I’d like to stay with a laptop but am open to a tablet as well. Thanks!

I have recently brought a Surface Pro 6 off eBay, I went to set it up yesterday and halfway through the process, the screen went black and now the screen doesn’t come back on, there is still sound and the keyboard still has power but the screen is completely black. I have tried to force restart it using the power button but nothing seems to work. Does anyone have any advice? Or is it a lost cause and should send it back?

Hello! Recently I've decided that I'll sell my Surface Go 3 and my Surface Laptop 3 (13,5") to get a Pro tablet and a 15 inch laptop. My question is, does the Surface Pro X still worth it in 2024? Cause it's looks are still top notch, but I've never had any experience with the SQ1.

PS The hardest thing is to find it in Silver 😂

Hi!

As the title says, is the OG Surface laptop studio worth it?

Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio With 14" Pixelsense Display/Intel I5-11300H Processor/16Gb Ram/256Gb SSD/Windows 11 Home/Platinum

The above one am getting for almost 1,100 USD with an additional warranty. I have a 2TB Samsung 970 EVO from my previous laptop and am willing to swap it with the 256 gig SSD and paired with the 3050 Ti and an i5 11th gen, feels much better than my previous i5 9th gen 1050 lol for the price.

Yeah, I don't wanna overspend on a separate laptop and a tablet so a 2-in-1 seems the best barring all the non-ergonomics. Tablet for the stylus and notetaking and laptop for general software compatibility - likely be using some engineering/design software.

SLS2 is out of budget - almost twice as expensive as this.

I will have a separate PC rig with a much better GPU and such - a laptop GPU isn't going to perform as well. So I am open to equally if not slightly less performant devices in the surface range - the touch + screen is what is keeping me here haha.

Hi guys I have a base model Surface Pro 7. I initially bought it because of the 2-in-1, I thought I could use it to write and also as a laptop if needed.

However, I came to realise that writing on it compared to a Samsung or Apple tablet is horrendous. The surface pro 7 heats up even when just using onenote, making writing uncomfortable, and honestly it's quite laggy too.

Wondering if it was possible to just buy a new laptop and repurpose the surface pro 7 into a pure tablet for writing, which hopefully reduces lag and heat. Not sure if I'm able to run android on the thing? Or if you guys have other suggestions.

Im considering to buy this for school. SOLELY basic uses like emails, excel, powerpoint, word, adobexd and simple programming (python and js). Are there any better options or is this good enough? cost about $180 usd.

My experience in using the Surface GO 3 for teaching in class unfortunately has not been very positive so far. Maybe some have similar or opposite experiences and can share. There are quite a number of quirks and often times it seems the processor is not capable enough. My requirements are:

1. Use the Surface GO as a virtual whiteboard that is connected to a beamer (through a USB-C to HDMI adapter)
2. Step through presentations, write and sketch on the board, skim through PDFs

I use OpenBoard mostly as a whiteboard app, Powerpoint for presentations and Edge for viewing PDFs. My impression is that, while technically Windows is able to run as a tablet OS, the UX is not good enough. I have the option to disable touch controls when pen is active enabled. Even though I have to say, touch still works, don't know what this does.

The quirks I noticed:

1. In tablet mode leaving Edge in full screen mode requires you to find out that long pressing on the top brings up an "X" button - the note "press esc to exit fullscreen" is not helpful at all, why doesn't it say, "long press on the top to bring up the exit button" when there is no keyboard connected? I guess, because Edge developers don't think about tablet usage...
2. The laser pointer in Power Point did not work with the pen, only with the finger and it sometimes takes a couple of seconds to show, on some occasions, it doesn't show, instead advances to the next or previous slide
3. Sometimes touching simply doesn't do anything, eg. opening the start menu, then touching to open settings, nothing happens, touching again, nothing happens, or in Microsoft Todo, there's a button "Got it", but I can't "click it". I can open and close the todo app, but touching this button doesn't do anything. I can touch to open Edge, but not Settings... It drives one crazy, opening settings through long pressing the windows icon works though
4. Marking or drawing in a PDF with Edge, there is no visible undo button
5. Accidentally zooming in way too far in a PDF almost causes Edge to freeze and it's hard to zoom out again, the UI is not responsive
6. Sometimes "clicking" something with the pen just doesn't show any visible reaction, the tablet seems locked up
7. The screen gets uncomfortably warm, when writing with the palm resting on the screen doesn't feel pleasant
8. There are all sorts of additional marks, scratches, dots, etc. while drawing, even in places that are not touched or where the pen is
9. Swiping up from the bottom often just briefly flicks the menu which disappears again quickly
10. Sometimes search fails, as soon as you search for a program (with keyboard attached) the menu disappears
11. Attaching the keyboard is sometimes not recognized, I have to detach and reattach
12. Bringing up the virtual keyboard may take several seconds
13. Sometimes things just don't work and it's not clear why. It looks like it SHOULD work, but it doesn't and only after a restart it's back to normal.
14. Often the UI doesn't show any reaction, e.g. you click on it somewhere, nothing happens, after some seconds the result of the click shows. Because the processor is so slow, one cannot be sure whether the tablet has just not registered the action or is actively processing it
15. The battery doesn't last very long

Overall, it feels sluggish and hand writing is unpleasant and error prone (those scratches and marks). I don't know what Microsoft did there, but it looks like they stopped at "feasible from a technical perspective".

I wouldn't recommend using this for teaching.

Super, super, super specific request.

I'm looking to make a quick setup for my wife with our already owned Surface Go (2018), and a GoPro Hero11 as a webcam, so she can show her family trails on her bike while talking to them.

Does anyone know if this is possible, on any of the Surface Go models? Instructions on how to use it as a webcam can be found here.

Greatly appreciate it!

Unpopular opinion, but I really liked the Surface RT. I got the Surface RT back in the days during my university years. I had bad money management where I ended up selling some of my stuff to cover up monthly rents and I ended up with no laptop so one day I saw the commercial for the Surface vs iPad and looked into it online and here I found a Refurbished Surface RT for 90$. I immediately got it because I needed something to check and do my homeworks on. I wasn't expecting so much at that price point. All I needed was a functional Microsoft Office and web browser machine, and the RT did deliver that. The day I received the package I opened it at night and left to my friends place and as I'm walking down the door stairs in snowy night I flipped on my back and slammed the Surface on its face to the hard ground I was panicking that I did break it I couldn't afford that then I didn't even turn it on once yet. Surprisingly, nothing broke it ran perfectly with no crack on the screen thanks to the keyboard cover. It has a sleek design and I was happy carrying it to my classes, taking notes, texting my gf, watching a movie or YT in my bed before sleeping. The device was so not optimized that updates consistently brought up the storage shortage warning I couldn't get programs from the web browser, video media was laggy when I ran any other task in the background. One plus when I play music on the Groove app through aux cable in my car the sound profile was noticeably well balanced that I even kept using it through my next truck instead of using my phone to play music. I wanted to give the new Windows eco system a chance and I got a Nokia Windows Phone and unfortunately I lost it within the same night in a party, I haven't keeping up with the Surface line up for a while and I hope someday I will hop back in.

Wanting a windows tablet to read comics and play some light visual novels. Have a 12 inch ipad but the size and file system are a hassle. Is that too much for one in 2024 though?

I need a new Windows laptop for graduate school. It needs to have at least 16GB of RAM. And cases available for it. One of my friends recommended the Surface Laptop 5 i7/16gb/512gb.

I just wanna know if it’s a good choice before I buy one. I know a new one is supposed to be coming out soon, but I start school the week before May 20th.

Does this sound like a good choice? Or should I get another branded laptop?

I know Dell has Support Assist ; it does a general diagnostic, performance check as well as a cleaning of leftover files. Does the Surface Pro 9 have something similar ? Thank you !

….and I can’t find a bootable image anywhere. Any tips how to fix it?

Mine came with Windows 11 preinstalled of course, but I was curious to see if I would have any battery life savings by downgrading to Windows 10. My nonscientific test results having screen brightness at 30% with battery saver on and just using Edge to browse the web with three tabs opened:

• W11: 100% to 80% in 1 hour.

• W10: 100% to 87% in 1 hour.

I honestly prefer W11, mostly for the UI and snap window function, but I might boot into W10 whenever I want to save battery.

I remember buying this brand new a couple years ago before going on a vacation outside the country and needed something that wasn't bulky and heavy and could easily fit in a backpack. This is honestly the best laptop I've ever purchased in my life. I haven't replaced anything, even the charger. And it all still works like the first day I bought it.

Good job Microsoft 👍

Hello everyone, as we all know by default windows enables the infamous "Adaptive contrast" feature when on battery.

As we can read in the small summary of the screen settings page, that feature is claimed to "Help" saving battery by constantly changing brightness and contrast of the display according to the displayed content.

What I'm asking here is: Has anyone found out exactly how much turning this feature off could impact on battery life?

Battery life is a very delicate topic with the surface as it has never been good on surface devices.

P.s. I have a Pro 9 i7

Hi !

I have the opportunity to get a brand new Surface Laptop studio 1 with the highest specs for 1000€.

Is it a good deal in 2024 ? Would you recommend me to wait for a deal on the SLS 2 ? Or is it truly worth it considering the price announced ?

Thank you for your time and have a great week-end

I haven’t been using this laptop for a while and when I came back it took so long to start and is super slow, after like 10 minutes waiting for task manager to open it came up with this. How can I solve this? Can I just end the “surface background task host” task? The disk is also at 100% but I am pretty sure I have some storage free…

A bit of context on this, so surface laptops have really weird resolutions (mine is 2256 x 1504). While it is a great display, it causes me some issues (ex : battery drains quickly and I cant do a lot of gaming with such a high resolution screen) and when i try to change it the resolution shows up with black bars as they dony natively have a 720p or 1080p resolution that fits the display.

So I was wondering if its safe to use the inel UHD panel / CRU to change it. ( a lot of people say it may be unsafe and the graphics panel gives me several warnings)

I used to use wired earphones (KZ ZSN Pro X) with a usb-c connector on my Surface 9 and up until recently, this was working perfectly. Now, there's no audio when I use it. I've tried various solutions such as reinstalling the audio drivers and doing a shutdown via holding the power button for 20 seconds, but it still doesn't work. Note that the earphones work on other devices (both phones and other laptops with and without the usb-c connector) so it's likely the issue is with the Surface Pro. Any idea what I can do to fix this?

Got it used and the seller didn't have the charger. Just wondering if I should go for the Microsoft one, or can I get a cheaper, yet very reliable third party charger?

Thanks.

It's the 32GB/i7/nVidia

Hello!

I just ordered and received my Surface Pro 9. I ordered it for graduate school this year along with other supplies and accessories, one of them being a flash drive. However, I didn’t realize there wasn’t a USB-A port on the laptop. I had my suspicions but disregarded them. Anyway, how do I go about still using the flash drives? Would an adapter work? Does anyone have any adapter recommendations?

TIA

There's one way the replace the speaker driver by Microsoft one, and it worked for me, but it apparently reduce the volume and I don't like that.

So I keep googling and finally found that it actually caused by screen refresh rate, if you choose the "Dynamic 60hz - 120hz" , everytime when you moved the mouse it would causing crackling and I assume it's the same reason while you hit the play or stop buttom and Windows shoule be blamed. While when you change it to 120hz, the crackling gone.

Hope it would help.

https://youtu.be/6Y3xtwoGEPM?feature=shared

Just went to the recovery image download page, and instead of just the serial number, they're now requiring login using a Microsoft account.

Microsoft's level of evil continues to grow daily.

I have a Surface Pro 5 with a crashed ssd. I want to run the OS from a usb key but I can't find an iso for Surface with Windows & the Surface Pro drivers.

Has anyone done this before?

Hello, I have a Major problem with my Surface Laptop 3 (13.5" 8gb+256gb)

anyone experienced these symptoms below or know how to solve it?

-After recent Surface firmware update (and hibernated for week), I Cannot see Anything in internal screen, but connecting external display works fine.

-Device manager can't recognize internal display, but touch input, mic and windows hello works.

-When it's turn on, Windows logo appears in internal display for 2 second, and got dim immediately and gradually disappear.

-Cannot boot UEFI (hold volume up key and power button thing) except through Windows setting reboot method.

-When i disconnect SSD or install formatted SSD, Laptop getting Boot-loop. White Windows logo shows 2 second and reboot until battery dies. No external display Output, No Recovery USB recognize, No UEFI.

-Laptop Didn't got Any kind of shock and no visual damage found on every component.

-So far Windows Update, Delete Windows Update, Surface Diagnostic, Fully charge battery, Completely Discharge battery, Force reboot, Soft reset, Reinstall Display and Graphics Driver, Reinstall Windows, Hard reset, Contact Microsoft support, Use Surface recovery USB, Detach mainboard from battery, Change SSD, Change battery, Change Keyboard topcase, Change Display assembly are not working.

-Send it to Microsoft is not an option because in my country, Microsoft only offer exchange refurbish service and it cost two times the price of perfectly working Used ones.

-He l p

Sorry for bad english, but I really grateful someone reply or give any solution. Thank you!

Hello everyone!

I know there’s a lot of topic on the subject already but it’s really hard to make a choice 😅

I have a MacBook Air catalina (i5, 8GO, 2017), but I would like a tablet to learn how to create and draw some designs and write on notes and books. I also need to use excel and all the windows apps for uni and I like playing the sims 4 and Minecraft however my MacBook always overheat while using them.

I can afford the i5, 8GO RAM, 256GO SSD but I don’t know much more.

A friend recommended me the surface pro 5 but I’ve read that it wasn’t the best.

Do you have any advice?