DrDamn
Member
Any idea when we will see the Miix 710/720 launch in Europe/US? 710 seems like a number of Kaby Lake options to rival the M3 Surface Pro 4 and leaked details on 720 suggest more of i5/i7 SP4 rival.
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 announced: "better in nearly every way" (The Verge)
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Any idea when we will see the Miix 710/720 launch in Europe/US? 710 seems like a number of Kaby Lake options to rival the M3 Surface Pro 4 and leaked details on 720 suggest more of i5/i7 SP4 rival.
This is the first I've heard of the Surface Dial. I agree with you.
This is insultingly bad, the most ridiculous accessory I've seen in years.
Shogmaster
Member
Knowing Lenovo, it could be next week or 6 months from now.
I'm hoping to test them out at Lenovo booth at CES in January. I'd be surprised if 710/720 is out before then, but you'll never know with Lenovo.
Shogmaster
Member
Good thing it's an option then. There are people very happy about the Dial, like video editors. Playing around with one at MS Store, I'm curious about potential usage for my own workflow, but not angry about its existance, lol.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
What? How do you use pen and touch at the same time?
Onlinehero
Member
Thanks to both of you! I've settled for an i5, 256GB, 8GB RAM. It fits snuggly with my needs. The Book isn't worth the extra hassle for a swede.
Cool.
I forgot one other thing I like about the Pro vs. the Book - the lack of having something warm or hot in my lap.
The Book stays really cool in my lap since the guts are in the screen, but if I'm using the dGPU or even just heavily using or charging the batteries in the base, they can kind kind of warm.
The Pro never does since simply none of the battery or the guts are ever on my lap.
I forgot one other thing I like about the Pro vs. the Book - the lack of having something warm or hot in my lap.
The Book stays really cool in my lap since the guts are in the screen, but if I'm using the dGPU or even just heavily using or charging the batteries in the base, they can kind kind of warm.
The Pro never does since simply none of the battery or the guts are ever on my lap.
Onlinehero
Member
My sperm is totally psyched for that!
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
It's supposed to be announced in the spring, I'd wait to see what happens then. I think MS has lowered the price of the older models after announcing the new ones.
Spring.
eyeball_kid
Member
The iPad Pro treats Pencil input and touch input as separate, so you can do touch and even gestures while drawing with the Pencil. Though I haven't seen any apps which let you (for instance) move the drawing area as you draw, or change the color without lifting the Pencil. But it's technically possible.
What Surface Dial gets you is physical tactile feedback when you manipulate settings. That's the point of its existence.
The feel and precision you get from physically turning a dial with detents (programmable and simulated with force feedback) is very different than manipulating virtual controls on a multitouch screen.
Surface devices and the OS already support simultaneous pen and touch.
Shogmaster
Member
There is nothing magical about how Apple Pencil works vs any other pro cap/electro static touch and active pen combos. They all treat pen and touch as separate input devices. They just don't let you use finger and pen at the same time because that causes havoc with art software that doesn't work that way, which is like 100% of them.
Don't believe me? Look at Surface Studio. That Dial works on the screen with a simple electro static pattern recognition. And obviously it let's you use the Dial with the pen simultaneously. But only the Surface Studio let's you use the Dial on screen because it's the only one currently with the touch panel firmware to work in that manner. SP4 and SB will be need a firmware update to work in the same manner, according to MS.
EDIT: I see that the post above this also tackled the issue.
eyeball_kid
Member
I didn't say otherwise, I was merely answering his question about the iPad Pro since the other person didn't respond.
edit: ^ lol dude, I was just trying to give info, I didn't come in here to platform war
Sorry, quoted wrong person. My bad.
Shogmaster
Member
Well I think she is saying otherwise. You just got caught in the middle.
With these capacitive touch panels, I've seen CES demos going back to 2010 or something that was showing off "infinite" amount of touch points. Basically saying that as long as there was horsepower to track all the points, pro cap touch can have as many touch points as you'd want. And in the early touch panels for mobile devices, you had 5 point touch as a standard (N-Trig Duo Sense 1 IIRC). Then they started to come out with 10 point touch devices and now all pro cap touch screens do 10 point touch (because most people only have 10 fingers, although most men should be able to manage an 11th point when in the right mood
). Pen is just another touch point to track. With the Surface Dial, it would have minimum of 3 contact points as a reliable pattern recognition and maybe as much as 5 points just to make it easier for the computer to track. Anyways my point is, all these procap/ES touch panels are working in pretty much the same manner. The differentiation is really in the pens at this point.
The touch screen on the ipad doesn't stop working entirely if the Apple Pencil is within 20cm or so, unlike Surface Pro 4.
As for pen and finger at the same time, I'd like to be able to switch pen size, zoom, press undo, or hold down a virtual modifier key with my left hand, but Microsoft's system blocks all non-pen touch input while the pen is nearby.
The example given of someone turning a dial while drawing a stroke... this could just be a touchscreen interface!! They're having to code it specifically to cope with the dial, but if the dial wasn't there and the palette was touch control, that would work great.
I don't have those options, but that's pretty good. Nice to see a non-handwriting keyboard option!
With all of that said, I don't want to forsake palm rejection either. I often run into trouble with the annoying Action Centre swiping out from the right hand side and have to use a glove while drawing.
Shogmaster
Member
The touch screen on the ipad doesn't stop working entirely if the Apple Pencil is within 20cm or so, unlike Surface Pro 4.
As for pen and finger at the same time, I'd like to be able to switch pen size, zoom, press undo, or hold down a virtual modifier key with my left hand, but Microsoft's system blocks all non-pen touch input while the pen is nearby.
The example given of someone turning a dial while drawing a stroke... this could just be a touchscreen interface!! They're having to code it specifically to cope with the dial, but if the dial wasn't there and the palette was touch control, that would work great.
What you are talking about is how the each device designers chose to have the pen and touch behave, not some intrinsic limitations of the hardware. On Windows, you need to not only deal with pen and touch but mouse input as well. All apps have to acknowledge the presence of the mouse. Letting them all go at it once will make most software behave badly.
iOS has the advantage of not worrying about the mouse. So you will see different interaction and behavior of touch and pen. But then again, this is probably why you won't see OSX add touch and pen for a while. Apple doesn't want to deal with the messy transition like MS had to from XP to XP Tablet Edition to Vista to Win7 to Win8 and now finally Windows 10, which seemingly strikes the right balance for the most of the user base.
As for the touch and pen working together on Windows, clearly MS doesn't want finger touch and pen working simultaneously since the palm rejection behavior has been solidified around the current behavior rules. But with the introduction of the Dial, they have opened the door for another input method that also leverages the touch panel to interact with the pen at the same time. So I think we will see more devices for that purpose coming in the future that gives us different and added functionality than the Dial. It's just a simple electro static touch point pattern recognition. The sky is the limit.
TheBlackMarvel
Member
There was a deal (in the UK at least) where they lowered the price to the same as the student discount one and threw in an Xbox One S. Don't know if it's still up though.
It's up but I think it was for last year's Surface Book.
TheBlackMarvel
Member
Ah, didn't know you were after the Book, I got it for the Pro 4.
EDIT: They were definitely after the Pro 4.
Right OS paradigms are understandable, but software is already making good use of touch behaving differently to mouse input. It should be reasonable to make UI components which are specifically intended for touch input only.
As for palm rejection, I would like to think that Microsoft could be smart enough to dismiss touch inputs on the opposite side of the pen. The device knows I'm right handed, so anything to the left of the cursor is likely my left hand, and anything to the right is likely my hand and wrist.
I'm happy for the Surface Dial to exist, but it feels like a wasted opportunity, with far too narrow an application. Most artists that are frustrated with drawing on the Surface are frustrated by the lack of keys like Alt, Shift, etc. I enjoy tactile feedback and spinny knobs quite a lot, and I can't imagine using this while working. I'd be much happier with small bluetooth grid of 9 buttons or so, like the Wacom ExpressKey Remote.
Looking on the UK site, it's the SP4 alright. With an XBox One S. Might take that and just sell the Xbox, cheers guys.
Shogmaster
Member
Look, you already have a perfectly fine input device with metric tons of buttons available to use on your SP4. It's got a damn dial to boot!
I'm hoping they do a revision to add the on screen functionality. That would be easy and cheap to do frankly.
Shogmaster, you always seem quite angry! 
Yeah, the ExpressKey remote seems like a solid solution, just a shame it uses a USB stick. Last time I checked there was also some awkward clashing of Wacom's and Microsoft's input drivers?
Let's hope Wacom lean into the Surface Studio announcement and start making a Wacom pen and ExpressKey remote that's a good option. I know the spec supports it, but until the Wacom pen for Surface actually appears it can't be relied on.
Yeah, the ExpressKey remote seems like a solid solution, just a shame it uses a USB stick. Last time I checked there was also some awkward clashing of Wacom's and Microsoft's input drivers? Let's hope Wacom lean into the Surface Studio announcement and start making a Wacom pen and ExpressKey remote that's a good option. I know the spec supports it, but until the Wacom pen for Surface actually appears it can't be relied on.
Shogmaster
Member
Shogmaster, you always seem quite angry!
Let's hope Wacom lean into the Surface Studio announcement and start making a Wacom pen and ExpressKey remote that's a good option. I know the spec supports it, but until the Wacom pen for Surface actually appears it can't be relied on.
Ever since Photoshop CC and Painter 2016 switched to the Microsoft's Tablet API, I wouldn't bother with the N-Trig Wintab driver. Voila! No more conflicts with the Expresskey Remote's driver.
It does suck that SP4 only has one USB-A port, but then again, I got a Lenovo Ideapad Miix 700 instead for $550, which has 2 USB-A ports and a much better Wacom AES pen as bonus.
BTW, I'm only angry when I read crap-tastic articles on pen devices like that Engadget one.
You got a link, this is a great deal. Is it the new Surface 4 (was it even updated?)
I'm posting on my phone and I saw it on my desktop earlier but if you google the Microsoft UK store it's very easy to find.
I've no idea if it's the updated version or not sorry.
There's no Surface 4, only Surface Pro 4.
The SP4 didn't get an update, but the Surface Book 4 got an additional SKU with more power.
Cosmic Bus
pristine morning snow
Does the pen come in the box for every version of the Surface Pro 4? I've noticed some of the deals on Best Buy specifically say "pen sold separately" but I thought it was always included.
BeforeU
Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.
sold separately? That has to be a mistake, because it should come with every version. Since the first Surface
Shogmaster
Member
Only Surface 3 and that one lower priced SKU of Core i3 Surface Pro 3 didn't come with a pen. All Surface Pro 4s should come with a pen.
I installed the Windows 10 Anniversary update, and disabled 'ignore touch input while using pen'. It works pretty nicely for using the pen alongside my left hand, but I haven't been able to find a way to make my toolbar or choice (TouchKey) allow for proper 'hold' inputs.
It's nice to not have to lift the pen so far away to allow touch input, however.
It's nice to not have to lift the pen so far away to allow touch input, however.
DrDamn
Member
This one ... https://www.microsoftstore.com/stor...d=HP-SP4-plus-Xbox-bundle-STH3-26102016-en_GB
SP4 - i5 - 8GB RAM - 256GB storage + X1 FIFA 17 bundle for £1079
I think if I could get this deal in the US I might bite. I'd flip that Xbox for like $300
DrDamn
Member
Also available elsewhere if you want bricks and mortar shop ...
Currys ...
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...x-one-s-with-fifa-17-bundle-10154297-pdt.html
JohnLewis with 2 year guarantee ...
http://www.johnlewis.com/microsoft-...5-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-12-3-touchscreen/p2293407
Currys ...
http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/comput...x-one-s-with-fifa-17-bundle-10154297-pdt.html
JohnLewis with 2 year guarantee ...
http://www.johnlewis.com/microsoft-...5-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-12-3-touchscreen/p2293407
There's no good reason for the dock being so expensive. It's worth knowing that the Surface Pro 4 dock is compatible with the SP3, but it's just as expensive. It does make it easier to mount your SP4 wherever you like, though.
Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Does Walmart ship overseas? It's $127 here:
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Microsoft-Surface-Port-Replicator-V4/47167967
And at Jet.com
https://jet.com/product/Microsoft-Surface-Dock/b70346c1f58d42f0a20e6c838804dd8f
Maybe. I replaced my vaio with it.
ZackieChan
Member
I'm digging mine as a replacement for my MacBook Air. It's not without its quirks, though.
Can any recommend drawing apps, either paid or free?
As this is for my sister I'd love to give her a list. She already likes to draw on a standard drawing tablet connect to her PC, but this would be the first time she would be drawing on the screen directly.
Any help would be appreciated.
As this is for my sister I'd love to give her a list. She already likes to draw on a standard drawing tablet connect to her PC, but this would be the first time she would be drawing on the screen directly.
Any help would be appreciated.
StudioTan
Hold on, friend! I'd love to share with you some swell news about the Windows 8 Metro UI! Wait, where are you going?
Clip Paint Studio (formerly Manga Studio)
Mischief
Sketchbook (there is a free version)
Sketchable (also has a free version but it's very limited)
and of course Photoshop
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