I have Surface Pro 3, and I absolutely love it ... but it's not without issues.
For starters, the price. Although having had it for a while now, and feeling that this is the best tech I've bought in a while, it is pricey. Between the tablet itself, plus warranty, plus the keyboard cover (a must. I love pen and touch, but too many things I use the keyboard for still), it gets pricey quickly.
Usability issues, there is this nasty driver bug with it's wifi card, where you get BSOD after waking up from sleep. Don't know if it happens to everyone, but when it happened to me, I searched and found PLENTY people with the issue. The fix is 'easy enough'.
Turn off a setting to not keep wifi on while sleeping. This however means, when waking up, I have disconnect and reconnect to my wifi. The fix was very easy to google for too, but not sure if someone non-tech savy would even know what to google for.
Also, my first surface had it's touch screen die out on the top half within a month. Apparently also common, but one support ticket to Microsoft and I got a brand new one.
Having said that, I will never buy any other laptop other than surface laptops. I am extremely happy with it. I am usually a Linux user, but haven't really missed it much (although I still have it on my desktop for any Linux specific stuff). I use it for developing, occasional drawings, writing notes, diagrams, reading ebooks, browsing in bed. It really is an all in one device, and worth every penny.
For what it's worth: people with those kinds of issues are rare. Not rare enough, of course, but it's not as if everybody has them. In a way, chamakits's problems demonstrate why Microsoft is still selling them: even if they show serious issues, the rest of the tablet is so good that people will still love it.
As an aside, my own Surface displayed a very minor issue with the pen tap location being off by about a millimeter at the top edge of the screen when I first got it. Windows Update fixed it right away. It hasn't shown any issues since then, at all. From what I hear from people I know that also own one, this is more typical than situations with serious problems.
> there is this nasty driver bug with its Wi-Fi card, where you get BSOD after waking up from sleep.
Have you installed the latest Surface Pro 3 firmware update [1]? It fixes several Wi-Fi related issues, including:
* Intel(R) 8 Series PCI Express Root Port #3 - 9C14 update (v2.0.1151.0) addresses cases when the Wi-Fi adapter is not available upon resuming the system from sleep.
* Wireless Network Controller and Bluetooth driver update (v15.68.3059.117) improves Wi-Fi throughput, especially after rebooting with Bluetooth devices that are paired, enhances power consumption situations, and addresses instances of system instability.
You shouldn't need to disconnect and reconnect your Wi-Fi once the drivers have been updated.
My experience of the Pro2 was seamless, as you'd expect from a reference machine. Everything just works and is correctly configured out of the box. Set up your profile an go. If you already have an online profile it'll pull in your existing settings.
My experience with the S3 was less than stellar. Returned it within a month. Defective battery, UI on apps were bad (icons inaccessible depending on size of window), didn't like the keyboard either.
My parents, very basic knowledge of computers, bought a cheap $300 laptop recently. I'm across the country from them now and it's agonizing trying to give step by step directions over the phone. The computer wouldn't connect to certain routers and slow on other routers. Most things were fixed after an update to the OS, but that's kind of hard when the thing has trouble connecting to the internet in the first place.
This also reminds me of when I got world of warcraft CDs and had to spend almost 48 hours just to patch up to the most recent version.