HELP NEEDED - Surface Pro 8 Pen Input Stops Randomly

With @Eltos’ help (from another thread) I’m trying one more hail Mary pass to this problem. I’ve manually copied all of my notes from my OneDrive notebook to a newly created notebook on my SP8 and disconnected from the OneDrive notebook.

WISH ME LUCK!

PS - OneNote would NOT let me just copy or move my OneDrive notebook to a local folder. It even prevented me from creating the old style OneNote pkg of my notebook to import into another desktop notebook.

See why I hate cloud computing - it’s even more intrusive than Apple’s walled garden centered on iCloud…

PS - even if I can’t get my Surface Pro WinPad, I hope we get a 5g SKU of the x86 Surface Pro 10 just to move up from LTE…

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Well, just survived a 30 minute meeting without the inking going out on me - that’s a good start!

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Yea. Me too. Would love the extra speed.

Don’t get your hopes up for higher speed.

I have noticed that in ATT low-band (sub-6) areas the LTE is about the same as the 5G, as shown in the image above. Moreover, my iPad using the Apple “Personal Hotspot” feature is pretty much always connected if the iPhone is in range and is therefore utterly indistinguishable from a device with its own $$$$ cellular connection since I take it nowhere without also bringing my iPhone.

The wifi for the iPad mini that’s doing comparably to the iPhone on 5G is a 4G LTE Netgear Nighthawk with an ATT SIM of its own, a second line on the same cellular plan (Elite Unlimited). The line is 5G but the Nighthawk is an older 4G “mifi” router. The iPad mini, Mac mini, and everything else are normally connected to that and there’s never any speed difference from the iPhone that I have noticed.

If you actually have better than low-band 5G in Midland then good for you, and it’ll likely be a worthwhile upgrade. :+1:

FWIW

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NOPE - 5g in Midland is barely a step up from tin cans and string! I know I should save the $20/mo and tether, but it is so handy to just open the SP8 and start surfing…

It’s your $20. :wink: Putting a different service’s SIM on it would protect you from ATT going down but it would be much more than $20 most likely.

P.S. - the Surface Pro likely wouldn’t be always connected to your iPhone anyway. The Apple personal hotspot thing is just for iStuff. It would give a normal hotspot for a Windows device. Walled Garden benefits. :smile_cat:

I’m SERIOUSLY looking at dumping AT&T - their service just keeps getting worse and over-saturated wherever I go, and their Directv service is even worse - they’ve been locked out of Fox Sports since last year’s World Cup (no World series or Superbowl) and now have lost the local ABC affiliate as well on the cusp of college football season.

Thinking of going to Verizon and YouTube TV.

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Funny thing. That was where I was up until today when my family and I dropped them like a hot potato for Verizon who infinitely higher performance and penetration. I used to think WhistleOut’s map was gospel but I feel it is just what the carriers claim is their coverage with no semblance in reality. In reality, AT&T is worse where I have been, boonies and ‘burbs alike, and is not the winner in coverage even here in Michigan where WhistleOut claims AT&T wins—WhistleOut is laughably mistaken. I now get nearly three times the download speeds I did with AT&T, from 100 Mbps to over 300 Mbps average, in Metro Detroit. And upstate in Michigan, I can hold a stable signal in the summer whereas it is hoping for a dry day with AT&T since the humidity kills the spotty connectivity.

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Thanks @Hifihedgehog - I’m eyeing September as my jump off point to make the switch. My problem is I have a BOATLOAD of phones and lines to upgrade, and with Apple upping the price on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, it’s going to look like the national debt!

It all depends on your location. I was with Verizon for a decade and switched to AT&T a couple years ago because the last two summers there was zero Verizon coverage at the national park where I volunteered and T-Mobile was roaming on AT&T there for the most part. And everywhere else I was traveling, ATT was comparable to Verizon. This wasn’t true until recently. AT&T actually has improved quite a bit. For instance they have coverage on the north rim of the Grand Canyon now when before they had zero and I had to use Verizon.

YMMV

How do I know? You don’t trust the coverage maps except in general. You have to actually get a prepaid device that uses that service’s towers (or an eSIM trial) and test it on the ground. There’s no other way because they all fudge their coverage and performance. Yes, Verizon too.

T-Mobile is the worst that way. Like right now at this park there’s Verizon, which used to be the only choice here, and AT&T which is very good now, but there is pretty much no T-Mobile even though their map shows coverage. The last time I had their post paid service I found that they would have locations marked as verified by customers with good signal but there was no bandwidth behind it. So I’d get four “bars” of LTE and only 0.5 Mb per second.

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The old “if their lips are moving” trick…

image

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@Dellaster - apparently you are more RIGHT than even I suspected. My son is an Uber/Lyft driver here, and he hears as many complaints about poor Verizon service as AT&T - worse still, most folks are on T-Mobile because it has better 5g in town, BUT almost zilch outside of Midland and Odessa whether backroads or the Interstate highway…

Unfortunately that’s the fate of flyover country (or should I say “blow through sand country”)…

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I’ve been thinking a lot about that as well lately. I LOVE my instant connectivity on the SP8, BUT I keep reading in lots of places that even if there is an X86 Surface Pro 11" it will not get cellular connectivity - that is RESERVED for WOA and QC based devices (maybe part of the QC exclusivity BS). That is going to make for a VERY DIFFICULT choice even if there is a Nuvia-WOA SP 11" because I’m not sure I am ready for full time WOA, especially since Chrome (yes, the dreaded Chrome) is the glue between iPhone and the SP8.

What I really need is a Go Fund Me hacker bounty page for the first person to get full MacOS on an iPad Pro, with full 5g support, or an 11" x86 based convertible with 5g!

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At that time (~6 or 7 years ago) when I had T-Mobile postpaid in the Las Cruces area I got the best LTE speeds I had ever seen to that point: ~80Mbs. But only ~450Kb/s (kilobits per sec) download in Alamogordo and the same in Arrey/Derry up the I-25 from Las Cruces. Truth or Consequences was briefly 2Mbs download after a long support call (my sixth call since signing on with them a month before). Alas, it was a fluctuation in the congestion and it wouldn’t get near such elite speeds except at around 3am during the rest of my stay.

/rant

I’d say “Trust But Verify” if not for experience which tells me to “NEVER TRUST. Verify Then Keep An Eye On Them For Tricky, Treacherous Moves”. This goes for all cell providers.

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Had to quote you so I could

:+1: :+1:

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Survived two meetings with my SP8 and local copy of OneNote, so :crossed_fingers: it will live to see another day. Since I have M$ Complete until January 2025, I’ll be good until the Spring 2025 release of the folding iPad Pro… :rofl: :pray:

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