Who here has a surface 3 or 4

And would you recommend it ?

Cheers in advance

Do you mean a Surface 3 or a Surface Pro 3?

Surface 3.

I have a Windows tablet, the Linx 1010 not the Surface, but the OS is exactly the same and it's great. The build quality of the Surface is excellent, as it's similar to my old Surface RT and fixes the problem with the RT, that it only runs apps and the app store is limited.

It's great having the exact same OS on a tablet and my main PC, makes it far easier to share programs and files, and using the same Metro apps on my desktop PC is very useful. I keep the Twitter app open on my PC all the time and it's far neater than having a Chrome window or tab open for Twitter, and it's easy to quickly swap between Twitter accounts ( I have a personal and a work Twitter ) and to have the exact same app on the tablet.

It's also great on a tablet having the very same control of files and settings as your PC, since you can choose to simply mirror your PC settings with your MS account or have different settings on the tablet but you haven't got to learn a whole different OS. File management is far better than my Android phone for example since you have a choice between the finger-friendly tablet UI app for pictures etc or you can open the traditional windows file explorer if you want to do some serious housekeeping or moving files around.

With Windows 10 you can choose between a tablet UI that is easy to use with fingers or a desktop UI that is better for use with the keyboard and mouse. Personally I never use the tablet UI as I find the desktop UI is perfectly fine to use with fingers and I prefer it.
In tablet mode apps snap to full screen or you can snap it to half screen and run a different app at the same time. You can slide the bar to make each app bigger or smaller, and it doesn't blur the screen when it's doing it like the iPad does. In desktop mode windows are exactly the same as your PC, you can have as many as you want and any size or shape you want.

Full programs like Chrome can be used and have some of the same tablet friendly controls, like being able to swipe a page right to go back a page for example, far easier than having to press the tiny back button on the iPad.

You can plug a lead into your HDTV or a second monitor and extend the display, ie have different things on each screen. You can use it as a dual monitor PC or you can play a movie on the TV while surfing the net on the tablet display.

If you have kids you can set up separate user accounts so they can play without being able to read your emails or look at your photos. It comes with a years subscription to Office 365 or you can just use the Office Mobile apps which are free but don't have the full functionality. Or of course if you already own a full licence to Office on your PC you can just install that. Plus with USB ports and a micro SD card slot you can easily add external hard drives or extra storage, a decent 128GB micro SD card can cost under £40.

I have a Surface Pro 3, and I love it!

I use some fairly processor intensive software (number crunching) and so having a decent processor is important and access to other Windows based software is handy for work. I also want to be able to watch TV/films, read books etc. on a tablet. The Surface gives me the best of both worlds, and switching between tablet and PC modes is instant. I have plenty of disk space too (although you pay through the nose for that), and the battery life is good.

The only thing on my wish list would be more USB ports.

I have a Surface Pro 3 through work and it's OK but my biggest annoyance is the keyboard/trackpad which I find very fiddly to use. At my desk I have it plugged into a docking station so that I can use a proper keyboard, mouse and monitor. The SP4 keyboard is supposed to be better and is backwards compatible but haven't tried one yet.

It's fine as a secondary machine but I still don't think - as the adverts say - that it could totally replace my laptop as my primary machine.

Had a Surface Pro 4 and sent it back. It had some backlight bleed on the screen edge (common complaint I later learned), the fan fires up way more often than expected but the biggest complaint is less about the SP4 and more about Windows 10, namely the poor high DPI support. Some software is simply unusable without hacking away at it for a while. For example, SQL Management Studio 2014 is unusable on a SP4 unless you apply a hack (and then it's usable but ugly). The last thing you need on a small screen is poor support for the high resolution on the screen. That MS were releasing software so recently that doesn't have high DPI support is astonishing.

So I sent it back. The adverts claim it replaces a laptop and a tablet but the reality is that it does neither. There's potential there and at some point in the future it may well do that, but right now it's a bulky tablet or small laptop with a detachable keyboard but not the killer product I expected.

By the way. The SP4 keyboard is decent and a step up from the SP3 keyboard. It's a proper, but thin keyboard now and the trackpad is glassy and firm. Thumbs up for the keyboard, thumbs down for the SP4 itself.

That's a SQL Management Studio problem, not a SP4 problem. Any PC with high resolution monitor has that problem. Google finds many such complaints, including on Win7, 8.1 and 10 and with earlier versions of SSMS. It also happens with software by people like Adobe. According to that link if you have a high res display Windows will ask a program if it can handle it, and the Adobe software says yes even though it can't. The 'hack' is just tricking Windows into thinking the program said 'No' and letting it scale it. Not as good as if the program ran at that scale to start with of course.

It's not Windows at fault. It's the software, even when that software is made by MS themselves. It's like buying a car that can do 200 MPH but fitting tyres that are only rated to 130. You can't blame the car.

I have just purchased a Surface 3 bundled with the keyboard and pen. I got the 4Gb ram/128Gb storage version and it is very good. The Intel Atom CPU is adequate for what I want to do, it is less obvious than I thought it would be. The bluetooth pen is great but the backlit keyboard feels quite fragile.

I didn't say it was a SP4 problem but it is a problem that people will encounter on an SP4 and is something that people should be aware of before making a decision to fork out the better part of £1000 for the device. The software form a large part of the decision making process. Had I known that three key apps (SQL, Photoshop and Todoist) rendered so poorly then I would not have purchased an SP4.

I agree with you that the individual software is at fault but imo, Windows 10 should be able to handle and scale older apps better hence my finger pointing in that direction.

I've got a Surface Pro 4 - the second one I've had .

The first one crashed on day 2 with what I suspect was a dead hard drive. Windows 10 just went into a loop trying to fix it. It seems to be quite a common problem.

This second one is fine, so far.

It's a beautiful piece of kit when it works.

I have Surface Pro 3, I had zero problems with it, but I don't think I am ever going to upgrade it to W10, touch there is a big step back imo. Can't comment much on the type cover, I have it, but I don't really use it.

I thought the same, 8.1 was easier to use on a tablet than 10. W10 has removed/changed some of the swipe gestures that 8.1 has, like swiping from the left edge now brings up a selection instead of instantly going to the last used app. Now it opens a window with all the current running apps so you can select which one to open, but 8.1 let you do the same by swiping in a bit then stopping. It just seems a backwards move.

But I'm now happy with W10 on my tablet, even if I use it in desktop mode all the time. Features like virtual desktops are useful.

My problem with W10 is that I want the apps fullscreen => tablet mode, but then things are not working ideally. For browsing I prefer the IE W8.1 way with swipe gestures, in W10 there's Edge where I have to aim to tap on small controls or desktop IE that isn't very touch friendly and 3rd party browsers may work better, but they also do not care much for touch UI wise. W10 is more about mouse than about touch. And there were just too many problems popping up when I tried W10 when it came out the last summer. So I rolled back and did not miss anything of it since. I could live with W10 on a desktop, but on my touch devices I'm keeping W8.1.

Chrome on a W10 tablet has swipe right and left for back page and forward page. The buttons at the top are a tad small but perfectly usable.