Surface Go 3: Voice command seems to be working OK!

[~Brian~]

Good evening:

just figured I'd post here to let @DailyDi know that so far, in testing, the surface go 3 is working as intended.I remember posting something about the fact that an iPad will take the last few sentences of the above paragraph and tack it on every once in a while when you hit the return key to go down to the next paragraph. The surface does not do this, and I'm not sure if the reason that it doesn't do it is because there's something unique about the IPad where it scrambles up things and puts half of it on the next line or something, but with the surface I do not have any of these weird paragraphs that are half from above and half from below .

Brian

Edited May 23, 2022 by ~Brian~
word edits

[~Brian~]

Here it is June 5th: and I am very impressed with the surface go 3. I have the 8 gig model, ram that is, and a 120 gig internal hard drive with a 256 gig SD card in the slot. This way I can and have added all of my work files to the surface itself, so that I do not have to carry my Dell to work every time I go in. It is a lot lighter to carry my surface go 3, and have that loaded for what I need it for, then to carry a heavy heavy computer which takes up a third of my desk space when I have a smaller desk , so I have to save space in the smaller footprint .

program wise, I have a full version of Office 2019: I do not like Office 365 because all it does is want money from you, and a lot of money at that.When I looked at what it would cost me , if the church were to cover my request for software through techsoup, it would cost at least half of the retail value of the software I wish to acquire . Additionally, Microsoft keeps changing the rules of donation, and the ways that you get the software, and all of this . While this is there choice , I still find it ridiculous that most of the software that I used to get two years ago was less than 75 bucks , and that was called an administrative fee , and now you are paying half of the value of the software , and most times you're using the cloud , so you pay $99 a year for the right to use the software , and that makes no sense to me : I need a software that will be as usable in 2022 then it would be in 2052, and with everyone wanting to go cloud , which I don't like to do that often, I am not sure how viable or how practical having to pay for the right to use office suites every 365 days would be , when you pay 250 to $300 in the past, and you get a code, which gives you the right to use the software for as long as you can , because you have purchased the program's key . Two weeks ago, I purchase 2 office keys from England, and from France , and that costs me about $15 - if I would have purchased full versions of the software , it would have probably cost me $300 apiece , whereas now I pay $15 and I get two keys, one of which is on the surface, and it is totally legal, the other I am holding in case I need to install it on another machine . At some point I may also upgrade windows 11 to professional so that I can connect with all network machines at home and at the church, and using the professional version will allow me to connect to any computers that may need assistance from me, because I can use remote desktop to do this . There are also other ways to remotely connect, so it's always a good idea to have the professional version as much as possible, because then you don't have to add features, and you don't have to pay once you upgrade to the professional or whatever version you want. Office 2019 is now installed , and this is the professional version that has everything that you can get . I'm glad I've done this because now I can create documents on the fly, on the surface, on my computers, or print them from wherever I have access to the printer and a Wi-Fi network.

as far as ease of use, this thing is as easy to use as falling off of a log. I keep forgetting, that the surface is basically the same thing as my I3 laptop, even though it might not have the biggest hard drive. This thing does respond a little flaky when you tap on the screen, so you have to be careful. As far as being able to use it, I have invested in:

1.  Hard case for the surface to protect it from impacts drops or breakage.

2.  Surface go three type keyboard. This way I can type as if I am on a computer, rather than only being able to type using the on screen keyboard. I believe this thing lasts a total of almost 25 to 30 hours a charge, so that is not a problem, but sometimes it can be a pain when you finally run out of power and have to charge because you cannot use it while it is being charged.

3.  Rather than using a surface mouse, which usually goes about 50 to $80 apiece, I invested in a Logitec wireless mouse, which is the small version of my innovera mouse that has a USB A receiver.Also to make it easy for me to be able to use it, I have invested in a USB C to USB A adapter, so I don't have to purchase a special mouse that works with USB type C connectors . The next thing that I wish to add to this would be a USB C hub , so that I could add thumb drives/ sticks or other external devices to the surface so that we can use it with external devices without having to have special connections. A USB 3 USB C hub should have exactly what I need to be able to hook up C to A devices.

there are drawbacks to the surface however calling one of them is sometimes the surface gets a little bit overwhelmed, and sometimes it can slow down, or webpages can load extremely slow. By this I mean, try going to @zombieg website and you will see that sometimes it will slow down to a crawl and I will have to restart after a few moments. I just happen to notice that sometimes pictures loading on a website take forever, so this is not unique to her site only- it's just something I've noticed.

Second drawback is battery life: the battery seems to start at 100- and then it will within about two hours maybe 3, go down to about 75%, and then it just seems to go from 75% down to 50, and the next thing I know I'm turning around and I'm almost dead. Maybe it is that the time is going exactly the way it's supposed to, and it just seems like I just plugged it in, then I unplug it and use it, and it it is almost dead on arrival, when I would want to use it again. Of course, this type of tablet is not designed for the heavy duty user, and that is not the reason why I bought the tablet in the first place. I needed a smaller compact version of my computer, and I haven't bought a new computer since probably 2014, so it is long overdue  - so far I am impressed with the fact that I am able to do so much with a little tablet like this- they say that this is the low end version of a surface, but considering what I do on it every day, it does rings around the surface two that I had back in 2011 or so: this surface had Windows RT, and you could not install anything on it: what you had on it was what it came with. At least these new surfaces you will be able to install stuff on, once you take it out of S mode, which is basically some sort of stupid mode that allows only for application signed by Microsoft to be installed on it. Because I use multiple applications and programs, I need to have them on the surface, as well as all of my computers. This is so in case I need to use zoom for example, or maybe Acrobat, I can do it in seconds, and I can have access to it, as well as any printers scanners or copiers that are on our networks.

I've done about a week or two using the surface and office, to do differing tasks: when I go to work, I add numbers to my spreadsheets, and sometimes I have to look up stuff in Word, or take notes, so this makes it a lot easier. I can also go online and look up things and do what I need to do when I pay bills and other things. So far I have not found too many things that are problems, except that sometimes this thing can get really slow, or it can be really jumpy, or you can sometimes have trouble closing the tabs with the X's - one time I had tried to close four open windows, and I ended up with 10 to 15 new tabs because I could not effectively close it using the X - when this became a problem I just use my Logitech mouse to click and close open tabs remembering that sometimes my fingers are bigger than the X, so I have to be careful what I'm closing.

As I said, I'm very happy with the surface that I'm using: I have not had any weird repetitive or half broken paragraphs writing on DD using my surface:   when i'm using my ipad however....it can be a pain in the **** because you could say something in a paragraph, and then you finish that paragraph, hit enter once, and a third of the paragraph is repeated, or the last few lines are just pasted below it. The surface does not do this however the iPad does, so you have to be careful when you do that.

I have been able to watch movies, deal with my iTunes, use zoom, office, access my server,and access my websites by using this little Dynamo - it is a good thing to have because you don't have to carry something so heavy - however when you have to get the big jobs done, you may have to go back to your laptop , but I am not unhappy with the choice I made , and I consider this my 50th birthday present . I will be paying for this for 36 months at $20 a month , but it is worth every penny of it , so I can have a new computer without having to pay over 1000 bucks to get one.

Brian

[zzyzx]

3 hours ago, ~Brian~ said:

program wise, I have a full version of Office 2019: I do not like Office 365 because all it does is want money from you, and a lot of money at that.When I looked at what it would cost me , if the church were to cover my request for software through techsoup, it would cost at least half of the retail value of the software I wish to acquire .

You may want to consider loading Libre Office on this system.....  Ok, if you have Office 2019 loaded, then you don't need it.... 

I'm able to use Libre Office to handle most Microsoft office files, but I will admit there are some incompatibilities.