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Comment by pottertheotter | Hacker News Reader

I've had a Surface Go since August 2018. Aside from the small size, I hate it. I can't think of a time when I bought a new computer (including phones and tablets) and was immediately underwhelmed by its performance. It is so slow.

The other issue is the keyboard. Unless you have it on a solid surface, you have to be very careful about putting any weight on it. The keyboard will flex, which causes it to think the trackpad has been pressed. You can imagine the issues that come from that.

A Microsoft Store exchanged my keyboard for a new one, thinking it must have been a defect. After using it for a while and having the same experience, Microsoft support told me that's how the keyboard is designed and I need to be more careful when using it. OK...

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and was immediately underwhelmed by its performance. It is so slow.

I think it says more about the state of software today than anything else, when 4GB of RAM and a CPU that's faster than the laptop I was using 10 years ago (compare https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+Duo+T240... and https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+4415Y...) is still considered "slow" for those everyday tasks that haven't changed in 10 years.

I know there are situations where a "real" desktop OS is helpful, but at the same time it's remarkable to me how well my 2016 iPad Pro holds up with only 2 GB of RAM.

The 2015 model actually had 4 GB, but that was a 12.9" screen and substantially pricier.

They stuck with the same 4 GB in 2018's redesign unless you buy the very expensive 1TB storage option, in which case it's silently bumped up to 6 GB. Apple oddly doesn't even advertise that difference, it only came out through benchmarking.

Hopefully the 2020 refresh bumps it up to 8 GB which I think would future proof new devices for 5+ years of solid performance.

Honestly, they just need to get their flash storage supply chain under control, and configure swap memory support for iOS. Or perhaps add a microSD port and let the device swap to a (disposable) microSD card. It's just preposterous that RAM-constrained mobile devices still can't use virtual memory (something that has been known since the 1960s) because of their bottom-of-the-barrel eMMC storage.

At least it puts a limit on how much RAM something can use. VM is always extremely slow, and once your RAM is full performance slows to a crawl...

I thought apple devices used nvme storage now?

Electron apps I am forced to use are probably the problem. I love vscode and would support other similar electron apps but people are using electron without even a need for it and locking down features that you can implement with some work for the browsers.

They are hostile too. Some of them won't let me build my own client or use a third party one.

The current standard machine sets the available features and the optimization level in stone, not the machine from 10 years ago.

If you don’t travel much I always recommend used thinkpads coming off lease on eBay. Higher end models used by business people who probably used them as PowerPoint display devices. They aren’t usually light or fancy, but they are cheap and powerful. Every 3-5 I spend ~$400 on one as my personal device and never disappointed. I like them more than my work macbook pros but they are not as portable.

The problem I have with thinkpads is the same as I have with almost all OEM windows machines---the branding is impenetrable. Like, which one is the good one? Is it the T series? The E series? The X series? The QZT series? Which is the Thinkpad X̡̨͟T͏̧͢Y̶̨͏7̷̀5̶̷Q̵̶͡͠͝Q͠͡ mark XZY? Is that the best one or the worst one? And you can't look at the prices to tell, and just assume the most expensive one is the best one, because the prices are for the current generation, and you're looking on eBay on the last generation. Screw that.

The original XTRAs system was like:

X: portable for Japanese(B5, 12”)

T: portable for American/European(A4, 14”)

R: office typewriter for secretaries(A4, 15”)

A: office computer for bosses(A4, 15”)

s: experimental ultraportable

Post-Lenovo acquisition system is:

X1xx: junks for kids

X1C : MacBook killer for China(14”)

X2 : stretched office typewriters for Japanese(12” wide)

T : Proper American Portable™️(14”)

R: Still office typewriters

A: X2 but uses AMD CPU

W: the most best ones that you order only by accident Yoga: ones that flips fragile keyboard exposing 11, 13, Flex, Helix, Tablet, whateverett: experimentals

The only ones you’d care are X1C, X200, or T400 depending on your region, religion and body size.

Not going to solve your problem but...

Actually, the convention is really simple, when they follow it. It goes [model line] [Screen size] [Intel CPU generation] [0 for intel, 5 for AMD CPU of same vintage] + Yoga if flippy

Model lines: X is premium business, T is mainstream business, E is economy, L is legacy/economy (extra ports). So by looking at "L380 yoga" you know it's a 13" convertible with lots of ports and an 8th gen Intel CPU.

That is actually really cool! Except for the "if they follow it" part, which rather threatens to scupper the whole thing. :-)

No 10th gen CPUs?

Thinkpad T4##/s(14”), X2##(12”) or x1c(12” + thin) series are the ones to look at. Others not really much of a reason to bother and are in much less supply.

There's no "good one", since the different series represent design tradeoffs other than just price. Some people want the lightest device, some the most powerful, others want the longest battery life. You can't have it all.

If you just took the most expensive ThinkPad, you'd probably end up with a P-series workstation, which is far from most people's definition of "best". And that's okay.

Don't forget business-grade laptops have good keyboards ;-) I find Thinkpad keyboards great, btw.

The X220 cost nothing (last one I got was 50euro from ebay) and, with Linux, have very long battery life. Put in a good ssd and extra memory and it for the feel (I did not benchmark) will outperform the Go for everything I do.

Also the battery can be swapped so you can take 2 for travelling.

They are not heavy but they are bulky indeed.

Are there specific sellers that you follow?

Greencitizen. Find sellers that sell broken stuff for parts. Those are the honest people. If everything is perfect on their profile you know it’s not. If there’s a lot of broken stuff for parts the stuff they say works usually works.

I have the 8GB / 128GB SSD variant and I haven't had issues with its performance, though I came at it from the angle of replacing an Android tablet as that market has dried up.

I've found it pretty pleasant for that use case, and even some light coding on it during the holidays at my parents. Compile times are not great and I've been meaning to set it up so I can use VS Code's remote feature to use it as a frontend to my home server, but actual interaction in VS code and completion etc. is totally acceptable for Rust and JS.

Keep in mind there's an important difference between the 64 and 128 GB models: 64 GB ones use an eMMC for storage, while the 128 GB model uses a NVMe SSD

Feels like we're talking about 2 totally different machines - I'm using one right now, and always use it or a Surface Pro 7, and I couldn't be happier. I use one of them on my lap 95% of the time (I generally work from a recliner). I love the keyboard in this situation. I guess I've never tried putting weight on it - maybe that's a different keyboarding approach; I think the ergonomic recommendation is to not rest your hands on the keyboard, IIRC.

I'm entirely satisfied with the performance. Although mainly I'm coding in a terminal through ssh, so I don't push it much. But for videos, browsing, etc I've never had any issues.

Along with the very pleasant WSL Linux experience, I also wouldn't want to go back to a computer without a touchscreen and excellent stylus support. Of course, I could get that with an iPad Pro, but then I don't have a real computer - so I'd need 2 devices (which I used to do, and hated it). Being able to read and annotate papers with a pen (including in portrait mode) is very nice, as is presenting from a computer I can draw on directly.

I'm surprised at how long the battery lasts, and like the magnetic connection to power or docking station. The dock is really nice too, although I don't use it as much as I used to, since I'm mainly using it on my lap nowadays.

That seems totally different than my experience as well. Especially the part about the battery life: mine seems almost immediately empty so I have to bring battery packs, cables and/or multiple devices. I did address this with MS support, sent it in for repairs (twice) but nothing wrong with it so the light work I use it for apparently is very different from what you do. I do the same on the iPad pro (although that was not the intention: I wanted to do more dev on this one) and that one has 20%+ end of day while the Go shuts down within a few hours. Not even 6 months old. Useless...

> Aside from the small size, I hate it. I can't think of a time when I bought a new computer (including phones and tablets) and was immediately underwhelmed by its performance. It is so slow.

Put Linux on it and it's not so slow anymore. With 4GB of RAM you can even run the GNOME desktop (for its touch friendliness) with few or no memory issues, without ever hitting swap. The 'tablet' experience is vastly better on recent versions of GNOME than it ever was on Windows 10, and easily on a par with the new iPadOS. It actually turns tablet computers into a form factor you can use professionally.

How exactly do you do that? I have been using windows on my surface go solely because I gave up trying to figure out all the secureboot settings and how to turn enough things off to get a live USB to boot. I would love to switch, but it was so difficult and I never did accomplish it!

If you can get to the firmware settings, there should be an option to 'disable secure boot', 'enable third-party OS's' or the like. Then you should be able to boot anything that has been properly signed, at least. I'm quite sure that people have done this, even on the Surface Go.

https://www.infofuge.com/install-ubuntu-18-04-on-microsoft-s...

Ubuntu support secure boot. You probably mean fastboot?

I have had endless keyboard hardware issues; MS refuses to anything even though it is inside warranty. Tells me I have to be more careful and it is my fault. Absolute opposite of my experience with Apple and the iPad Pro. So I just use a bluetooth keyboard and a mouse with it now as the keyboard cover (2nd one) just completely stopped working. I have not had the thing for 6 months...

Besides that, the performance but especially the battery life is just depressing to work with. I could live with the performance if the battery life would be anything like my iPad, but for a device so slow having battery life this bad seems weird.

I think it's more that software today is absolutely awful, because almost no software developers care if their software is slow. "CPU is cheap!"

I have 8GB variant and performance on Win10 was abysmal. But i bought it to install Linux on it - and it's perfect. Best small-form Linux tab on market.

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