Scott Hanselman

Last year in August I went and bought a Surface Pro 3 with my own money (it's not machine that work paid for) and I've been very happy with it. Now the Surface Pro 4 came out, and well, it's silly to upgrade for me when it's been just a year.

But. That Keyboard. The Surface Pro 4 has an all new Keyboard and Touch Pad.

The Surface Pro 3 keyboard is good, to be clear, but the touchpad sucks. After I used it for a few months I called it out as sucking. It's usable, but it's not fun to use.

Turns out that you can get a Surface Pro 4 Type Cover keyboard and it works and fits perfectly on a Surface Pro 3. You can upgrade your Surface Pro 3 (and pretend it's a 4, which is what I'm doing) by just adding the new Keyboard.

Fingerprint Reader

There's lots of new color Type Covers but the really interesting one is the Type Cover with Fingerprint Reader. Sadly, only available in Black, but it has an integrated Fingerprint Reader that lets you use the new "Windows Hello" login feature of Windows 10. Windows Hello means "using biometrics like fingerprints and faces and eye scanning to login to your computer."

It works and it works great. There was an Oct 26th "Firmware Update" in Windows Update that gives you the drivers you'll need. A Firmware Update for a Surface is essentially a "driver pack." Run Windows Update and attach the keyboard and you're set.

You enroll as many fingers as you want in Sign-In Options and that's it. Now you log in with your fingerprint. Lovely.

All new keyboard and touchpad

The picture before shows my original Surface Pro 3 Type Cover next to my new Surface Pro 4 Type Cover with Fingerprint Reader. First, the keyboard was already good on the Surface Pro 3, but it's just better on the 4. There are actual spaces between the keys, and you can see from the pic how the keys go even closer to the edge/bezel of the cover's surface. The keys are also slightly rearranged for the better. FN has been moved to the left, which makes sense, and a "context key" (which is effectively Shift-F10).

Another nice touch is that the FN key now has a light. On SP3 you had no way to see if it was locked, and you had to FN-CapsLock to force it on, and would have no visual indicator.

Finally, the silly Share and Settings secondary functions for Function F7 and F8 are gone and there's now an actual PrtScn button. It's the little things.

Now, to the touchpad. IT IS SO MUCH BETTER. It's actually usable. It's way larger (they say 40%) and it feels nicer. Before I always took another mouse with me because the SP3 touchpad was crippling. No longer. It's large enough for multi-finger gestures, including 3 and 4-finger taps. I'm still holding out for a "4 finger swipe" for Virtual Desktop switching, though.

One other subtlety that is worth pointing out...the fold. With the Surface Pro 3 Type Cover keyboard, when you fold it up to keep the Type Cover off the table, the fold makes it hard to press the "Start Button" on the screen because the keyboard butted right up against the screen. The Pro 4 Type Cover folds tighter and lower against the bottom bezel such that pressing icons in the taskbar and the Start button isn't a problem anymore. Subtle, but again, it's the little things.

I totally recommend this keyboard. It's given my Surface Pro 3 new life. It's the keyboard it should have always had.

* My links are Amazon Affiliate Links! Use them as they help support my blog and buy me tacos.

Sponsor: Big thanks to my friends at Octopus Deploy for sponsoring the feed this week. Build servers are great at compiling code and running tests, but not so great at deployment. When you find yourself knee-deep in custom scripts trying to make your build server do something it wasn't meant to, give Octopus Deploy a try.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

About   Newsletter

Hosting By