Microsoft launches Surface Book 3 with new Nvidia GPU options | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft launches Surface Book 3 with new Nvidia GPU options

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98 pointsnaves54 comments

> It’s disappointing to not see any design tweaks

Why ? So that manufacturers feel they have to change something, anything, to satisfy spec-only reviewers ? And then we end up with an apple keyboard fiasco ?

Keeping a design unchanged is so underrated. I witness it most when giving technical support to the elderly.

When they ask: "why did they changed it?!". I say: "because someone needed a job".

Although the updates released are very welcome, in my opinion, the Surface Book 3 has some significant problems.

I get that due to the design, it will always be a heavy machine. But due to the hinge, the SB is not really a portable machine, at least in a modern sense. There's no technical justification for the bulkiness; other laptops implement(ed) the form factor with much more compact hinges (I owned at least one that did). It's huge even when in a backpack.

It's ironic that this horrible hinge is the trademark of the machine. If they changed it, they would be essentially forced to sell it as a new line.

The USB-C is also clearly a checklist feature, as it's not fully integrated: the charger has a Surface connect plug (AFAIK), and the tablet does not have a USB-C (I'm sure about this). This means 1. that the tablet needs the base to be charged through the base (but one can live with this), but worse, 2. that one needs to buy a separate USB-C charger (have fun with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Surface/comments/7gj449/adventures_...).

Given the prices, and the fact that there is nothing comparable to the SB as tablet (maybe the Ipad), one could buy a cheap SB as large tablet. In this case, when traveling (with a separate laptop), one has to carry two chargers (or a hacky adapter, like I do). Check out the Microsoft Surface connect <> USB-C adapter: it's a joke.

I personally think they sell few units, and that they're keeping the line as sort of "trophy laptop" (the prices are insane; for the same, you can buy much, much more powerful laptops of well known brands/lines).

design tweaks like more than 1 usb-c port

While it's a good point I wouldn't call it a design tweak but an hardware improvement ^^.

Well I doubt that any of these have reached perfect design (the way that say, a can of Coca-Cola has) so we’d expect to see some minor changes. Hinges, ports, keyboard, etc etc

Progress for the sake of progress must be discouraged. --Dolores Umbridge

Why is this getting down voted it's a quote from Harry Potter ya dorks. It's so incredibly obvious that it's a joke I am supersized those of you who down voted it can tell the difference between a shoe and a hat...

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23080059

sigh

For this price and the target market why are they not including TB3 and more ports? They are committed to keeping their users on their poorly designed dock connector when they are is a much better industry standard connector out there.

I love my SB1 although it's far from perfect. The dock connector does grow on you. Unlike USB-C, when someone trips over your cable the dock connector pulls free. The design of the SB1 means you can charge the tablet or keyboard independently with the same connector. And the $300 dock, while expensive, is better than any USB-C dock I've seen at providing a clutter-free desk with single attachment.

TB3 means that end user could attach their own egpu to a lower end (cheaper) model, and future proof it harder against potential SB4.. not to mention, that their proprietary connector only connects to their $300 dock! I feel like everyone can learn from their competitors, but here Microsoft is emulating only the worst parts of Apple

“Run Linux on Windows”

Really fascinating seeing this in an official Microsoft ad.

It's smart. Give people freedom of choice for their OS and earn most money with services.

I'm using .NET on Ubuntu and it just works perfect. So as a Linux user I am now connected to the Microsoft ecosystem.

Balmer maybe made a fool of himself while dancing the 'developer developer developer', but he was right.

Balmer can't be attributed for this change in MS strategy though, i am pretty convinced he would never have allowed this, he called Linux cancer after all.

I'm not sure Ballmer would not have allowed that. Linux in WSL under Windows is not a threat to Windows; it's absence was beginning to be a threat, as a generation (both of people and technologies) was Linux native and needed (or at least it is way more convenient) it locally to do their work. So it is basically either MS did WSL, or people were going to migrate away.

And at least they did WSL cleanly, meaning that they do not rely on proprietary extensions for e.g. Linux projects in VS but simply use ssh. Maybe Ballmer would have wanted to attempt a proprietary lock in (the extend part) -- I'm not sure this would have worked in the context I described, because one important source of the need is people working on remote systems which are real native Linux, so they needed standard things anyway.

while that is indeed the quote, I think he primarily was referring to the GPL.

(in before the Linux/GNU copy pasta)

Anybody got any day-to-day practical stories of how this Linux layer generally is? I have the top tier Pixelbook bought on the promise of integrated Linux on secure hardware.

In reality it's crap, no FUSE, some GUI programs simply don't run, upgrades can trash your install, sporadic development attention from Google, and my 2015 MBP is an order of magnitude faster (wish I'd sprung for the 16Gb version though).

The new MBP without a touchbar would be a great replacement but the Book 3 has caught my attention. Love to hear stories from Mac->Windows refugees.

Hm, depends on what you need. WSL1 translates syscalls to NT, it's not a real Linux kernel, so probably no FUSE. Performance is good in general, but it's still NTFS underneath. I use it for SSH and FileZilla, with Debian. No breakage so far, even going from Debian 9 to 10.

WSL2 is basically a Linux VM on Hyper-V with some glue involved. It should be possible to make FUSE work there. I haven't really tried WSL2 yet.

You'll have to bring your own X server. I use VcXsrv.

So WSL1 was like a reverse Wine?

Yes, I think that’s a valid way to put it. “is”, though. Because WSL2 is so different, WSL1 will stay, for the time being. You can use both side-by-side.

I use it for all of my dev stuff, and I like it. I'm mostly a windows user, a few of our devs are heavy gamers, so they appreciate having a windows machine. With WSL, we run our servers in linux, and have browsers open in windows, and running VSCode in windows.

The other benefit for us, is with the graphics work we do, and most of our users being on windows, in Chrome or Firefox, we're developing using the software our users are in, while developing in the same server environment our servers run on.

It was fidgety to get set-up the first time, but now, that we've got that sorted, it's quite nice.

I wonder if this will end like "OS/2 runs Windows apps better than Windows does"?

The most striking issue is that Thunderbolt 3 isn't available for this refresh. Even stranger is that the 15' doesn't have Wifi6 either (because it uses a AMD CPU)?

Both the 13” and 15” have WiFi6:

Wi-Fi 6: 802.11ax compatible

Bluetooth Wireless 5.0 technology

Xbox Wireless built-in (15” only)4

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-book-3/8xbw9g3z71f...

Where do you see otherwise? You’re talking about the Surface Book 3 right? Which is also Intel only currently.

They claim lack of thunderbolt 3 is by design, for security reasons. I bet they just got their chips for surface connector working and they don't want to ditch them. The surface hub does work pretty well. One cable to everything. https://sup.news/microsoft-says-surface-devices-dont-have-th...

Still on Intel i7 Y processors according to the article.

I always look at the Surface Book and want it to be my next laptop, but I feel like it is a jack of all trades that doesn't really excel in any one area - and therefore, I have a hard time justifying it over other machines.

Most powerful Surface ever? Sure, but the Macbook Pro 16" can give me double the cores at a similar pricepoint.

Gaming-class GPU? Yeah, but if I wanted a gaming laptop I'd probably want something with an RTX card in it. And if I didn't care about form factor, I'd build a desktop.

Detachable tablet? Interesting idea, but this feels highly impractical with the 15" version, which is the model I would get for maximum performance.

I think if I was a college student, this would be a fantastic device. A little bit of everything and the ability to type notes in OneNote or handwrite them when necessary. But as my daily driver for productivity, I think there are better options at a similar price point.

I used the original Surface Book (13in) as a college student for a year, and I think you are spot-on.

For me, as a student, it was a beautiful device. For that academic year, my notes were more impeccable and organized than I could have ever imagined my notes to be. OneNote is a pleasure to work with. Writing on Surface Book feels great. Downloading lecture pdfs/powerpoints and highlighting/annotating stuff on top of them was very useful. The machine ran fast enough for me to actually write code and use it as a normal machine too, with no limitations. As a daily driver, it was great.

But all the cons you listed were true as well. My current daily driver is a newer MBP, but I still eye Surface line all the time, hoping that one day it will get to the point where I would want to pick it up again as my daily driver.

I think it will take a hardware redesign at this point, which I hope comes with USB4 that allows them to break dock compatibility as well.

The 15 inch version doesn't need to detach. Just let it flip around like a ThinkPad X1 Yoga, therefore allowing you to put all of the compute stuff in the base as well. Go for 8 cores and give me the best mobile video card on the market and I'll buy one so fast.

Great point about flipping around vs. detaching.

During my year with a surface book, at no point I just detached the tablet and used it on its own. When I wanted a "tablet" mode, I would usually disconnect the tablet, turn it around, attach it, and then close. Which essentially flips it around and puts in the same position as X1 Yoga.

The Quatro RTX 3000 Max-Q should make these a nice and slim VR-capable laptop option! Nice change from the heavy bricks we've had to carry around until now.

They aren't planning to sell the Quadro versions to customers directly, unfortunately, but only to business purchasers. If you go to the Microsoft site (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface-book-3/8xbw9g3z71f...), the preorder configurations for personal use only include the relatively weak baseline GPUs they've chosen (1650 and 1660). I confirmed this again by talking to a sales rep over chat.

Good to know!

The surfacebook 2 could not do vr with non windows mr headseats due to design changes that were made to make the tablet come off. I wonder if that is still the case with this one.

Are the Quatro cards suitable for gaming? I've always been under the impression they tuned or modified more for use in CAD and similar applications

My understanding, at least in the past, is that it's the same hardware with different drivers. The drivers "guarantee" accurate rendering at cost of a bit of performance (maybe). At one point there were even hacks that allowed you to install the Quadro (it's quadro btw) drivers on gaming cards.

The extra cost is mainly from getting the cards/drivers certified by every CAD/CAE software vendor as compatible, and possibly just extracting extra value from a market perceived as less cost-sensitive (ie, they are probably paying 10k/year at least just in CAE software licenses).

They are and they might be a tiny bit slower than their gaming tuned counterparts, but they are still capable of running games without issues.

The lack of thunderbolt 3 on the SB3 makes Dell XPS 13 a better thin&light option

The Surface 3 comes with a real NVidia GPU like the GeForce GTX 1650 or 1660 Ti. That's what got my attention (being able to run SolidWorks on a thin and lightweight machine has some appeal for traveling).

Unless I'm mistaken, Dell's XPS 13 just has CPU integrated graphics (Intel Iris). So I wouldn't consider it better, unless I limited myself to a desk, tethered to an external GPU.

I do wish the Surface had other, beefier components available (eg. larger SSD).

Sigh is a traditional laptop smaller than an A4 sheet too much to wish for?

I just want a Surface Go with a decently-sized SSD that I can hold by the keyboard, and there just doesn't seem to be a machine like that.

(Or a Surface Book that is just a bit smaller)

No Ryzen 4 is a major letdown.

Probably contracts with Intel that haven’t expired.

Then how did they manage to stick a Ryzen 3 in the Surface Laptop?

FWIW, I own both the SB1 and SB2, and it's been, hands down, the best hardware I've ever used (and I've been through a lot, including multiple generations of macs).

Typing this on my SB2, which weighs next to nothing, is capable of good gaming, has acceptable battery life, and allows me to detach the monitor and use the pen while in client meetings and marking up docs.

Best all-around machine ever.

I think the Surface Book design is getting a bit long in the tooth. I don't think it was ever a winner for style, and the hinge and gap are not only strange, but also make it feel like a thick machine for such a premium laptop.

I normally love Microsoft hardware design, but the Surface Book is the one device that stands out as needing a change.

Isn’t the 15W CPU strongly limiting compared to the 28/W45W CPU in Apple’s lineup?

Finally a laptop with a good (1080p) front-facing camera.

will it run linux (directly and not inside windows) ?

(microsoft <3 linux right ?)

I've used Manjaro and Ubuntu on my Surface Book 1. https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/

The bezels on this (and macbooks) are still SO HUGE.

Guess I'm gonna keep recommending that my friends buy XPS's until they figure out that big bezels are ugly.

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