The Surface Pro 3 Is My Kind Of ‘Laptop’
I started using a tablet within a few months of them existing in the market place, I’ve owned many an iPad since they were released, but I’m still a passionate laptop user. I’m currently using a Thinkpad x230 and an iPad mini and truth be told I’m mostly satisfied.
I still have a few niggles though, that the Surface pro 3 seems to fix:
- The Thinkpad is just that little bit too heavy – fixed
- The Thinkpad battery life, at 5 hours, just a fraction too short – fixed
- The Thinkpad screen resolution just a little too low – fixed
- The iPad screen much too small for magazines and most business PDFs – fixed
- I have no way to annotate on presentations and documents – fixed
- I love to share my screen and sketch freehand during meetings – sorted
- I never get around to reading analyst reports – no more excuses
- I never have paper with me when I want it – sorted
Last year I tried out the Surface and original Surface Pro, but they didn’t quite work, the Surface Pro was close but:
- The Touch cover was rubbish – probably fixed
- The battery life was terrible – fixed
- The screen was ‘just wrong’ in portrait mode and A4 PDFs didn’t work at all – fixed
- I work mainly with the Thinkpad on my lap – probably fixed
- The kickstand was never at the right angle – fixed
All in all this is a pretty good score!
On paper I’m pretty sure that the pro 3 could replace by beloved Thinkpad and address the tasks that the iPad fails at. The issue is could it replace the tasks that the iPad excels at, probably not! So I would still end up carrying the pro 3, iPad and iPhone, but even so that would be progress because 100% of my mobile use cases would be met instead of the 70% that are met today.
The big question remains, could I give up the Thinkpad keyboard and form factor that’s been my constant companion for 17 years! There’s only one way to answer that someone needs to get me a pro 3.
1 Response
[…] cost, light weight and all-day battery life and design for laptop use. This post complements my first thoughts on the SP3 that I wrote on the day that it […]