One month with the Microsoft Surface - Week 3

‘One month with the Microsoft Surface’ is a series of 4 experience reviews that will be released on a weekly basis for the period of a month. They will be based on my experience with the Surface. These are not traditional reviews and will not cover every little detail of the device but rather what it’s like to own one. The aim is to leave you with a more intimate and true to life view of owning the device and hopefully factor in on your buying decision. 

Week Three:

 Touch Cover Typing Speed

(Key sizes of the Surface Touch Cover and the Alienware are fairly similar) 

I promised last week that I would provide some scientific typing speed comparisons between the Surfaces Touch Cover and a regular, tactile keyboard so I thought that it would be good to start with that. By ‘scientific’ I mean 10fastfingers.com, for what it’s worth, I’ve heard that it’s one of the best typing speed measurer on the internet, and that’s as scientific as it gets folks!

I’m not that much to a typist I should add, but I’m “above average” according to the site. I’ve conducted the test on an Alienware M14x’s keyboard (shown above). I’ve had the laptop for just over a year now and I’m pretty used to its keyboard. The poor thing has suffered having been put through countless uni assignments and reports, as a Management/Marketing student I can tell you, there have been some very, very long business reports to be written. Point is, I’m now extremely comfortable with this keyboard.

On the other hand, the Touch Cover, which I’ve only had for three weeks now. As mentioned in Week 2, I was surprised by how fast I became accustomed to it, especially since it was very awkward to use in the first few days of having it. Since it’s a pressure sensitive keyboard with no physical keys to push down, the only response you get when typing is a clicking noise the Surface makes to acknowledge a key stroke, which has come to be very reassuring over time.

As for the results of the test (which I tested thrice on each keyboard), I managed 54 words-per-minute on the Alienware, on average. While on the Surfaces Touch Cover, I managed 50 words-per-minute on average. So pretty close. The numbers don’t surprise me really. Come to think of it, I think the Touch Cover would actually be more comfortable to type long essays on since it requires less energy, no keys to physically push down. But I’d have to get much more scientific to test that theory, which I doubt I have the resources to complete.

If the numbers are any indication, Microsoft have done really well with the Touch Cover, it gets extremely pleasant to use, fast. But then again, if you’re still unsure, you could always opt for the Surface Type Cover which has actual physical keys.

Surface v. iPad

(Surface charging and importing images from an iPad. Now try reversing the roles.)

Before the Surface came along, the iPad was my go-to companion device. You’d be more likely to catch me lying around with it rather than clicking away on the laptop. And for the most part, I was satisfied with it. At least until I installed iOS 5 on it.

As a companion device, the iPad was mostly used for basic things like browsing the web, checking email and playing casual games. It accompanied me to uni every day, I wouldn’t leave without it. I used it to take down written class notes and in one semester, used it with a capacitive stylus to write down equations for the financial classes. It did what it was supposed to and did it well.

I had the first generation iPad, or Original iPad as some would call it, I never upgraded to subsequent versions of the iPad because I found no need to. Stupidly large, unnecessarily resource intensive screen resolutions never appealed to me. Apple would flaunt a “quad-core GPU” on the iPad 3 which is impressive for a tablet, but we all know that the tablets screen resolution would be eating up most of the GPU’s power leaving not much really for graphical improvements in apps and games. I could go on on a never-ending, everlasting rant about Apple’s marketing scheme (which is rather ingenious) but that’s for another article.

I did cherish my iPad though from when I bought it in 2010 till about June 2012, when I saw the Surface for the first time. By then the iPad could not even handle loading Facebook without crashing. I could no longer trust it with any important documentation in fear of losing my data, nor could I enjoy any of the latest games in the Store like Real Racing HD anymore.

Still, I would rather carry the iPad than the M14x around with me.

The Surface made me realize what I was missing out on with the iPad. It made me think of the extent of what a thin and light tablet is really capable of doing. Yes I miss Bad Piggies, but finally having a device which can truly multitask, and features a powerful, usable file management system more than covers for that. Not to mention a full-fledged Office suit and a USB port, I couldn’t ask for more.

A couple of emails asked for performance benchmarks, and even though it’s not really a fair comparison to put a device from 2010 against one from 2012, I’ll do it anyways. Try to think of this as measuring the performance difference rather than finding out which one is more powerful, which is obvious really.

In the SunSpider Javascript Benchmark (v0.9.1), where a lower result is better. The Surface (IE10) completed the test 1031ms while the iPad (Safari) took 3334ms. SunSpider is a browser-based benchmark that measures stuff like tagcloud generations, 3D raytracers, code decompression and other tools that developers use to tackle problems using JavaScript. 

Since there is no one tool that runs on both the Surface and the iPad to test CPU/GPU performance, browser based benchmarks like SunSpider was one of the only tools I could use to measure performance. At least until Futuremark releases 3DMark for the tablets which is currently in development.

Surface v. Alienware

There isn’t much more to compare between the two other than the purposes I use each device for. With the Surface, I can flip out the kickstand, connect my Razer Lachesis mouse, and use it as a laptop replacement. If fact, I use my laptop far less often now. When I used to power the M14x up to do things like import photos from my phone and do some light editing on them, the Surface is now doing that. When I would pull the laptop out to start on a review or article for the site, the Surface is now my device of choice.

About the only things I do on the M14x now, is play FIFA, watch movies and edit images with Lightroom. That’s about it. Everything else is offloaded to the Surface. I could only imagine how much more the Surface Pro could take off the Alienware. I’d probably only be using it for gaming in that case.

Measuring the M14x against the Surface in terms of performance is just absurd. But anyways, the SunSpider test on the M14x (IE10) completed in 135ms.

For what it’s worth, I did find a Windows 8 app that benchmarks the CPU, GPU, RAM and Disk performance, the images below show the results. Click to enlarge.

(Alienware M14x)

(Microsoft Surface RT)

Battery life

Finally, I figured now would be the right time to talk about battery life. I’ve spent a good amount of time with Surface and I'm happy to report that battery life on this thing is amazing. Maybe it’s because of the Tegra 3’s 5^th “companion/low power” core or Windows RT’s power management system, or a combination of both, but it works wonders. I get about 1 and half days’ worth of battery life, which translates to about 9 to 10 hours of usage. That includes a combination of browsing the web, listening to music, watching TV shows, playing some casual games, working on Office, all while being constantly connected to Wi-Fi.

Those numbers are comparable to what I get on the iPad 1, but then again, the iPad can’t do as much as the Surface. And they’re undeniably higher than what I get on the Alienware, which is about 5 hours max.

I make it a habit of plugging all my devices in to charge before I go to bed at night, you never know what might happen the next day and having a fully charged phone or tablet could come in handy. But by night, the Surface usually still has about 40% of charge in it.

Overall, I can’t complain about the battery life. I could about the magnetic charger though, it’s like that thing has a brain of its own. Choosing the days in which it latches on entirely on its own, and days when it refuses to do so, driving you mad in the process. I wish it connected more like the Touch Cover. Fix it Microsoft!


Next week will be the final week of this series. I’ll try to gather my final thoughts on the Surface RT, dive into the Windows RT ecosystem and maybe talk a little about the Surface Pro.

One Month with the Microsoft Surface:
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3 (You are here)
Week 4