 8 so I've had some dealings with it so far, but i can honestly say it works fucking amazing on this tablet. it's clearly the enviroment that they were gunning for with the whole panel bullshit.
I logged into my hotmail after i setup the time and computer name and it instantly setup my panel screen and desktop screen like my sager back in my room at home. This made me happy. I immedietly used The best browser for downloading a good browser and installed google chrome immedietly, and logged into that and into my Google account. All that fun shit transfered right over also.
I was pretty excited about the legit-ness so far.

So i'm getting used to the stylus at this point and they did a bonned up thing (sorta) in that the styuls doesn't actually tuck into the body of the surface, but fucking magnets work some how to stick it to the side right in the spot where those same magnets would connect the charging cable. That's pretty stu in my opnion but not a deal killer, /shrug.

The other nifty thing about the stylus is the screen will detect it really really accurately about 2'' from the actual surface of the screen.
There is a button on the side that .... functions in some way like a button on a mouse but my ass has yet to figure out what that way is.
and there's also a button on the back, like you'd have for a click pen or a mechanical pencil. This has done nothing so far.

The SP2 has a built in 2 position kick stand, which is pretty good because it can get quite warm in your hand if your browsing for longer that 20 mins at a time. but i found that ankle on knee sitting let me use the kick stand to sorta position the SP2 like a surface of sorts positioned resting on my foot, the kick stand, and my stomach

"Hey korean BX guy do you have the 150$ additional keyboard? "WE SURE DON'T":
Welp there you have it. I litterly just got the SP2 with no accesories so couldn't try out the mouse/keyboard stuff yet. And this became my first real cause of concern. In windows, and IE, and other stuff like that, when you click on a text box, the onscreen keyboard doesn't automatically come up.
For instance: After i did the firm ware update/OS patches, I installed League of legends and Steam. When i clicked on the text boxes to input my user name/ p-word, i get nothing but a blinking cursor and no keyboard. I have to manually position the window on the desktop so it's at the top half of the screen, and then tap near where the start button would be to pull up the taskbar, and click the keyboard icon. This is immedietly annoyinig as shit. Infact in some instances, like for fullscreen stuff, that sort of shit becomes impossible.

It's highly likely there's a setting i can turn on, however, i'm not sure, because the wonderful thing about chrome as my browser is the google keyboard worked like it does on an android OS, pulling up automatically when a text box is engaged.

I'll write more on this if it becomes more of a shit probem, but I knew when i got it, i'd probably be buying the keyboard eventually or something small and similar to the keyboard. What was really annoying was that the BX didn't get any keyboards to go with the damn tablets themselves.... good job uncle sam, way to plan that one through.

The meat and potatoes:

So Vidya gaymes, I've installed League of legends, and ran a quick bot match to see how ridiculous the game was going to perform with a touch screen and a stylus. The graphics themselves worked flawlessly with not a stutter at 60fps. Control's on the other hand.... lmao, get a mouse and keyboard people this shit was retarded impossibe
Terraria ran awesomely of course, but i haven't installed any gully washer graphical intensive games yet. (namely because i left my charging cable at work like a dumbass)

BUT I WANT TO TALK TO MY FAMILY, and other gee wiz stuff:

Haven't tried to skype video call yet, but they have a brand new custom Facebook app that works really really well with the tablet.
I installed FLYvpn and it seems to work real well, as i browsed to some porn sites here in korea to see if it worked (it did)

Bottom line, i'm pretty excited and pleased. I'll post updates on wack shit i encounter or successes that may occur on getting video games figured out.

Or i'll probably drop it tommorow and cry like a little bitch that i just blew a grand on stupidity.
Also my lady that cuts my hair wasn't there, so this other lady cut it, and now i look like i'm a recovering cancer patient.
Morale of the story is wait for YOUR hair person.... don't try and force it.

[Tokitoki]

I was playing with a Surface 1 over Thanksgiving that the GF's uncle was setting up for the state police/coroner. He had the keyboard attachment and it was pretty cool. The one he had had no key response, you just touched them and it typed, which he said freaked some people out so they made one with response. The cool thing about the keyboard is that it has a mouse like a laptop would; touchpad and click buttons below it. I think you'll be happy with it once you get the keyboard.

I wish these things were out before I got my stupid iPad. Never again.

[Serra]

If you ever figure out a setting to pull up the keyboard whenever you can enter text, let me know. It's one of the more annoying parts of Windows 8..

[jmc]

Bought a surface rt 1 for my sister a few weeks ago, and was setting it up today (christmas gift I won't be around to set up, since i'll be working).

Its a pretty nice tablet once you start playing around with it. I have no use for a RT, but it seems like it would be perfect for my sister starting med school next month.

[shepardG]

Update:

So second day with the Surface pro 2 and I'm playing Darksouls 2, with a wired x-box controller. I broke down and bought a blewtooth mouse and headset, and i'll probably spring for the keyboard also.

Chrome still isn't working ... like it should i guess you could say. I still use it, but i feel like it's functionality is hampered, cause it doesn't understand what the device is doing. I should do some research and see if there's any reasons behind this, or if it's just me and i screwed up some setting.

The mouse:
I got the microsoft wedge mouse, and pairing was perfect, which i assume is a pretty standard thing now (i remember bluetooth v 1 and 2 were pretty damn iffy when it came to stuff) but the 4.0 stuff works real well. I didn't notice any prominent lag which i read was associated with bluetooth peripherals, maybe the 4.0 fixed alot of that stuff also.
The mouse itself is.... odd feeling. If you haven't seen it:
http://asset0.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d...06_610x436.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FJgou_lcCZ...0/IMG_3885.JPG

It has left and right click, and scrolls are handled by a touch sensor that runs along that line, and works for up,down,left,right.
It isn't BAD, but it isn't great either. I run my standard mouse sensitivity pretty high, and don't move my wrist much, wich translated well to this, but your palm has no dedicated resting spot like you get with a regular mouse.
I have yet to use it for extended League of legends gaming sessions, but i'll update with comfort level. which will probably be shit.

@ sera, nah i haven't found out how too yet, but if I do i'll definetly let ya know.

I haven't found a tablet sleeve for it yet. it's 10.8'' long so it's really really tight in a 10'' sleeve. If i find something I like i'll mention it here.
Gonna try to video skype with my wife either tommorow or friday and i'll let ya know how that goes.

at 2.4lbs it's a p. heavy tablet, but i'm a bigger guy so i somewhat appreciate the heft. I can grip the thing from top to bottom fairly securely with my fingers wraping around it, so that's a nice inadvertent feature.

I got some VPN client software running on it also, and encountered no hickups so far: FLYvpn, and Tunngle so that's a good sign as well.

Not sure if i mentioned but the power supply has a usb port on it as well, which i'm not sure offers actual USB with the SP2 functionality or just a charging port for usb devices.

more to come.

[The Stig]

Dark Soul 2? If it could handle that, then FFXIV should be also no prob if you play... was wondering if you could test. If I recall correctly, you're running on Intel HD 5000?

What's the heat output like?