Surface pro alternative

underdog

The wife is going to buy a surface pro, this will be used for drawing, that's pretty much all it will be used for. Been out of the IT loop for some years, so what is a good alternative to surface pro, it has to be windows based.

Thanks in advance 

roundthebend

Lenovo Yoga maybe. @digitalscream seems to know the good models, I'm sure there's one that converts to a tablet

octatonic

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

underdog

octatonic said:

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

Cool that was one that's come up on Google as a good alternative 

Grunfeld

octatonic said:

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

I hadn't even heard of a surface pro till about 2 hours ago -- and now, like buses coming along together,,,

I was talking to a bloke in ASDA about not really liking the ipad pro I got the other day and he mentioned these things.

underdog

Grunfeld said:

octatonic said:

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

I hadn't even heard of a surface pro till about 2 hours ago -- and now, like buses coming along together,,,

I was talking to a bloke in ASDA about not really liking the ipad pro I got the other day and he mentioned these things.

Been trying to get the wife to buy one for 2 years now, I think given the amount of paper we have around the studio with drawings on (in the thousands) she's finally seeing the advantages to it.

It would certainly speed up the design process once she is used to the software and will certainly make organisation easier 

Grunfeld

underdog said:

Been trying to get the wife to buy one for 2 years now, I think given the amount of paper we have around the studio with drawings on (in the thousands) she's finally seeing the advantages to it.

That's exactly the reason why I got a sodding great ipad!

I couldn't see my floor because of printed journal articles I'd put down -- dozens and dozens -- and I just want something to read pdf files on.  I know it's insane but it does solve the problem.  Except... Apple.  I'm not liking it.  I'll get used to it I guess.

Sporky

Not Windows, but I am very fond of my Samsung Tab S3 for this sort of thing. With My script Nebo for note taking and Autodesk Sketchbook for drawing.

You definitely want an active pen for this sort of lark. 

randella

octatonic said:

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

I really, really wanted one of those but the numbers start to stack up fairly alarmingly once you spec an i7 with a bit of RAM. 

I stayed with Apple in the end and bought an iPad Pro which I love.

Did I mention I really wanted the HP?

Really. 

fob

Teoh Yi Chie's YT channel has a lot of fairly detailed reviews of various devices - could be worth a trawl.

https://www.youtube.com/user/teohyc/videos

Corvus

We've just sent a couple of Surfaces back for swaps, windows overlaying each other, see-through. No amount of restore rebuild driver faff worked. Seems not uncommon looking on t'internet and no fixes found bar warranty swap. Others been fine though.

underdog

roundthebend said:

Lenovo Yoga maybe. @digitalscream seems to know the good models, I'm sure there's one that converts to a tablet

The yoga 920 looks pretty good. Going to go pc world tomorrow so she can spent half hour trying them out, so by the time we leave their screens will be full of roses and skulls  

Only trouble with the folding designs is I can see the keyboard being a pain when it's behind, which is how I imagine it will be used most of the time, so maybe screen will have to be detachable which limits options a lot 

Sporky

I have a Yoga 900 - they keyboard behind is weird for all of three minutes. 

digitalscream

Yep, I've got @Sporky's old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro - it's pretty awesome, but I've never used it for drawing.

The Spectre x360 is great, but the key differentiator between it and cheaper models is that it has the right gubbins in the touchscreen to be able to handle proper pen input for drawing. I forget what the device is, but it's pretty much critical to the whole endeavour.

And, naturally, only expensive laptops seem to have it.

Can she live with a normal pen-and-graphics-tablet arrangement? If so, just make sure you get a laptop with good colour reproduction and good resolution. Pretty much anything in the £600-900 range should do just fine.

Also, bear in mind that current-gen i5 CPUs are easily the match of previous-gen i7s. Don't be scared of going for the i5 at all, and if it helps you save money...

underdog

digitalscream said:

Yep, I've got @Sporky's old Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro - it's pretty awesome, but I've never used it for drawing.

The Spectre x360 is great, but the key differentiator between it and cheaper models is that it has the right gubbins in the touchscreen to be able to handle proper pen input for drawing. I forget what the device is, but it's pretty much critical to the whole endeavour.

And, naturally, only expensive laptops seem to have it.

Can she live with a normal pen-and-graphics-tablet arrangement? If so, just make sure you get a laptop with good colour reproduction and good resolution. Pretty much anything in the £600-900 range should do just fine.

Also, bear in mind that current-gen i5 CPUs are easily the match of previous-gen i7s. Don't be scared of going for the i5 at all, and if it helps you save money...

We've tried the drawijg tablet thing before, the disconnect between hand and eye really annoyed her, also looking for something she can just pickup, take home and carry on working on without the need to grab cables and other bits.

Snags

Asus Transformer Pro 3 is very similar. Or Yoga or even the top end Lenovo Miix units.

prowla

A previous job bought some, but they were a bit unreliable.

When I see an ad for something which is based on saying it's better than another company's product, I tend to think that I'll check out the other company's product because it must be good.

octatonic

randella said:

octatonic said:

Mrs Oct has a HP Spectre X360.
She loves it.

I really, really wanted one of those but the numbers start to stack up fairly alarmingly once you spec an i7 with a bit of RAM. 

I stayed with Apple in the end and bought an iPad Pro which I love.

Did I mention I really wanted the HP?

Really. 

Yes, it was expensive but for us it was a business expense.
It is exceptionally light though.

hywelg

underdog said:.

The wife is going to buy a surface pro, this will be used for drawing, that's pretty much all it will be used for. Been out of the IT loop for some years, so what is a good alternative to surface pro, it has to be windows based.

Thanks in advance 

NO, no and thrice no. 

I have a Surface Pro 2 and I've tried to use CorelDraw on it and it's an utter failure. Where shall we start. 

Screen is far to small,  touch is not good in Win10 , loss of access to modifier keys (Alt, Ctrl, Shift etc), right mouse button becomes awkward. 

So the question is,  what software is she going to use? I suppose Painter might be a decent bet but still not sure how it works with touch. PS isn't really a drawing prog. Illustrator meh....the new apps from Xara look promising but are still in their infancy and lacking basic features. 

wibble

I like the idea of this...

https://www.iskn.co/

No idea how good it is though

underdog

Well went to pc world and she's just bought a 12inch I pad pro, said it was by far best for drawing, how to integrate it with our windows world is my problem.