New Surface Pro
microsoft.com
microsoft.com
> Support is limited to the country you purchased the device in.
Eg:
- If you buy an Apple laptop, and need a repair, they'll fix it if it's in warranty, regardless of where you are.
- If you buy a Microsoft laptop, and need a warranty repair done in a different country, Microsoft won't help you.
I purchased a Surface Book (which I love) in a Microsoft store in the US. It's been sporadically doing this since a couple of months after I unboxed it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_f85KlC5Bc
Microsoft UK won't fix it. Even when I travel to the US I'm not sure I'll be there long enough for Microsoft to do the repairs. I love the hardware, but this policy is really bad. I paid for the top of the range laptop and expect support for it.
Edit: I've raised this with Microsoft Support in the past and they've simply restated the policy and closed the case as resolved. When I attempted to escalate it, they told me to post a complaint to Microsoft's legal department (?!?).
it's crazy, even if common, to treat your customers like shit.
it's not MS's problem of people are dodging taxes, and it should be (if they want customers) their aim to help their customers.
I'd love to buy a surface pro but not having world wide warranty would stop me from buying it.
For example:
I've spoken to people who sell products online on Amazon.in and other marketplaces. All of them accept returns and write off the losses on those as overhead of doing business.
http://www.gadgetsnow.com/tech-news/Amazon-ends-refund-polic...
http://www.amazon.in/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=orc_h... — expand the laptop section and it says:
10 Days; Replacement only
Not eligible for return if the item is "No longer needed"
I've confirmed this with Amazon. You may have been successful, but nobody should buy a product assuming they can return it, when the policy says otherwise.
Try walking into a random shop and asking if they permit returns.
Not true. That is only for the iPhone. The Macbook has only national warranty.
Unless policies have changed drastically I'd say you are wrong.
There are some country-specific restrictions- here in Mexico, they are unable to fix Apple products from other countries sometimes due to government restrictions; e.g., they were unable to replace my girlfriend's iPad screen at any price at the Apple Store since it was bought in the US.
Most of the stuff was not avoidable- image retention on the screen, worn out battery, defective motherboard, etc.
> Apple reserves the right to change the method by which Apple may provide repair or replacement service to you, and your Covered Equipment’s eligibility to receive a particular method of service. Service will be limited to the options available in the country where service is requested. Service options, parts availability and response times may vary according to country.
It sounds like you can get treated differently based on where you are.
Similarly if your power brick dies, you can't expect an apple store to carry power bricks for all possible outlets(especially with the iPhone style bricks that don't have removable prongs).
Still sounds like you'll get supported to that countries ability to support you.
You may obtain service in the European Economic Area (EEA) countries and Switzerland without paying any shipping and handling fees. Outside this region, service options may be limited. If a given service option is not available for the Apple Product in such country, Apple or its agent shall notify you about any additional shipping and handling charges which may apply before rendering service. Shipping and handling charges will not apply in countries where Apple does maintain an Apple Retail Store or Apple Authorized Service Provider (“AASP”) (a list of current service locations is provided at locate.apple.com/uk/en).
IANAL, but basically this seems to say: (1) in the EEA you can get your support no questions asked, (2) outside the EEA you may have to pay S&H charges, unless there is an Apple Store or Reseller.
1. Even in the EEA, you may have to pay shipping and handling.
2. Where there's no representative of Apple (and I'm not saying there should be), can you really say "Apple service is available, you just have to pay shipping"? The reality is closer to "You will have to ship it internationally". Apple isn't "doing" anything here but accepting a package in a country where they have service locations.
https://store.apple.com/Catalog/Images/worldwidewarranty.htm...
Apple care is totally worldwide.
I've travelled with Mac laptops since the Powerbook days and every single time it has been fixed in the country I was in. The warranty checks done on Apple Support make no reference to the country of purchase.
This can be misleading. I bought my Macbook Air in Portugal, had 2y warranty there. Then moved to the UK and the brick stopped working. Went to an Apple Store and since it was after the 1y warranty offered when you buy it in the UK, they rejected replacing it for me. Eventually went to Portugal to visit my family and got a new brick from the same store in 5 minutes. On a curious note, there's no Apple Stores in Portugal yet so in this particular case it was even more interesting to realise how much better help I got from a non-official store.
Therefore, Apple either has to say "our laptops are only good for three years", or say that particular laptop was defective and fix it.
Sure does: 2 years. http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar...
They even have a page outlining the difference: https://www.apple.com/de/legal/statutory-warranty/
It is kind of cheeky, since in most cases for Apple products, the seller is also Apple.
I still don't understand how these make sense together...
"This 2-year guarantee is your minimum right. National rules in your country may give you extra protection: however, any deviation from EU rules must always be in the consumer's best interest." (which is the case of UK law).
I still don't see any problem. Apple states that you get 1 year of "Apple" warranty, which allows you to get your product serviced by Apple, at no cost, independently of where you bought it.
Beyond that date UK law will apply, but since it applies to the seller, and not the manufacturer, they say to contact the seller (as I said in another post, a bit cheekily, since they will be also the seller in many cases).
Unless of course you buy Apple Care, that will allow the same level of service as the 1 year warranty...
( Source: http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/guar... German EU LAW: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/DE/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... (99/44/EG) )
Edit: Well the most important fact of course is that there is no "eu law" there are just policies that the countries than can enforce/make a law out of it (http://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/overview-law...) well european can than make claims against the country, but sometimes they even fail to do that.
On top of that, as merb said, following the EU directive, local law (in France, that's the Hamon bill) says the legal warranty of compliance[0] covers for the whole two years. So Apple can tell me to buzz off past the first year if I bought their hardware from Amazon, but so that I can go through them directly instead of going the roundabout way through the seller during the first year. The seller can never tell you to buzz of (as long as you duly prove the defect past 6 months as merb said), even during the time a possible commercial warranty applies, but it can be more efficient to go through the manufacturer directly, as is the case with Apple Stores, but I've been using this for other brands where the wait list was months long through the seller whereas the manufacturer fixed it in less than a week and even footed the bill for the postage.
[0]: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F11094
[1]: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F11093
[2]: https://www.apple.com/legal/warranty/products/mac-french.htm...
In practice it's a mess system. Courts choose and pick however they want to implement the directives, even in countries where courts should be independent the ruling political countries have enough pressure on the courts. Sometimes they even enforce invalidated directives which is unlawful but then again if a country has enough money they could just pay the fines. Therefore there is so much unhappiness about the EU in the general populace, local politicians blame the EU laws, EU politicians blame the local laws and no one is accountable, it really sucks and isn't what a democracy is supposed to be.
Mobile phones also have a 5 year warranty here as you "should expect them to last this long" according to a court ruling.
I don't think that's an outlier. In my experience, going to an Apple Store is always more frustrating, time-consuming, and expensive (if you are buying upgrades) than going to an authorised reseller.
IIRC, there's an authorized retailer in Lisbon (Chiado). Warranty-wise, I wonder how buying one there factors in vs. getting one from anywhere that sells them new (like FNAC).
I walked in to a US Apple store and explained the problem. The Genius person agreed there was a fault and then started tapping away at their computer. He umm'ed and ahh'ed and called over a manager.
At this point I was thinking they were going to reject the warranty repair for some reason, but the manager ended up apologizing that they didn't have any UK-style MacBook replacement keyboards in stock, and they couldn't work out how to order the part in on their US system.
As it happens I had moved to the US, so getting a US keyboard was actually a bonus. I told them I was happy with a US keyboard, and 10 minutes later I was leaving the store with it installed in my MacBook.
I had to take my MacBook in three times durnig its life, for the same issue (wifi/bt issues because of aircard connection to VM)
Every single time I was told to make an appointment. Which take about 3 days to get. They took the laptop and spend a week fixing it (every time!) My experience at Multiple Apple stores in Southren Ontario.
4/$ still works, but some of the other symbols are in different places.
Yes. US ISO layout is superior if you need to do any programming (or even just to write some Markdown), too bad it's not used more.
On German keyboards it's even 'worse' though. Because ;, [ and ] are used for ä, ö and ü, [ and ] are Strg + ⇧ + 8 and Strg + ⇧ + 9. Same for { and }.
(Strg = Ctrl)
So any keyboard shortcut involving those and ⇧ or Ctrl is pretty much impossible.
The labeling is actually cooler, with images instead of "Shift", "Tab" etc.
I don't really understand why this is done, since well-made symbols are also understandable for illiterate people or those not speaking the language.
On the other hand having to read all that in text while you're riding by isn't very reasonable either. Complex signage is only as good as your knowledge of it, which maybe is why passing a driving test in Europe is so much harder; it requires knowledge we just get from being able to read in the US.
Only bicycles
>2. a bicycle on a white circle outlined in red
No bicycles.
>3. a bicycle on a blue [rectangle]
Recommended route for bicycles.
That being said, traffic signage is a mixture of both, where some meaning is given by convention (e.g., white background and red border means "not allowed"), and then extrapolated by pictograms (bicycles not allowed, trucks not allowed, pedestrians not allowed).
Edit: A certain cultural context is of course always required, to know for example that a crossed out cigarette applies to smoking in general and doesn't mean that you can smoke pipes, cigars, or bongs. Such 'misunderstandings' only happen with QA engineers though. ;)
But really, if you're driving then you should have done a driving exam and test in your home country. Then you're ready to drive from Romania to Ireland (with the help of some tunnels and ferries) and be able to manage reading the road signs the whole way. This is possible because of a (mostly) shared iconography. Of course, on a bike you don't need to pass a test but you should do a little bit of studying to make sure you don't get a fine.
The US doesn't need this because it uses English.
This is also completely distinct from keyboards which aren't even QWERTY across Europe. There are also AZERTY (France) and QWERTZ (Germany) and some countries like Belgium have all three in the same office as people have different preferences. And pair programming is as painful as you can imagine.
white circle with red outline: something that is forbidden (the road is forbidden for bycicles)
the last one indicates a bycicle-only path crossing the road, 150 meters before it you should see a white triangle outlined in red ("danger") with a bycicle inside it
On the MBP I'm typing this on, the key is labeled enter in small type and below that return in larger type. I think holding down the fn key and pressing that key does the enter action, while without fn it does the return action. I am pretty sure my full-size Mac keyboard has return on the main keyboard and enter on the numeric keypad. I think the Lisa was the same.
IIRC there was no Enter key on the original (128K) Mac keyboard, but the optional numeric keyboard had the Enter key.
Apple have an old user interface guideline that basically said that the main keyboard was for primarily typing text, while traditional data entry was secondary. Hence the function of the Return key was strictly to insert a carriage return into some text. And so no Enter or Control key on the original keyboard. As a kind of substitute Apple introduced the Command (Swedish campground) key, but it wasn't a direct mapping of Control. And IBM further muddied the waters by introducing CUA. By the time of the Mac II the default keyboard was much more compatible with common computers. It was a time of rapid change.
It's a disgusting view, I'll give you that
1. Physical keyboard layout (how keys are placed). There are two primary standards: ANSI (mostly US) and ISO (most of Europe). The most notable difference is the shape of the Enter key (L-shaped on an ISO keyboard and straight on an ANSI one). ISO keyboards also have one extra key and a shorter left Shift to make space for it.
2. Logical keyboard layout (how key presses are interpreted). This is what is printed on key caps, but it doesn't have any relation to the actual scan codes being sent. Many languages use their own accented characters (e.g. ąęćłóńżź for Polish) and historical preferences (e.g. QWERTY/QWERTZ/AZERTY), but this is implemented in software.
Logical layout can be easily configured in the operating system, and for touch typists it doesn't really matter what is printed on the keys, but differences in physical layout can take some time to get used to.
PS. I'm Polish, I live in the UK, and I type on a US mechanical keyboard with ANSI layout :)
As a UK->US transplant I really miss the Enter key shape. :(
First, it's somehow easier to type ~ on UK layout (no weird finger twists) - helps quicker to get to your home directory when navigating terminal.
Second, I use cmd+1/2/3 to switch tabs a lot. Cmd + ` rotates windows. You can imagine it's very easy to mix up 1 with ` and instead of having the tab you want, end up with completely different window. Really breaks my flow often.
I do not mind enter key that much. In fact I think US one is better.
Protip: "cd" with no arguments normally takes you to your home directory. Though if you need to reference something in your homedir using a global path without changing directories, ~ is probably still the fastest way to do it.
Also, only about 20 countries have Apple stores, so that's also limited.
Was traveling in UK, and laptop keyboard cracked - big hole in the side of the keyboard. Took it to Apple store in London - forget which one - replaced at no cost in about 3 hours.
EDIT: per goatforce5's comment, I had a bit of 'umm' and 'ahh' when I was in London. I thought it would be "out of warranty", but it was the same thing - "not sure we have any parts to fit the US keyboard". They did find one, but that was the potential hold up.
Same thing happened to me (white Macbook, cracks on the keyboard). AFAIK it is a known defect from this series and Apple accredited repair shops were instructed to replace the keyboard for free no matter if the warranty was still valid or not.
It's still a good thing though, I know no other brand that would do that for free 4 years after the warranty expired (in my case).
The reason I wrote that is because I've purchased multiple MacBook Airs in the US and Apple UK has always serviced them. Obviously your experiences are different.
I've gotten 4 or 5 replacements, for free. I always have spares (instead of carrying them with me). So always claim "Dude, weird, I just bought this a few months ago."
Given the past drama, I think Apple just swaps them, to avoid any further bad PR.
And, frankly, these adapters should last forever. For comparison, I don't think I've ever replaced an HP or Dell adapter.
My employer is in New Jersey, I'm in Canada. They purchased me a Surface Pro 3 at my request, and I've never had a problem getting support directly from Microsoft, including 2 48-hour replacements.
I'm glad you had a good experience, but this does not make my poor experience or what Microsoft UK has repeatedly told me 'incorrect'.
My case number is 1378118289.
"Support is limited to the country you purchased the device in"
But it certainly doesn't invalidate your poor experience, which sounds very frustrating.
That said, your video looks familiar. Does it go away if you disconnect and reconnect the keyboard? Every once and a while I have to do that.
This is categorically not true of apple or several other brands i've gotten gear this way from.
There is no warranty, but the lenses are cheaper (due to currency values and the price the companies set it can be a little cheaper, but sometimes a lot cheaper). In the old days the prices in magazines for equipment where in 2 columns, US and imp (imported by us).
In your case you bought the computer overseas an brought it in yourself.
For example Nikon doesn't want you buying gray market and set up a page to try to deter people: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/nikon-store/gray-market.page
Some places that sell gray market lenses will cover the warranty for you in place of the manufacturer (probably a good bet, the if the items are well made and they have an in house repair)
https://www.photo.net/discuss/threads/would-you-buy-gray-mar...
In this case, I just hope they want to squeeze every last dollar out of their buyers, like Hollywood does with movies.
Otherwise, regional/country-locked sales/warranties make little sense.
In other cases, it is about squeezing every last dollar out of the buyers. Mostly those in UK and EU.
As a pro-tip you can disable the touchscreen in device manager. Even if you do this the pencil/pen will still work on the touchscreen, but 'touch' will be disabled, so you can can still use it in a pinch but without it being a non-starter device.
I was so impressed at first at the technical support, they seemed very responsive. But the first support persons promise of help with-in days never materialized. And the number they gave us to get back in touch with them no longer worked. The second support person promised to exchange the surface. But the exchange location was in Shanghai not Beijing. A trip not possible for a teenager in a foreign country.
Time and time again they made promises which were never fulfilled. I swore MS off forever at one point. I finally figured out how to disable the touch screen so that the surface was at least usable as a laptop.
To give some MS credit they did promise to exchange the surface for a new one when she returned home. Even though it was technically out of warranty by a week at that point. By then there were strong yellow lines on the screen for some reason. Their exchange turned out to just be a repair for the touch screen (after waiting two weeks). But it was obviously the same machine because the lines where still there. Finally some strong but nice words with the manager of the MS store got them to exchange the surface that day.
Lets hope the new ones are better...
Apparently, if there's a service center directly run by Apple, they'll service it regardless of the country.
Its even €60 cheaper in the UK, €50 cheaper in Germany.
As for the keyboard discussion below: when the mechanical layout is the same, or close, you can just change it from the preferences. I poured green tea into my powerbook 1400 in Tokyo; while waiting for a repair part I used it with an external Japanese keyboard set to US letter layout. I would get confused if I looked down so just typed with a blanket or jacket over my hands and it worked great. (Ironically that model was made in Japan, by Sony I believe, and was only serviceable by sending it to Japan. Since I was there I got to watch someone fix my machine while I waited).
I have gotten Applecare repair support in India where there were no Apple stores (at the time).
My workload is probably something like 40% reading, 30% writing, 25% coding, and 5% running code, and the Surface has been a nearly ideal form factor for this.
The new "Surface Pro" ticks a lot of boxes for me:
- Supports my existing keyboard, pen, dock, and power adapter
- Improves battery life substantially
- Offers improved keyboard and pen for when I get around to it
- Fanless options
- Improved performance (not that I need much more)
Unfortunately, the configurations are weird. My ideal machine is an i5/256GB/16GB. The closest I can get is i7/512GB/16GB, which nearly doubles the cost, and requires a fan. I just don't get how they can make the floor for 16GB RAM $2200. Is there any professional workload where 8GB isn't constricting today, let alone in another 3 years? My only thought here is that maybe the RAM increases the thermal envelope enough to require the fan, but that seems unlikely, and I would still happily make that sacrifice if I didn't have to also pay for the processor and disk upgrades.
I'm going to harangue them on Twitter, and also look into clearance SP4s with 16GB.
Can you comfortably run some kind of linux VM on it? What kind of external keyboard does it support? How does the display hold up in moderate lighting conditions?
For a lot of work, I've got a desktop, but I use my 2013 mbp at cafes and such. I mostly do node and frontend work, so while a strict windows dev env is feasible, I prefer linux.
I have run VMs on this, but 8GB RAM gets tight, so it's not something I do regularly. I do use Microsofts version of Bash on Ubuntu for things where I am more comfortable with standard linux tools.
I use the type cover for almost everything, but I've got a more traditional keyboard hooked up to my dock.
The display is excellent. It's glossy, so direct sunlight is problematic, but otherwise it gets plenty bright and looks very good to me, though I suspect my tolerance for colour inaccuracy is pretty high.
I prefer lightweight tools, so I use Visual Studio Code. It won't hold your hand, but neither will it get in your way.
When working on projects, get in the habit of using virtualenvs. It's a small amount of overhead, but will save you a ton of frustration in the long run. A primer on windows:
From project directory, initialize it:
> python -m venv .env
(I put my virtualenvs in .env out of habit. Virtualenvwrapper, itself a useful addition for managing virtualenvs, puts them in your home directory, which can be fine too.)
Activate it:
> .env\Scripts\activate.bat
Use "pip" to install your dependencies. Also use "pip freeze" to record those dependencies for installations elsewhere. I'm currently following this for dependency management: https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/a-better-pip-workflow
Keyboard? Anything USB or Bluetooth. Only one USB port, though.
Display? Pretty bright, the spec is posted if you look. Glossy, but everything is these days.
VM? Sure, it's a 2 core 4 thread processor, just order enough RAM. My i7 has Hyper-V but I don't know if that extends across all procs.
Some details on running NixOS in Hyper-V, in case anyone's interested: https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-hardware/blob/master/microsof...
EDIT: ah, yes: worth to note, the first specimen I bought had some kind of hardware issue; the GPU driver was crashing somewhat frequently, and the whole machine was crashing from time to time too (like, a couple times a week). Was super disheartening. Fortunately, I was able to replace it in the shop where I got it (they had a limited time offer where you could replace during the first month, no questions asked; http://x-kom.pl, just to thank them through some lip service). The replacement doesn't show such problems, fortunately (over a year already).
I have storage coming out of my ears after years of collecting disks cards servers and clouds so I have no need to buy a larger SSD.
Being forced into a higher bracket would make me look around more. The clearance SP4s are a great deal right now and I'm not regretting my full-price purchase.
Enjoy your SP4!
- Reading, watching, or gaming, particularly if I'm walking around frequently
- Taking notes (principle reason I got the Surface was my attachment to handwritten notes)
*I often use the Surface with the keyboard attached, but in positions that no ordinary laptop could support. Laying on the couch with the hinge hooked between my knees and the keyboard on my thighs, or with the hinge hooked over the steering wheel and the keyboard more or less dangling (not while driving, of course).
Even though it's a small amount of my usage, having that capability available to me means I can avoid carrying other things.
They keyboard cover is nice, but I find it to be an incredibly annoying add-on to what I consider a perfect form-factor.
At work it gets hauled around as a notebook for writing notes and annotating documents. If I find I need to do some more serious work, I just stand it on the table and start using the keyboard. When I get back to my desk it gets used as an ancillary laptop.
At home whether it's a laptop or tablet depends on what I'm doing. If I'm just mindlessly clicking through reddit while using it as a remote for Netflix, then I'm definitely just using it bare. If I decide I want to type out a lengthy reply to a Hacker News post or do some programming, I'll shift over to the coffee table with a keyboard.
Definitely see a lot of people that bought them with the best of intentions that don't really make full use of them. I've had my eyes on the "convertible" market for years, though, and I don't regret the purchase at all.
Perhaps not surprisingly I think a pixel sense "screen" that could be paired to something like a NUC wirelessly would be a pretty awesome peripheral as well. Something I intend to build out of my SP4 when I upgrade it.
1. I write in my daily journal using the surface pen and onenote.
2. I am taking notes in onenote with the surface pen at a meetup.
3. I am writing random fiction nonsense (onenote, surface pen).
4. I am taking notes in onenote w/ pen on one side of the screen, while having chrome open on the other with one of the MOOCs I am taking.
5. I am working on Chinese or Japanese exercises in onenote w/ pen with my kindle open to an exercise book.
I play around with portrait / landscape, having the flipback extended, etc, based on mood and position.
SP3.
Somewhat more concerning is the half dozen times in recent months where it has crashed and then had some kind of trouble starting up. Two such times I was convinced that it was the end for it, but leaving it for a while always allowed it to recover.
But mostly, battery life. SP3 wasn't a champ to start with, but I could get 4+ hours of work done easily without charging. At this point it's less than 2 hours before I'm hunting for a charger, which does change how I use the device.
But in spirit, yes, this. The upgrade in RAM should be $80 in hardware, but I have to pay $900 for it because of the configuration options.
I've recently went form 8GB to 16GB (and a processor jump) and my dev environment haven't really gotten snappier.
That said it still feels like the easiest thing they could offer in all SKUs, given the price.
Then there's the fact that I expect to keep it for another 3 years, and I doubt memory usage will go down.
Linux, a reasonably memory efficient text editor, and some chrome tab discipline is all it takes.
In end, however, Docker dependencies eventually forced my hand to upgrade.
Mentally, whenever I hold a Surface, I don't find myself thinking of the kind of experience I expect from the iPad. I realize now there is the iPad Pro, which has more horsepower/keyboard/pen etc., but it still doesn't feel like a full laptop.
Does anyone else feel like the iPad experience is more.. I dunno, geared towards casual use and entertainment with the walled garden of apps, and Microsoft really doesn't reach/target the same market (even though they are trying)?
EDIT: I guess I am trying to say, something about this market still doesn't feel quite right.. maybe there are still options to innovate.
The biggest thing that's dragging Surface down is its UI. Neither classic Windows apps, nor Metro apps are very pleasant to use on the given hardware.
I wonder what Alan Kay thinks of Surfaces compared to iPads.
It is really fascinating to look at laptop and tablet and phone evolution from a distance.
Computers became "personal", and then "luggable", and then "portable", and then "laptop", and then "handheld", and then "phones." As they walked that transition computers were getting more and more powerful, but they were still shedding features as the evolved.
And then at the 'phone' endpoint of evolution they sort of 'bounced backward'. The key to that bounce was screens. First they got to be higher resolution, and then they got to be bigger (clearly testing what was more desirable). And as boundaries along size have started to settle out they have been getting back peripherals (pens, styli, and keyboards).
I feel like the current hardware has re-affirmed a couple of truths. One is that keyboards remain an accelerator for input much like bicycles accelerate walking. Very difficult to improve upon. Styli only make sense if they are at least as good as the instruments most people use and that measure of 'goodness' is sensitivity and lag. The last is that command entry is often gesture based, and while you can do it with keyboards or styli there is a certain "grace" associated with turning the page by flicking your finger rather than pressing the 'down arrow' key or the 'next' button.
The tension is that all of them, the laptop, the tablet, the phone are the "same" thing but tuned in slightly different ways.
> The most versatile laptop.
What's the point of the question?
Lots of end users want a laptop with 32g.
Windows overhead, Visual Studio, Linux VMs, multiple docker containers, local dynamodb, sql database, queues, etc. If you're developing locally against a workflow with a few VMs in the mix, 16gb can be an incredible constraint. I'm not trying to simulate hundreds of users, just one across a stack.
the demand for 32g in a laptop was greater than the demand for a touchbar, I can tell you that.
Fortunately, there’re some ultrabooks on the market with user-upgradeable RAM. This article says Intel CPUs supports 16GB DDR3L modules since Broadwell, i.e. you should be able to install 32GB yourself: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/16-gb-so-dimm-ram-module...
It becomes essential once you start running VM's or Docker etc
Remember, this is a fanless design so thermal throttling will be insane, just like on the macbook and the xps13.
why does this apply here: because I can easily imagine artists using this to modify some assets and trying to run the game to see what they look like, but with 16GB of ram they won't even load the editor, much less the actual server+client combo.
But hey, we're always hiring!
by the way the integrated graphics are real shit in this laptop, better go get a MSI or something. This PC's are clearly not for high end work, it's just Macbook Pro kind of "pro".
PD: I think if you're running the whole map on the RAM you're doing something wrong.
Is it really shocking that dev machines have a lot of ram?
If someone works in full frame photography or edits 4K video, do you tell them to try working on machines with 4GB of ram to see what they come up with, and how it's going to be "beneficial"?
Why would it be any different for games? When a level designer loads the entire map into editor, it's the same as loading a 4K video into Adobe Premiere - it's going to eat up your ram, and you need to have loads of it.
>>Who in hell does run a game server on a laptop, and outside office?
At E3, the answer is - literally everyone. We send one guy with a fully encrypted beefy laptop that runs all servers during the show, and he has to keep an eye on it 100% of the time. You're not going to fly a desktop over the Atlantic just for a games conference.
Because they can travel with people and desktop computers.. kinda.. can't.
Why not fly just an encrypted SSD with the game and buy desktop at the location?
With global inventories, it shouldn't be that hard for major vendors like Dell or Apple to offer an identical configuration to drop a hard drive into.
"He knew from experience that it was always impossible to cut content down to memory budgets, and that many projects had come close to failing because of it. So now, as a regular practice, he always put aside a nice block of memory to free up when it's really needed."
[1]: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/132500/dirty_coding_tr...
I work on a pretty complex system myself and every few months somebody comes in,takes a quick look and tells us we just need to use framework X and all will be easy. Guess what, we are not totally stupid and have looked at it already. And it wouldn't solve the actual problem which is that it's just a very complex thing we are doing.
First understand what people are doing before telling them they are wrong.
TEST things under the constraints of machines that people own. Multiple people have given multiple reasons why there are better ways to do things. I read another recently talking about being able to capture all the game state for debugging, too.
Because it's impractical, unnecessary and wasteful. There are a number of processes that by their nature require global knowledge. These are not the sorts of processes that need to be done in the client (many of them in fact are done up front precisely so that a client will not need to do them), but they are the sorts of processes that a developer will need to do if they are to be able to make a change and see its effect. Also, there are good reasons to generate assets at a higher resolution than needed in the final artifact.
Just like if you're rendering a 3d animated film you might need a more powerful machine than those who are only watching it, or if you're training a neural net, you need a more powerful system than if you're merely running it.
But I work in the same company as Gambiting, on the same game I think. And yes, loading a map that is the size of San Andreas in GTA5 (with more props) is expensive on memory.
You can't "load a region" in the editor, not because there is a design constraint but because you need to generate navigation meshes, collision systems, render objects etc before you "stream" them in, not to mention that "streaming" is a hack that is build for consoles and weak PCs and has to be optimised for to work reliably, you'd spend more time chasing bugs in your streaming than actual bugs you were working with.
So, you load the whole map, you generate your navigation mesh and run your collision detection, and then you can do mapwide things like "find breaks in the world" and other stuff.
In this case, yes, 64G is helpful, because a developers time, especially a tools programmers time who deals in very low level C++/ASM optimisations for AAA games' time is worth more than a studio full of 64G ram modules.
For videogames, both latency, bandwidth, and software support ain’t quite there yet.
I've taken to using an external usb fan to get extra speed.
It's common to run several types of server in production, these all need to be run on localhost for development purposes. Also virtual environments so server architecture can easily be scripted.
16GB works for me, but is far from ideal. I was hoping MS would one-up Apple here, but not yet.
AFAIK, the reason ultrabooks have LPDDR3 is because it is very low profile when soldered. If thin is your thing, you want LPDDR3. My t460p has a smaller footprint than a MBP, but it is as thick as a whole stack of them.
The difference between LPDDR3 and DDR3 isn't dramatic in actual operation; LPDDR3 uses about 70% of the power of DDR3.
It becomes a bigger deal when the machine is in standby, however; LPDDR3 uses 10% the power of DDR3. This would be a big deal for Apple, which also insists on using LPDDR3, and has historically sold machines with standby times measured in weeks or months. Not sure if people have particular expectations of standby times from Surface Pros, but if they're used like tablets you'd want it to be decent. Keeping the memory powered is nearly the only power used when a computer's in standby, so 10x the power usage would be a huge deal.
Furthermore, I found that solutions which couldn't be successfully worked on with <16GB RAM were basically architecturally unsound. Not being able to scale the workload on demand or control peak demand. Extra RAM just hid poor developers from their non-scalable solutions - or just increased their downtime till they got an OUT OF MEM error. The issues were only exacerbated at scale - failing even with 128+ GB in RAM.
Basically, when the difference between a dev sample and a prod sample is 3+ orders of magnitude, your ability to scale the process up/down, fail gracefully, even battery life, etc. are far more important than having large swathes of memory to fail on. Especially on the go.
If you do deal with production (big) data, you're ssh'ed in to some always-on, process-maintained hardware if only for the sake of latency and interruptions. And you better have the toolset to do it. How much memory does a terminal take?
For graphics, I understand - but then you're definitely not working on a surface pro or on the go at all really.
ie I'm running Rails, MySQL, Elastic, Redis, Nginx, Memcached, and in some cases, multiple instances (dev, test, and multiple shards)
And then the usual OS requirements - Vim, 250 browser tabs, Slack, Hangouts, etc.
I'm sure there are all manner of optimisations and assumptions that could cut things down, but I'd rather the big manufacturers upgrade their RAM capacity every few years so I can focus on a dev environment that's a good approximation for prod.
Also, 250 tabs? dayum. I don't know how anyone could effectively use that many tabs. I don't think thats what browsers/laptops are designed for. My mind memory of just the tabs would be saturated long before the laptop's.
I do work in graphics/rendering, I work on laptops often and plan to get a surface pro, 16 GBs is the most painful part of working on a laptop for sure. It is the primary reason I spend most of my day on the 128GB ram desktop whenever I'm close. But even 32GB would go a long way for me.
Longer device life and usefulness comes come from additional ram than a beefier processor.
Apple mentioned somewhere the 32 GB laptop jump involves dealing with a battery usage hit. While 32 GB arrives, a few vendors like Lenovo seem to have the 32 GB offering available in laptops, but not their Surface Pro clone.
I can see some people not digging the kickstand, but I'd say give it a try before dismissing it.
I don't have experience on a car, but I routinely use it on my lap in the public transport, on airplanes, and on "small coffe tables", as long as I accept "90% of comfort".
Of course, the SP is a hybrid, so if the laptop form factor is a requirement (or "100% comfort"), then no hybrid is an appropriate choice (except the Surface book, which is arguably overpriced).
Regardless, it's definitely wrong to state that it needs more space; it actually needs less than a laptop, as it only needs three contact points - the kickstand, the screen bottom, and the top/lower side of the keyboard.
Additionally, it has the great feature of elevating the heat source off the ground. This comes up any time I want to sit it on, for example, my couch. With my old laptop, the fan exhaust was largely getting smothered in upholstery, but with my surface pro it's sitting 6 inches above the table/couch/surface.
You can barely use it in your lap if your legs are crossed, and the keyboard can't be used if you're holding the device in mid-air. Other than that, my complaints are all about heat dispersion/generation, not the form factor.
I will agree it was awesome on plane tray tables, but that was about the only "oh cool! obvious advantage!" location.
i found myself wanting a normal laptop that could hold itself up repeatedly, and kept switching back to my macbook pro
Which, honestly, I might prefer right now since I still use mostly usb 2&3 devices.
This product wouldn't be appealing to me if they'd put Type-C on it instead of SurfaceConnect and Type-A.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15674254/microsoft-surfac...
> Microsoft is planning to release a dongle that will plug into the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices and provide USB-C support. It’s like any dongle you’d expect, and it simply slots into the Surface connector port on the device. “If you want to charge a device with a Type-C charger, you can. If you want to put data back and forth with a Type-C peripheral, you can,” says Panay.
And of course I would prefer to have a magnetic charging connector over USB-C all day. Makes even more sense if your USB-C is from this very same connector.
Jesus christ this is insane.
Most developers seem to assume their program is the only program running on the system.
This is why my girlfriend can't have multiple browsers open. For a "demanding" workoad (IE; IntelliJ IDE, browser, mail client) windows can easily consume 15/16G already.
Personally I use a stripped down linux machine but I'm regularly over 8G, where's the future-proof option?
Fortunately, in my arena of software we distribute work off of the computer and our programs are more piecemeal. Very few software engineers need a large amount of resources locally.
I run all of that on a 8 GB machine, it works perfectly.
What would you even plug into it? It's not like USB-C accessories are readily stocked everywhere, I'm still carrying around dongles all day for my TouchBar MBP.
If the laptop shipped with USB-C people would be whinging they need dongles, literally can't win.
How about multiple USB ports, say 1 USB-A and 1 USB-C?
The transition to USB-C has begun. For most of the life of the device, you'll probably want USB-C.
I'm sure Microsoft will get to it in the next release.
USB-A.
> five years
Both—not having either will mean tons of dongles.
> 10 years?
USB-C.
[EDIT] actually the 10-year will probably be "some other stupid new connector, with USB-C dongles"
lets just let it die and move to cables that won't need a dongle and aren't thicker than almost everything in a laptop from this generation
I could HotSync my Treo over Bluetooth 10 years ago and it was an effortless two-way sync with reasonably good conflict resolution.
It amazes me that nothing quite gets that right these days.
I have no intention of replacing any of these things until they break, that could be a long, long time.
USB came out it 1996. Peripherals stick around a long time.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/why-your-next-phone-or-laptop-sh...
You'll soon need adapters to use those peripherals for laptops and Surface type devices.
I've only seen the joystick port appear on sound cards, which themselves are pretty much dead, and the AT connector was all but extinct by the mid 1990s.
New motherboards seem to fall into two camps: Legacy ports of all flavours, or ridiculous numbers of USB 3.0 ports. I saw one recently with 12 USB3.0 connectors on the back.
I'm guessing that many of the almost 400 million Android phones that ship this year will have USB-C. Chromebooks? They're going USB-C.
You're just telling us that you'll be happy with legacy. That's fine with me. Not everyone has to plan for the future. It's coming with or without you.
[EDIT] I'd add: yeah, we have some USB-C Android phones at work. Most of them have... USB-A on the other end of the cable that came with them (there's one exception).
The point is that market is starting to adopt USB-C, and everyone should be ready for the transition. I want a future port on my new computers, which will have a 5-10 year lifespan. USB-A would be nice too, but if I can only have one type, I'll take the future port.
> What connector do you think you'll need in two years, five years, 10 years?
And my answers were USB-A, both, and USB-C (but probably also whatever replaces it), respectively.
Your response to my answer was to tell me that lots of host devices are shipping with USB-C, which has no effect whatsoever on my answer (which I expect is typical, even of people on HN). I thought you must not understand that a bunch of host devices supporting USB-C barely has any effect on what I'll be plugging into my computers for the next few years, since you responded that way, so I gave an (incomplete) list of my USB-A devices which will almost all still be working in 2 years, and most of them in 5, and also, incidentally, a complete list of my USB-C devices (none).
USB-A is hands-down the more useful port to me for the next few years. USB-C is a nice bonus for future-proofing but has zero immediate utility, and will still have little or none in 2 years. Just answering the question.
A $2000 device should have the new port.
If I'm not mistaken, save from the flash drives and non-bluetooth dongles, all of those can be converted with a simple cable switch. Wired KB+mice may unfortunately be cabled into the device but it's still practical enough to just keep an adapter on the end or there's some soldering for a cable swap to be done. Unless you plan to change all of your gear at once, you're in for such a transition anyway, one way or the other.
I have to agree with melling here, such a pricey device that I'd plan to keep for at least 5 years should have the new port.
No. USB-C will soon dominate.
USB-A was two years ago.
We're currently in the "having tons of dongles" state. In a year, it'll be 50% USB-C 50% other stuff. In 3 years, it'll be 100% USB-C, with high probability given the current market trends. Even Apple is adopting the USB-C standard. That speaks volumes to the coming trends, and how fast they're coming.
I have a 4k monitor with a USB hub and it connects via USB-C. So I can just plug in one cable for power, video, keyboard and mouse. On the surface that means three cables coming out of both sides of the thing, and one of the cables going to a USB hub since there is only one USB port. But I guess you could use the dongle, assuming it supports HDMI output.
That monitor is 2 years old now, I bought it with my 2015 macbook.
That's what I'd plug it into.
I'd say that HDMI would be make the machine a lot more versatile than USB-C (or MiniDP, for that matter). Showing a few photos on a TV, using your client's projector for an unplanned demo, using an absent coworker's screen - I can't remember how often I've envied MacBook Pro Retina users for that port. It's magic.
TVs and projects are not going to switch from HDMI to USB-C either, so waiting won't solve that problem.
1. No USB-C. 2. If I want 16 gigs of RAM, I need to opt for an i7 and half a terabyte of SSD.
I wish I could just go for an i5 with 256 gigs of storage and 16 gigs of RAM. That would be sweet (and not as expensive).
Too bad, let's see what others come up with.
I have a good friend who runs linux natively (I use a VM) and is raving about the new Lenovo Carbon X1 as well.
This will be $1800+ after tax, why not just get a really solid laptop at that point? Hell you could buy two solid desktops
But you pay up for those things. So for you, definitely just get the solid laptop. Surface pros can be maddening, and often feel finicky enough that they can't be primary machines.
Their goal is to be a more versatile version of exactly that, though? The surface isn't meant to be a tablet alternative, it's more of a laptop alternative that's also sort of a tablet.
Yeah a solid desktop, plus a decent laptop, tablet, chromebook and a kindle.
[1] Never say never, but it is a pretty big improvement!
The problem is the software and features:
- Windows 10 is a known factor, and it constantly frustrates.
- No Thunderbolt or USB-C is ridiculous in 2017.
I'd like to see Microsoft releasing Linux drivers for the Surface Pro. If they really love Linux enough to support it on Azure, they should support it everywhere. (I know, they support it on Azure to compete with AWS and Googs)
This new Surface Pro supposedly has longer battery life and the core i5 is fanless. We'll see how it translates to actual real world usage in future reviews hopefully.
I interact with the device in a fundamentally different way. I will sit and read a document with a pen and no keyboard (to proofread, highlight and makes notes). I'd tried this on ipad and it never fit in my workflow well.
I will use it to take notes at a meeting in OneNote. Again, the ipad workflow never worked for me for this.
The benefits definitely aren't for everyone. But it fits me perfectly, and I wouldn't go back from it now. Its probably at least a year before I upgrade (I also have a desktop for heavy lifting). I'm feeling the pinch of the older SP3 cpu a bit on some of the work I do, but not enough to warrant an upgrade yet. If I had money to throw around, I'd get the new one as a drop in upgrade without a second thought.
A document had to be somehow transferred into each viewer, and manually saved back out so I could use the reviewed document on the desktop.
With the SP3, live documents are stored in either dropbox or a network share and its seamless.
I do a lot of design work in indesign and photoshop, and even word. Being able to make both simple and substantive changes on the fly is a lot more use than far more limited ipad apps.
The SP4 pen is far more pleasant to write with than any ipad stylus I came across. This is all just a matter of taste, but I found my muscle memory reacts for better to the SP4 stylus.
My ipads were great for many things, but work was never one of them for me.
Usecases: Web Dev in node/javascript/HTML/CSS, now using WSL. Notetaking in onenote + surface pen for general journaling, notes at meetups, notes from MOOCs, notes from self-language-study. Vague low-power gaming sometimes. Adobe Lightroom photo editing.
Issues: Onenote is absolute fucking garbage at syncing. It is absolutely unusable when offline. It will throw unskippable error dialogs about being unable to sync when offline, meaning I can't use it to write or take notes at all unless I tether. It is so useful in all the above usecases, with no competitor, that I have subjected myself to just getting my tether on my phone ready when I'm out and about and needing to use onenote. However, it is frustrating to the extreme.
Anybody here at Microsoft care to comment on this actually being addressed? Syncing and offline issues have been a "top priority" for the onenote team since 2014 according to the flares of investigating I do occasionally.
Lest we forget, the dream that was USB-C was that we wouldn’t need half a dozen different cords and adapters to connect things, we could just use one port for everything. Sure dongles are slightly worse than cords, but one cord for everything is the best solution. So Mac users need dongles now, but MS is like “fuck that, give people what they immediately want and screw the future”.
If I end up buying the new one (which I might for the built-in LTE), I won't have to buy a new type cover, pen, dock, or spare chargers. Everything is compatible. In my car I keep a Mini-DP video adapter, a portable DVD-RW drive, and an Ethernet adapter, all are USB Type-A, and all would still work with the new Surface Pro.
Consider how much loathing I hear from Mac fans about Apple taking away MagSafe. Why would Microsoft do that to their Surface customers? This is Microsoft making a pro-consumer decision.
They’re now making a stink about “People who love USB-C love dongles. so we have a dongle for you” so it seems like they’re going after the standard intentionally for short term gains.
The dongle method makes sense. People using USB-C right now, are indeed pretty used to dongles. And by offering a SurfaceConnect to USB-C dongle, they'll let you use your USB-C charger... while still having the full benefits of a magnetic charging port that won't yank your tablet off the desk if someone trips over the cable.
The key difference is that these products all purchased early last were all in the early adopter or luxury category.
Surface Pro in mid-2017 should very obviously use USB-C. It fits in both luxury/pro categories. But even beyond that I could see the incentive to use it regardless, just based on it being the future interface for all devices.
I just moved to a 2016 MacBook Pro and the only "all new hardware" I've purchased is a pair of $10 adapters. I haven't replaced any of the hardware I already own, because I don't need to.
I can only really criticize Apple for not including an adapter or two, and for not including more than two USB-C ports on the base 13" MBP. The latter's really pretty regrettable.
They included the ports people use the most, and will support adapters for those of you who need less popular ports.
I guarantee most people would be thrilled with one cable for everything, making a step towards that halfway through 2017 seems reasonable...
USB Type-C is nice in theory, but even if you assume they get all the compatibility issues with it worked out, we're gonna be using USB Type-A for many years to come. Type-C only accessories being common is a really long way away, and you'll have replaced your Surface Pro by then.
This is an excellent explanation of USB Type-C: https://xkcd.com/927/ (That isn't to say that USB Type-C is bad, but pretending we're all moving over to it in 2017 is silly.)
So with the Surface Pro you're probably buying adapters one to two years from now, whereas with the MacBook you're probably buying those adapters today. Whether adapters are bought now or two years from now I don't think is that great of a concern.
MS hasn’t supported the port, and is intentionally taking a swipe at Apple “people who love USB-C love dongles.” To me implies they know what they’re dong and are trying to reap the benefits of the inevitable awkwardness of transitions.
For what it's worth if I was in the market for a Surface Pro I think I'd have also preferred USB-C, given its momentum.
Besides, Microsoft's products occupy only a portion of the PC hardware market, and several vendors have USB-C products out now. If it slows adoption of USB-C products, I think the effect will be fairly negligible.
The TB16 dock is great though, works seamlessly and smoothly with 4K displays, GigE, supports Power Delivery and remote 'wake' (there's a power button on the dock that if the laptop is sleeping will wake it).
Why do they compare it to the Surface Pro 3, and not the 4??
It’s hard to tell how much of that is hardware difference vs. optimization of the signal processing software though.
This statement begs an obvious question...
[1] : https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSImages/Surface_J_Overview...
There is a certain cachet to old technology.
Scanning back solutions also exist (basically a scanner that you can attach to the camera) . These cost thousands of dollars each and may take a few minutes per image. You cannot use them for moving subjects. [1]
These factors make cameras like this a very rare sight indeed.
[0] http://www.dannyburk.com/drum_scanning.htm [1] http://www.betterlight.com/products4X5.html
I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 and Win10 on a Surface Book - no pen input, can't use dedicated GPU, wifi signal occasionally dies, can't wake up from sleep
Other then that, Linux actually runs pretty well and is very usable.
That's... a pretty big "that"
But I haven't gotten around to trying yet, as with the Linux subsystem and hyper-v - I have enough Linux for my current needs.
I do plan to try and move to Linux (again) now - for better window management and better package management (scoop.sh and chocolatey notwithstanding) - and because I strongly believe in FOSS.
Being able to adjust to any angle means you can use it just as comfortably in an airport chair vs on a lounge etc.
Typos aside, hardware looks promising, but Windows...
The only place were I'm ok with Windows is a multi monitor gaming rig.. And that's because there's no other choice.
But, look, the problem with marketing to creative people is that they take it sort of as a challenge to prove you wrong. It's like ingrained. Kind of a bad habit, but, hey, it is what it is and I will happily admit I want one of these new devices and would consider it a major upgrade from my current gear.
Sure, I'd love to have 32GB of memory and an even more powerful machine in general, but I've been damn happy with all of the Surface products I've owned.
Much better to watch people actually using the software rather than just reading reviews...
Surface Book review for music production https://youtu.be/jqPhTDM-uBg?t=1m21s
surface pro 4 https://youtu.be/NwpebBvLBSI
The "no fan" option on the Core i5 could be quite nice, one of the annoyances about the Surface Pro 3 that I've seen was the noise of the fans.
Don't think dust will gather inside the device that easily if there is no fan to suck it in.
I again convinced myself that the Surface pro 3 is better so I bought it. Wow, some problems are: - The top right of backside is extremely hot when I watch youtube. - Again, the Alt btn of the surface pro 3 keyboard is broken. - batter length is not as advertised.
Therefore, I wont never buy a new surface even if it is cheaper than macbook pro. I am saving money to buy a new macbook pro.
Honestly, there's no pleasing some people. When the pen was included, everyone was saying, "let me buy a cheaper SKU without the pen; I don't want it!", and now that they've done that everyone is complaining.
So far the only drawback of the SP4 is the battery life, so except if they improved it a lot I don't see the point of paying the 500-600$ more. They say it's possible to watch 13.5 hours of videos, but manufacturers tests are not trustable anyway. It would probably be more like 7-8 hours of real-world usage. Are the extra 3 hours worth the difference? Maybe, but for my usage no.
I mean, during the conference day I'm kind of depressed of not having battery any more, but with cold head I tell myself it is better for me.
Seriously how is Microsoft even supposed to compete when they're held to completely different standards to their rival. I do feel for them.
Not to mention Surface Pen works with REAL Photoshop and REAL Illustrator.
For the same as the 8GB i5 with 256 GB, you get a MacBook with a Core m and the built-in keyboard. It's slower than the i5, but it's an actual laptop.
16GB RAM starts at 2199 $US. That indeed quite off-putting for something that should replace my laptop.
Most of my heavy-duty work is done via SSH into a remote VM. I watch movies, but mostly browse the web. Most of my actual work is programming intensive. I like pretty screens. Larger is usually better. I want to be able to take it on a plane without hassle when I travel.
New surface? HP Elite x360 15"? Wait for Surface Book refresh? Yoga?
What's new compared to SP4?
Fanless i5 would be nice - my sp4 i5 isn't loud, but quiet would be better.
Was hoping the new sp would be waterproof though (it's the only remaining "obvious" improvement I see. We'll that and enough gpu power to drive vr - but I suppose we're still a few years from that in a small, light, quiet battery-powered device).
It would be pretty damn surprising if you got any more than an incremental improvement this late in the game.
All I really care for in a tablet is that it is:
1) Fanless (The iPad is fanless)
2) Lightweight (The iPad weights 600g)Do you ever want to use keyboard with your tablet? Can you see that advantage of a pen? Is there any windows software that you might want to run on your tablet? If no, then no.
Basically this isn't a tablet that is competing against the iPad, it's a tablet that's competing against the macbook/macbook air.
However, as far as I know the surface line does not support Linux well.
I want to use all the software that is in the Debian repos. I don't want Microsoft to spy on me. And I don't want to be exposed to their security issues.
They have this, more or less (well, Ubuntu rather than Debian). You get real apt-get and you can install things, most of them work.
> I don't want Microsoft to spy on me.
No luck there, though it seems like everyone short of the BSDs is doing that these days :(.
> And I don't want to be exposed to their security issues.
You still are, though again I don't think their security position is worse than anyone else (again, short of the BSDs) these days.
If you're fine with an iPad 2, the new Surface is probably overkill.
As someone who just retired an iPad 4 (first retina I think?), new tablets will be much faster and lighter. I'm currently using a $200 Lenovo tablet, mostly as an ereader, and it's snappier than the old iPad (though the screen is worse). Also, Opera mini is great on these old devices.
Everytime I pick up a Surface, I think to myself - this is too much for just casual use. Maybe if I wanted all that computing power and options in that form factor, but that's a different use case.
Judging by your requirements you're looking for a tablet and compared to the surface an iPad still offers a way better tablet experience.
Does this mean I'm less apt to upgrade?
The XPS 13 2-in-1 is better for me if only for this reason. The XPS also comes with a pen, USB-C, and a decent hardware configuration like 16Gb of ram because we are in 2017!!!
I just wish I could get QHD+ screen. No option on dell.com, while I see that on https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5MV7YA so it must exist somewhere. I also have been told that it may be possible to get a trackpoint on similar models that share the chassis - but no touchscreen then.
Oh, and there is no LTE in any case. I guess I will have to wait for 2018 to at least get the QHD+ option.
I find the keyboard very good (the right menu key is a bit useless, but you can remap that using many methods) and the touchpad is the best I've used too, although it's probably not as good as the ones in Macbooks.
If the keyboard is the only thing holding you back, rethink it. You should be more worried about the price and the kickstand which is not a problem for me but might be for you, especially if your legs are short and you intend on using it on your lap a lot.
I don't think I could do without them, and they are one of the only reason I'm considering the XPS: a proper keyboard.
FYI, by default these 2 keys go to the next tab, when using the shift key right above: they go to next desktop, using the control or menu key right next to them they reorder the tabs, etc.)
For the tool I use everyday, price is not the problem. However, a bad keyboard is.
It would be nice if the top-level configuration on the SP5 had 32gb of memory - I end up swapping sometimes (which TBH isn't that bad with a SSD, compared to the old rotating rust drives)
I'm sure the Core i7 are something like the 7500U (i.e. dual core, four threads) - is your Core i5 dual core, dual threads?
The reason is eDRAM i.e. large L4 cache in the mobile CPU. Some workloads (compiling C++ appears to be one of them) like lower RAM latency even more than extra CPU cores.
In an era when even Apple is rumored (and even if false, still plausible) to be switching to USB-C for the iPhone, Microsoft still tries to force a proprietary connector. Didn't they learn anything from IE? Even if it's good for them for a while, it'll be their demise not following standars and thus locking thenselves out of everything.
Switching to USB-C from the bussiness perspective would be a great expense... and would involve higher price tag.
What this means is now people (those who buy an extra $200 device) will be happy for a while until their devices start to be incompatible or work slower than the competition who have a single cable type for everything. Then they will resent the brand and thus not buy again. Of course totally my opinion.
They could add USB C, but I still have more USB A devices, and I suspect others do too.
[1] USB C isn't magnetic, and the fake 'magnetic USB C' is just an adaptor and doesn't do data.
They could've started a low cost evolution on a single device instead of handicapping the whole Surface line. Now it has this whole funk of "no USB-C" all over it and it increases the cost of when they upgrade the whole line. And seeing as Surface is experimental (not core to MS, they would shutter it rather defend if it goes south), I doubt that they bought an overwhelming amount of cables, connectors, etc., I think it has more to do with a slower product development cycle due to politics.
USB-C just isn’t popular enough yet to have crashed and burned (though even after that it’ll still be popular for ages for want of an alternative).
I have a Surface Book (the hardware was good enough to get me to switch from Linux, without ever actually having seen one), and the Surface cable is marvellous. Magnets are awesome, and the Surface Book is probably the most carefully magnetically-designed computer hardware. At work I have a Dock and I pretty much just put the Book on the desk by the connector and it jumps into place and my external monitors connect. And removing it, really easy and it can’t go wrong. The whole thing is really, really nice.
Why can't I buy a $40 (or Chinese equivalent for $20) adapter to connect it to things?
Why isn't there a pin-out or open standard?
I know the magnetic factor would be a problem for this use-case - it would often be too "heavy" for the magnets.
https://www.kensington.com/au/au/4491/33972/sd3500v-universa...
Also HDMI/DP adapters worked without issues across my MacBook Pro, Samsung's Chromebook and another Dell laptop which is also hugely convenient.
Ah, but then you should be incentivized to buy an Apple® Certified Cable™ (made 100% from organically grown coppers and hand-milled by crafty Chinese masters from a solid plastic core). Not that I would dare to suggest that the chaos is create on purpose or anything like that.
What we like to think of as USB-C are actually 3 individual parts that an be swapped around as the OEMs feel like.
there is the 3.1 bus speed, that can be swapped for older and slower speeds.
There is the Power Delivery spec, that can be replaced with older or omitted entirely.
And then there is the C plug itself, that can be replace with an A or B plug when mixed with any of the above.
The only thing that the C plug offer on its own is hte aux pins that can be used to carry Displayport, HDMI or Thunderbolt signals. But again this depends on the OEM.
It is a downright combinatorial explosion, that is just waiting to set fire to something.
Hell, a while back there was a story about someone getting their phone drained because the C port allows bi-directional power delivery. And their powerpack used the C port for both charging itself and charging other devices. This, in combo with a phone that could charge other devices as an emergency option, allowed the two devices to ping pong a charge between them until both were run dry.
Frankly the C plug and related specs are overdesigned, trying to be all things to all people.
But it does point to the fact that many of us have such a dock, and are very happy to not have to buy a new one to use with our new Surface Pros. It also won't hurt that our old power adapters should still work.
One particular gamble of the Surface line was that it relies on accessories to really meet your needs. Microsoft has done a commendable job in this area, allowing me to "upgrade" my Surface Pro 3 with a new keyboard and pen, and now allowing me to continue using all my accessories with the latest device.
I agree they have to break compatibility at some point, but I don't think there's much value yet in doing so. Maybe in a year or so, USB-C will be standardized and reliable enough to really make it advantageous to use as a power supply for all my devices. But it's not there yet.
In my opinion, Intel is playing Serguéi Bubka's technique: because there is no enough competition, they go as slow as possible in the mobile market, just matching the performance of the second competitor.
Surface Pro > Surface Pro 4 > Surface Pro 3 etc...
Is it bad to have higher numbers in product titles? I don't see a problem with "Surface Pro 5" but maybe "normal" people do?
Mac Mini and MB Air and such.
When you go to sell it 5 years from now, it will be the 2017 Surface Pro.
None of these products (Surface) really matter because Microsoft is just buying time and expertise with the Surface line. HoloLens will change everything, as soon as it drops. Microsoft will be working furiously to spin down the Surface line and ramp up its new platform. It is the gold key. We don't always have our phone in our hands but imagine you have these lenses on all the time to help you experience a deeper world.
The usage and perception of a laptop with a detachable keyboard, full touch screen, and a stylus is the same? I don't think so. Perhaps they're very similar, but I think it's a stretch to equate them.
one of these products (Surface) really matter because Microsoft is just buying time and expertise with the Surface line. HoloLens will change everything, as soon as it drops. Microsoft will be working furiously to spin down the Surface line and ramp up its new platform. It is the gold key. We don't always have our phone in our hands but imagine you have these lenses on all the time to help you experience a deeper world.
I think you're slightly overly optimistic about the future here.
Build quality is similar to Surfacebook, but I would have to spend another ~600 to match the stats. Is the whole touchscreen tablet combo worth that premium?
I'm not saying the extra 600$ is worth it in this case, we'll have to wait for reviews to know that, but generally you're paying for better build quality, integration, support and form factor.
I was wondering if the pen/stylus input method really was worth the money over a traditional touchpad+keyboard.
I would say it depends. I love the touch screen (I've disabled my touchpad) - and I love the real pen/digitizer.
The sp4 is basically the dynabook: high dpi screen, a pen that works.
Still some annoyances with scaling in legacy apps - and I've yet to find a great "smart" drawing/cad program that really takes advantage of the pen - I'm thinking something like Ivan Sutherland's "Sketchpad".
I haven't quite gotten around to it, but I believe it would make a great Smalltalk companion (although it's a "button" short). It does work quite well with MIT's "scratch" system.
Other pros:
-fully customizable HTML UI
-fast, lightweight but powerful
-advanced actions (cloning along a path) aren't archaic hidden abilities for advanced users, they're discoverable and usable by new uers
-reasonable price
-not as serious/enterprise as some people might need
-due to semi-indie status it probably won't serve as your ONLY 3d modeling tool with only a handful of file format option
Its the combination of an over-sized tablet that you find impossible to hold and touch type on comfortably at the same time because 'TOUCH ON EVERYTHING', mixed with the idea the family photo frame sitting on your desk would make a great workstation if I just added a detachable keyboard. Lame!!!
Think I may go for an XPS 13. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_aSht_ssls
I'd love to get the 256Gb SSD / i7 version and upgrade to 16Gb RAM
I have an SP4 and this would be a very hard to sell upgrade to me.
TL;DR: Unless they redesign the charger and make the touchscreen resilient to cracks, I won't be buying another Surface in the future.
Complaint #1: Am I the only one here super frustrated by the design of the SP3's (and SP4's) charger? Specifically, the magsafe-like plug. It frays right where the cord meets the plastic plug and short-circuits. You can actually see the spark inside the plastic piece that connects to the computer, and the LED indicating it's connected to power will flicker on and off. I've owned two cables now (the original and the replacement I got for this issue) and it's happened on both. There's a thread here about this: http://www.surfaceforums.net/threads/power-cable-fraying.108...
The result is I have to be very careful when it's plugged in, because if I move and shift the cable, it might short-out and the computer shuts off (and it resets my Surface's time, too). Also, annoyingly, sometimes the LED in the plastic magsafe plug indicates it's connected to power, but when I connect it to the Surface the Surface says "plugged in, NOT charging" (emphasis mine).
Microsoft recalled the power cords due to the AC power plug, but not the magsafe connector. So when I contacted Microsoft about the recall, they sent me the part that plugs to the wall, which was not the problem. I've tried reinforcing the connection with electrical tape, and that helps to a very limited extent.
Complaint #2: A month into owning the SP3 I dropped it and the screen cracked. This broke the touch screen (the Surface thinks I'm repeatedly tapping where the screen is cracked.) I had to disable the touchscreen drivers to make the Surface usable, so now the tablet functionality is all gone, which is a bummer because I bought it in part for reading and videos. And, even with the drivers disabled, when the computer boots up from power off, it often waits indefinitely at the screen with the word "Surface" unless I "massage" the area where the screen is cracked. This behavior (and recommendation to massage the screen) is documented in this reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/4vmimv/surface_pro....
Dropping it was my mistake, but I wish the Surface's touchscreen was more resilient/better able to handle cracks. iPads and iPhones seem much better off in this respect.
Complaint #3: Occasionally, the Surface will turn itself back on when I've pressed the power button to turn it off. The result is I'll come back to use the Surface later and the battery will be totally dead. I'm 85% sure that it's not me hitting the power button to turn it back on, especially because my power settings are such that, if it's sitting idle for 5 minutes, it should go to sleep.
I really like the Surface in a lot of ways, but the issue with the power cable and the fragility of the touchscreen make me unlikely to buy another Surface, and make me hesitate about recommending a Surface to a friend.
Usually it's on a table or desk, but it's fine on my lap too.
If true, that would be a wonderful life.
> Xbox
> Xbox 360
> back to "Xbox One"
Microsoft sure has weird naming tendencies,.
Angular 2
Angular
Facebook Messenger
Messenger
Not to mention... google play store vs play store vs google play music vs google books vs Inbox vs gmail vs Google docs vs Google Drive (wtf is even the difference between these two?)
I want to mock but then I recall every naming meeting we've ever had at my company and I totally get it
Its got the same pixel density of a macbook pro, weights half as much, has a touchscreen, etc.
Just to clarify, the Surface Pro and Surface Book have a 267 DPI 2:3 aspect ratio display. They are fantastic.
The MacBook Pro's display is ~227 DPI and is not 2:3.
For a casual home user? No, I would never recommend a Surface Pro.
* 17.3" 1080p
* Core i7 (quad core)
* 16GB RAM
* Discrete graphics
* Backlit keyboard (at no extra charge!)
$800 shipped to my door. Only thing I need to do yet is order an M.2 SSD and I'll be happy for the next 4 years.
So my heart leaped a little seeing a new Surface announcement, but personally, smaller screens will never work for these tired eyes. That and when I bumped up to 16GB of RAM... I hit $2200. (It's also hard to see which Core i7 they put in these, but I have a sneaking suspicion there's a 'U' in the model name, meaning it's actually dual core.
Obviously the laptop I'm getting weighs 3-4 times as much and has a fraction of the battery life. It's a completely different animal. But for me, personally, the Surface will just remain "interesting" until it's portable, powerful AND the pricing is not exorbitant. Then I could see trying to get some work done on it when I'm out and about.
Lenovo Clearance does have a Y700 (17.3" 1080p) with GTX 960, Core i7 quad, 256GB SSD, but only 8GB RAM. Brand new for $799. http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-y700-se...
Ah the Lenovo deal is (mostly) back except 8GB instead of 16GB - includes 256GB SSD.
http://www3.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-y700-se...
woah.
the days of carrying 3-4kg laptops are 20 years ago for me. life is too short for that.
ASUS GL752VW-DH71 from NewEgg. "Last gen" Core i7-6700HQ and "last gen" Geforce GTX 960M 2GB.