Surface Laptop is just a laptop

I know they just tried to bring price under the $1000, but selling a laptop with 4gb of RAM in 2017 is criminal.

> Similarly, while on the one hand PC OEMs are concerned about the user experience if a laptop is accidentally charged from a smartphone charger—something made possible by USB Type-C—I feel this concern is misplaced. It's true that the laptop will charge much more slowly from a 5W smartphone charger than a 35 or 60W laptop charger. It may not even be able to charge at all unless sleeping, merely treading water draining its battery as fast as it charges while turned on. But you know what? It'll still charge faster from a 5W smartphone charger than it will from no charger at all because you've left it on your desk at work. A world in which every laptop's charger is compatible, and where you can use a phone charger at a pinch, is a world I want to live in.

It seems to me the greater concern is dimbulbs plugging their phone into their laptop charger.

> using a pen on the Laptop is inconvenient at best, downright idiotic at worst. You have to grab the lid to try to steady it and stop the whole thing wobbling and moving.

I wonder how many of you are using touch screens on a laptop, especially when your main job is programming?

Intel recently leaked their upcoming Intel I7-8xxxU Processors. They are going to be available in a real quad-core 8 thread configuration at 15W TDP.

I really hope MS will use one of those to release a Surfacebook with 32GB Ram and atleast one Thunderbolt 3 Port.

That would last me long enough to justify the high pricetag. The current Surfacebooks are just too limited in their lifetime because of the connectors.

The Dell XPS 15 9560 is just amazing with the Intel Core i7 7700, upgraded to 32GB of ram, and a 1TB SSD and the best part an NVIDIA GTX 1050. Ubuntu and Windows 10 runs great on it. It is 4 lbs.

I use it as my primary workstation with the thunderbolt docking station and a 4K monitor. It is thin, light and strong.

What is the Windows laptop to get if you want 32gb, a retina level bright display and latest gen processor?

So what if it's just a laptop? I really hate that trend toward making everything a tablet/touchscreen in the PC market. I don't really want one of the new MBPs when it comes time to upgrade mine, but looking at the other side of the fence is equally cringe-inducing.

The higher-end (non-touchscreen) Dell XPS mentioned by a sibling looks promising though.

don't touch my screen.

I think Microsoft know what they are doing with the fluffy keyboard surround. In the retail channel where demo machines are available to touch, decisions are very much on look and feel.

The lack of USB C makes me wonder if Microsoft are stupid. However, had they just put two USB C ports and little else then people would be complaining. Still not sure who this laptop is for. It also doesn't represent some undreamed of future either.

the alcantara definitely feels different than the version they use for the type cover. more plasticky.

I can't believe that this is described as unadventurous, when it's a laptop that's covered in Alcantara right where you're going to put your sweaty palms.

The time has come, my wife's 2 year old laptop with a touchscreen we bought at Costco for $400 is finally dying. I use a custom Windows desktop at home (no touchscreen) and a rMBP at work so I'm not too much into one or the other. So we took a trip to the Apple store so we could look at Apple's devices.

And of course the size and performance of the regular old MacBooks were really enticing. Price was higher than I think my wife wanted to pay (she's gone years on sub $1000 computers and the instant upgrade every couple years when the old is replaced with the new is a feature to her), but she was seriously thinking about it.

We spent about 20 minutes sitting at one and my wife trying out MacOS and really seeing it was effective at handling some of her frustrations with Windows 10. And over those 20 minutes you could see her start to really take to it, the nice screen, the tiny size, the responsiveness of the touchpad...then suddenly she reached up to the screen to make a small adjustment and scroll a web page she was looking at and the spell was broken -- no touchscreen. She didn't buy the Macbook.

It turns out, even though she doesn't use it all that often, the fact that it exists and is expected to work and it didn't was all she needed to know. She pointed out that all of her other devices: phones, tablets, etc. are all touch screen, that moment when it didn't work required her to think twice about scrolling rather than just doing what she was expecting to do was enough to make her not want the entire device.

We discussed how many issues there are with Windows 10's usability and all that and I guess where we left the conversation was that there's no expectation that Windows will work effortlessly, you go into "using mode" expecting to have to think through tasks and fidget with things until they're correct, so there's no spell to be broken, but you know that you can reliable get things done. And that sets a baseline for her of what she thinks a computer should be at a minimum and she's willing to pay $500-700 for that.

She admitted that up until she touched the screen the extra $500-700 for the Apple computer started to seem okay to her because the "using mode" was so good. But then it didn't work and there was no way to make it work. It was like swimming through heaven and then sitting on a cloud the wrong way and a loud buzzer went off BZZZZ. The buzzer vaporized that extra value for her instantly.

It's something I've never considered because my computers fundamentally don't have touchscreens so I'm trained to expect it. I don't think of my MacOS usage all that much different than my Windows usage.

Microsoft was correct in enabling touch, but what it really not making the Surface line interesting is that they swim in a market of machines that more or less do the same thing (maybe not as quite as well) that are half the cost. Unless your use-case is particularly sensitive to some specifics of the performance of this machine, you may as well hit up your local Costco and get a machine with the same RAM, and 2x the storage as the best configuration here for 1/3rd the cost.

Sure it'll probably die on you inside of 2 years, but then you buy another semi-disposable computer then, get all the upgrades from the future and still be 30% under the cost over 4 years. Windows doesn't provide a usage experience that demands a price premium and this laptop is missing things that we know will become commonplace within the expected lifetime of the device.

I have to say, a rating in the 70% rating range for Microsoft Hardware is actually quite good. Keep working on it! The price is ludacris, but that's also expected. Honestly with all the recent improvements through new leadership I wouldn't be surprised if they learn out of a few feedback rounds and make affordable good quality laptops.

What I'm really surprised though was the guy they put in front of the camera here. I'm also an ugly guy, but I think one should be self aware enough to put someone else in front of the camera if that's the case. And wearing such a t-shirt... wow.