Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Review | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Review

anandtech.com

197 pointsfumar137 comments

I really liked my Surface Pro 1 when I got it. There were a number of small problems such as missing key up events that resulted in stuck Ctrl keys, cursor getting stuck in one place, random resets overnight, but nothing that I couldn't live with. Form factor was good and the hardware just about good enough all round - slightly small hard disk, one USB is a little annoying, but again, can live with it. I recommended it a few times to people and online.

Unfortunately the power supply died one week out of warranty. There was a long back and forth with support after one person said they could replace it free of charge since there were symptoms within the warranty period, and another said that person had made a mistake and that I'd need to buy a replacement. Not a good experience and device was out of commission for a long while waiting for their responses. I bought a third party power supply, which I don't really trust, but clearly the 100 USD Microsoft replacement power supply is not reliable either and is twice the price.

Now the power button is becoming unreliable and if it goes I'll be unable to use the device at all as there's no other way to turn it on, and it does reset itself from time to time still. I don't want to move it too much in case it turns off and I can't get it back on again.

I still really like the form factor, but what a review like this doesn't capture is the long-term reliability and service quality that comes with the device, and that's what's most likely to put me off buying another Surface Pro / Surface Book.

This is exactly what's holding me back from buying Surface devices. I rather stick to Thinkpads and Macs that I can replace/fix easily and which have great build quality/durability and available parts.

> Macs that I can replace/fix easily

How come? MacBooks were the first laptops in becaming fix unfriendly and every vendor is actually following that lead.

A good example is battery replacement. Yes, MBP batteries are glued in, but Apple has an official service that will replace it and the top case for not much more than it costs to buy say a Lenovo battery at retail. Also, eBay has a big supply of Mac parts that make replacing things pretty easy once you recognize that you gotta replace larger functional units together (e.g. LCD with cover glass).

The Surface is just as hard to repair, but without the official service options and fewer parts on eBay.

Microsoft has different levels of support as well as Apple and you can find parts on Ebay easily too. I honestly don't see how Macbooks are any easier to repair than any other ultrabook really.

I wasn't talking about all Macbooks. Anything older than a Retina is pretty upgradeable and fixable.

If I type in "Macbook Pro battery replacement" the first hit is an Apple website that informs me of the official service to replace my battery for $129-199.

When I type in "Surface Pro battery replacement" I get a link to an iFixit page that informs me I have to undo the adhesive on the screen with a blow dryer to get at anything inside. Even an iPad is easier to open!

Step 1 to getting Mac fixed. Take it to Apple Genius who may well just fix it for free (definitely if it's under warranty and quite often if it isn't) or tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it yourself or where to get it fixed cheaply.

Assuming your problem isn't already solved, then Apple products are no easier than rival brands aside from being better built in the first place, having standardized parts, a simple range of models, and an active third party market.

I'm sure Microsoft has different levels of support, but I suspect everyone you're talking to is referring to Apple's standard warranty coverage. I'd rather have an Apple product with standard coverage than anyone else's product with "gold" or "platinum" or whatever they call it support. (From my experience of high-end corporate support the only benefit I found was that when I told the support person "assume I tried all that crap" (rebooting, reinstalling Windows, rebooting anything else on the network, etc.) he actually went off script and got to the useful stuff.

I've had nothing but great experiences with Lenovo, Apple and Dell's customer support. As others have mentioned, there is also a fantastic third party ecosystem for parts and services. I can not say the same for other companies and would welcome others experiences with them.

The tip of my Pen on my Surface Pro 3 broke (I wasn't even sure when, or how, it could have been entirely my fault). I walked into a Microsoft Store and showed them the problem.

They weren't able to remove and replace the tip itself, so a few minutes later the CSR went to the back and brought me a new pen, and mentioned that it wouldn't appear as warranty service so I would be free to replace it down the road if necessary through "normal" repair channels.

This was without any additional warranty coverage. I can't speak for other Microsoft products, but they seem to go out of their way to support the Surface to provide a similar, if not superior, repair/replacement experience as Apple (I previously owned a MBP and had its screen repaired for free as well at an Apple Store).

MS support suggested (off the record) that I find someone who had a Surface Pro still in warranty and ask them to ask for a replacement power adapter. Said that they'd get one free of charge, no questions ask. Unfortunately I don't know other people who own a Surface Pro so that didn't work for me. Anecdotally I've heard of Apple offering informal service outside of warranty, so was hoping I'd get something similar as it felt like a borderline case, but no luck in my case. Even a reduced price to replace the faulty accessory would have gone a long way to improve the support experience for me. In the end I got a half-hearted apology from them and that was it.

I still really like the form factor, but what a review like this doesn't capture is the long-term reliability and service quality that comes with the device

Someone did a review of the Nexus 7 1 year after they bought it: http://androidandme.com/2013/06/opinions/one-year-later-the-...

Warning: there is an auto-play video on that page.

This sort of thing is problematic with such short release cycles of products, but maybe something like, initial review, then small updates 1month in, 3 months in, 6 months in, might be useful for non-early adopter consumers.

My experience with MS re: the SP2 was quite different. I bought the SP2 in Dec 2013, within a week it was ruined by a failed MS firmware update. The SP2 began randomly waking up from sleep mode, annoying, and hazardous when it did that stored in a briefcase (because it would heat up).

A few weeks later the MS store exchanged it for a brand new one without hesitation. Subsequently I've had other problems with the SP2: the Type Cover failed, the power supply connector came apart, each time the broken item was replaced with little hassle.

That's not to say the SP2 has been trouble-free. Numerous software/firmware issues were evident but most were resolved in the first 10 months it was on the market, coincidentally about the time the SP3 was being introduced.

The SP4 seems like it offers substantial improvements, though it is costly. I'm inclined to wait a while before seriously considering purchase, give it some time to get the bugs worked out, and who knows, the price may come down a bit next year.

To me, it's almost as much of a reflection on Microsoft's OEMs as it is on Microsoft that, in 3 years, Microsoft has iterated from it's first device, which was a commercial flop, to a tablet/ultrabook that's only real criticism is the lack of a USB Type-C port.

Where would Microsoft be today if they had given up on their OEMs 5 years sooner, and gone head to head with Apple on hardware?

The OEM's participated in a race to the bottom in an effort to maximize how many people bought PC's. This caused damage to the Windows/PC brand. By the time they pivoted to "ultrabooks" the damage was done and these brands were seen as low end/discount unable to produce quality PC's.

I'm not sure that Microsoft could have stopped that, even if they rolled out a "high end" Surface like device 5 years prior.

It believe it's the lack of a low end product that makes Apple, and now Microsoft attractive to premium buyers.

> The OEM's participated in a race to the bottom in an effort to maximize how many people bought PC's. This caused damage to the Windows/PC brand.

That's what strengthened the Windows brand in the first place - availability, unbiquity, and the sense of it being the "default" ("nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft").

Over time, the lack of control over the quality resulted in variation, and Apple was eventually able to capitalize on that by selling themselves as consistent experience, but that's only within the last decade. The OEM situation with Windows has been the case literally since before Windows (it existed during the DOS era as well).

It's good that Microsoft is finally responding to this pressure and providing a default, consistent experience (analogous to the Nexus experience on Android). But I wouldn't say that it's what did damage to the Windows brand, because without it, there wouldn't be a powerful Windows/Microsoft brand in the first place.

Exactly - how can you hurt the Windows brand when the whole point of the product was to commoditize the hardware to bring the cost of the total solution - hardware + software - down in price? Microsoft's goal has always been to encourage and in some cases even mandate interoperability. That's typically been thought of as a good thing, but you can't be surprised when hardware makers do everything they can to cut corners - when you're selling a commodity you can't charge anything above the prevailing marginal cost of production. The only path to success is to ruthlessly cut the cost of production.

If your product is being commoditized, the only way to seek margins is to fight commoditization. You do that by deifferentiating your products. And what laptop OEMs seem to have concluded is that differentiating on build quality/design/attention to detail/form factor wasn't an option.

And they continued to believe that even when Apple demonstrated conclusively that people would go out of their way to buy Apple hardware, rip off the Mac OS that they'd paid for, and install Linux/Windows on it.

Why is it obvious to Microsoft that the Surface Pro, or the SurfaceBook, is a valid addition to the PC hardware marketplace, but it wasn't obvious to any of the many competing OEMs?

How profitable is the Surface for Microsoft?

Does Microsoft consider it a loss-leader reference design?

If it's been profitable, why hasn't anyone else in the PC space copied it?

I believe (don't quote me on this) Microsoft is closing in on a billion (1) dollars in annual revenue from Surface. Not sure how much is "profit" but someone who follows earning more closely might be able to clarify.

If the form factor is really that successful, I wonder why no one else is copying it? The Surface itself is made by a Taiwanese company named Pegatron, which is a division of Asus - so it's even being made by an established PC hardware company.

"how can you hurt the Windows brand when the whole point of the product was to commoditize the hardware to bring the cost of the total solution - hardware + software - down in price? "

You answered your own question. The OEM's "ruthlessly cut the cost of production" too far and thereby damaged the PC brand.

This "ruthlessly" cutting of costs would have been survivable, however with Apple attacking from the flank with the iOS/app model, the PC makers were/are now in an even deeper hole.

Depends on which era you're referring to.

Yes, low cost hardware drove Windows/PC adoption in the 80-90's. This was key to Windows success.

However, throughout the 00's the continued downward pressure on pricing by OEMs, Microsoft's questionable decisions, and the cheapening of the PC brands, caused consumers to be seek a premium alternative.

I believe it also makes sense to separate the consumer vs enterprise markets. Buying Microsoft at home is not the same decision process as buying Microsoft at work.

Microsoft actually did start competing with Apple on hardware already back in 2006:

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/14/microsoft-launches-the-zu...

So clearly Ballmer had this in the cards for a long time. The various iterations of Zune, even though commercially unsuccessful, laid the groundwork for both the "Metro" UI language and Microsoft's in-house hardware design.

Maybe Zune was a necessary "weaning period" in reducing Microsoft's OEM dependency.

The Zune wasn't half bad. I liked it much more than my ipod at the time.

It's biggest problem was timing -- launching less than a year before the iPhone was a huge problem. The market had moved on from the entire dedicated MP3 player space before the Zune had a chance to find a market and iterate on the product to refine it.

I don't know if that's true. The first few iPhones were very expensive unlocked and on contract, required signing up for a $70-$100/month phone plan, which was close to double what dumbphone users were paying. The iPod Nano, iPod Touch and iPod Classic saw updated versions each year, slowing down only once iPhones and Androids became mainstream and replaced dedicated music players.

The original iPhone was 400$ without contract (it was locked to AT&T though). However, it could be jail broken by simply going on a website using the built in browser. Unlocking it wasn't much more complicated too (within the launch week, you could unlock it with a turbo sim, and couple months later software unlock were released).

I got an iPhone 3G in AU on a 2 year $40AUD/Month contract.

At the time, this was almost half what I would have paid pre-iPhone. Before the iPhone, I would have had to get a normal contract, plus a data add-on. Monthly cost was close to $80AUD.

Didn't a similar bundling of services at relatively lower costs happen in the US?

Still more expensive than call and text only, but still not that expensive.

I think the biggest problem was that nobody took it seriously, and I'm not really sure why. It was easily as good, if not better, than the iPods of the time. I definitely don't think it was an issue of timing though. the iPhone's capacity at launch (8GB) was a joke compared to dedicated players at the time. And music streaming services weren't all the popular. Plus even if they had been, it would be a year until we saw a 3rd party app store on the iPhone.

>I think the biggest problem was that nobody took it seriously

There was that one guy, who got the tattoo...

Jesus, that guy. He's lucky it's a pretty neat-looking symbol. So in 10 years when nobody recognizes it he can play it off as some obscure video game reference.

Not just one. And considered changing his name to Zune too. He seemed to regret it though. http://www.wired.com/2009/09/zune-tattoo/

It was too little, too late. They were roughly as good as a well established option, with a better ecosystem. There is nothing compelling about that, and as noted the dedicated player was about to get its lunch eaten (not that anybody knew this).

I think its biggest problem was that it had wifi, but didn't have a web browser. Then six months later, along came the iPod Touch ...

I was in the same boat. I had a Zune HD, and it was a very underrated hardware/software package. Probably a good example of a superior product that was a victim to timing, marketing, and other forces outside of the product itself.

the software was abominable. The zune ran a version of MTP that was proprietary and so could not be used on older versions of Windows or Linux... while ipods worked beautifully on Linux.

Just getting Music on the Zune using the desktop software was an exercise in pain.

Agreed, entirely. I adored my original Zune, as far as a piece of hardware, it was amazing. Cool look, big color screen, heck even an FM tuner. It was ahead of its time. The software on the other hand still gives me nightmares. It crashed all the time, would constantly lose large chunks of metadata I had meticulously entered, would randomly freeze while loading music... it was the weak link in the Zune chain.

> * The various iterations of Zune, even though commercially unsuccessful, laid the groundwork for both the "Metro" UI language and Microsoft's in-house hardware design.*

I think this is key. Microsoft has been selling keyboards and mice for a long time with probably a small team, but organizationally the Zune (and Xbox 360) efforts allowed them to staff up and work out a lot of the logistics.

I'm under the impression they were legally prohibited from "[giving] up on their OEMs 5 years sooner" due to US antitrust action. DOJ oversight ended in May 2011 and the Surface line was announced in June 2012.

Yep this was painfully clear a long time ago. Their entire tablet PC/pen computing stuff was DOA because of shitty vendors. (And MS not really making the UI accessible, but that's another point.)

Interesting b/c Microsoft had made a big push to promote the tablet form factor back in 2002, but the OEM devices weren't popular. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_XP_editions#Tablet_PC_...

I have a Surface Pro 3, and owned a Pro 1 (1st gen), I have to applaud Msoft for iterating quickly on their hardware line. Its been ~3 years and the (personal experience) general consumer approval of the Surface line has been gradually changing. It went from an iPad competitor, which was a terrible comparison, to a generating its own category, a tablet that can replace your laptop.

I typically skip a generation to upgrade machines, but the Pro 4 (based on this review) solves all the small quips I had with mine. Its looking like I am going to upgrade to the Surface Pro with Iris graphics. Still on the fence about the Book, I don't really need the laptopness.

At work I have a Surface Pro 3 and a powerful multi-screen desktop running Windows 2012 - this is an excellent combination.

I'm using a Surface Pro 2 and it's still an amazing piece of hardware. I'm eagerly waiting the Surface Book release in the UK because my biggest bugbear is actually using it on your lap, but having the comfort of a tablet for use in the evening.

On my desk I have it hooked up to 2 monitors (resulting in 3 screens) and it just works really well. Quiet and fast.

I recommend you check out the Surface Pro 4. The new hinge (implemented on the Pro 3) is quite versatile, and I have used it on my lap without much hassle.

I like my Pro 3, but I think it's still a real pain to use in one's lap. They're not as good as they should be on airplanes, either - the hinge-plus-cover thing requires a lot of front-to-back real estate.

That's pretty much why I'm buying a Surface Book as soon as I can.

> It went from an iPad competitor, which was a terrible comparison, to a generating its own category, a tablet that can replace your laptop.

My experience, observing friends and strangers, is that they wanted an iPad to replace their laptop. Almost everyone I know with an iPad either 1) doesn't use it or 2) uses it as a laptop.

The thing is that the iPad was an awful laptop for a long time (lack of multitasking being the main issue). In my opinion, tablets are a very small niche, and most people want to upgrade them into cheap, light laptops by buying an external keyboard.

With the Surface, Microsoft was simply giving people what they were already looking for.

Maybe that's why I enjoy my Nexus 7 tablet so much. I have never owned a laptop, nor do I want one. I want a tablet so I can get to IMDB with a largish screen while sitting on the couch, not so I can do work.

Strangely my workflow is in a place where most of my graphic programs also exist on Windows (Lightroom mostly, everything else is easily changeable).

It's my terminal workflow that I can only use on a Mac/Linux. Zsh, Vim, Tmux, LateX, Python and mostly a package manager (Apt on Linux, Homebrew on the Mac). Most of which I can just configure in a new system pulling the config files from my Github repository in less than 15 minutes after a fresh install.

That's what's mainly holding me from going back to windows (and the Application update process which is still awful as I can see from my VMware installation of Windows 10... seriously, updating the various components of Visual Studio in a semi manual way is just ridiculous), is there any good alternative for the Shell in windows that doesn't involve considerable tinking?

On Windows 10, I use babun along with a Vagrant VM for terminal-based development.

babun is a Cygwin distribution that's actually configured nicely out of the box with oh-my-zsh, etc. It comes with a very pretty terminal, a package manager, and more. That said, it's still Cygwin, which means I try to avoid doing complex, heavy-duty development in it.

For that, I just spin up a Vagrant VM. It's insanely easy.

This is a nice work method. But my biggest grip with it is that I use the GPU for CUDA calculations.

At least in OSX it's not possible to directly access the GPU trough a VM (in Vagrant or any other way), while in Linux it's possible with KVM.

How does it work on Windows?

MSYS2 uses pacman like Arch and has a lot of packages https://msys2.github.io

I use MSYS2 which is probably as close as you'll get to a Linux environment for native windows programs. There is a port of pacman fire package management, and it has an xterm compatible terminal called mintty.

There's also Cygwin (and Babun is meant to be a nice configuration of this), but Cygwin tends to create an environment that is a bit more isolated from the rest of the system, while MSYS2 focuses more on working within the native environment.

This thing looks nice but I think the Surface Book is going to be the breakout device for Microsoft in this generation.

I agree. The Surface Pro 4 is an excellent device, definitely an achievement in the 'laptop replacement' game. No OS fork is a huge win to me.

As an ultrabook user currently, I'm targeting the Surface Book outright for my next machine. It simply has all the features I need (and a little more in the real graphics card) and even has engineered benefits for things I don't want now but will probably want when music software catches up (good touch input). I saw a lot of complaints following Apple showing off their "one plug to control them all" design because of how hardware interfaces and musicians/DJs/performers love redundancy and back-up plans, so I'll be interested to see if they start taking market share away from Apple...it'll be slow, if it happens, but I'm interested!

Just out of interest because you seem like you might know - does Windows across devices do a good job with audio latency? Presumably Windows as a desktop OS has it down, does that carry to phones and tablets too?

Ableton seems pretty good lately on Surface Pro 3 + Windows 8, and I don't find it sluggish or buggy, but there is some latency with audio recording on the built-in card. I haven't tried using an external audio interface (which are incredibly cheap these days).

Windows still trails OS X and Core Audio here unless you're using ASIO. There are no real ASIO drivers (AFAIK) for the Surface Pro 3, though ASIO4ALL works if you want to dedicate your sound card to just ASIO apps (for me that sucks, because I want to hear other audio on my system at the same time!). With my Macs, though, it pretty much just works. I'd probably use an external interface if I absolutely had to use Windows (and I'd want a bigger screen than the Surface Pro, probably the Surface Book and even that's cramped).

Gotta say you really did hit the nail on the head with this comment. I'd like to mention though that I've been using 12" screen gear for about 5 years now, both in production and performance (DJ) environments, and I've yet to really run into issues. Granted, I've had an external monitor or a projector going from time to time, but, like when running Line6 Gearbox, I'm not looking at the screen nearly at all. When running Traktor Pro, I try not to look at the screen very much as well, because looking like I'm "checking my email" is a constant dig at folks who use laptops as performance platforms. I don't mention these as contradictions to your perspective, just another few thoughts to consider!

On the (sadly rare) occasion I get to play with music stuff these days, I really have trouble going away from my 2x1440p+rMBP 15 screen space. Even just the rMBP is super cramped. Different strokes, I guess.

As eropple covered quite well, native Windows latency isn't up to industry standards. ASIO4ALL has been very good to me on the desktop OS, but I believe that is very RAM dependent - I've never run it on less than an i5 with 8GB of RAM, whether XP, Win7 or Win10. Because it's free and community supported, I consider it simply an oversight by MS.

Unfortunately I can't speak to Windows phones or tablets, because I'll admit that I've used iOS for that. There's simply too many good, well, excellent audio programs in that sector to try otherwise. My main ones are Propellerhead Figure, GarageBand, a few synths in production, and djay2 for fun playing tunes and mixing.

The issue that Windows can address with the tablets (not sure about phones) is the ability to plug in a USB soundcard. This is an extremely helpful ability that iOS really doesn't support (again, the native CoreAudio deserves recognition as very good). I got a very small M-Audio (now owned by Avid) soundcard that runs ASIO drivers, has a mic in and phones out (both stereo), and I even got an Asus Netbook with 2GB of RAM to run Ableton Live 8 well enough to create loop-based tracks on the go! For live performance, people simply love the MacBook Pro platform because of stability, and I can understand. The more that Microsoft does though, the more attention that will be granted from software developers to try and capitalize on the potential market. If MS continues to keep their hardware/software combination friendly to more tech savvy type musicians, e.g. plugging in a soundcard and running desktop type software on portable hardware, then I think they'll be able to take some market share.

I do have access to a Surface Pro 3, but because I'm happy and still working on my Lenovo ultrabook with Win10 (keeping my prior Win7 one as a 'desktop'), I'm not really anxious to go messing with that. But, for DJ type folks who use 'controllers' like the stuff made by Pioneer, a Surface Pro plus a controller with built-in audio is a compelling offering. Not cheap, but not a toy either!

They also posted a Surface Book "First Look" today with a couple of GPU benchmarks:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9732/the-microsoft-surface-boo...

That's what I was looking for, thanks.

tl;dr:

> The Surface Book is a very interesting take on the Ultrabook by Microsoft. I’ll need some more time with it to get a full review completed, but initial impressions are that it’s a solid device with a great display, a good keyboard, and a generous trackpad. The overall device is not as thin or light as some other Ultrabooks, but generally those don’t pack in 70 Wh of battery and a real GPU. Stay tuned for a full review soon.

Looks like there's a massive amount of reviews for the SB coming in today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/3pmrt1/surface_boo...

I don't like Windows that much, because I prefer open solutions. But is indeed a fantastic device.

Hardware is pretty similar to SP3, which is on its way to run smoothly under Linux. Quite soon everything will work with a stock kernel, plus Marvell drivers for wireless and the camera ones.

With a bit of ingenuity, I guess it'd be easy to come up with a nice tiling window manager setup.

Anyone else think we're getting a little hyperbolic with the weight of these things?

"The first Surface Pro was a sizable 2.0 lb monster tablet which packed Ultrabook class components into a chassis that was over 0.5-inches thick. It was powerful, but heavy and the 16:9 form factor was not ideal for a tablet."

Yeah. I've had people tell me how heavy the 13" Retina MBP is ~_~

To be fair, MBP are pretty heavy for their size.

It is a bit heavy isn't? 3.48 pounds (1.58 kg), according to Apple.

http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs-retina/

A tablet that's 2 lbs and > 0.5" thick is gargantuan by today's standards. Less so at the time of the original Surface Pro release, but still huge- it was 50% heavier than, and 1/3 thicker than its main tablet competition at the time (the iPad 4).

I think the extra size and weight is totally understandable given that it's a full-blown PC, but Microsoft's marketing message is that this is something that will replace both your laptop and your tablet with no compromises. They've used that phrase a lot (no compromises), but to a heavy tablet user the extra size and weight in tablet mode would've seemed like a huge compromise. 1/4 lb isn't much of anything in absolute terms, but in relative terms for that product category the hyperbole is probably warranted.

I think it's reasonable criticism in-context - this is a tablet, not a laptop.

A laptop's weight is only relevant when you're transporting it, otherwise it sits on some solid surface and how much it weighs is fairly inconsequential.

A tablet's weight is felt in most use cases during regular use. A lot of people hold tablets in their hands while they're using them rather than set them on some solid surface with a stand - this makes them a fair bit more weight-sensitive than laptops.

Same reason why the 16:9 form factor is fair criticism - it makes the tablet really awkwardly balanced when used in portrait mode, something that isn't an issue with laptops which can only be used in one orientation.

I have the smaller surface RT and it is horrible to hold as a tablet. Weird shape, crazy sloped edges, it just doesn't feel good in hand.

It's not about "lifting" a tablet, it's about "holding it" for hours. Anything heavier than 300g (a Kindle) quickly becomes difficult to hold after about ~30 mins.

It sounds silly when you look at the weights involved, but the first and second generation models really aren't fun to use as a tablet for any extended period of time, just slightly too heavy and the form factor means you can't really use it one handed either.

I have both a Dell Inspiron 10 tablet and a SP1. You can wave your hand around holding the Dell cupped in the seat of the palm and lightly squeezed by the fingers. The SP1 is more like working with small weights by comparison and puts a lot more stress on fingers and palm.

Serious question: Can someone please sit on top of a surface and surfacebook (in a closed position)?

These devices have thinner-than-ever glass (and in case of sb, an air gap) and i am concerned that carrying them in a backpack can get them destroyed by other books/whatever. Would be great to find out otherwise :)

To answer my own question: http://mashable.com/2015/10/21/microsoft-surface-book-review...

> "I placed the Surface Book on my carpeted floor (office-style, so a pretty low-pile carpet). Then I held onto my desk and chair. I lifted both feet off the ground and gingerly lowered them onto the clipboard side of the Surface Book -- my heels and the majority of my weight were rested on the hinge. I did not move my feet or jump and down, but the device survived my full body weight (roughly 150 pounds) resting on top of it. In short, I do not see a fundamental flaw in Microsoft’s unique hinge design."

Would you sit on top of your laptop?

I carry a thin plastic laptop in my backpack for years and have never had a problem with books crushing it.

Just know that you have an expensive piece of equipment in your bag and don't toss it around.

i'm always careful with electronics, but the flight attendants and baggage handlers often arent unfortunately :)

Personally, I actually prefer the 16:9 aspect ratio for any screen that has sufficient raw vertical resolution to not hinder productivity.

I feel that once a device gets past the point where the lack of vertical resolution limits productivity, the marginal utility offered by even more vertical resolution becomes rather insignificant, to the point where I'd probably benefit more from having more horizontal resolution for things like snapping windows side-by-side and not having black bars on 16:9 video.

Really? I find exactly the opposite: the marginal utility of more vertical space (for code, mostly) continues increasing all the way until I have to physically move my neck to see it. I have a 24" monitor next to my main screen oriented vertically for exactly this purpose.

I'm generally more productive with a split screen view for code, with either different files on each side, or different parts of the same file on each side. This kind of workflow needs quite a bit of horizontal resolution to work well.

Interesting - a 16:9 screen splits into two 8:9 screens - almost squares. A 3:2 screen splits into two 3:4 screens, much more useful document-style aspect ratios.

That said, with the surface/surfacebook, we're talking about small 12-13 inch screens anyway, not enough physical real estate for that kind of work. You'll likely connect to a larger external screen if you're looking for a splitscreen workspace.

Reading this now in a roughly 2:1 split on my Thinkpad t420s (16:9, 1600px:900px). On the right, i have a terminal window, with no margins, and no window decorations. On the left Firefox with HN open, which because of the "forced" margins set by stylesheets, end up being a squarish "page", with a regularish (portrait) text block in the middle...

  -FF---------Term--
    mmm mm   |mmmmmm
    mmm mm   |mmmmmm
    mmm mm   |mmmmmm
             |mmmmmm
    mmm mm   |mmmmmm
             |mmmmmm
             |mmmmmm

So while some people probably prefer a 1:1 split, I usually end up with a 2:1 or maybe even closer to 3:1.

Is the Surface Pro anywhere near the point where the lack of vertical resolution limits productivity?

Myself, I find that 16:9 is preferable only for monitors 32 inches and larger. Below that size I'd like to have more vertical space.

For me, 1824 px of vertical resolution is more than enough.

Whether or not 7.9" of vertical physical space is enough to make use of the native resolution without scaling is an entirely different matter. I haven't tried it yet so I can't be sure myself.

In my experience, quadrupling the resolution (aka going retina) lets you go lower the font 1 point, giving you about 10% more vertical content on equivalently sized screens. So if you're happy with a 19" 1080p (9.3" vertical) screen, then I suspect that you'll be fine.

I am itching for a 4:3 simply because of digitized print media, e.g. books and PDFs and magazines.

You need a 12.2" 16:9 to display a magazine page at the same actual size as a 10" 4:3

3:2 is a compromise play, fitting video pretty well and requiring only a 10.8" screen to match the 10" 4:3 on print media.

That's setting completely aside questions of what aspect is simply most natural for a tablet- how comfortable it is to hold, how well it functions in both landscape and portrait, etc

I've been reading magazines and books on tablets for a while now, and while I agree that 4:3 portrait is naturally more suited to reading, most magazines are printed at an actual size of A4 paper or larger. So even on a 9.7 inch iPad, the content is being shrunk to "fit to vertical height".

This can make the content harder to read, as you're not viewing it at the actual size it was designed for. The alternative is to read it in landscape mode "Fit to horizontal width", but with visual clarity, the trade-off is having to scroll to read the whole page, which is annoying, and reminiscent of scrolling through a web page.

Yeah, even on the ten inchers there is some shrinking. We would really need a 11-inch 4:3 or something thereabouts.

Although to me, the ideal solution would be auto-cropping (or auto-zooming) the margins. The actual content is often only, say, 9" by 6.5". The tablet bezel serves as a margin for us, we don't need double margins.

The auto-cropping works for most magazines but not all. Businessweek is notorious for using margins to include photo captions, graph legends and related articles. Most mags also use the margins to include page numbers. Source: used to crop margins on magazine PDFs when reading on a 16:10 Android tablet. Not worth the hassle.

3:2 is the aspect ratio for comic books, actually.

I read a lot of digital comics (thank you, Marvel Unlimited), and my Surface Pro 3 is the best device for reading comics I've ever used. The 12" screen is the same exact size and aspect ratio as a physical comic book.

I prefer 16:9 too (for tablets, which is the topic of this story) but for a completely different reason: it is easier for someone with large hands such as myself to pick one up from a flat surface with one hand (in a "beer can" grip).

(For laptops and desktops, I prefer 4:3 as long as I have at least 1280 pixels of horizontal resolution.)

I generally favor 16:9 for phones, 16:10 for compact tablets (e.g. Nexus 7), 3:2 for large tablets and small laptops, and 4:3 for midsize-to-large laptops and desktops.

- Devices meant to be used in one hand should have aspect ratios that minimize width in portrait mode for ergonomic reasons.

- Laptops become very unwieldy past a certain width. From personal experience, a 14" 4:3 laptop is as wide as I'd ever want to deal with. 12" and below can be 3:2, though.

- Tablets should shoot for something in between, in part because they're used for media that varies wildly from 4:3 magazines to 16:9 movies to everything in between. I'm slightly biased here because I love reading comic books on tablets, those are naturally 3:2, and from personal experience my Surface Pro 3 is perfect for that purpose. 16:10 is a nice compromise for tablets that are small enough that holding it in one hand is still feasible (I speak from personal experience with a 2012 Nexus 7).

- Desktop monitors should maximize space in all directions. Square would be ideal, but I don't think anyone has ever made square monitors in significant volumes, so I just say 4:3 instead.

Actually, I have to admit that I'd probably prefer a square screen for desktops, but I don't think square monitors have ever been made in significant numbers.

Does anyone have information about battery life of core m3 vs I5 vs I7 in sp4?

I can't stand the material of the soft plastic keyboard case. It drives me batty.

I have a Surface Pro (original) and have used both the original Type Cover and the Type Cover 2 (illuminated). Both are fine for a tablet/laptop hybrid. I tested the Type Cover 4 a couple weekends back and it's fantastic. If I weren't switching to a Surface Book, I'd definitely be considering a Pro 4 with that new type cover. The key feel is amazingly good for the size and weight.

The new Type Cover also works with Surface Pro 3 as well....

Was desperately looking for a more direct comparison between the m3 and i5. I can't decide!

If the m3 meets the performance requirements, then cheaper would seem to make the choice obvious and more potential battery life would be like free chocolate cake.

Agreed. It does look like all models share the 39 Wh Battery... now we just need a performance comparison.

Unless the unit is replacing a recent generation i7, probably not since it is reasonable to assume that the next generation hardware will offer comparable or better performance than a device several generations old when said device is performing reasonably.

There are edge cases where the difference between adequate and inadequate performance will come down to the CPU or graphics card. In those cases, the difference between a Surface and a different class of device will be more important.

How does this compare against the Macbook?

- has a touch screen

- has a stylus

- has a detachable keyboard

- has Windows ;-)

Also it has Windows 10 instead of OS X, and probably worse touchpad (because so far, nobody else has gotten it right)

It's not Microsoft's fault that osx is an OS with extremely bad hardware support.

The Chromebook Pixels actually have as good (or better) touchpad than MacBooks

Can confirm - I've been using a pixel 2 for a while now and it's amazing.

Kind of bummed that Microsoft didn't go with the USB Type-C on these.

Has anyone seen how Linux/*BSD is coming along on these devices? I couldn't care less about OS X, and have little use for Windows (gaming without a high end GPU?) -- but well-integrated Linux would be nice.

That's obvious, I suppose; also it can be fixed :)

Who cares. Both lack a trackpoint.

You'll probably be more interested in a Surface if one of the following is true:

- You take handwritten notes or draw diagrams. - You're an artist who would prefer to draw on the screen rather than on an external tablet. - You want a 'consumption' device rather than a 'workstation'.

I would have never believed I would be saying to avoid a MS product of you want to get traditional work done but it's true in this case. Typing on it is not a good experience -- the keyboard is small, cheap, and missing many valuable keys, the touch screen is great but the mouse is atrocious.

Although they're trying to target artists, until the 'mobile' version of CS6 is ready is might be a pass. Pretty much any CS6 application will being the tablet to its knees and nearly burnt my lap.

The software selection is abysmal which sounds silly since just about everything is developed for Windows, but pretty much no one of consequence (except for MS themselves) is developing touch or pen friendly apps so you're left with muddling around with regular desktop apps which were designed with mouse/keyboard input in mind. It's not bad, but it's a little frustrating and not the best experience.

This is a general comment on Win 10 but the UI now has absolutely no consistency. This has pretty much been true for all iterations after XP but it's much more noticeable and jarring now. It's like they got half way through developing Win 10 but then gave up because the deadline was coming. I don't blame them for rushing after the failure that was Win 8 but it shows. Apple might put form over function but as least they care about it.

You might not really care because your IT department will be imaging it anyway but holy crap did MS choose the most user-hostile defaults. I really shouldn't have to comb through every setting and group policy disabling all their tracking and other assorted bullshit.

The new Office is nice but it has the same problems the Adobe suite. Unless you're using the mobile versions you'll just watch your battery life drain away -- Desktop OneNote is by far the worst offender and is almost unusable because of it.

To each his own. I've used an SP3 hard for a year now, and came from a 2012 MacBook Air. While the keyboard is inferior, I value the functionality, and honestly, it works fine. The trackpad is among the best I've used with Windows. As for software, as a lawyer I require little more than the Office Suite, Acrobat, and a browser (I use Chrome). All work beautifully on the Surface (and Windows 10 made it better), and I've been pleased/impressed with battery life. Finally, I could not disagree more about desktop OneNote. It's my favorite piece of software. I use it all day, every day.

I don't mean to be contrarian, but for all the years Microsoft took heat on HN for sucking, I think they deserve some real credit for developing a product that, at least for me, works really, really well.

I agree with everything here except that I find the Windows 10 UI to actually be quite nice and fairly consistent.

Cortana works better than Spotlight on OS X, and it doesn't cover up the middle of the screen to boot. I can actually do arithmetic with it without covering up the article with the numbers in it.

The Windows 10 virtual desktops are basically a copy of Mission Control, except a bit nicer. Windows doesn't hide your desktop thumbnails by default the way that El Capitan perplexingly does.

The window snapping feature in Windows 10 is vastly better than anything built into OS X by default. The split fullscreen view in El Capitan is a joke and extraordinarily clunky compared to just being able to snap windows to any half or quarter of the screen in Windows 10.

> Pretty much any CS6 application will being the tablet to its knees and nearly burnt my lap.

That's not what I find with my i7 sp3. Instead I find that it struggles to cool itself when the CPU is running at max for a period of time. Worse when I was living in Singapore I would have to have the AC on if I didn't want it to throttle itself as the ambient temp was 30°C.

I disagree completely. I have two Macbooks (2015 air and 2014 pro) for work and home but also use an SP3 at home.

Biggest weakness of the SP3 keyboard is the lack of gaps. It's a little flimsy but that's not a huge deal. SP4 looks like it fixes both of those things and finally has a solid trackpad.

Either way once you get used to the keyboard, Office applications are still far better on windows than Mac. Even with the new Mac Office. If I were an Excel heavy user, it's Surface without a question.

Comparing El Capitan to Windows 10, I wouldn't say OSX better anymore. Windows 10 certainly looks far better, no competition. Similarly spec'd, my Macbook air feels a lot slower although I do still prefer browsing on it. For productivity, I much prefer the way MS snaps windows to each side and find it far superior to OSX's new split view. Now that Windows has their own 'mission control', the feature gap has closed significantly.

Touchscreen for browsing is pretty nice too.

If we're talking pure fit and finish, they did come a long way from the disaster that was Win8, but honestly, in a feature comparison, "non-optional telemetry uploading" is a massive point in the favor of literally any other choice.

I can't take Windows seriously as a primary computing platform with that in mind - it was the foot over the creepy line IMO.

Bizarre. I've replaced an MBP, iPad, and desktop PC, with my SP3.

I've never heard anybody think of it as a "consumption" device. It's the most useful/productive piece of tech I've ever bought.

>The software selection is abysmal

>It's not bad

Bizarre

> You might not really care because your IT department will be imaging it anyway but holy crap did MS choose the most user-hostile defaults.

That reminds me; one of the main reasons I'm still running 8.1 pro on my "gaming" partion that I occasionally dual-boot into for gaming (and now, sadly, playing with Rift DK2, as Oculus have given up Linux support indefinitely).

I know I'll have to bite the bullet at some point, and as a note-to-self that might be of interest, some frantic searching if someone hadn't published some PowerShell scripts to turn off the madness, turned up this:

https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10

I haven't looked at it, but it certainly seems more sane than clicking through lots of gooeye just to take back one's OS.

Nice. Tier 1. Supercalafragilistic.

Yet when I think about this amazingly cool device , as a developer, I feel no inspiration. I don't see what I'm going to develop for this thing that will be different from what I'll be developing for a bog-standard, 400-dollar Dell Inspiron. Okay I might stick a bit of touch in there but I won't be making it touch-first. Microsoft acknowledges as much with this amazing keyboard.

The pen is actually cool, but no cooler than the Wacom I have been able to buy for more than a decade, and for which all use cases have already been deployed. There's not a whole lot more one can do with a computer pen without going to an actual piece of paper. I see MS Edge's annotations feature and I raise it "show me cross browser".

So yes I'd love to own one. But I'm not having any eureka moments.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this device is not the device at all, but what it reveals about the rejuvenated Microsoft. That this company which many were dismissing as history, is able to bring out a product, even though fairly conventional, that easily challenges Apple, suggests to me that MS is getting its mojo back, and I'll be taking notice when it talks software. That to me is what's greatest about this release. Not yet another (highly competent, indeed stunning, but conventional) notebook.

I disagree - the experience of writing with the pen, on the screen is totally not the same as writing on a Wacom tablet.

The pen can also be used as an ultra-portable mouse replacement - it fixes the "fat fingers problem" that plagues most touch screen interfaces and allows precise clicks, right-clicks and HOVERS which makes using multi level menus a breeze.

Regarding cross-browser annotations, that's something developers need to fix, :wink:, :wink:

I leave you with the mention of Staffpad[0], an amazing app for composing music which combines pen, touch, and some heavy processing into an amazing experience.

[0] http://hanselminutes.com/473/developing-staffpad-a-new-class...

Hmm the NAND write is a little low. Not a huge deal but a little surprising for a machine of this spec/price.

The Yoga 900 and this should be an interesting competition. I think I'll definitely grab one of them this year.

Save yourself the frustration and go w/ the Surface. I picked up a Yoga 2 last December and wish I had waited a little longer.

Overall the laptop has been okay. My main issues are w/ Lenovo's track record of the hidden / self-installing bloatware on their machines that has come to light this past year. Also, I have problems w/ the trackpad reliably registering clicks and taps, and the multi-gesture support leaves a lot to be desired.

Isn't the Surface Book a more interesting comparison to the Yoga 900?

I thought yes, but the price points are so astronomically different I'm not sure. We're talking $1399 for 512gb/16gb for the Y900 while the Surface Book is, I think $2199 or so. Also the Book has a discrete GPU which isn't an option on the Y900.

> I thought yes, but the price points are so astronomically different I'm not sure.

On the one hand yes, on the other hand surely that's something to factor in a comparison between machines which seem very similar in purpose?

> We're talking $1399 for 512gb/16gb for the Y900 while the Surface Book is, I think $2199 or so.

Hahaha no. For 16GB/512SSD it's $2700, the $2100 option only has 8GB/256SSD, though both use an i7 and have a dGPU.

> Also the Book has a discrete GPU which isn't an option on the Y900.

The Book only has a discrete GPU on some options. The $1500 8GB/128SSD and the $1700 8GB/256SSD only have an iGP.

Woops, I was looking into the 256gb. That's obscene, $2700.

That's a big annoyance, but I find the RAM issue worse, 16GB RAM is only available on the $2700 and $3200 models (resp. 512GB and 1TB SSD), from the $1500 to the $2100 price-points you get 8GB period end of the story.

aspect ratio on the yoga isn't even close

Yeah, thats a huge problem.

Unfortunately, his review sample only had the weak Intel integrated GPU. I can't wait to see some numbers from the models with the nVidia GPU.

There is no nVidia chip in the Surface Pro 4. I believe you are thinking of the Surface Book.

https://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/devices/surface-pro-...

I purchased a surface pro 3 when it first came out, and while it is a great improvement, it still can not compete with the iPad

* More Apps on itunes

* The glass is very easy to crack on the surface Pro

* Microsoft requires that you register the device. I suppose this is the norm for IPhones, but this detracts from the PC experience

* the Surface pro is not adept for comfort viewing - on the lap or in bed.

* It is still a PC that tries to be like a Tablet rather than a true tablet. It has a lot of very annoying issues: when watching a video in a browser, it sometimes goes in the background, requiring you to tab to the correct screen. The brightness and orientation take six clicks to adjust (this was fixed with Windows 10 in Tablet mode).

* The surface pro runs MUCH hotter - sometimes too hot to hold

* The iPad is more competitive for cost for the same specs

That's EXACTLY what it is, I believe that was the actual design philosophy behind the thing, you are stating this like they messed up or didn't understand what they were building. Whereas it's much more likely (by the sounds of it) that you didn't need a PC that can be a tablet, you needed an iPad. So I think they built the thing correctly, you probably should have just bought an iPad instead of Surface Pro.

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