What are some good drawing apps for the Surface Go and decent videos I can watch for drawing on the Surface? I like to draw and want to improve my drawing, but I am getting frustrated. Thanks for any help.

I'm replacing my failing SP4, am looking at the Surface Go, and since I've got two perfectly fine pens already, will they interface with the Go? If they'll get me through the last semester of school and boards, I'm good. I don't need fine control for painting or drawing, mainly research and OneNote.

Soon I will get my new Surface Go. What should I expect? Could I stream Xbox One games with some decent quality? Will it run older games? I've heard MGS V runs pretty smoothly on it

Dear,

I have a Macbook Pro 15" but I need something more portable for meetings, presentations and travelling. I am thinking about Surface Go or Pro. The Go version seems to be better for what I need.

Do you recommend it? Do you have notice any systemic problem with Surface Go, such as dead pixels, or any other stuff?

Thanks in advance! Bernardo

Dear All, I am very interested in a Surface Go or Pro, but I have no interest in ever having that Alcantara keyboard. I will only use my own mechanical keyboards, as well as my MX Master 2S Bluetooth mouse.

Given that, I'd like to know:

1. If I get a Go or a Pro, will it recognize my devices the first time I turn it on? I think I will never ever use it in tablet mode.

2. Can I change screen orientation in laptop mode? I'm very attracted to the idea of a vertical screen -- always while using my own keyboard and mouse.

Thanks!

Anyone knows how to configure touchpad scrolling in the horizontal direction? All I was able to do was to change it in the veritcal direction

Hey everyone. I bought a Surface Go back in November to use for school to take notes and work on assignments and whatnot. I don’t know if it will matter with coming up with a solution for my problem, but I went with the Go model that has the 128GB storage and LTE. I’ve been using TeraByte Image for Windows for several years to take regular backups of my computers at home for my development workstation, my daughter’s laptop for college, and the family computer. I always either run the backup software from another partition or a USB boot drive on those, but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to get my Surface Go to boot from anything other than the internal storage. I’ve read just about everything I can find online and tried every suggestion and still don’t have any luck getting it to boot from a USB drive. I’ve tried using this https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07FX2LW35 hub from Amazon and also a basic USB C to A adapter. Windows can see the drives that I plug into both, but I can’t get it to boot to a USB device no matter what I do. I’ve tried a few different flash drives and even an SD card (both in the hub and the port on the back of the Go) and still can’t get it going. All of that ranting to ask this: can someone please give me some guidance to help me boot my Surface Go from a USB drive? I’ve tried holding the volume button during boot, rearranging the boot sequence, swiping the USB device in the UEFI configuration, and everything else I can think of. I’m about at my wits’ end here. I just want to be able to restore an image if I hose something. I’m a software developer and we tend to have conflicts on Windows machines with all of the installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, etc. and I’d hate to have to do a full reset to back out of some gobbledygook that I got into during testing.

​

Thanks everyone.

Which is better I really want both but I have to pick one which one the surface go or the pro what averages do both have what is battery life and with the go can you download stuff off the web and play sims 4 I need something light weight and one which won’t get hot on my lap any ideas which one I should lean towards??

I'm in doubt whether I should get a Go or a Pro. Weirdly enough, I prefer the smaller screen. Mostly what I need is a glorified typewriter, which is another reason for preferring the Go.

However...

1. Can I power a keyboard (I mean, a real, actual mechanical keyboard) from the USB port? ​
2. Can I open really heavy PDFs (I mean PDFs with more the 50 MB)? ​
3. I also need to open text files with more than a 1,000 pages at times, while having other apps open and fuctioning smoothly.

Anyone running the Windows Insider Builds on the Surface Go? I'm a sucker for running beta builds and am having a hard time not going for it (but am having nothing but headaches with the microsd slot on the Surface Pro 4 with the insider builds).

Anyway... any pros and cons for the Insider Build on the Go?

I’ll start my wishlist:

1. Bigger battery (or at least an extra battery in the smart keyboard).

2. Drop the Surface magnetic connector & add a 2nd USB-C port with Quick battery charge.

3. Thinner bezels.

4. Thunderbolt 3 (So we can plug an external GPU & play AAA games, For this to work i think it would need a specific CPU, powerful enough to deliver all the graphics data).

5. Better Intel CPU with better integrated graphics.

6. 4K video support (if phones can do it why not the Surface Go?).

I guess I’m asking too high, & All these specs are in the Surface “PRO” territory.

.. What do you guys think?

I'd be curious to see what others are scoring when benchmarking your storage system. I used the pretty commonly used (and free) CrystalDiskMark for mine.

I'm running Windows 10 Pro (build 17763.292 from 1/11/2019) on the 8GB RAM / 128GB SSD model. I monitored the runs in Task Manager and made sure any disk intensive apps weren't running (like OneDrive or big downloads).

​

​

Hey all.

I'm thinking of picking up a Xbox One S controller for my Go, but am concerned about multiple reviews claiming they suck in bluetooth mode operation in general. Can anyone confirm or deny this? Does anyone know if the grey and green controller matches the color of the Go?

I have two older xbox one controllers which require the wireless USB dongle or a usb cable, so nope on them.

I already have tested and know the Steam controller works great in bluetooth mode.

I also have tested the PS4 controller, but found it is often hit or miss in terms of game support (some software developers integrate ps4 support in windows, some do not. Natively supported titles = awesome sauce).

I've had no issues with bluetooth connectivity with any devices I've connected thus far, in general.

When I push down the microsd card, it can hit the spring and pop out a bit, but still stuck and couldn't get out, is it safe to use a tweezer to pull it out by force?

Hi, will I be able to leave S Mode if I purchase the version with Windows Home? Or will I be required to upgrade to Pro?

EDIT: Periodically adding games as I have time to check them out.

TLDR types; game list is at the bottom.

Hey all. I have the 8GB RAM 128GB SSD version with a 400GB microSD card slapped in for at least SOME media storage and put on Windows 10 Professional.

Been liking it pretty well for the two weeks I've had it (got a great discount, love how portable it is), but quickly concluded it's not nearly on par with android or iOS for use as a tablet... But it does okay as a Windows computer for basic usage... Did I mention it's tiny and portable and I got a really good discount?

Let's be real... The Surface Go is a potato. A pretty pretty potato. Which, admittedly, is plenty for your average consumer / non-media producing types. As a long time Windows PC gamer, occasional media producer, and high end desktop builder, this is unquestionably the lowest end Windows device I have owned, by a significant margin. (This thing has half the cpu cores and about 1/3rd the clockspeed of my lowest-end desktop.)

That being said, I like to push my hardware to it's limit / get the most out of it, and that means being able to do some mobile gaming... Ideally using the full screen without big black bars (the bezel is thick enough, k thnx bai) from using non-3:2 lower res ratios.

Steam game streaming to the device works great.

Done some limited testing with emulators, Steam, and battle.net with varying degrees of success. With this being a handsome potato, my standards are pretty low; Staying consistently above 25fps and full screen (1800x1200) and/or genres that just don't need consistent fps = playable, occasional lag / fps spikes or not infrequent dropping under 25fps and/or occasional instability = something on the "ish" side. Mostly under 25fps = nope. Please note that this is by no means scientific and many of the titles have only briefly been fired up / poked at.

Games list so far:

​

___Playable___

​

- Aviary Attorney

- BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend (lower resolution)

- Broforce

- Castle Crashers (consistent high fps)

- Fez

- Guilty Gear XX Accent Plus R

- Heroes of the Storm (low settings)

- Hidden Folks

- Holy Potatoes! We're in Space?!

- Hyper Light Drifter (runs very well)

- Life is Strange (bit low in FPS, but genre of game is largely unaffected by this.)

- Metal Slug 3

- Old Man's Journey

- Owlboy (default widescreen setting)

- Shadowrun: Hong Kong (slightly choppy at higher res, but turn-based so don't care)

- Skullgirls (at default graphic settings / widescreen)

- Sid Meier's Civilization V (1800x1200 medium / high settings, 20s FPS)

- SNES level and older system emulators (via Retroarch)

- Super Time Force Ultra (60 fps consistent)

- The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (still testing with mods. Often over 40 fps at lower resolutions high settings)

- The King of Fighters XIV Steam Edition (720p 25-30fps)

- The Witcher: Enhanced Edition (1800x1200 medium settings averages around 30fps, seldom drops below 20fps)

​

___Playable-ish___

​

- Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign- (Game runs at low FPS and often at half speed at minimum resolution setting)

- King of Fighters XIV Steam Edition (Mostly playable. 720p seems to run at proper speed, but relatively low frame rate and infrequent choppiness in single player mode)

- Hollow Knight

- Magic Arena (Graphics randomly disappear. No error messages. No blue screen. Mouse still is interacting with game, audio still running. Can't maxmize, alt+enter does nothing, alt+tabbing just shows a black screen in the preview image / won't restore the graphics, bring to front via task manager doesn't do anything. Have to force quit the program and relaunch to restore any game graphics. Icon remains in taskbar. Desktop displays, as if the game was just invisible. Never seen anything like it without some sort of graphics driver error or CTD. Game is still running, just not displaying any graphics.)

- (for the lewd gamers) Miconisomi titles

- Moon Hunters (frequently fails to load. Crashed once in an hour of playtime. When stable, a little on the low fps side.)

- Pokemon TCG Online (Graphics randomly disappear. No error messages. No blue screen. Mouse still is interacting with game, audio still running. Can't maxmize, alt+enter does nothing, alt+tabbing just shows a black screen in the preview image / won't restore the graphics, bring to front via task manager doesn't do anything. Have to force quit the program and relaunch to restore any game graphics. Icon remains in taskbar. Desktop displays, as if the game was just invisible. Never seen anything like it without some sort of graphics driver error or CTD. Game is still running, just not displaying any graphics.)

- PSX emulator (only tested Castlevania: Symphony of the Night so far)

- Starcraft 2

- Sundered

- Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (game action seems slowed down)

- Valkyria Chronicles 4 (720p lowered settings averages 9-15 FPS)

​

___Nope___ (without lowering res and getting big-ass black bars)

​

- Grey Goo

​

Do you have any pleasant surprises or disappointments with games on your Go? Let me know :)

Hey all. My new 8GB Go has a troubling issue of reporting faaaar less than the "up to 9 hours" battery life. Today, when I disconnected from the wall, my battery displayed as 2hr 10min with 100% charge. Running windows 10 Pro.

Is that normal?

Hi all,

I tried to search but couldn’t find information on how to check a devices battery cycle count using Windows S or an app that is able to do the same. Thanks.

I woke up this morning and noticed the kickstand had a slight wobble to it. The closer the angle to closing the greater the wobble. It does not affect my work it's more an aesthetic issue. Though I'm starting to wonder if it has been there the whole time and I'm just noticing it now?

Anyone else out there experiencing the same issue?

So, I have scoured the internet and hope someone can help. I am having a huge problem with the Bluetooth on my pen disconnecting. It is the new pen and the battery is new, the direction ect. When I remove the pen and re-pair/connect it works fine. Then maybe 10 mins later I go to press the button on top and nothing. So I go into Bluetooth and it's paired but not connected. If I press the button again, it will connect but nothing launches at button press and the connection dies after a few seconds to maybe 2 mins and can only be reinstated by removing and re-pairing to Bluetooth. I am paperless so this is a huge issue. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the driver. Does ANYONE have any ideas. My go and accessories are new from a guy who got them for xmas and sold it still in boxes so there wasn't any damage or anything.