Microsoft Surface Pro 4 announced: "better in nearly every way" (The Verge)

Status
Not open for further replies.
I love my SP4 m3... may have to just sell my MacBook Pro and SP4 when the SP5 comes out and use it as my only computer. There needs to be a dedicated team at MS making a special variant of Windows 10 for Surface. Like when I have the Settings app open and touch the search box and the keyboard doesn't pop up... why? That also happens in the search bar on the Start bar.
 
So my gf has been non stop complaining about the fan noise on Surface Pro 4. What the deal with this? any work around or solution? When I talking on the phone with her, even I can hear it. So she is definitely not exaggerating.

My SP4's fan ran constantly (i5). I found these fixes to be very useful, especially the registry edit to disable Turbo Boost while on battery. The actual number you'll have to set the battery CPU max at varies depending on your model. Now the fan only runs if I'm plugged in and doing something intensive like playing a more recent game.
 
I use ZBrush R7 on my i5 and the fan rarely kicks in. Sometimes it may turn on while charging, but I'm believing there are some other things going on (potentially background updates) when that happens.
 
I love my SP4 m3... may have to just sell my MacBook Pro and SP4 when the SP5 comes out and use it as my only computer. There needs to be a dedicated team at MS making a special variant of Windows 10 for Surface. Like when I have the Settings app open and touch the search box and the keyboard doesn't pop up... why? That also happens in the search bar on the Start bar.

There is an option which enables the popup keyboard. Can't remember where it is though.
 
Just ordered a Surface Pro 4 i5 to replace my old Surface RT. Definitely looking forward to taking notes via keyboard and pencil in class.
 
There is an option which enables the popup keyboard. Can't remember where it is though.

if you are in tablet mode I guess it works, but I don't really like tablet mode... or have played around with it enough.

mainly I just don't like having everything maximized in tablet mode and not being able to use the desktop.
 
Handful of annoyances! Maybe you can help!

- Why does the rotation lock button disable when I connect a keyboard? I often lock it in portrait mode when I remove the keyboard, then I forget to disable rotation lock when I connect the keyboard, then have to remove the keyboard again. Quite annoying that they lock it like this.

- Can I temporarily disable the swipes from the right side of the screen to activate the Action centre? I get a lot of false positives while drawing. I believe there's a registry hack but it seems severe, and the left-swipe is useful sometimes.
 
if you are in tablet mode I guess it works, but I don't really like tablet mode... or have played around with it enough.

mainly I just don't like having everything maximized in tablet mode and not being able to use the desktop.

Press start

Type "typing"

Go to typing settings

scroll down to bottom

enable "show the touch keyboard or handwriting panel when not in tablet mode and there's no keyboard attached"

---

Now when the screen is detached, even if you're not in tablet mode, the KB will automatically come up when you touch a text field.
 
I'm worried I'll need to return my Surface :( Wireless Display feature isn't agreeing with me right now. Issues with the pen result from that. This time next week, this thread may be down 1 user.
 
I'm worried I'll need to return my Surface :( Wireless Display feature isn't agreeing with me right now. Issues with the pen result from that. This time next week, this thread may be down 1 user.

I haven't had much luck with wireless display via my Bravia. Maybe the dedicated hdmi receiver peripheral gives better results.
 
I haven't had much luck with wireless display via my Bravia. Maybe the dedicated hdmi receiver peripheral gives better results.

I've had issues with miracast on my Bravia from at least two sources - not tried a surface pro though.
 
So I've been running my surface for a day now, just bought it! (all updates have been installed btw) Currently I have edge open, and running Spotify in the back ground.... its giving me 3.5hrs battery life expectancy. With Netflix open (no movie playing) it's giving me 2.5hrs. Also, this is with Bluetooth off, aeroplane mode on and brightness on the second lowest. The fans turn on even with some light browsing and the system gets hot very quick.

Is it fair to say I should return it?
 
So I've been running my surface for a day now, just bought it! (all updates have been installed btw) Currently I have edge open, and running Spotify in the back ground.... its giving me 3.5hrs battery life expectancy. With Netflix open (no movie playing) it's giving me 2.5hrs. Also, this is with Bluetooth off, aeroplane mode on and brightness on the second lowest. The fans turn on even with some light browsing and the system gets hot very quick.

Is it fair to say I should return it?
Edge is pretty bad for the Surface. I recommend Opera, which has improved my experience massively since I switched over. The fans haven't come on in weeks.
 
Got my device for a day. Fairly happy with it so far, but just now came across something annoying. In one of the more crucial programs a bunch of stuff looks jumbled.

7khG4ZC.png


Same goes for drop down windows, like for country selection. The text overlaps and while it is still legible, it is fairly annoying. Any way I can fix this? Don't know if it's isolated to this one program or more pervasive.
 
Got my device for a day. Fairly happy with it so far, but just now came across something annoying. In one of the more crucial programs a bunch of stuff looks jumbled.

7khG4ZC.png


Same goes for drop down windows, like for country selection. The text overlaps and while it is still legible, it is fairly annoying. Any way I can fix this? Don't know if it's isolated to this one program or more pervasive.

sometimes you can fix this by right clicking on the exe and going through the troubleshooting thing. It's a big problem for certain software, and Paprika on windows is very horrible with lots of tiny GUI.
 
I'm having similar issues with a HDMI TV screen for the Microsoft Wireless Adapter. A Netgear PVT3000 works, however. I just need to find a converter. If it doesn't work, this baby is going back. Too many issues to tolerate.
 
My i5 8GB fan still goes bonkers for apparently no reason...is there a fix yet or any advice? I've turned off MS Hello, everything updated, keep strong track of background processes but it still gets hot and loud.
 
Anyone know if the HyperV issues have been resolved yet? I've left it disabled since launch.

The issues with the screen flickering? Those of been resolved from what I've read and in my own experience. Get this though, for the past week or two people have been reporting that enabling Hyper-V is actually a fix for the SP4 sleep drain issue. I tested some myself last week and it actually seemed to help. Took the drain from like ~5% an hour to 1-1.5%. So strange Microsoft is sometimes.
 
The issues with the screen flickering? Those of been resolved from what I've read and in my own experience. Get this though, for the past week or two people have been reporting that enabling Hyper-V is actually a fix for the SP4 sleep drain issue. I tested some myself last week and it actually seemed to help. Took the drain from like ~5% an hour to 1-1.5%. So strange Microsoft is sometimes.

Placebo. The sleep issue is related to Skylake.
 
So I just bought a refurb one with the M3 to evaluate the Surface line. I also have a Lenovo X250 but have always liked the Surface lineup and wanted to try out Core M, so this fulfills both desires. So far the battery life meter is fluctuating a lot. I want to see how it compares to my X250 which thanks to its two batteries (3+6 cell) can get over 10 hours of battery life. And as for the Core M3, it is handling things nicely, though I have yet to try the two most taxing programs I use on a computer (Capture One Pro for photos or Sony Movie Studio Platinum 13 for video from my Sony A5100). Glad to finally have one though, my desire to own one was getting to much to handle.

EDIT: I really like it but think I will return it. Battery life today was a little more than 5 hours with brightness at 25%, no Chrome usage, some YouTube, a little photo editing (which at times was slow). At least now I know that I can actually consider Core M machines. Also I like small tablets (have an iPad Mini) and feel like I would prefer to wait on the Surface 4 and get that instead. Hope the Pro 5 UPS battery life.
 
It's hilarious how much better my i7 SP4 battery life is over the i5 SP4 I had before.
this is awesome, love it, still glitches here and again, edge goes unresponsive and I have to lock unlock to fix it :/
 
It's hilarious how much better my i7 SP4 battery life is over the i5 SP4 I had before.
this is awesome, love it, still glitches here and again, edge goes unresponsive and I have to lock unlock to fix it :/

Presumably you had a duff i5? The actual battery life on normal ones should be similar, right?
 
I don't know who to blame.

We tried a second SP4 on different screens. We tried three different adapters. The wireless display just couldn't work.
 
I don't know who to blame.

We tried a second SP4 on different screens. We tried three different adapters. The wireless display just couldn't work.

Really? That's really odd. Do you use windows 10? It's built in and I stream it all the time to my Roku, Xbox One. It works flawlessly.

It worked better then Chromecast. I ended up returning it.
 
Is the battery drain while in sleep mode fixed yet?

I right now have my power button set to hibernate, which has done a great job of preserving battery while it's not in use, but sometimes I accidentally press the power button and then I have to wait a minute or so before I can try to wake it up.
 
I don't know who to blame.

We tried a second SP4 on different screens. We tried three different adapters. The wireless display just couldn't work.

I got mine to work with miracast on my 4k bravia once and never again. Works perfectly with an adapter but not with the TV's built in mirrorong.
 
Replaced my 3 year old i7 Dell laptop with an i5 8GB/256GB SP4, and holy moly, it's knocking my socks off performance wise.

I picked up a Surface Dock as well (this is my work machine) and the dock is doing a lovely job pushing to 2 1080p monitors.

Using it on my lap at home with the kickstand/keyboard is much more comfortable than I had anticipated as well. Overall, seems like a winner.
 
I don't know who to blame.

We tried a second SP4 on different screens. We tried three different adapters. The wireless display just couldn't work.

why did you want to cast the Surface screen to a TV? I'm guessing it was more than just Netflix/Hulu or whatever as you could have just used a Chromecast. I hope you weren't tyring to cast to an HDTV and then drawing on the Surface while looking at the TV...

anyways, are you getting something else? If you are limiting yourself to Windows 2-in-1s with pen input, I can't imagine any of the other options will give you a better screen casting experience.
 
New issue. My pen doesn't work. The button that opens Onenote works but it doesn't erase or draw at all. No tracking dot either.

Anybody else had this?

I've already tried replacing the battery, unpairing and re-pairing.
 
Looking to Replace my Macbook Pro with the surface book.

Has anyone had experience with light gaming on the surface book? Acceptable?

I play Dota 2 and Civ 5 with no problem. SC2 chugs a bit on higher settings, so I usually set it to low and it runs fine.

New issue. My pen doesn't work. The button that opens Onenote works but it doesn't erase or draw at all. No tracking dot either.

Anybody else had this?

I've already tried replacing the battery, unpairing and re-pairing.

Did you try replacing the pen tip? My first surface pen broke, it would still pair, but the tip stopped drawing full lines.
 
New issue. My pen doesn't work. The button that opens Onenote works but it doesn't erase or draw at all. No tracking dot either.

Anybody else had this?

I've already tried replacing the battery, unpairing and re-pairing.

did you try taking the battery out of the pen and putting it back in? Reboot?

My pen was registering input even when I wasn't touching the screen one time, I popped the battery in and out and all was fine.
 
did you try taking the battery out of the pen and putting it back in? Reboot?

My pen was registering input even when I wasn't touching the screen one time, I popped the battery in and out and all was fine.
Yes I tried both of those.
Did you try replacing the pen tip? My first surface pen broke, it would still pair, but the tip stopped drawing full lines.
No I did not, I don't have any extras.
 
So is the the SP4 M3 faster or about equal to the i5 on the SP3? Really considering going fanless.

If you look at benchmarks, the m3 is just a bit slower. I sold my SP3 i5 and moved to the SP4 m3 and I don't notice any performance difference. I generally use Chrome, Spotify and Photoshop to do digital illustration.
 
If you look at benchmarks, the m3 is just a bit slower. I sold my SP3 i5 and moved to the SP4 m3 and I don't notice any performance difference. I generally use Chrome, Spotify and Photoshop to do digital illustration.

That's good to hear. I use my Surface Pro for pretty much the same thing but with a bit of After Effects here and there.

Must be nice to browse Chrome without the fan kicking in, huh. ;p
 
Speaking of the pen, using apps like Sketchable seem to require you to press the pen to the screen so hard that you can start to see the LCD warping from the pressure. Gives me the willies.
 
Speaking of the pen, using apps like Sketchable seem to require you to press the pen to the screen so hard that you can start to see the LCD warping from the pressure. Gives me the willies.

Install the Surface app, it lets you adjust the pen pressure.
 
Out of nowhere I'm getting "Driver Error" for my Pen in bluetooth settings. No input from pen is working. If I hover the pen, the cursor does even show up. It's not batteries... if I hold down the eraser a white light starts flashing on the pen. Restart does not help.

edit: huh... I clicked "Remove Device" from the bluetooth settings and paired again. Now clicking the eraser will open OneNote, but trying to use the pen tip as a cursor gives me no response...
 
New issue. My pen doesn't work. The button that opens Onenote works but it doesn't erase or draw at all. No tracking dot either.

Anybody else had this?

I've already tried replacing the battery, unpairing and re-pairing.

Visceral I just realized we're having the exact same issue. Did you try replacing the Pen tip yet? I guess I'll head out to the MS Store after work and buy the tip kit.
 
Looking to pick a Surface Pro 4 up at the weekend. Was looking to get a book originally but for specs that justify buying one, the price was just too ridiculous here in the UK.

I'm going to be using this machine specifically for everyday use incl. Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop work. Also planning to play some steam games (stuff like Ys, TiTS etc.) on it too.

I'm eyeing the 8GB i5 model. Should be adequate, right?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom