Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds | Hacker News Reader

Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds

blogs.windows.com

261 pointscaution285 comments

Caveat emptores: With a couple exceptions, Surface devices cannot be repaired, nor have the battery replaced. Not even by Microsoft. iFixit's repair scores on all the devices, except the Pro X, range from 0/10 to 1/10. If you have a problem that would require repair, you need to instead get it replaced with a refurbished machine. This means you have to back up your machine and set it all up again on a new one. If you're out of warranty, you also need to pay hundreds of dollars for this: $250 for a Go, $450 for a Pro or Laptop, and $600 for the Book or older Pro 4. It's unavailable altogether for anything older. They trumpeted improved repairability for the Pro X (edit: and Laptop 3), but I can't find anything suggesting a similar effort for the Book.

I like my Surface Pro 4 a lot. I initially got it for the pen when I was a math Ph.D. student. It was great for taking notes and giving lectures. I don't do that anymore, but the Surface machines still appeal to me as potential upgrades. But it's tough for me to justify spending north of $1,500 on a laptop when I can only expect a few years of life from it.

So, please, other laptop makers, make some 3:2 laptops. Dell, good job with that new 16:10 XPS. Microsoft, at least make the damn batteries replaceable.

just a nitpick: the proper plural is "caveant emptores".

cave-ant They're everywhere~

Thanks! Part of me knew that I was gonna burn myself by going for the Latin.

This is only partially true now. The surface laptop line has made huge strides in repair-ability. https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/23/20929530/microsoft-surfa...

That being said, the surface pro, go, and book lines have yet to attain the same level of repair-ability.

Oh, you're right. I remember hearing that when it came out. I thought I'd looked through all the iFixit teardowns writing my post but missed the Laptop 3 one. They score it a 5. The battery is still glued down, though.

Maybe they've made changes for the Book 3, but I would think they'd say something if they had. According to The Verge, it's the same design.

I hope they continue to make those changes. To your first point, I find it ridiculous when companies make devices with very little ability to repair.

The new LG Gram laptops are also 16:10, and are a fraction of the weight of the XPS laptops.

I never really liked my LG Gram as it always seemed a bit flimsy. I never broke it, but it felt like I had to baby it.

I switched over to a Lenovo Carbon X1 7th gen. Don't feel that need anymore and the keyboard is amazing.

Not 16:10, though.

I have a broken Surface Pro 4. The power connector is kaput. For the next tablet, I am looking for alternatives in "good tablet and fixable after 3 years" category.

I have a Pro 4 as well. It still has the best GPU of any of the tablet-Surface line, and is plenty quick for anything I need to do. Unfortunately, my battery life is now half an hour, which makes it more of a fixed workstation with built-in UPS than portable tablet, and it's a source of real frustration.

Huh the Surface Pro 7 i7 should have a vastly superior GPU. Where does it fall short compared to the SP4?

For several generations, the SP4 with the Iris 540 was as good as it got. I just looked at the SP7 i7 specs, and it looks like you're right, though. I stand corrected!

And it happened to me! model 1796 128gb. They kept repeating to install recovery images until I got tired for days. When I traveled back to Miami they didn't want to repair it -now I know that they couldn't!- They offer heavy discounts on newer models but I wasn't going to fall for that. Long story short, they gave me a brand new replacement unit.

I have an SP3, getting close to five years now. Battery life still decent, no bulge (knocks wood), and it still works well. I rarely use the pen, and only occasionally use tablet mode for reading. The lack of repairability in the Surface line, combined with my rare use of the tablet mode, have me looking more at light laptops when the time comes, possibly even the Surface Laptop (good to see that's improved repairability a bit). I get that getting a slim package requires tradeoffs, but complete lack of repairability is a step too much for my liking.

I have a Surface Pro 7, their oversized tablet, after ditching my ipad pro out of frustration. I wanted something that had a nice pen but still had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on, use ssh, and was full featured enough that I wasn't required to lug a laptop with me.

And the surface pro is.. fine. Hardware wise it's great even, but my issue is overwhelmingly that Microsoft's default software makes a sad tablet experience. Their screen keyboards are garbage, the store is lackluster and the tablet mode does not play nicely with most apps leading to weird issues like not being able to leave the kindle app once it's fullscreened.

If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare.

Are you considering switching back to the iPad Pro? Or is fine good enough for your use?

If the iPad let me stick in a usb drive and copy over comics, and load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not.

For what it's worth, the iPad feels great in terms of size and construction, it has a fantastic screen and the overall UX/UI is pleasant. Unfortunately, it's not usable as a short term laptop replacement and basic computer tasks are just not possible, especially not offline.

For what it's worth, you might be able to copy over comics using a USB drive now. You can definitely copy comics over a network share as an alternative, as the Files app supports mounting samba shares.

EDIT: of course that doesn't help with the loading of open source software on the device.

You can even use your USB floppy drive in iOS's Files app now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH8EJutmmT4

You can also compile your own open source software from outside the Apple App Store, there are some limitations to long-term use that might require a $99/year developer account, but it’s still possible. And the $99/year is not per user but per company, so if you know somebody with a dev account, you can split it with them by starting a company instead.

Not to say that the iPad Pro is a Windows tablet replacement, to me they’re still very much distinct products right now. iPad OS isn’t (yet?) a macOS replacement for developers and power users.

FWIW since iOS 13 usb drives work fine on iPad. I use mine for work, but most of what I do can be covered with a browser and video editor.

I haven't tried using USB drives with the iPad, but they have been building out the Files app and there are more ways to work with external storage than before.

Loading software from outside the App Store is not going to happen, but they are, slowly but surely, expanding to support other tasks.

> load open source software from outside the Apple store - yes. Since that will never happen in our lifetime, probably not.

If that was non-negotiable why did you even consider an iPad Pro in the first place?

You can do both. For OSS software though, it would need to be iPadOS apps built with Xcode or some cross-platform framework like Xamarin, but some time ago, Apple enabled anyone to install apps without a developer account.

This. The Surface Pro is a really decent machine and I don't have any complaints on how it functions as a laptop and 'workstation' (or whatever you call laptop+2 monitors+mouse+keyboard), but as far as tablet goes: the hardware is all there but the software is not quite there yet. The only tablet-y thing I do with it is tell it to never switch to tablet mode and then use the pen to draw and take notes. It does that really well btw (was one of the reasons I got it in the first place), but for the rest I don't see me using it as I'd use a 'standard' tablet. Not sure if it's me, I don't use tablest often, but when I try to do so on this thing I end up opening the desktop software anyway to get things done because the alternatives are non-existing or not good. And navigating typical desktop software with just touch isn't really cutting it.

This is interesting as over in the WinUI thread people are complaining how the tablet features have ruined Windows on the Desktop.

Probably true too though.

One of the problems with MS' approach is trying to get a "one UI fits all" approach which just doesn't work, the usecases between tablet and desktop are too different.

Even Apple hasn't made this mistake and they're all about simplicity and consistency.

Yes, it’s all the more galling that they ruined the desktop experience without providing a good tablet experience. Yes, things are bigger and more tappable, but there’s more to a good tablet UX than that. They have only done the relatively easy part. The hard part requires redesigning behavior and workflow, which will take far more time and effort than just adding some whitespace and increasing widget size.

Windows 8 was all about redesigning behavior and workflow, those were the aspects that were largely walked back in successive updates.

I was a big fan of Win8 (was fine with it on desktop as well) but tablet mode on Win10 was a major downgrade and I only ever use Surface in desktop mode, even on the rare occasions I tuck back or detach the keyboard. I still use touch a lot though, sometimes simultaneously with mouse or trackpad.

Seems to resonate with me. A tablet by default is a consumption device.

While a surface is a production device. Since you can actually do something with it except sending emails.

First, you should not be using the store. It is an also-run of an anti-feature. Just ignore it for the bloatware it is.

Second, ignore tablet mode. It's one of those things developed by underfunded teams. Just use it as what it is, a portable PC. If you configure windows to have >2px thick borders you will not miss 'tablet mode' or whatever it is. Just enable all settings on the quick side bar thingy to toggle auto-rotate and you are set.

And finally, i agree with you on the keyboard. It's sad :( pen writing recognition was supposed to be the saving grace, but it only works minimally OK for japanese and chinese. No hope for english and let alone for other latin languages. and even using with chinese text, the input UI completely kills your ability to use things you would have on a keyboard like shift, shortcuts, arrows, etc.

For all the deserved hate Windows 8 got, the tablet experience was fantastic - the experience of running multiple apps side-by-side in particular was better than what the iPad has to this day.

It's mindboggling to me that Microsoft must have the code for that sitting around in a repo history somewhere and yet tablet mode on Windows 10 is still such a mess even after years.

I pulled out my Surface RT yesterday and it is almost exactly what iPad multitasking is.

It really is mind boggling that Microsoft fumbled that so bad - great tech but some really user-hostile business decisions cost them dearly.

Yes, tablet mode on Win8 was good!

The problem was ramming it down the throat of all the desktop users too. I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.

>I still don't understand how such a big company can make such obviously bad decisions.

Simple, resume ego driven development from someone who just want to climb ranks.

But it wasn't a terrible desktop experience: in 8.1 you had a strongly tiling window manager and a lot of apps designed for phone widths or smaller to tile. The tiling was horizontal only, but you could do a lot on a two widescreen monitor setup.

It moved a lot of cheese, sure, but it wasn't offering as much an "inferior" desktop usage as people seemed to think it did because they never bothered to learn what it did offer new/different/better.

> had a real file system

Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/files/id1232058109

> use ssh

The Blink app solves that nicely for me.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blink-shell-mosh-ssh-client/id...

There are also several VNC viewer apps if I need to connect to my Linux workstation for more cpu or graphics intensive work.

The problem with iOS for these solutions is that iOS is a designed experience and you're always swimming upstream when you deviate from the path.

The Microsoft stuff tries to live in both worlds, but the ecosystem around the "modern" side is weak.

Everyone is struggling with this stuff, as witnessed by the schitzoid steps to evolve MacOS and Windows.

“Apple’s Files app solves mostly solves that for me.“

It’s better but it’s still riddled with arbitrary restrictions. For example when I want to watch a MKV video in iCloud I have to copy the file from iCloud to the folder of the player, then delete. Can’t open iCloud files directly with the player and can’t move either.

On the bright side I am confident by 2025 in iOS we will have the same functionality we had already thirty years ago... with the exception that every piece of software will be charged with the 30% Apple tax.

Using infuse (a video player app) I can open files from icloud directly.

How?

Settings->Add files->via documents

That open the icloud browser (wierd name)

It works but it’s quite clunky. Either you have to copy over when you play directly the video it’s not in the library. Definitely not very intuitive or simple.

Wow, that's a $60 app (or $10 per year). I wonder how much of the code for that is actually open source.

It's a quality app and there's also a free version that might be enough for OP if his codecs are supported.

The free version I think will suit most people. It's what I use.

Totally agree... got my surface pro for the same reason (wanted a combo laptop/tablet, and was excited for a tablet with a real OS)

The tablet mode sucks for anything but basic reading. The touch interface is crappy, the on screen keyboard sucks.

It is a really good laptop... as long as I use it on a desk or table. The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible.

It is a nice, light, laptop for travel, though... but I still need to bring a tablet.

The non-rigid keyboard makes using it without a desk impossible

Can you elaborate? Which version? I've been using the Surface Pro 6 and I don't notice a difference with using it on a desk or on my lap.

I think I have the 6 as well... the keyboard connection to the tablet is not rigid, meaning you need something to support the tablet itself (like the kickstand)... but using the kickstand on your lap is not very convenient, because it does not hold the keyboard at a fixed angle to the computer... and you have to move it up your legs far enough to have the kickstand extend back and still have room on your legs. You can't have the screen be at your knees.

Also, you are limited in the angle you can have the screen. With a normal laptop, you can open the hinge very wide (like 150 degrees or so) so that you are looking directly at the screen when looking down at your lap. With the non-rigid keyboard, you have to have it fairly close to perpendicular (close to 90 degrees) which means you are looking at a bad angle to the screen when it is on your lap.

It might be worth revisiting the Windows 8 interface. It was maligned at the time but it’sa very fluent, intuitive interface now that people are used to iPads. The multitasking is exactly the same as iPad now, only difference being you pull down to close apps instead of up.

I pulled out my original Surface RT yesterday and was surprised to find it has aged incredibly well - perhaps better in 2020 than it was in 2012, because it was well ahead of its time.

The Surface RT was a crappy, closed device. You can put Linux on just about any Baytrail- or Cherrytrail-based device now (used to be a huge pain), and with a decent amount of RAM and GNOME3 on Wayland it's actually a very intuitive and productive tablet experience. Even the windowing UI is just as intuitive as Windows 8 if not more so: you click on an "Activities" overview as opposed to a start button, but the rest is pretty much the same.

I don’t really see how any of that is relevant.

Surface RT was running underpowered Tegra with 2GB ram and still does 60fps on the entire desktop/Start experience.

Have you used the Windows 8 multitasking interface recently?

Tegra has a good focus on graphics, so it's no surprise that it could do 60fps animations on the Windows 8 start screen. Nice eyecandy, I suppose. And 2GB RAM will still run pretty much anything a Surface RT user might care about, except the modern web of course.

It's not like I did any market research, but I recall people liking the Windows 8 interface on phones and tablets. My personal impression from playing with Windows phones in stores was very good. Opinions were (predictably, IMO) less positive for the same interface on desktops and laptops.

I definitely fell in the latter camp. Working helpdesk there were a couple "Help my Windows 8 PC is in this weird setting and I can't get to my programs" tickets. I don't recall it being as easy as it should have been to get out either.

I heard someone complaining the other day that every iOS application has the Share button in a different place and sometimes a different icon altogether, and poured another one out for the poor, misunderstood Charms bar.

Windows 8 had so many great ideas and it is an open question if Microsoft had stuck to their guns a little longer and waited for more people to get used to where their cheese moved if Windows 8 might be even more fondly remembered for moving touch UIs forward.

Microsoft scaled back a lot of their tablet functionality because consumers didn't like it, and of course Apple started to copy Microsoft's tablet functionality shortly thereafter. I think maybe, Windows X will be more touch based instead of them trying to meld them into one OS. Only the core will be the same, but the UIs will be split on the OS level. I think...but who knows, Microsoft often changes directions. All I know is that the Surface hardware is on par, and in many cases better than Apple.

I briefly owned a Surface Book before returning it and I agree.

The tablet experience on Windows was horrendous.

Eg: something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.

> something as trivial as adjusting the display brightness required me to go into Windows settings.

I've never had a Surface Book but I had the Surface Pro 3 for awhile and I'm pretty sure it predated the book.

On the Surface Pro you just slide from off screen to bring up quick settings and then tap the brightness icon. Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...

It's had a brightness slider for a long time now. And if you have a Surface, Fn+Delete and Fn+Backspace are hidden shortcuts to Brightness Up and Down.

> Granted it only had preset values rather than a slider...

Yeah and that was always either too bright or too dark.

I'm glad they added the slider now.

you swipe from the right and adjust the brightness with the slider at the botton: https://i.imgur.com/sBYNv5z.png

older versions, you had to swipe right, then touch screen icon and slide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFYmwnzRpJ0

Thanks. That wasn't available when I tried it circa 2016. You had to tap an icon with 25% steps which never resulted in the brightness I wanted.

>Their screen keyboards are garbage,

Have you tried the WordFlow (swype or whatever it's called on other platforms) method on the keyboard ? Seems to work as well as Windows Phone did, which is pretty damn good.

It's fine as a portable Windows PC to me. Great for travel, does pretty much everything I need, including Visual Studio. iPads are so much more consumption oriented that I can't see myself every needing one in addition to an iPhone.

>If Microsoft invested a bit more in improving the tablet experience, they could really eat some of Apple's marketshare.

They did with WinRT (not the tablet the API, now called UWP) and it failed because they decided to throw away backward compatibility of APIs.

Windows 8 and the Metro design language was my favorite UX by far of the last two decades.

This time, I guess they've decided to throw away the user experience in favor of backward compatibility :-)

> swype

Swiping seems to be efficient mostly in english. I had a try on android and it was just exhausting while being unforgiving for CJK type input.

Just to say, having a decent keyboard is still important to a lot of people. And Apple has effectively made efforts in this regard to have a good keyboard experience on the iPad.

I have very little experience with iPads, but I absolutely hate the iPhone keyboard compared to Windows Phone/Mobile. Windows 10 is unfortunately not in the same league as its mobile predecessors.

Haven't used the Windows 10 on-screen keyboard much to be fair. I usually use the Surface keyboard (which has improved a lot circa 2017), but for prolonged work I'll attach a USB keyboard (mostly because I need an ergonomic keyboard to type).

I have an original surface pro I inherited, it works fine except for the garbage keyboard/cover. Well, it did work fine until some recent firmware update made it so the wifi crashes any router it connects to... It's really a beautiful bug.

This only seems to effect windows, I've been using it with OpenSuse with no such issue.

I pretty consistently hear that the iPad makes a great tablet and a shitty laptop and vice-versa for the Surface. I’m not sure it’s possible to have the best touch experience and the best keyboard and mouse experience in a single OS. Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.

> Maybe Apple will let the iPad dual boot iPadOS and macOS someday soon assuming the MacBooks transition to ARM.

That would be excellent. iPad needs a local web server capability for development, e.g. to run Jekyll/Ruby or Hugo/golang. Rumor is that upcoming Apple Arm CPU will support hardware virtualization, which could theoretically enable Linux to run in a sandboxed VM.

As for UX, the new iPad Magic Keyboard is a game changer that seamlessly blends tablet and laptop. Now we need to address the iOS gaps (e.g. Xcode, non-Safari browser and mail client) and/or allow dual-boot as you suggested.

On Pythonista you can run Flask or Django, it's nifty. The apps are coming, there's one for nodejs and react. Would not be surprised to see ruby/go soon.

People really want a GUIs that are much more dynamic and context-aware. The size of the buttons should change if I attach a mouse or a touchpad. The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?) If I walk into a dark room, apps (and ideally, websites) should change to dark mode. If I walk into an area with direct sunlight, the contrast should be boosted. The device should behave differently if it's laying flat on a desk, or on a kickstand, or if I'm holding it in my hands.

Cell phones are better. They've figured out obvious things like screen rotation, adaptive brightness, bluetooth audio handoffs, and Android has made some headway with things like darkmode and automatically changing settings when you get into a car, but tablets have lagged behind, and I'm sure there are dozens more tiny things that automatically changed based on the device's context.

> The on-screen-keyboard should completely disable itself if I attach a keyboard. (Did Windows figure this out yet?)

This always works fine for me on my SP6.

That's good to know - I had a touchscreen windows laptop a while back and it didn't get this right.

I've put Arch Linux with GNOME on my SP7 and it's been great. There are a few tweaks I needed to make, but nothing too drastic and I really think the hardware is word-class, I love the tablet form-factor, but iPad OS is way too limiting. SP solves that, so I hope MS will keep making them.

Does the pen still work? What about multi-touch and pressure sensitivity?

The pen doesn't currently work, I have an older iPad Pro for when I need pen input so not a big issue for me.

I primarily like it for the form-factor & build quality, which in my opinion matches Apple level, but I seldom use it as a "tablet". It's more a super-portable laptop for me that can also serve as a convenient way to kick back and consume content.

I, weirdly enough, also like the type cover over standard laptop keyboards. Maybe it's because it's not part of the tablet itself that I find the keys less stiff and as a result more comfortable than on most laptops.

I made a similar decision when the increasing bloat of the web made my 3rd gen iPad inadequate. I considered the new iPad Pro, but decided on a Surface Pro 4 instead. Except for me it wasn't a real filesystem I wanted. It was a virtual memory system that didn't make programs discard data when multitasking.

On the iPad, opening a couple more browser tabs and then coming back to the original tab might cause the page on the original tab to reload. This could be very frustrating on sites like HN or Reddit. I might start typing a comment, and in the middle of that need to look up some things to fact check myself or get some references. Do that, go back to the comment--and the damn page reloads, wiping out what I'd typed so far.

Anticipating this, I could "select all" on my comment and copy it, then go do the research, and then come back. If the page reloads then I could just paste the comment back. If I needed to copy and paste something from the other page it was usually safe to do at that point. Just switching between two already loaded pages usually would not trigger a reload.

I never ran into anything like that on SP4. I could pause writing an HN comment and research in other tabs as much as I wanted, and never had the partial comment gone when I switched back.

I don't know if this is because Windows will use a pagefile and/or swapfile when there is not enough physical RAM for everything, or because the SP4 had 16 times as much RAM as my 3rd gen iPad so I simply never got it low enough on RAM, but for whatever the reason browsing worked a lot better the SP4.

Since then I also got a 6th gen iPad (not Pro). It's much better than my old 3rd gen was about this, but still does occasionally force a refresh when witching among tabs.

Current mobile OS's (iOS and Android) do run without a pagefile, in order to cope with the crappiness of inbuilt eMMC storage which would quickly wear out as the pagefile got rewritten. Theoretically, well-behaved applications are supposed to checkpoint their own internal state when signaled by the OS to do so, since this ought to be more space-efficient than the use of a pagefile; in practice, almost no applications actually do this properly.

For what it's worth, Linux is a lot more parsimonious in its use of swap space than Windows, given very similar hardware and use cases.

Of course, modern iPhones and iPads actually come with fully fledged NVMe SSDs. So it's not really clear why that decision hasn't been revisited - or why Apple hasn't at least introduced some kind of process hibernation which fully restores background processes when switching back.

This would seem to be necessary for any serious multitasking workflow on an iPad Pro.

> had a real filesystem and I could easily load comics and movies on

Apps might not expose the iPadOS filesystem well (since they've gradually accreted a UX paradigm over the last 10 filesystem-less years), but it actually does work perfectly well to open files from your iPadOS home directory [the thing the Files app exposes] in any app that can handle that file type. You can open video files from Files into VLC; you can open CBRs/CBZs into https://chunkyreader.com/ ; etc.

For getting the files in/out of the iPad, Files can access external disks just fine (I've been using a Samsung USB-C T5 SSD); and Safari (don't know about other browsers) now allows you to save arbitrary files, putting your downloads in a regular Downloads folder within the Files-visible homedir. I'm sure there are other methods as well (e.g. copying files to the iPad's local storage from a storage provider, e.g. iCloud Drive, or Dropbox, or an SFTP/S3 client's host profile; or using a BitTorrent client to download whatever.)

Of course, apps can't access your homedir arbitrarily if they don't have the relevant capability, but that's just good sandboxing—if an app only works with particular files, it should only be receiving capabilities on individual files (through e.g. the Share/Open With action), not capabilities on your filesystem as a whole. The only reason desktop OSes aren't already mostly this way is the inertia of legacy apps.

(There's also nothing stopping a local POSIX terminal emulator app from creating a shared container that other apps like IDEs can write into, if you're wondering. Nobody's bothered yet, but that's because everyone wants to own your eyeballs with fully-integrated single-app solutions, not because it's not technically possible. You could totally build the equivalent of Termux for iPadOS. The only limitation would be that the package ecosystem would have to use the App Store as its package manager, with packages containing executables being distributed as Apple-signed extension "apps." Sort of like how iMessage's sticker-pack "apps" work, or how Photos.app's filter-pack "apps" work; or how Safari's content-blocker "apps" work. Or, come to think of it, exactly like how XCode.app attaches its POSIX tooling into the [read-only] macOS rootfs.)

> BitTorrent client to download whatever

AFAIK Apple doesn't allow BitTorrent clients to run on iOS devices

>Their screen keyboards are garbage

This coming from the company who bought SwiftKey is indeed baffling.

In some of the fullscreen apps like the Kindle app, the Close icon is hidden behind a swipe gesture. Swiping up/down at the very top of the screen makes the top toolbar appear, usually either as a full title bar or a small gesture bar that can be activated with a swipe.

I share the same feeling, even though didn't own an iPad before (I knew I needed something with less limitations). The new tablet mode they did is better (https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2019/08/29/annou...), however the biggest deal breaker for me _is_ the on-screen keyboard. Try using Slack in tablet mode, it's impossible: every time you go to a channel, the on screen keyboard pops-up, the animation to open/close takes 2-3 seconds each time: it's frustrating to the point I just plug the keyboard back on and use the surface in laptop mode.

There's a picture of the new Microsoft Ergonomic Desktop on The Verge. So sad that the keyboard is wired and not TKL :( Somewhat normal function keys though compared to the Sculpt. Mouse is also wired.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21247234/microsoft-surface...

https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/W1Uqdi9jgOACKGZQ_CEJVgGbxdw=...

Wired devices are way less fiddly for serious and professional use. No need to ever bother with pairing with the host, keeping a battery charged, or anything else; they will just work out of the box, and will keep working for the foreseeable future.

Yes and it's not like they're going anywhere. Especially on the keyboard the cable is a non-issue IMO. I highly prefer wired keyboards. The only reason to have a wireless keyboard is liking the look of a total wire-free desk (which I don't care about).

And with the mouse it's just a minor annoyance (empty batteries are a bigger one so I have that wired too).

Wireless is also an attack vector. Bad actors can potentially listen in on what's being typed.

For the average user it's NBD, but for large companies it's different.

The current Sculpt Ergonomic desktop is wireless and I have had a lot of issues with it- if I plug it into my USB-C hub, it randomly misses keypresses. So I have to plug the dongle into it's own port on the other side of my Mac.

OMG ME TOO!!!!

I love that keyboard so I put up with moving the dongle around but damn I hate it too!

I really wish there was a wired version!

I just want them to come out with an external trackpad! There don't seem to be any options for an external "precision" Windows-compatible trackpad.

That is getting pretty close to being a split ortholinear layout [1] (especially the left side).

I'm almost surprised that they haven't made the switch to a vertical staggered key layout [2] yet for some of their Ergonomic keyboards. I haven't tried one myself but it seems like it would improve the ergonomics somewhat (at the cost of having to relearn some muscle memory).

[1] otholinear: https://i.imgur.com/br7Z4Gf.jpg

[2] vertical stagger: https://i.redd.it/kbgjlube09e41.jpg

Are either of those for sale anywhere? Or do you have to build them yourself?

I've been meaning to buy a split keyboard for some time but I can't find a good vendor who sells complete keyboards w/o tons of LEDs or weird wooden designs. I just want a straight forward mechanical keyboard style one.

I'm not sure about those exact models but there are some links to pre-built ones in this /r/ErgoMechKeyboards thread [1].

edit: Just found this list of a bunch of split keyboards [2]. You should be able to find something on there.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/f5h3d6/s...

[2] https://github.com/diimdeep/awesome-split-keyboards

Thank you, both of those are helpful. I'm happy to see the market has matured a lot since I last looked.

This seems to simply be the budget keyboard from mid-2019 with a mouse added in: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4523191/use-microso...

It will probably take a bit till they iterate on the premium, wireless one again.

Hmmm... Interesting, they have dedicated emoji and office keys... I wonder what the office key does? also they got rid of shared function keys which is great, shared fn keys never made sense on a large full layout desktop keyboard, no one is getting this keyboard because it looks compact.

I was looking at the Surface Book 3 specs and it hit me that the value proposition for discrete graphics has changed significantly if you want to game on your laptop.

Since Stadia, Geforce Now and other cloud gaming services have launched, I suddenly have no interest in paying hundreds extra for a gaming capable laptop, just to make a compromise on weight, battery life or GPU power. I've been gaming on the cloud services for the past few months, and as long as you're within a few hundred miles of a cloud rendering location, you're going to get a far better mobile gaming experience on a thin, light and cheap laptop than you would on mobile graphics.

I've been enjoying fast-paced platformers, online shooters and action-RPGs on a 5 year old laptop and wouldn't want to downgrade to mobile graphics. This actually shocks me that my hardware preferences could have changed so rapidly. I would have been salivating over the gaming specs of the surface book 6 months ago.

What has been your primary cloud gaming service? I've been wanting to give it a go during this WFH period.

I'm signed up for both Stadia and Gforce Now. Both have lengthy free trials right now. They have different game libraries, so I've been switching back and forth depending on the game. I recommend both.

If you want to try the absolute smoothest user experience, give Stadia a try as it will come with a selection of free games and there's nothing to install. If you already have a large Steam library and want to play some of those games, give Geforce Now a try.

The ability to play many of my existing Steam games made GeForce Now the clear winner for me. Don't have to repurchase any games and if I decided to get a better gaming PC in the future (which I did when HL: Alyx came out), I can play any games I purchased prior on that PC.

The latency for multiplayer was just barely acceptable. I tried both Rocket League and Destiny 2 and was able to notice that I wasn't playing as well in either compared to playing locally.

I still struggle to see how Google plans to make Stadia successful when they're asking developers to port to their platform and players to pay for games they can't play locally. It would be interesting if they released a console offering that just replicated one of the Stadia servers but I don't see that happening.

I think it's cool people are finding value from these game streaming services. I remember when I first tried the Steam Link and thought there was some real potential there, and these services offer an even better convenience proposition.

Unfortunately, I've come around to the cynical mindset that I will never enjoy gaming over a streaming service, ever. I cannot stand the input lag, and I would rather play a game with shoddy graphics than with extra lag, or even just play a different game entirely. Maybe it's tolerable for games with zero real-time component, and even then I can feel the stickiness.

Back in the earlier days of large LCD TVs, I was always that guy who had to make a comment about lag on my friends' TVs. I knew I was being a dick but I couldn't handle being told there was "no lag" or "barely any lag" when there clearly was. I guess most people felt like my friends did because for a long time it was basically impossible to find a TV with reasonable input lag; then, LED TVs showed up, and basically by coincidence the gaming situation improved.

This is selfish, but I'm worried that as more people come around to cloud gaming (and the big players push it harder), the non-enthusiast gaming market will start drying up in favor of the streaming services. I can see a possible future where consoles die in favor of streaming apps; where some games start being released as exclusives to a cloud service; where mod support and community patches die off entirely because they're incompatible with streaming.

There must be differences in how people perceive lag, because it's rare that I notice any from LCDs. I have used a handful of TVs that were noticeably bad, but it was always solved by flipping them into game mode.

Given how much input lag can exist locally (well over 100ms) it should be entirely possible to eliminate perceivable lag in cloud gaming if the local hardware is low latency and the render farm is within a few hundred miles. I play Stadia from my laptop with a wired xbox controller, so I don't expect my hardware is adding a ton of lag, and anyway it's not perceivable to me. I just played through steamworld dig which has quite a few quick-reaction jumping puzzles and didn't have any issues whatsoever.

> There must be differences in how people perceive lag

Yeah, the only conclusion I've been able to come to is that some people are just more sensitive to lag than others.

If we're talking purely about enjoyment, then being sensitive to lag is nothing but a drawback. But from a performance standpoint, it's undeniable that lag has a heavy impact on gameplay. Your reaction time is constant from the time the light on the screen hits your eyes, so every millisecond you add to the pipeline from machine-to-screen (and from controller-to-machine) will strictly add to your reaction time. Sometimes even a very small increase in ms can change a challenge from "pretty doable" to "almost impossible" if the reaction time requirement was at the edge of your capabilities to begin with.

Whether or not this is "noticeable" depends on a lot of factors, including whether or not you've played the same game before on a less laggy setup. I think you're right that, given the same scenario (even the same skill level), some people just notice it more than others. Still, a part of me can't help but believe that it affects people's enjoyment whether they notice it or not.

I would love for a decent study to be done on this, because I think it has implications far outside gaming. Run an experiment where participants play a game in identical settings, except lag differs by small increments. At the end have participants rate their subjective experience, possibly along with their perception of responsiveness. My hunch is that even small differences in responsiveness would have a strong impact on experience, even if the participants don't notice anything "wrong."

I don't think cloud game streaming is good enough for most people who want serious graphics hardware. But seeing how more and more laptops get Thunderbolt 3, and how USB 4 is planning to effectively subsume it, what really changes the equation are external GPUs. At this point, it just makes more sense to have a light laptop that can be conveniently used on the go, and plug in a powerful GPU specifically for games that need it (which are also unlikely to be played on the bus etc).

Yeah, I don't think cloud gaming will be a replacement for people who shell out for desktop gaming hardware or external graphics card docks. But for when faced with making a big laptop portability and price compromise just to get mediocre laptop graphics, the cloud gaming gets pretty interesting, to me anyway. I also wouldn't consider myself a hardcore gamer. I maybe play 10-20 hours per month of a mix of genres, am not interested in e-sports, and prioritize convenience and fun over competitiveness. And since I used to game more seriously, I get why hardcore gamers are a bit threatened by this technology since if it ends up good enough for the masses, it's really going to hurt the high-end hardware options.

Hmm I tried gaming on a laptop (i7-8550U, 802.11ac) using Steam where the gaming happened on my Gigabit connected high-end desktop. It was playable but the video compression artifacts made an 11 year old game look pretty terrible (in comparison to playing it natively). So I can't imagine anyone would prefer that if the pricing on good hardware is within reason.

I have not tried Stadia so I cannot compare that to how this Steam streaming works, but it would have to be 100x better.

I have a Surface Book 2 15” with the max specs and it is not worth the price to me. Compared to the new MacBooks I much prefer the Surface Book’s ergonomics and keyboard, but the performance is just too unreliable, it frequently thermal throttles and also randomly slows down to a snails pace. Plus now the back has been getting unusually warm even when idling on both my Windows 10 and Linux dual boot, it never used to do that. I’ve only had it for 13 months and it’s already showing its age.

I don’t understand how my desktop i5 4690k with an old SATA SSD is SO much faster than this laptop that has an 8th gen i7 8650u, DDR4, NVMe SSD, even for basic tasks like having more than 20 browser tabs open and just surfing the web.

I totally agree, I have the 13.5" and suffer from the same problem. MS Teams warns me that my audio quality will degrade because of the CPU load - on a machine that is essentially idling. Sometimes it takes tens of seconds to react to clicks (we're talking Outlook, not Paraview) when I'm in a conference etc.

Outlook can also take a second to react to a click on a high end PC. It feels terrible no matter what. You always have to bring an extra bucket of patience when doing anything with it.

> I don’t understand how my desktop i5 4690k with an old SATA SSD is SO much faster than this laptop that has an 8th gen i7 8650u, DDR4, NVMe SSD, even for basic tasks like having more than 20 browser tabs open and just surfing the web.

The surface book is in a strange bind. the 8650 is much much weaker than your 4690k and has very little thermal room to play with. The thermals are particularly tricky because the CPU lives in the tablet portion; meaning there is a tension between cooling it properly, providing a touch screen and keeping it thin and light enough to not have awkward weight distribution.

Yup that's what I've found, unfortunately for me I realised this after purchasing it. It's odd that it's marketed as a high end performance laptop whereas it's more comparable to a low-mid range desktop.

Just from the power envelope (88W for the desktop vs 15 for the 8650u in the surface book 2, assuming it's configured to that setting -- edit: it is) the desktop part would be 80% faster, if all things were equal.

Now all things aren't equal. The mobile chip is going to be thermally limited, while a desktop chip has a huge heatsink and fan to it's service, and a lot of room to be "just warm". Despite whatever architecture improvements (and take those with a grain of salt, remember that skylake and its descendants are the most affected by the Spectre/Meltdown mitigations) you still have physics against you and the desktop part should be 50% faster simply because it can keep the turbos up and higher frequencies than a TDP-restrained mobile processor.

It'd seem that, today, only the AMD Renoirs are capable of pulling "desktop-like performance on a mobile budget". Let's hope AMD keeps bringing good chips out, and Intel wakes up and stands with something decent, unlike what they've been doing so far.

-- edit:

Since I was already editing: of course a Ryzen whatever is going to be also TDP-limited compared against other Ryzens, but AMD isn't really making the mobile parts completely equivalent to the desktop parts. So yes, calling a Renoir "desktop performance" is massively ignoring AMD "super powerful" desktop chips.

More reason to hope Intel gets up and starts giving a fight here. We need competition, otherwise AMD will turn the tables and will get back to a stagnant situation.

> It's odd that it's marketed as a high end performance laptop whereas it's more comparable to a low-mid range desktop.

That's true of nearly all laptops except maybe bulky gaming laptops. The thermal and power limits of laptops mean that they're not really "high performance", they're just high performance for a laptop.

Disable Anti Virus and Firewall. Helps a bit.

Honestly, that sounds faulty – I had a SB2 with similar symptoms and it generally means the thermal paste or something is bad. I was able to return mine for a full replacement, no questions asked.

I’ve had mine longer than the 12 month warranty though

To fix or at least improve some of the thermal throttle issues you could use an USB fan that's aimed at the CPU area, and/or use Intel XTU to undervolt the CPU (on my SB2 around -120mv is very stable, but varies a lot from CPU), disabling Turbo Short Boost helps a bit too. I think, as others have mentioned, the thermal issues are due to having the CPU and display as one part, the airflow is limited but display also produces some heat compared to normal laptops.

Is it weird I'm absolutely excited over the new desktop bundle for the erognomic keyboard and mouse? I have absolutely come to love the Microsoft erognomic keyboard and mouse set, so I look forward to snapping it up so that I can replace my much much older version of those products.

When it comes to those two accessories, for me at least, I think they're such a great value for such a low price!

Is it weird I'm absolutely excited over the new desktop bundle for the erognomic keyboard and mouse?

I don't know if weird is the word. Some people just are really into this sort of thing. Like when the hard-core Apple fans lost their coolant when the black keyboard and mouse came out.

I think it's normal because these are things we interact with physically every day. We become attached to real, tangible things. It's part of why keychains, mobile phones, and jewelry are so personal to us.

You're not the only one.

Especially because the last generation sculpt mouse was mechanically junk (i'm on my third one in 2 years...) but in a great form factor.

Is the new mouse still used with the palm facing down? What specifically makes it ergonomic?

I'm looking to stave off some looming wrist RSI, and have latched onto the idea that a vertical mouse (Evoluent, Anker, and Logitech are probably the most popular manufacturers) is the best solution short of switching to a different device type, like a trackball.

I've got the Logitech vertical mouse and it's the best thing I've done for my wrists lately. Highly recommended. Also got the Logitech ergo keyboard and that has been great as well.

FWIW, I didn't find switching to a trackball particularly difficult. I've got two CST trackballs - I use my office setup left-handed and my home setup right-handed to even out use between my limbs.

CST now bought-out/renamed to X-keys by P.I. Engineering.

Have you tried adjusting your workspace? I had serious RSI and started the mouse to trackpad to wacom dance to try and solve it but it turned out I was just shifting the real problem was just my chair was too low. Raised it and it resolved itself and haven't had an issue for close to 7 years now.

Have you tried exercising? Between reading Sarno's book and regular exercise / activity all pains everywhere are gone.

Everyone seems to immediately try to jump to some device that is going to fix all of their problems without actually taking care of themselves or changing their habits first.

That's a bit difficult right now :)

Seriously, since we have been in lockdown for 2 months my wrists are much more sensitive. I did use the powerball for a bit but I don't have the patience for brainless exercise. I love walking in nature.

Since this started I've been doing 100 burpees a day to make up for never going anywhere. Takes less than 20 minutes. I hate repetitive exercise as well but I don't see it as optional.

I've maintained exercise throughout this WFH period, specifically chinups/pullups and pushups each 3x/week, and deliberate cardio (biking) 30-60 min also 3x/week. My hints of RSI are so far exclusively in my right wrist, so I have good reason to believe that a vertical mouse would help (or switching to mousing left-handed).

I wish they had a picture.

I know so many people that absolutely love the MS ergo keyboard, even worked at one shop that one was given to you on your first day because everybody used them and they assumed you would want one too.

For me, they actually caused rsi issues. Took a while to narrow it down to the ergo keyboard. Which is a shame, it's one of the few MS designs that I like.

I'd want the Sculpt (short-travel keyboard) in the split configuration though -- the split, wired seems to have big keys.

I'm not sure I understand people that want heavy mechanical keyboards, which for me feels like a throwback to touch typing classes on the IBM typewriter in 1988.

Interested to try the new Surface Go - we brought one of the original ones as a test device and was quite disappointed. The performance, especially for web browsing, is far behind that of cheaper Chromebooks, even though it had more powerful hardware.

Upgrading from the pentium to the m3 should put it on par with a $300 Chromebook.

If you want a Chromebook, get a Chromebook.

Agree with the other reply 100%. If you payed for the upgraded Surface Go, it works excellently, and runs pretty well when you break out of Windows S mode.

I use it for travel and more portable uses. I specifically use it to read via screenreader (Kurzweil 3000--works best on Windows), when I need something more portable. I even got one for my mom for Mother's Day last year and she uses it as her primary Windows laptop.

It is better than spending $180 for the cheapest Windows laptop that you can get, due to the tablet form factor, durability, and portability. Sure, the battery is not replaceable but this is livable.

> If you payed for the upgraded Surface Go, it works excellently

Personally, just using the new Edge and a few tabs on the high-end, 8G Surface Go 1, it still lags.

The base model still uses a Pentium gold, so you're probably not going to like it either. You'll have to pay $629 for a better processor.

Microsoft appears to be pricing their hardware in line with Apple now? $1599 starting price for the Book? I get the quality and the features are up there but the price is unappealing.

the surface Go even starts at a reasonable $399 but then to add a dock is $250? The dock is is 62.5% the cost of the computer? That seems rather steep

I think with the docks it's a no-win situation, from what I can tell the surface docks contain a display adapter (maybe 2 now for the new one since it supports multiple displays?), a NIC, a USB hub, charging circuitry, and some other random stuff. The price of all that seems to add up. I originally assumed the video out on the surface dock was just passthrough but it's not, it has its own display hardware with its own quirks and you update the firmware on it to change the behavior in some cases.

In my experience a comparable USB-C dock of decent quality for my macbook is pretty expensive too, though certainly not surface dock level. I think this is just the situation we're in with how laptops and docks interact now. If more of the smarts were in the laptop than the dock the dock would probably be a lot cheaper, but that seems like it might drive up the price of the laptops.

The original Surface Dock supplies power, two USB ports, two mini-displayport plugs, a headphone jack, and an ethernet port. (I'm using one right now.) With my first gen Surface Book, I'm able to drive two external screens through the dock, or use the laptop screen plus one more. Haven't tried with a Surface Book 2 yet. The nice part is that it just reuses the charging port.

As far as docking stations go, it's a substantial step up from most docks. That new price tag is still pretty steep though.

Reminds me of the $999 Apple stand

The $999 Stand was a publicity stunt, to get people and outlets talking about Apple and maintain its apparent status as a "luxury brand" (which it's not, it's a consumer brand, albeit a slightly expensive one).

But if MSFT is going for the same thing with something that's actually meant to be useful like a dock, they're just being stupid. No one views MSFT as a luxury brand anyway.

No, Apple wanted to appeal to pro-sumers. The stand is for people who need the display, but already have a monitor grid to plug it in.

You're paying for the r&d that does into creating these products. The Surface Book is full of custom parts, and you really don't expect it to cost the same as other OEM laptops.

It also goes without saying the Surface line are luxury items.

But why does it contain so many custom parts? Does it improve the user experience in some way?

The hinge and locking system are custom made for the Surface Book, and it's very sturdy. Many users [0] mention that they really like it as well.

I'm pretty happy with my Surface Book 2 as well, it's a pretty solid computer, with the only caveats being the repairability and non-upgradeability.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/6lu0kg/lets_talk_a...

I think that’s always been Microsoft’s point of the Surface line. The PC market is flooded with cheap laptops, and Microsoft wanted something premium to compete against Apple.

Well step one should be to create a product that competes.

Higher resolution screen, better aspect ratio, touch and an ntrig pen. Seems they would need to make it more expensive for a fair competition.

Given the technical specifications of Apple's laptops it is not that hard for many of us.

It's not a fair competition to have in the same category a mobile device with a touchscreen and a laptop with a tiny touchbar.

IDK, I think it is more to set a baseline experience expectation. (Similar to what Nexus and Pixel did for google)

A LOT of PC manufacturers bundle a lot of crappy software with their laptops. MS hardware is just windows.

Microsoft is guilty too. I was pretty surprised when I saw a launcher for Candy Crush on a new computer. Go ahead and feature it in the store, but it doesn't belong in the menu of a new computer.

Well, they're not guilty in the sense that that is the baseline Windows experience, disappointing as that fact is.

It's pretty shameful that it's pre-installed even if you are doing a fresh install of windows on a machine you put together

Also, they don't want to jeopardize their relationship with PC manufacturers that buy Windows, so they aren't going to make a modestly priced regular laptop that competes with their customers.

Recall that the surfacebook is a 2-in-1 device. A tablet, and a laptop.

While the dock is compatible with the Go, I don't believe it is the expected to be used with the Go.

> Microsoft appears to be pricing their hardware in line with Apple now? $1599 starting price for the Book? I get the quality and the features are up there but the price is unappealing.

We'll have to see the detail of the configuration, but the original Surface Book had an entry price of 1500 (5 years ago), and it was a fairly anemic configuration (iGP, 128GB storage). The SB2 lowered the price to 1150 for a similarly anemic base configuration (no iGP and 128GB storage, and a Kaby Lake where the other models got Refresh).

The book's always been a pretty premium laptop.

> the surface Go even starts at a reasonable $399 but then to add a dock is $250? The dock is is 62.5% the cost of the computer? That seems rather steep

You do know that the Surface Go is a tablet right? The "keyboard" is the $130 Type Cover. Getting a dock just for that seems somewhat unlikely. As in, if you already have a dock for some other surface product you might use it with a Go, you're not going to buy a dock for a Go, that's insane.

The Surface Book was always a premium model and not a staple, compared to the Surface Laptop which was meant to address the lower part of the budget spectrum. The Surface Laptop is more comparable to the Macbook Air line on both features and price.

Also the dock was definitely designed for a workstation setup, which the Surface Go isn't. Surface Go support seems to be incidental. I have the gen 1 version of the dock and I use it at my desk to attach two screens and a keyboard and mouse.

A decent surface has always been in that price range

The dock for the original Surface Go was garbage. You were always better off getting the USB-C hub.

I am surprised the Surface Duo phone isn't listed, since it looks like a luxury item, and considering all the products are too be preordered.

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

> Our active noise cancellation is adjustable through intuitive on-ear dials and specifically tuned to [..] block out [..] human voices.

If only someone confirmed this working, I'll be buying them in an instant.

From the Surface Book 3 launch video: "Rendered on Surface Book 3".

That's how you sell a Pro machine.

If they are still refusing to put Thunderbolt 3 ports in, they could have put the far better Ryzen Chips in...

What is the reason to not putting Thunderbolt 3? I still prefer the XPS 13 with 2 TB port + 1 USB Type-C.

I believe it has to do with the amount of lanes available on the board, because they want to keep the Surface connector (and I don't blame them.)

Apparently DMA attacks (thunderclap et al).

But Windows 10 in 2019 included Kernel DMA Protection to mitigate thunderclap etc

I think the battery story just barely got better with AMD CPUs. Intel's mobile CPUs (used to) do much better at keeping power usage low. IDK how the new 4000 series compares.

It’s disappointing that the SB3 seems to have the same screen and trackpad as the SB2. The screen has so much glare compared to the MBP and XPS, it makes dark mode unusable in most lighting situations. The trackpad is small and mediocre, it can’t reliably pick up two-finger right clicks. It’s a shame because I think the hardware is otherwise great.

As a former Surface Book 2 user I really hope this update includes good antireflective coating or even a laminated display. The Surface devices are great but the display while beautiful on its own is just too damn reflective. Ultimately abandoned the device because of the reflectivity.

I got a Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro 2018 and sent it back, now I'm thinking about selling the iPad to buy a Surface Go 2: kickstand included, WSL 2 when needed, keyboard with a function row.

My only worry is that the experience in tablet mode is gonna be subpar.

> My only worry is that the experience in tablet mode is gonna be subpar.

That was my experience with the Surface Go. The battery life was much worse than my ipad mini 2.

There are far less dedicated apps for Windows 10, so much of my tablet workflow involved using the web browser to access services.

For batter life alone, I returned the surface go, and bought and ipad pro.

Meanwhile, MS is touting the "bigger" battery in the Go 2.

That's, 27Wh [1] vs 26.12Wh [2] of the original.

Go figure.

[1] https://youtu.be/kVAa-I8s9V0?t=180

[2] https://surfacetip.com/how-much-surface-battery-capacity-in-...

Things to consider when pricing the Go 2, upgrading from Windows S to Windows Pro and for make sure to get a drive bigger than 64gb. Windows isn't really a comfortable experience with so little storage space over the years.

Surface Go and iPad Pro are not comparable products.

I have a Surface Go and it's a great little machine for what it is but iPad Pro should be compared to the Surface X.

Be ready to say good it to a lot of apps.

> I got a Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro 2018 and sent it back

May I ask why?

Apologies for jumping in here, but hopefully parent will answer your question.

I have noticed that a lot of the reviews & comments about the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro are separated by size. People who have the 12.9 seem to be much happier (on the whole) than people who have the 11. I have the 12.9 and I love it. The keyboard is fully as large as a laptop keyboard and the trackpad is smaller than a MacBook's, but still very usable. The 11 users complain that many of the keys are too small and the track pad is just too teeny to use reasonably.

Obviously, physical input devices are very personal and have much to do with your hand size, your height, etc.

I will say that one downside is that the case is heavy. It makes the 12.9 fully as beefy as the 13 inch MacBook Pro. The upside is that the ease of pulling the iPad away from the case encourages using the iPad naked (when a keyboard isn't needed), which is so nice for lap browsing, comic reading, etc.

I have the 11 and am very happy with it, beside the price.

I consume content on my iPad and thought that having a keyboard would make me using it more productively. Turned out that the keyboard is not that great in my opinion (11", AZERTY, impossible to do a Ç in one second like I do everyday on a standard magic keyboard) and that the trackpad is a tiny bit too small for me.

“My only worry is that the experience in tablet mode is gonna be subpar.”

From my experience it’s not just subpar. It’s basically very sad.

> I got a Magic Keyboard for my iPad Pro 2018 and sent it back

What didn’t you like about it? I have one and feel it’s a huge improvement and very worth the price I paid.

I got one too, the keyboard and touchpad are great.

The Surface Go makes a lot of compromises to provide a janky experience in both laptop and tablet mode, and I am here for it. There's an unbelievable amount of dorky coolness is being able to swap from Gvim in laptop mode to Slay the Spire in tablet mode.

The biggest issue with touch on the Surface Go 2 is that Microsoft is dropping support for classic Edge in the near future, and no other Windows browser feels quite as snappy on low end devices or as good on a touch screen yet.

Go Pro X, lice a little. Seriously though I am using one and could not be happier vs an IPad definitely but vs a PC using a RDP also.

I got to play with the 50" Surface Hub and it blew my mind. Even if a bit laggy and not altogether precise with gestures. 4K video, pressure sensitive drawing, handwriting recognition and indexing. Going back to a 15" screen felt strange afterwards. Very "Minority Report". I believe there is a large format 85" Surface due shortly ;)

They featured WSL in the Surface Book video! And terminal is in the dock!

Those earbuds look like they'd fit worse than Apple's. I wonder if I have funny shaped ears, but nothing fits right. Those Pixel Buds look like things that would fit with the way they have those hooks or whatever they're called. It must be really hard to design these things to fit a wide range of ears.

> I wonder if I have funny shaped ears, but nothing fits right

That's what U.S. air force discovered after WWII [1] (discussed on HN recently [2]). Also known as flaw of averages, curse of dimensionality, etc.

> There was no such thing as an average pilot. If you’ve designed a cockpit to fit the average pilot, you’ve actually designed it to fit no one.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2016/01/16/when-us-air-...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22956832

Have you tried IEMs? I have ears where regular earbuds don't fit well too, Apple's are incredibly uncomfortable for me. But IEMs like the Shure SE215 fit really well and I barely notice them. The Meelectronics X6 works great for a pair of cheap Bluetooth gym headphones too.

Or even better CIEMs if fit is a goal :)

1. At first I resented AirPods for not sealing out background noise, or fitting securely. But then I realized its a feature and not a bug. You can be in a private space while not fully disconnected from the public space. Just another tool in the arsenal 2. People have mentioned IEMs. If you feel discomfort from most headphones, you can get custom ear molds made for IEMs. In the US, this is generally a co-pay to an audiologist for a visit, around $50 for the audiologist to make the impressions, and around $100 for the custom plugs. IEM technology has not changed drastically, so you can buy used or older models. A 10 year old triple driver IEM will likely sound better than any non-IEM option. Make sure your IEM choice has detachable cables, as life happens. Plus, you can then use something like the FiiO UTWS1 to turn your IEMs into a more modern experience. There will be a downgrade in quality but it will be worth it for convenience. 3. Microsoft likely made a mistake with the size of these buds. They look like gauges that people put into their ears. This will either be a failure, or in the modern world of branding, an unlikely success.

FWIW, FiiO has cheap IEMs that are pretty good. For under $200 you can get a pair with 3 drivers in each ear (F9 Pro), and the aforementioned bluetooth “true wireless” adapter. Add another $200 and you have custom ear molds.

>> Our active noise cancellation is adjustable through intuitive on-ear dials

My only real complaint about my Sony noise-cancelling headphones are the stupid touch controls, why would Microsoft copy those?

They are physical dials, not touch though.

If they actually worked they might not be so bad. I’ve never gotten my otherwise beloved mx3s to do one single thing I wanted them to do while using the touch controls, but I can see how pausing a song, adjusting volume or forwarding might be nice if it actually worked.

It's not a touch control, it's a physical dial like on a stereo. It actually feels really nice. You can adjust the volume on one ear, and the noise cancellation on the other. There are touch controls, like stop, start, skip etc; but not volume/noise cancellation.

I use Sony WH-CH700N's because they fold flat, have physical buttons, noise cancelling and have good enough sound quality. (It's bluetooth, can only ask so much)

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1389412-REG/sony_whch...

I was really hoping that Microsoft would tweak the design of Surface Book 3 and change the hinge, this spec bump is a little underwhelming after all this wait

Time to wait another 3 years.

The Surface Book 3 may give the XPS 7390 a run for the money for the high end enterprise users. My initial concerns will be heat, weight and build quality. XPS metal body feels great and is durable. I wonder how this will compare.

Heat has always been the problem with Surfaces, for whatever reason the firmware always has massive power/thermal management issues. When the firmware is working right the thermals and noise level are great (especially if you're using the dGPU in the keyboard base, because it spreads the heat across the whole machine), but it's so frequently not...

I hope they get it right this time.

I use a Book 2 as daily driver but to be honest I would prefer the HP ZBook I had before. The Book is very unstable with multiple monitors, the docking station constantly runs out of USB resources, when I detach the tablet and reconnect the display settings get messed up and I spend ten minutes reconfiguring and overall it lacks speed compared to its configuration. Really not a good experience for a pricey high end laptop.

I've had the same experience, the thing eventually becomes a nightmare with display issues if you're using the dock, which I think most are. We also have had multiple people's Surface Book 2 batteries start to swell to the point that the lid is parabola when you close it. I've recently had a show-stopper charging issue too, which is very obnoxious when you're in the middle of work.

But you need to compare it with future XPS 9300 or XPS 9700.

I will never endorse the "nostril camera" of XPS 9XXX series considering they have now released better.

They've gone back to the 9XXX numbering scheme but those are the newest models. Ex: For the 13" line the 9300 is the newest iteration with above-screen camera replacement

I think the laptop to beat is the X1 Carbon. Feels completely solid and uncompromised.

I have a Book v1, and let me tell you, that thing is riddled with issues.

The hinge is the biggest thing. Because it connects over PCIe to the base, the Book is very sensitive after a decent amount of time. If I adjust the screen, the hinge disconnects and reconnects.

Also, if I unplug my headphones while it's sleeping in laptop mode (which I use 99% of the time), the audio cuts out and I have to restart the machine.

That's why I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude with the same 6300u that's inside the book and with a worse screen -- at least it generally works even if I had to re-uninstall Candy Crush...

Long term surface book user. Can confirm the hinge becomes absolute trash after a while, and MS will wash their hands of you after the warranty period. Doing anything to the lid will cause the PCIE bus to disconnect and freak the laptop out, sometimes repeatedly.

Cute concept, garbage execution.

What draws the high end to a surfacebook or an XPS instead of saving $1000 per laptop and going with the similar-specced Lenovo T543?

Isn't it better to go with a 7nm AMD Ryzen 4000 based laptop nowdays?

For example a Ryzen 5 4500U is also Quad-core with 8 hyperthreads, but has a 2.3GHz base clock.

I wish we had device convergence without fancy tricks like Android/Windows link or iOS/Mac Handoff. I'd love to be working on a document on my phone, put it in laptop mode to write in a more desktop-like environment for multitasking or putting PDFs side by side, and then docking at home for a full desktop experience.

So far, it seems like Samsung DeX (is the X capitalized?) is the closest for me, but with them killing Linux on DeX, it seems like it won't come to pass.

Or maybe I just need to suck it up and get LTE data plans for all of my devices.

Windows Phone 10 "Continuum" was pretty great, as brief as it lasted. It is too bad Microsoft gave up on trying for phones running Windows.

Yeah, I had the opportunity to try it out as well and was impressed. I just wish there were more staying power in features like that. DeX is nice too but again we run a risk of the company shutting it down due to a lack of users.

"People tell us that putting on headphones is today’s equivalent of shutting the office door to focus and connect in any setting"

1. What's an office 2. What's an office door

0. What are open plan offices? 0'. What are the most popular office plans?

Microsoft has been trying to make pen input "a thing" since at least 2000 when they started selling "tablet PCs", and as a result their pen input has become really excellent over the years. The segmentation of the Surface brand is confusing as hell and I'm still not sure which is which despite being invested in it.

I am really disappointed that the Surface Books do not have a stronger GPU. After waiting two years for an update, I was hoping to see strong GPUs that would make this a swiss army knife laptop - something that is portable, has great battery life, but can also be used for gaming or machine learning work.

Unfortunately it appears that Microsoft will not sell the Quadro version of this laptop to individuals and only make it available through their commercial channels (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-boo...). I verified this in a chat with a sales rep.

It will probably show up here eventually.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/b/surfaceforbusiness

Those Earbuds look like a piercing plug / flesh tunnel. Hard to imagine they will sell well.

An ugly look didn't stop Airpods from selling like crazy, though.

Airpods are a status symbol (somehow, even though everyone has them?) So I doubt Microsoft will get the same appeal.

You are claiming AirPods are a status symbol, and you’re claiming everyone has them. Which is a contradiction.

They are not a status symbols. I see people working at fast food restaurants, in college, and other lower paid occupations with them. I also see them with iPhones and MacBooks and apple watches. But these devices aren’t that expensive.

I don’t see them and think “this person must have access to a lot of credit or be related to someone rich”. That might be reserved for having a nice home in an expensive neighborhood.

And in my experience, the utility and longevity derived from most Apple products far outweighed the extra few hundred dollars spent initially, so the amortized cost is much lower. I type this from an iPhone 6 bought in 2014, which at the time was the most expensive phone. But I didn’t buy it to be a status symbol.

Yes, they are a status symbol, just like the "blue bubble" v "green bubble" on SMS on iPhone. Blue bubbles mean the person has an iPhone, green bubbles mean the person doesn't have an iPhone. Do you honestly think Apple did that not knowing it would become a status symbol?

They might have intended that, but I still don't see the status in being able to afford a $400 phone. The vast majority of Americans can afford that, and obviously do based on how many iPhones I see. The cashier at target uses an iPhone, the lawyers I see use iPhone, the programmers use iPhones, the housekeepers who don't speak English at a hotel I see use iPhones. What is the status?

To me, the blue bubble means it's not using inferior MMS protocols which may or may not get the message to the recipient. I prefer using iMessage/Signal/Whatsapp.

Oh, AirPods are status symbols, all right. Not exclusively, of course (I mean, they work, and pretty well at that), but they signal that the wearer belongs to the in-group of the young, hip, and cool.

Based on my experiences, it would not signal that. I've seen people of many different backgrounds wearing them. Maybe more young than old, but that' just a general trend with technology. I wouldn't say if I saw someone wearing them they were "hip" or "cool".

In my experiences, they absolutely do signal that, so our anecdata cancel out.

Maybe this article will provide a starting point to shed light on the fact that AirPods have certainly become status symbols: https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-airpods-most-important...

I don't really know how else to illustrate that fact. Maybe there are peer-reviewed sociological or ethnographic studies out there that will specifically state this fact, but I haven't found any. But the world exists outside of the contents of peer-reviewed science.

The perfect device for me : the Surface Pro X's hybrid tablet format, with no chip inside, as your smpartphone is the chip, that lets you use Android (for everyday tasks and some pro tasks) or a full GNU/Linux.

A poor version of this, but already worth using : Samsung Dex with a portable monitor, with UserLand or Andronix.

Portable monitors are way behind the Surface Pro X (e.g. for pencil management), Samsung doesn't invest enough money on Dex and UserLand / Andronix lack some features (a good VNC client seamlessly integrated / hardware acceleration)

This was tried by Motorola a while ago but it didn't really take off.

My phone is now more powerful than the XPS 13 I used in 2017. Same with the SPX.

It changes everything.

Would the Go 2 run Linux OK?

I had a Surface Pro 3 for a while and though I got Linux running on it, I never managed all the tablety stuff working properly. Rotation, Pen + Touch input (at the same time without randomly cutting out!!), auto keyboard popup on input fields with no keyboard connecting, the keyboard actually working after being removed and reconnected, etc etc...

It was a great machine but Linux lacked support for this type of support in many ways. I wonder if this has improved as this was many years ago when the SP3 was just out.

this subreddit has some good information on the topic:

https://www.reddit.com/r/surfacelinux

and for the Go 1 it seems to work pretty well: https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/gclaqi/surfac...

It's gotten better, in that you now have wifi and can detach the keyboard. Pen and ink is still bad. Do not recommend running Linux.

Oh, WiFi worked fine for me even then!

Thanks for the feedback!

Still no TB3 -- https://twitter.com/h0x0d/status/1253917701719769088 -- but I am surprised Microsoft is admitted defeat and is unable to come up with secure a secure DMA implementation. There have to be enough kernel and firmware developers there to do it, right? Or has that org wasted away...

I am sure the proprietary dock -- whose price keeps increasing -- has absolutely nothing to do with the decision not to use TB3.

The base Surface Go 2 seems like an attractive option for those looking to do a bit of real computing alongside iPad-esque media consumption.

Maybe I've been using macOS with default wallpapers for too long but the Windows wallpaper in this post feels so familiar.

Whoa whoa whoa, hold your horses their Microsoft.

4 new products in one blog post?

And the blog post is pretty plain at that.

Where's the sexy animations? The over the top presentation?

If you're going to try and fuck me to the tune of $1,600 for a laptop, at least take me to out to dinner first.

Microsoft could really stand to learn a few things from Google/Apple product presentation imho.

Million dollar move, five dollar finish

I'd rather just focus on the 10% that is the detailed content, versus 90% hype, but to each their own. I don't need to be told for 3 hours that every minor feature is an Earth-shattering event.

Honestly this blog post is 90% gibberish. Skimming over it, I just see meaningless word salads like "navigat[ing] the current environment", "design[ing] a Surface for every person", and "stay[ing] connected to the people and content that matters".

Not only that, but I can’t find any review videos for the Surface headphones 2 on YouTube, and I’m looking for new headphones.

Whenever a new Sony/Bose/Apple product drops, the reviewers are all over it. No wonder the first Surface headphones flew under the radar so hard.

Yeah I’m confused by what their marketing team did here. It’s a super text heavy page with a just a couple of pictures showing the products from far away. Odd way to announce a hardware lineup.

With not even a picture for every product, like the keyboards.

Actually, I like how Microsoft goes straight to the point and does an altogether announcement in one page without the hype and pompous animations and transitions from Apple and Google over a single product page.

They saved the whole showcase animations and marketing in the video and not spoiled it into their website.

Agreed. The "no-nonsense" press release is wonderful. I'm fatigued by the trend of whole-page scroll-to-animate "our new BrandTech3 delivers twice the Foo for <consumer segment>" announcements. Unless there's something /really new/, over-hyping of incremental changes makes the company seem desperate to find things to fill a presentation. And this is the polar opposite of the weak "vague, positive, brand values" ad campaigns Microsoft ran in its more confused days (the Surface "click" ads full of dancers in pastel colors come to mind). Those did little more than make Microsoft seem out of touch.

And really, which non-tech people are going to be looking at this? There's not enough regular consumer excitement about "the next big Surface accessory" to suggest anything but the store/product page needs to be flashy. They're much better off drawing general consumer interest via review channels, product placement, and quirk-bait "behind the scenes" videos or collaborations.

Really!? I wouldn't call this announcement "straight to the point" at all. It truly is quite the opposite.

First, I get that including a byline in such an announcement is meant to convey the fact that real people worked very hard on this, but I actually think that most people will see the full names and specific job titles as visual clutter.

Here's my summary of the announcement.

Paragraph 1: times are changing and I think we both know what we mean. Allow me to imply that Windows market share is growing faster than ever (data do not support this: https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/desktop/worldwide, https://www.statista.com/statistics/218089/global-market-sha...). Let's draw a false equivalency between OS and hardware while ribbing Apple for their butterfly keyboard fiasco, and also boast about offering "cameras and mics built in to connect us to the people who matter most," as if that somehow sets us apart.

Paragraph 2: again, times are changing, and you know what we mean. Here are the intentionally generic product names again, with no additional information whatsoever.

Paragraph 3: as a company, in this time of change, we want you to know that we're more willing than ever to sell to you. We boast about unleashing Microsoft Teams upon the world as though that's a good thing. Here are two tweets meticulously chosen and vetted by very highly skilled marketing and PR teams to further convey our desired brand messages.

Panos out. Over to you, Robin.

Paragraph 4: in case you forgot, we're announcing a family of new products today. They're designed to work for more than one purpose.

Paragraph 5: here's a bullet list of the same intentionally generic-sounding names again. We didn't want to overwhelm you with even a tiny bit of technical specifications at this point.

- Sorry, disgruntled Apple refugees considering a switch, we won't tell you yet what the "Surface Go" actually is. Just know that it "delivers incredible value" and is portable -- oh, and it's usable by people who belong to companies or families alike.

- Perhaps surprisingly, our newest laptop is also our best one.

- Before we go into any meaningful detail, it's more important for me to pass on the message from our brand teams that the headphones 2 -- sorry, the smoothly phrased Surface Headphones 2 -- and the Earbuds "complete your Surface experience." This article is going well.

- The Surface Dock 2 is a dock that works like a dock.

Paragraph 6: whatever the Surface Go is (a tablet?), it's got a 2:1 screen aspect ratio! Let's take a break from these byzantine tech specs to mention that several oddly specific organizations, about half of which you've probably never heard of, have "chosen Surface Go." More hints as to what it is: it has a compact design, touch screen, keyboard, LTE Advanced, and is compatible with "Pen."

Paragraph 7: [jarringly sudden dump of Surface Go 2 tech specs, pricing, and availability, but presented as prose instead of a more sensible table or bullet point format]

Paragraph 8: on to the Surface Book. It all started when we set a goal to build a competitive laptop. That laptop has since been used by users.

Paragraph 9: [another block of needlessly wordy and sometimes outright redundant tech specs, pricing, and availability]

Paragraph 10: We have it on good authority that people use headphones to focus. Ours are designed to fit human ears and deliver sound. We provide a head-spinning 13 levels of ambient noise control, because Bose and Apple provide a measly three, and I think we can all agree that 13 is greater than three.

Paragraph 11: Earbuds, also designed for the human ear.

Paragraph 12: Dock.

Paragraph 13: we're coming out with a new "accessories bundle" of a keyboard and mouse, but we aren't making it clear whether we've updated the devices themselves.

Paragraph 14: you can preorder today! But only in "select markets" that probably means parts of the USA, and definitely not Mexico or South Africa. We can't link you to any further information from here.

Paragraph 15: as our brand teams would like to emphasize, we really hate to denigrate our products by discussing their tangible, specific, concrete aspects. It's never about that. It's all about "helping people find moments of focus and relaxation."

Robin out.

I'm probably about as cynical about slick, browser-killing, scroll-synced product animations as the next person, but this is no better.

This is just a minor refresh, they do more flashy stuff for big releases.

The new hardware looks impressive, but I think it's still being held back by Windows; I say this as someone who uses Windows 10 on a daily basis.

Given how responsive Microsoft has been to the market, I wouldn't be surprised if they scrapped Windows in favor of something web-based like Chrome OS.

Thats windows 10x which is annouced earlier.

I'm still not sold on the kickstand. I bought the original Surface Go because I loved the form factor and all, but the kickstand I dislike. I wish it was a more traditional clamshell design instead, making it more usable on the lap or when held in hand.

The Surface Go 2 looks interesting but I'm too deeply invested in macOS, unfortunately. I wish Apple offered something similar (i.e. a real computer, not a tablet). I really liked the MacBook Air 11" and regret that I sold it years ago.

Get an Apple laptop?

A 13" laptop is not really comparable to a 10.5" detachable.

There’s also the 12” macbook that they will update soon I believe.

That has been discontinued last year. Do you have a link regarding the supposed update?

Edit: I found some rumors that claim that Apple might revive the 12" MacBook in 2020. I hope they actually do but can't really see it happening as it might cannibalize their iPad sales.

I've got a 12" MB that I'll keep until Apple releases another fanless laptop, or until it stops getting macOS updates.

If only there were tablets of 15" Surface Book size or larger . I don't need laptop, but I'd be happy to have larger ipad or Surface Book

The thing that always bothered me about the Surface Go was that it didn’t feel like a cohesive device. More like a tablet with accessories. The way the fin awkwardly sticks out of the back is an admission that it can’t stand on its own because it’s a tablet, and the keyboard has an odd angle that makes it look unstable, like typing on a piece of cardboard. When I see it, I just see compromises, like a tablet trying its best to make it in a world where sometimes you need a laptop.

> The way the fin awkwardly sticks out of the back

By "fin" you mean... the stand? So, the stand means that it doesn't stand on its own? What?

You clearly haven't tried one because the built-in stand is fantastic and the keyboard cover works very well.

> By "fin" you mean... the stand? So, the stand means that it doesn't stand on its own? What?

Yeah. It needs the stand because it doesn’t support itself with the keyboard (like a laptop). It just doesn’t seem very lap friendly. Previous to the iPad Pro keyboard I didn’t find any solution to this problem tablets that didn’t involve some ugly clamps.

I haven’t tried it, so I am interested in others’ experience with it, since it’s an interesting design.

> It needs the stand because it doesn’t support itself with the keyboard (like a laptop).

Yeah it's primarily a tablet form factor and doesn't come with a keyboard. But that makes it a tablet that stands on its own with the built-in stand. Then, plug in one USB-C cable and it's a full computer with access to all my peripherals that can drive my 3840x1600 monitor. Add the keyboard cover (which is fantastic for how thin it is, the trackpad works well, etc.) and it becomes a laptop.

There are lots of problems with the Go. It's slow! Battery life is mediocre. Windows itself is a mess. Because it's a tablet that's a full computer, it's bulkier than an ipad. But it's such a neat little device.

One more thing that stands out about the Go... This falls under Windows being a mess, but I want to second what someone else in the thread called out: the software keyboard is just frickin' terrible. "No one on the team must actually use this at home" bad.

More information and links from /r/surface:

Introducing Surface Go 2, Surface Book 3, Surface Headphones 2 and Surface Earbuds

https://preview.redd.it/15gbamema5x41.jpg?width=1024&format=...

Official blog post: https://blogs.windows.com/devices/2020/05/06/introducing-sur...

Pre-orders for most products start today (May 6th), and some devices launch starting May 12.

---

Surface Go 2 - starting at $399

Release date: May 12, 2020 (US)

Product launch video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUw8jZl1hX0

Business product page - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-go-...

Microsoft Mechanics overview - https://youtu.be/kVAa-I8s9V0

---

Surface Book 3 - starting at $1599

Release date: May 21, 2020 (US)

Product launch video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYFnAnmwG5c

Business product page - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/business/surface-boo...

Microsoft Mechanics overview - https://youtu.be/rGOQYX5etG8

---

Surface Earbuds - priced at $199.99

Release date: May 12, 2020 (US)

Pre-order page - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-earbuds/8r9cpq1460... (US)

Product launch video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMk7wnybXLM

---

Surface Headphones 2 - priced at $249.99

Release date: May 12, 2020 (US)

https://preview.redd.it/rv7uekkqf5x41.png?width=890&format=p...

---

Surface Dock 2 - priced at $259.99

Release date: Later this month in select markets

Microsoft Mechanics overview - https://youtu.be/qaCHITOuWPw

---

Surface USB-C Travel Hub - priced at $99.99

Release date: Later this month in select markets

https://preview.redd.it/0b3u3dpxd5x41.jpg?width=1440&format=...

---

Other new accessories:

Surface Go Sleeve - https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-go-sleeve/8x1tzlkc...

Microsoft Ergonomic Desktop bundle - priced at $89.99

Microsoft Bluetooth Desktop bundle - priced at $59.99

Thanks for that, the Mechanics videos you linked to which deep dive into the machines functionality and hardware are great and what Microsoft really should've included in their blog post.

Microsoft Mechanics YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJ9905MRHxwLZ2jeNQGIWxA

From what I can tell, you can only get 4 cores on the Surface Book 3? Kinda unfortunate if true.

Hmm. Aspect ratio on the Go2 looks not right.

I have a 15" Surface book 2. The spine on it is absolutely massive and it is heavy as all hell. Got a comparable dell 13" and im not going to look back

Shame on the Surface Book 3 using Intel, after seeing what the new Ryzen 4800 looks like I don't think anyone serious about performance would be looking at Intel.

At least it's ice lake (10nm). From what Anandtech has said previously, it's got good graphics and AVX512....but other than that it's not faster than the 14nm processors because Intel still can't push the frequency as high.

Here are some benchmarks. Intel can mostly keep up with AMD. It's not great though...multicore AMD is pulling ahead by quite a lot.

https://www.anandtech.com/show/15762/the-acer-swift-3-sf314-...

It's amazing that after all of these years, Microsoft's best work is still ripping off Apple's design flourishes.

That blog post is straight out of Apple's marketing style about 3 years ago. White void background, dramatic landscape desktops, parallel array of flat devices inclined on the diagonal, high contrast background/model skin color, et c.

I'd bet the packaging for these devices follows the Apple model as well (just as Google did for the Pixelbook).

This hardware is a good choice for people in Windows Eco-system.

But for people on MacOS or Linux these prices doesn't make sense given they can get better bang for bucks. Also based on previous experience with Surface Book and Surface Pro will not touch microsoft hardware or software (except for testing cross-platform application).

Indeed haven't used Windows extensively for quite sometime since Windows 7. Still using a Macbook Pro bought in 2014, but do not use Surface book bought few years later as it's not as usable and nice condition compared to Macbook Pro, which is still chugging along very nicely.

Can you name better hardware for people in the Linux ecosystem that all work together well?

The appeal of all of these products is that all of the Apple stuff works flawlessly together and all of the Windows stuff works flawlessly together. I personally have a hell of a time just getting bluetooth to work on my Linux thinkpad so definitely open to suggestions.

Dell xps developer edition or thinkpad preinstalled with linux? Have someone else spend the time to get it to work just like you would with windows or macOS.

> all of the Windows stuff works flawlessly together.

Did you mean all surface stuff? What is it supposed to work together with? Headphones better work with everything and the pen and dial are kinda neat but don't scream "ecosystem".

Another soul! I’m in the exact same boat and after this release, I just might jump on the surface book wagon. Sleek looking, great battery, WSL first class citizen. I just want a good touchpad, the damn fans to stop spinning randomly, bluetooth pairing to work and good battery life without tweaking TLP for few days.

> these prices doesn't make sense given they can get better bang for bucks.

Like what? A nice high resolution 3:2 screen seems great and difficult to find anywhere else.

The drawbacks are the awful non-Windows compatibility (e.g. see reddits /r/surfacelinux) and the non-Wacom pen.

...Featuring an ultra-comfortable and stable fit, Surface Earbuds offer intuitive touch controls so you can start a phone call or change the song without taking out your phone....Screen-free integration with Microsoft 365 lets you catch up on emails with Play My Emails in the Outlook Mobile App for iOS or allow you to dictate in Word, Outlook or PowerPoint. -- Woooah. I can listen to Powerpoint decks! TAKE MY MONEY!

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