New computer
Has been time for me to refresh my computer for a while so last week I finally got my preordered Surface Pro 4.
After more than a decade with OSX I thought that Windows deserved a chance with their promissing Windows 10 release. Have been running windows occationally on the Mac also both dual boot and with Parallells/VMware Fusion but the experience was never great with limiting performance or the hassle of having to reboot the computer and then not having all the other tools while running Windows.
I started to look at the Surface line already with the Surface Pro 3 and found it to be a tempting concept, and when they released the Surface Pro 4 I couldn't find any reason to stick with a traditional laptop. I'm a developer and my main work is done either at home or at the office but I also do quite alot of traveling and work at clients locations all over the world.
I got the The Surface Pro I7 with 16GB of ram to ensure it could keep up with my work, and it clearly is a quick and capable machine, I also got the dock to support my dual screen setup in my home office including a 4K Samsung screen doubling as a monitor. The single Surface connect cable is a great idea but I found the connection from the dock to be a bit sensitive, so I quickly learned not to move around the computer while it was docked.
Since my primary usage of the computer is while docked with at least one secondary screen and a real keyboard and mouse I didn't bother with getting the type cover, I might just as well bring a real keyboard for me while I'm traveling and use the on screen keyboard in between.
Hardware and performance wise it shouldn't really be anything to complain about... I thought it was a good time to jump over to Windows now that it had matured and with Windows 10 finally felt like it didn't try to be two different OS at once, but one coherent experience.
4th generation still have child issues...
If you followed the news on Surface Pro 4 you might have read about glitching screens and there was an update available before I received my computer so I was kind of relieved that I shouldn't have to deal with child diseases but it seams like I was mistaken. Below is a summary of the issues I'm currently having with the computer (with all the available updates installed as of 17th of December 2015).
Sleep and keep sleeping
This was the first issue I experiences and basically meant that the computer didn't come back from sleep at all, hard power off and power on was required to get the computer back which obviously meant that all open program and windows would be closed and any unsaved documents lost. I changed the setting to disable the sleep mode and after recommendation from the support I have also disabled Hyper-V. It's been a while since I had the issue now but still don't trust it to be gone.
Freeze instead of BSOD?
I never enjoyed the BSOD (blue screen of death) that plagued Windows in the past, but now I have experiences something even worse, the total freeze of the system, first time was during lunch today, I thought it was because the computer tried to go to sleep but later this after noon it happen again while I was actively sitting in front of the computer and was working. I surely hope that is just an issue with my computer and that a replacement unit will solve...
Pen detection
Have had a few issues with the pen, had the button not working one and atleast once that the screen wouldn't recognize the pen at all. But over all has the pen worked okey but the remaining complaint that I have is that it doesn't register while you press the screen ever so lightly, what's the point of having 1024 pressure levels if they don't start counting until you press the screen firmly? At least for me it totally destroyed the feel that this would be anything like a normal notebook (paper thing you know). Hopefully this is just an issue with the pen itself and an easy fix...
External displays
As I mentioned I got the surface dock and are using a three screen setup at home, when it works it's great but occationally when coming back from sleep or after having any of the screens turned of they simply don't get detected correctly or at all, the TV does for instance not accept any audio any longer or one of the two screen just stays black. Unplugging the cable from the dock to the TV and back again usually solves the issue, just plugging the surface connect cable in and out does not however.
Kickstand
Let me start with saying that the kickstand is awesome and I have no issues to use it in my lap while traveling, again I don't use the touch cover which might make it easier, but without the touch cover it's really slim and you can really use this device anywhere without any issues. I do however have a small complain and it might just be my unit but in quite often is a little bit wobbly as the kickstand and the screen haven't created a perfect flat square.
On screen keyboard
Since I don't use the touch cover keyboard I have been using the touch keyboard and it hasn't been great, I think part of it is just a question of getting used to it finding myself pressing the wrong key over and over again, also took ages until I found out how to enable the full keyboard so you can use the arrow keys etc. Don't understand why that has to be a hidden feature and not enabled together with the other keyboard alternatives as default, they do actually even show the icon for selecting the keyboard but it's grayed out until you find this hidden menu which I can't remember myself now or I would have told you all about it. The other major complain I have about the on screen keyboard is in the tablet mode, while in tablet mode the keyboard is suppose to be shown while needed but this doesn't always work with normal windows apps resulting in no keyboard available, in normal windows mode there's a button to open up the keyboard when ever you want but this button doesn't exist in tablet mode leaving you to say the least a bit crippled.
Windows for developers
I'm a long time Unix fan and that was one of the main reasons I went with OSX all these years ago. I didn't however expect how much trouble it could be to setup a half decent setup in Windows. We use alot of git repos and uses Google repo to manage them all together. Repo isn't supported in windows but I was able to run it with the help of cygwin and also found a fork which could be used in windows. However regardless of what I did (and enabled proper symlinks in Cygwin) I couldn't get a setup which just worked. I could get repo to work in the command line and build all our projects with no problems but when I tried to open up the projects in Netbeans nothing worked, after trying everything I could thinkof and find on the net I finally had to abandon repo and just run git manually for all our repos as in the old dark days before repo....
Netbeans are still giving me some warnings when I add files but atleast it works now and I can't be asked to spend any more time to get it to work any better now. I assume if we where using visual studio it might have been much better but I really just wanted to setup the computer as I was used to and now afterwards I think it would have been quicker and better to set everything up in Linux, if they only would have had all the drivers for the computer...
Would I recommend it?
So the final and perhaps most important question, would I recommend this computer?
First of all let me start with saying that this clearly is a tablet which can replace your laptop. The tablet experience might not be as polished as an iPad but you can do so much more that you forget about some of the rough edges.
Hardware wise it's a great machine and Windows hello makes me smile each time I have to unlock the computer.
So for any other company this would have been a home run, they done everything they could to perfection, but for Microsoft it's different, almost all the issues I have with the computer is software related, and for Microsoft there isn't any good excuse for why they haven't solved these. So what I would say, if you need a new computer wait until early next year when Microsoft says they should release a number of updates and hopefully we can all recommend the Surface Pro 4 for the brilliant machine of the future that it really is.
