As we enter the back to school period, Microsoft has released several new videos touting the functionality of both the Surface 3 and its high powered older brother: the Surface Pro 3. The new videos focus on note taking, ease of use and the versatility of the tablets. However, while these new videos succeed in portraying the current Surface line as powerful laptop replacements, they do so brandishing the feature set of a now superseded OS.
Windows 10 was released nearly a month ago, and is already running on over 50 million devices with new features such as Cortana, Edge browser and the new start menu, which is proving popular across social media. Why then, isn’t Microsoft using their new OS to market their most popular and most successful piece of hardware?
The Surface 3 and Surface Pro 3 are still being sold with Windows 8.1 pre-installed, with a free upgrade to Windows 10.
In one of the new videos, we are shown the ‘one click’ surface pen integration with OneNote, including the radial menu which is not present in the Windows 10 universal app version of Microsoft’s note taking application.
In another video, the multi-tasking capabilities of the Surface Pro 3 are being demonstrated in a court room projecting a medical diagram to a large Miracast display; although impressive, the Windows 8 app snapping looks clunky when compared with the refined snap assist in Windows 10.
We will probably need to wait a little longer to see the same kind of videos showcasing the capabilities of Windows 10 on Surface.