Microsoft Surface Go 2 review | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

techcrunch.com

98 pointsmakaroni1180 comments

I feel like MS laptops are getting bashed left and right by various online experts these days without a decent reason. Apple products are not less cheaper and follow the same "100EUR for a charger" scheme. If you calculate the totals, MS laptop is no more experiensive than the Apple one. Except with MS products you also get a true mobile experience if that is what you are after.

The only drawback is Windows and its tooling. Which you can still circumvent with WLS. I wish Surface lineup was 100% Linux compatible, alas.

This isn't a laptop and suffers from a bit of "neither one thing nor another" syndrome; it can be used as either a kinda awkward tablet, or a _really_ awkward laptop (good luck using one on your lap on a plane or train or something, say). I think a certain amount of scepticism is warranted.

If you _just_ want a laptop, a laptop will be far better than this thing. If you just want a tablet, an iPad will be far better than this thing. If you want both... well, maybe it works, as long as you don't want to use it in laptop-y scenarios and you're okay with Windows' tablet experience? It feels pretty niche.

To be fair, I've been using my Surface Pro 4 for a bit over four years now, and pre-lockdown I was on 2 round-trip flights a month on average.

No issue whatsoever using it on the tray. On the contrary, my size and the reduced seat pitch in most narrow body aircrafts made my other machine (a 15" macbook) rather unusable.

Same experience here. I hear the 'unusable on lap' sentiment seemingly often (including in the OP article itself). Yet, I honestly cannot tell is because it's only the ones with a bad experience speaking up and the rest remaining silent, or because there really is a problem I'm not aware of. And in both cases: I honestly wonder how that is possible? Is my body different in some way that I don't see the difference between a Surface and a laptop for lap use? Or do I do things in another way than others? Are my legs longer than average? I mean I just put my legs next to each other, put the thing somewhere on my lap, screen like 15cm in fron of my knees, adjust the stand so it's in an angle I normally use and that's it. The only problem I could see is that if you'd want the screen to be roughly where your knees are that is impossible. But for me that distance is just a bit too much to be able to read text comfortably and I cannot rest my arms anymore because of how far the keyboard is.

That seems very awkward versus a laptop, though; in particular you'd have stay very still. I'd expect it to be particularly problematic on a bus or train, where there was movement.

The hinge is sturdy so in comparison with a laptop you don't have one big contact area with your legs but the bottom of the kickstand and the botom of the machine itself which don't move with respect to each other. The bottom of the keyboard kan move wrt the rest but only in one plane. I don't see how movement of whatever you're sitting on changes much in how the thing sits on your lap. I also don't encounter that when I'm on a bus or so.

https://msegceporticoprodassets.blob.core.windows.net/asset-...

This image is from Microsoft.com. Think how much his upper torso will have to bend to look at the middle of his thighs.

Sure, but the image shows a desktop. I'm talking about differences of the Surface vs a 'standard' laptop when used on your lap.

I’m talking the combination of a chair similar to that and Surface devices. I guess people who don’t have problems with Surface sits less often in surfaces that high and upright.

Anecdotally, I tried OG Surface Pro back when it launched. On my lap the kickstand was extremely unstable; on high speed rail chairs the angle of kickstand was extremely steep and uncomfortable; on university desks and cafeteria tables it was okay but never good; only on airplane couches and Starbucks tables, which I’m not as privileged to say I use with frequency, it fit, at all.

The kickstand has reportedly improved since, but the problem is that it’s a highly engineered design for multiple but precisely pre-determined situations, with a limited adaptability.

Traditional laptop hinges on the other hand, oh they work beautifully between 0 to 1.1g under any posture, if you could put it on a lap or table it’ll be nice. That’s it. Way better than the kickstand.

Keep in mind the device "lapability" improved a lot in the subsequent iterations, for two reasons:

- the kickstand is now freely adjustable, you can set it at any angle (there are no pre-determined stops)

- the keyboard "sticks" to the bottom of the front side, this both gives the device more rigidity on your lap and improves the typing angle

I have never used an OG Pro, but I've used an RT and the difference is night and day

I disagree in case of Surface Book. I didn't try Go.

This is a powerful premium laptop which can be used not only for pleasant programming experience due to good keyboard and 4k screen but also gaming due to powerful GPU card. It does not get hot and loud as much as any traditional gaming laptop with the same GPU card because GPU and CPU are separated (GPU under the keyboard and CPU in the detachable screen). I mean this is like the biggest advantage of all Surface Book laptops that makes them powerful, silent and cool at the same time. It might be not as powerful as dedicated gaming laptops but it is better because it is not even half as hot and loud. And which of your gaming laptops can run at least two hours without a socket? Honestly, the battery life of my wife's Mac Air 2019 is laughable in comparison.

It is also a good tablet. The only disadvantage for as a tablet is battery life which is far less than in iPads and Android devices. But neither of them is 15 inch and is equipped with an iCore.

There is no alternative on the market for Surface Book 2. Recent Surface Book 3 might not be more powerful as the audience expected but I would go for it all the same just because how much more malleable this machine is. If you need a mobile pc, this is the one.

Funny how different people come to different conclusions. I have a Book 2 and I regret it almost every day. The dock constantly runs out of USB resources, when I detach the tablet the external screen configuration gets f...ed up in random ways forcing me to rearrange screens and font sizes for a few minutes, the tablet mode feels very awkward to use and for its spec and price the Book 2 is not very fast.

My company also HP Zbook laptops. Next time I will get one of those those again instead. Not a very elegant laptop but it works.

Emm, screen config not retained is an OS issue and not a laptop tbo. I agree that tablet mode is not convenient but you are free to stay in desktop mode. USB resources are not enough but I never ran out of USB ports because I have no use for them. I connect everything via Bluetooth, mouse, headphones. Mini display port for external monitor.

Yes, for the price of ~2k you can buy a more powerful laptop. But how less powerful a 1.5 year old Surface i7 with GTX1060 even nowadays? I think the whole performance debate is a big exaggeration unless you're getting into high-end gaming on 4k resolutions or deep learning. If I needed power, I would never go with a laptop no matter how powerful it is. Buy a PC because this is what they are for.

I am personally over with classical monoblock laptops with GPU and CPU squeezed together. It feels just dated.

“Emm, screen config not retained is an OS issue and not a laptop tbo”

My HP Zbook didn’t have these issues with the same OS. I could take it to a meeting, plug it back into the docking station and things would be like before. With the Surface in 80% of cases something gets messed up. I suspect it has something to do with the drivers.

The high res screen on it also causes problems forcing me to constantly adjust the font scaling.

In general, what’s the point of getting a very expensive Surface Book if it’s not really better ?

Emm, screen config not retained is an OS issue and not a laptop tbo

It is when the same company is making both.

I have a 1st-gen surfacebook, and this thing for sure is not quiet or cool. It can barely run MTG Arena at 720p, much less stream it at the same time. Forget about any serious game. It gets incredibly hot, especially on the GPU, as there's only one fan for the keyboard area pointing at the screen, and it's tiny. The fan on the tablet portion is woefully inadequate for an i7, so spins up shortly after start and never spins down. And the full metal chassis means the entire computer gets hot.

Perhaps the battery life might matter more if it actually slept when it was closed, but the large number of spurious wakeups in bag caused me to assume the battery will be drained whenever I arrive.

> pleasant programming experience due to ... 4k screen

I opted for a 4k 15" screen when buying a new laptop, precisely for this reason. I was so disappointed to find out that I could barely see anything on the screen at 4k without using the magnification function, and that was before I needed reading glasses. I've been using it in 1080p ever since, and I regret not getting a 1080p native resolution, because mixed resolutions are a pain with multiple monitors.

> I've been using it in 1080p ever since, and I regret not getting a 1080p native resolution, because mixed resolutions are a pain with multiple monitors.

This is mainly a problem with Windows and some desktop Linux setups. macOS handles mixed DPI displays without issue.

I agree a laptop is a better laptop but for a tablet I find surface much better than ipad, and at a pinch (like on vacation) I can use a bluetooth keyboard and do some urgent work on it.

In theory the lap thing can be fixed with a third-party keyboard (when it gets released). I've been patiently waiting for something like this for my surface go because you're spot on - lap use is basically impossible. Time will tell if it's any good:

https://www.brydge.com/pages/designed-for-surface-tablets

I've never understood this complaint. I've had multiple Surface Pros and have never had problems with it in my lap, even on long train rides abroad.

> The only drawback is Windows and its tooling.

I switched last year from using Linux and macOS for 10+ years to a surface laptop. At the beginning Windows was going on my way all the time, but now that I’m more familiar with its system and powershell, it’s way better, and I really enjoy it as a dev environment.

The main pain comes from a lack of familiarity. Once that’s behind, you can be quite productive using Windows.

I now spend almost all my time in powershell and only use WSL for some specific stuff.

Do you mind elaborating what kind of problems you work on?

Yeah, IMO if you start out by installing bash and trying to treat Windows like a Unix, you're in for some really bad time.

A lot of developer tooling works just fine in Windows environment and trying to fight the system with unix shell is not the best way to coexist.

Agreed 100% pre-WSL, but now it's changed with WSL. Have used Powershell for last five years, but bash on Ubuntu is great.

I'm almost the opposite... been on the insiders channel for WSL2 and Docker + WSL2 support has been really good since switching in early March. I did try it a bit over a year ago and wasn't nearly as pleasant... when WSL2 etc will hit mainline, who knows for sure, if it hasn't already.

I had the opposite experience. Similar background, Used Windows heavily from DOS through XP. Started a job as Windows 10 had some major incremental releases and was eager to learn PowerShell and see what Windows had done in 10 years.

I earnestly wish I documented my disappointment when I encountered the same annoyances I hadn't seen since I left Windows because after awhile I forgot what they were. Annoying things like updates requiring reboots at least once a month, when an application was busy I couldn't move it out of the way (to do something else while I waited to see if it finished). I found PowerShell too verbose for everyday use, the "terse" commands too different and undiscoverable, everyone I worked with was still entrenched with BAT files, and to run PS1 files I needed to wrap it in a BAT file for security.

I glommed onto WSL, but found myself logging into an Ubuntu box we had because it was nicer.

I was happy my next job was a lot less heavy on Windows. I'd switch to Linux as my daily-driver and dual-boot Windows if I had to.

> The only drawback is Windows and its tooling

Oh goo, I was worried it was a serious drawback.

Also try reselling a Surface Go 2 in 3 years compared to a MacBook Air/Pro.

This is debatable but I would agree to some extend that it is easier to resell MacBook Air/Pro than Surface. I would also argue that it is rather due to higher familiarity with Apple products, not hardware. In anyway, this is not an argument in favor of Apple products.

I would say it definitely is an argument. I recently sold my 2016 15” MacBook Pro for $1,400. It held on to nearly 50% of its value.

I tend to upgrade every three years and this cuts the effective price in half. It is no different than factoring in resale value on a car or house purchase.

(Not specific to Surface Go 2) I assure you there is sometimes a reason, which in my mind can be generalized as lack of attention to detail: I deployed Surface Laptop 3’s to my SMB and now hairline screen cracking [1] is popping up left and right. Why? Because MS opted not to put a rubber gasket around their screens so when they changed from fabric to metal wrist rests, the imperfect closure fit led to pieces of sand etc. obliterating screens.

When I account for my lost time dealing with support, and the occasional cost of replacing devices/accessories that support will not, MS devices are far more expensive than Macs.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/8/21252634/microsoft-surface...

I agree. It is a design flaw I was well aware before making a purchase and bought a screen protector for Surface. It served me well so far, I am also more careful of not holding the laptop by the edge or slapping it too much. However, I think it is good since it forces you to be careful with the expensive gadget. Yes, the repairability is very bad and yes such are the costs for being detachable.

I’m not defending that design flaw but MacBook Pro’s haven’t exactly been free from issues themselves (up until their recent generation they had an ongoing problem with their keyboard that went on for years).

Frankly I miss the days when business machines weren’t made with aesthetics given as a priority.

After being subscribed to Louis Rossmann's YouTube channel for a while, I'm not sure Macs are much better in that regard (e.g. butterfly keyboard issues and replacement program, the bizarre cooling solution in new MacBook Air, pin layout that's very susceptible to liquid damage, etc.)

Most of Louis' criticism of Apple are not about the frequency of problems, rather on how they treat the consumer once problems happen.

He often makes fun of their "small number of users were affected" press statements that follow a certain pattern - denial, blaming the users (you're holding it wrong - though most of that is coming from tech media, not Apple themselves), begrudgingly admitting fault, addressing the issue after much pressure. So frequency also plays a role in it.

Not that other manufacturers are much better of course...

Apple has curiously "periods" -- there are times in which they build reliable stuff and then there are times in which they just don't. E.g. 10 year old MacBooks which still work despite the fact that they are heavily dented, while the new keyboard breaks just by staring at it wrongly.

I have a 2011 model Mackbook Air. While it is not the best or powerful laptop I've used, the only problem it gave me so far is the power chord (which I had to replace). It is still working after all these years.

I am not a Apple fanboy - I hate that Apple makes shitty decisions (soldiering everything, removing headphone jack from phones, removing ports...) and everyone else copies them. That said, they do make good stuff, at least compared to others.

My next computer is likely going to be a windows one though - Thinkpads and Dells are much more value for money than Macs.

Had the same experience with the pro 2 i think. Ran a small shop(15 peeps) and everybody liked the pro 2. I think we bought 5 or 6. One of those lasted more than a year. Heating, battery, screen, charger. And the dock was badly missing USB ports.

The build quality in Surface devices is terrible, ABSOLUTELY terrible.

I have a Surface Pro 2 where the (in)famous "VaporMG" coating layer was completely gone by the first year, leaving a pinkish-blueish-silverish combination of colors that makes the device look as if it was on ground zero at Hiroshima. The power button is flaky and no longer reliably turns the device on, the keyboard cover connector is flaky and covers periodically stop to work, etc. All of these are common issues.

Ironically I bought a Surface Pro 3 later on where the LCD connector died within warranty, so I just returned it and forgot about the Surface line altogether.

I have a dirt-cheap Acer laptop that has also been with more for a _decade_ now and it still looks better than the Surface Pro 2.

Weird, at my work there hasn't been a single problem with the Surface Pro devices in 2 years.

the surface pro 2 was released seven years ago. whatever your experience was then, it isn't relevant now. the surface pro line has undergone big design changes and improvements since then.

Hah. Reminds me of getting shards of plastic in my wrists from the original whitebook: the screen lid had two hard plastic "feet" rather than some rubber thing, over time the pressure and variour other stresses (that thing was full of hairline cracks all over the body) would chip away right where your wrists would rest: https://discussions.apple.com/content/attachment/155554040

The funny thing is they advertised this as a feature when it was launched because it was supposed to be more aesthetically pleasing and not collect dust etc. I guess there's a reason Apple still uses rubber after all...

Huh, wow. I got a hairline crack on the screen of my Surface Laptop 2 and thought it was just me and my carelessness. I will have to see if there’s any recourse for me since it’s outside the warranty window.

Use Microsoft Surface Laptop 2 and 3 for work, have to disagree that the only drawback is software. The trackpad is significantly worse on Microsoft devices than Apple fairly consistently. Even the new Magic Keyboard for iPad Pro trackpad, albeit smaller in size, is more sensitive and accurate than the Surface Laptop 3's.

That's purely software, if you use Windows under Boot Camp on a MacBook it will be identical to a PC

> That's purely software, if you use Windows under Boot Camp on a MacBook it will be identical to a PC

Right, but Microsoft owns both the hardware and the software stack here. It's not like they're reviewing an Asus laptop and complaining about the trackpad.

It's hard for me to believe that Microsoft would not invest in first-class touchpad drivers for Windows for their flagship devices, given that the touchpad is the main way someone would interface with their device, but it's possible that it's entirely a software issue I guess.

Drop Synaptics' driver and use Microsoft's precision touchpad driver.

Odd, I use both daily (original surface book, surface go, 2018 MBP) and completely disagree. Microsoft trackpads are the only ones I've come across that are just as good as Apple. You are the only person I've heard bash them. I've got hundreds of peers in the same boat and the MS trackpads are universally lauded.

Don't take my word for it, or your peers. Just google around for surface trackpad reviews and feedback. I'm sure it's fine for plenty of people, but I'm not alone with my opinion.

After 30 seconds of searching, I found exactly my experience: people find the trackpads equal, generally prefer the physical button of the surface, and prefer the more advanced gestures that Apple has provided.

Regardless, I'll trust my own experience and those of peers I know are unbiased to someone who may or may not be getting paid for their review online.

If by "advanced gestures" you're referring to two-finger touch right-click, or two-finger scroll smoothness, then I would agree. I'm not even trying to hold Microsoft trackpad to the same standard of four-finger advanced gestures on the Mac, just what I would consider to be really basic stuff.

I can see though that someone who prefers physical buttons on the trackpad would not have the same complaints...

I strongly, strongly disagree. The trackpad on my SB2 is terrible compared to the one on my MBP. It’s much smaller, two-finger right-click is unreliable, and the motion feels worse. Along with the glossy screen it’s my main complaint about the Book.

Windows does have its flaws (e.g. the useless built-in search), but its window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen - the live previews on hover, the way it interacts with middle click just like browser tabs/links, the window snapping with multiple monitors, etc. We'll see what WSL 2 brings to the table.

What's wrong with the built-in search?

I'll agree the start menu search can be slow on occasion & instead of giving me an app will give me a Bing search on IE. That's my only complaint. Otherwise I like how I can search for just about anything with it.

I'm a huge fan of the processes/windows search (Ctrl+Win) to help me find an app on a different visual desktop or a browser tab hidden among the weeds.

It seems ok now that I'm trying it, but I definitely remember not being able to find a specific settings screen (I think it was network connections) even when typing its literal exact name. Same for various applications. Maybe they fixed it in one of the more recent Windows 10 updates.

> processes/windows search (Ctrl+Win)

Just tried that combination, and it did nothing. What feature are you referring to?

I use the start menu only for opening programs.

For file search, use the program called Everything(). It's the first icon pinned on my taskbar, so the shortcut (Win+1) works.

https://www.voidtools.com/

> window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen

I /really/ missed in Linux where MMB-drag and RMB-drag to move resize windows without grabbing small UI dressing. The taskbar fills too quickly (you can't read the window text) and when it groups by Application it's not really any different than macOS' dock. I didn't find the stickiness or snapping that helpful.

I tried to embrace the window management and taskbar UI, but I greatly prefer both macOS and the many Linux options. I later tried add-ons to get Windows to add features I missed and unsurprisingly found those clunky as well.

>The taskbar fills too quickly (you can't read the window text) and when it groups by Application it's not really any different than macOS' dock

I just use the default setting where it doesn't show the text ever (only grouped icons), but I don't need it, because when you hover over a multi-window icon, it very quickly shows the previews (with just the right small amount of hover delay). They are live previews, so if some animation is happening in a window, you'll see it.

https://i.imgur.com/85Ct0Fp.png

As far as I know, macOS doesn't do anything like that, without 3rd party apps at least.

You can also middle-click on the app icon to launch a new instance of the application - e.g. a new terminal window in this case - no need to hunt for a "new window" menu item. This is analogous to how browser links and other UI elements (bookmarks, back button, etc.) behave.

You can middle-click on one of the previews to close it - so you don't have to aim for the small X in the corner. Any workflow is much faster when you can get away with imprecise movements.

Hovering over the preview hides all other windows for the duration of the hover (dim transparent rectangles of non-full-screen windows remain) which is useful if you just need a quick glance without switching to the app - you can do that with just mouse moves, no clicks needed - which means you can always go back to your original view by moving the cursor away.

There is a project that tries to recreate this in Linux (https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx), but it has a number of bugs and lacks polish in general.

I also miss alt+right click to resize and alt+left click to move a window from Linux - having to be precise is annoying and slows you down, but overall I still like the Windows UI better.

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

I generally prefer title text to previews (I find it annoying browsers seem to be phasing titles out when possible). The only context I've ever used live previews is with VMs when I'm waiting for an action to complete...I never really liked using the MS thumbnails or macOS' Exposé.

Next time I use Windows I'll check out those other shortcuts mentioned.

I am not clear how this is a true mobile experience versus an iPad. This seems like an iPad competitor, not a MacBook Pro competitor, and the iPad is quite a mobile solution.

It’s a much different solution than this, for sure, but it is a mobile solution.

I recently got a 10.2 inch iPad to add to my home setup of a 27-inch iMac and a 12.9 inch iPad Pro because I wanted something super portable that I could do work on when I am chasing the kids around. It’s really portable, and I can get a surprising amount of work done on it.

> The only drawback is Windows and its tooling. Which you can still circumvent with WLS.

WSL, and Terminal, is Windows tooling. It's a Microsoft project, a Microsoft compiled Linux kernel, a `wslu` package that runs in Linux is built by Microsoft, //$wsl using the P9 file server forked by Microsoft. It might sound like a nit pick, but they're spending a lot of time and effort and money to ensure Windows has a better Unix experience than macOS.

The nice thing about them is they're not just laptops but tablets as well. I love my Surface Book 2, the only iffy thing is the detachable portion, it is not 100% stable and if they can fix that I'd be set and buy only this laptop type for the rest of my life, not sure if they fixed it in the SB3 or not though.

I would love to buy a Surface Go but Windows 10 lacks some apps I'd like to see on a tablet that are already on both iOS/iPadOS and Android. If they matched the top 25 apps both platforms have in each respective app category, they'd probably have a better chance to have me buy Microsoft only tablets. I guess their niche they can fill is Office on the go, but life's about more than just Office.

Mind you, I tried the PWA version of some of the top apps, but they lack features on Windows 10 (who apparently adds PWA's to their store).

As a windows user and primarily Android users, when I bought an ipad a few months ago I was stunned at the things that were either unintuitive or impossible to do in ipad (I just want an alphabetical list of all the apps installed. Is that so hard? Why is it is still so hard to go back one space in a text field?)

Looking at the new ipad pro keyboard monstrosity, I can't imagine how people wouldn't laugh it out of the room if microsoft, google, or samsung released the same product. Doubles the weight of the tablet and has that weird hinge thing, and that price.

In terms of build quality, MS laptops need to priorities quality over looks.

Windows software is still a mess.

I wish they that drivers can be used by all major linux distro and ensure that the surface lineup is 100% linux compatible.

Microsoft should develop a Desktop environment on linux based on the metro design or Fluent design system which will suit the touch part on the surface tablets.

The surface pros are almost 100% Linux compatible fwiw. I don't about the other products.

What I really don't get is how companies get away with shipping any model that has 4GB of RAM. I mean,come on, it's 2020. The OS running idle probably needs more than that,not even mentioning opening a few tabs in Chrome.

They're trying to hit a headline price (albeit for a model that no-one should ever buy). This is fairly common, though it's a particularly egregious example; even Apple puts 8GB in their headline-price-don't-buy machines these days.

That and Apple puts an NVMe SSD iirc and not eMMC. Even the Lenovo flex 14 with Ryzen 5 3500u I have has 12GB RAM and 256GB NVMe storage. It was US $450 on Amazon for Black Friday. I doubt Lenovo/Amazon sold it for a loss. Microsoft definitely could hit $400 price point with a surface Go that was worth buying if it wanted to...

From the article

> It’s also worth noting what you actually get if you buy the $399 model. For starters, there’s no keyboard. And the keyboard is really the thing here. After all, that sort of convertibility is a huge part of the motivation for buying a Surface in the first place. Along with the full Windows 10 experience, you’ll want the sort of productivity that requires a keyboard. That will run you $99-$129.

> A harder pill to swallow is the processor upgrade. Similar to the MacBook Air I just reviewed, the real top-line component refresh mentioned in the press material requires a not inconsequential premium. Microsoft heavily advertised the addition of the eighth-gen Intel core line, which was heralded as helping transform the Go into a proper laptop. The base level, however sports the Intel Pentium 4425Y, chip, far more in line with the original’s 4415Y — one of the bigger issues reviewers had with the first Go.

Now the R5 3500u isn't a desktop class processor by any means but I am pretty sure it is better than a Pentium.

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/compare_cpu-intel_pentium_gold...

Once again, I believe it is possible to hit $400 with respectable specifications. You just have to be willing to make a smaller/no profit.

I think in Apple's case for many buyers (consumer and corporate) the "headline-price-don't-buy" machines are the machines that move the most units.

Anecdotally at both my current and previous employer - the "default" Apple notebook handed out was a 13" 2 port non-touchbar machine, which was for several years the least expensive MacBook Pro available.

Oh, I'm sure it is for the Surface Go, too.

IIRC Windows 10 is able to run with as few as 256 MB of RAM these days.

It depends on the use case

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min...

256MB for IoT without display, 512MB with display

For Mobile or desktop editions they say to have 1GB or higher for 32 bit (which I assume is the use case for a Surface)

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-10-192mb-ram

And what modern application is?

It's trying to compete against iPads, which don't have more than 4GB of RAM in most SKUs either.

Maybe, but iPads don't run desktop apps.

But ipads don't have to run windows. Which Makes it actually reasonable.

My instinct is the same - I have two computers with 32GB RAM, and it always feels well-utilized :)

But I also have two cheapo media computers with Win10, 2GB RAM, 32GB MMC hard drive. They've been working BRILLIANTLY over last ~2 years. Even went through major Windows self-updates... no clue how. Is there a version of Win10 better optimized for smaller footprints, or it's the same version but recognizes its limitations, I'm not sure. But we've been browsing the web, watching movies, even playing some dinky games.

So I can see 4GB actually being usable for many many people (NOT ones with multiple VMs etc of course:).

My experience with hundreds of win10 machine in an enterprise environment has been that disk speed has a far greater impact than ram.

16GB ram with a HDD is a much slower and sluggish experience than 4GB ram with a ssd.

This is for the general office use case.

Until you're using more than 16gb of ram and hit a wall... If you're doing full stack development with a few containers, database(s) and other services (rabbit, etc) you can easily eat 16gb. I rarely go much over 20gb though.

What pisses me off looking for a new personal laptop (not my work one) is so many of the best options have oddly gimped single-channel memory upgrade options (8gb soldered, 8gb in single slot) or have oddly limited GPU options on higher end AMD models (4800H in particular).

I echo the experience with "two cheapo media computers with Win10, 2GB RAM, 32GB MMC hard drive. They've been working BRILLIANTLY".

I have a couple of 2013 or 2014 vintage Asus T-100 TA (tablets with detachable keyboard) around the house still working like champs at tablet duties. I think they've been upgrade from the original Windows 8, and they even work with the Office 2013 apps that came included in the 300 euro sale price for each.

Not main work machines, but nice spares, and good for web, PDFs, tube and light games. And I get my fix of Metro Design interface not available on phones any more ...

DDR4 DRAM draws about 1.5W per 4GB, regardless of chip counts.

It's a tablet. It's the best tablet, because it runs a real operating system rather than a crippled "mobile OS", but it's still a tablet.

I think it's pretty absurd too especially since I just bought a raspberry pi 4 for under $100 that has the same amount of RAM. If I'm spending that much for a computer it has to be better than that.

This is not true. On my Windows laptop with 4GB, there's 2GB free when running Chrome/Edge with a few tabs, and almost 1GB free when I open Teams in addition to the browser.

You reckon these kind of tablet/laptops would be able to handle remote desktop smoothly?

Since the quarantine started I've been using my laptop to remote desktop to my PC in the office (I need a pretty hefty machine so a laptop doesn't cut it). I've been surprised how well it works and opens a world of possibilities for me. I'd imagine I'm not the only one realizing this.

Should be perfect for that kind of thing. A few people use iPads for Remote Desktop.

The previous version ran Linux on it to. I don’t need one but finding myself trying to talk myself out of one. As a secondary device for travel or just throwing in a bag to browse, email etc it seems ideal. My iPad goes goes ok but think I’d struggle using it as a primary device on a work trip and prefer that more for consuming media / annotating PDFs / docs.

that's another interesting point, you could potentially remote desktop from/to a different OS as well.

I wondered a similar thing regarding remote development using VS Code's remote-dev plugins (for SSH and/or Containers).

I've done this workflow (i.e. used a local VS Code to develop on code hosted on a remote machine) quite a lot, but always using fairly well specced laptops (Core i7s, 16+gb ram etc) to connect to the remote and the experience has largely been seamless.

Anyone got any experience of this?

Looking at my local VS Code now as I am connected to a remote SSH host working on a very small python workspace it is using a couple of hundred meg of ram and fluctuating from 0-2% CPU on a i7 quad core. I don't have a large workspace in something more demanding (i.e. something where the IDE can do something useful unlike with python where it is a glorified notepad) to test with right now though :(

A Surface Go has been computationally sufficient for remote SSH dev use for VS Code with Rust with my (admittedly small) projects. I no longer bring my XPS 15 when visiting parents for extended visits. The 10" screen/keyboard is a drawback, obviously, but performance hasn't been since it's the remote machine doing the heavy lifting.

Since the edit timer has expired, I will point out that it's the 8GB/SSD model I have experience with. Total RAM usage is over 4GB and I'd expect the eMMC model to be just generally a bad time.

Yep, I have the first version with 8/128 version but the cpu is the same, I bought it mainly for for being on call with less than 1kg in the bag. For my use case it's one of the best travel machines I had, I use it with dualboot Win10-Ubuntu.

I use it for more than just remote desktop, for work related apps I use: Outlook, Teams, Notes, etc.. All 4 at the same time is too much for the tablet, but one a time is ok, most of times even on battery saving. I try to sync outlook, notes, and other apps as much as I can when I am on external power.

If you buy it thinking it's not a desktop/beefy-laptop/SurfaceProi7 substitute but a valid companion I think it will work well.

Yes, I've been using a low-end laptop with Pentium N5000 CPU (Gemini Lake aka "Atom-class") and 4GB RAM. Handles 1920x1200 rdp smoothly plus MS Teams and Firefox running on the laptop.

The Surface Go 2 with its more powerful CPUs and GPUs should work fine.

I pretty much only ever use my Surface (which is quite old now) for RDP'ing into my office desktop machines to give demos - usually via a 4G connection as a lot of places I visit don't have a public wifi network.

Only problem I've ever had was when I accidentally pulled the ethernet cable out of one of my PCs as I was leaving to give the demo....

Edit: Only other problem I had was constantly losing the Surface video adapters - solved by attaching the adapter to my Surface power supply cable with a cable tie.

They work great for that, I used my Surface 4 to RD into my workstates a few times, and was able to do 3D modeling work with it. The only downside for that kind of work is the lack of an ethernet port, but that's a given on a slim mobile device such as this.

Absolutely. RDC needs minimal resources so it can run on ancient and low powered devices.

You can get a $20 dock to add usb and hdmi ports so my current setup is 2 rdc sessions going (one of the go screen and one on the external 1080p monitor) and a full sized keyboard keyboard and mouse.

I really hate how Microsoft replaced the Sketch app with their Whiteboard app. It was perfect on the Go. The Whiteboard app now requires you to login in to cloud services just to draw a squiggles. I'd rather not have my notes forced into the cloud.

Sketch app was one of the most useful apps in Windows 10. It was snappy and just one click away. Hate its replacement, wish they at least let us to keep Sketch app instead of just replacing it.

This drives me absolutely nuts about Microsoft. I don't want to have to login to anything just to use a simple app.

The sketch app would also start within microseconds of me pressing the pen button (ignoring BTLE connection latency).

The Whiteboard app first takes seconds to start, then it stays some additional seconds showing an empty screen until it decides to start the login process, then it needs a couple more seconds until you can actually sketch down your note. By which time I have already forgotten about whatever I was going to write down.

Setting the pen button to launch OneNote is now literally faster than Whiteboard and that's just ridiculous considering the idea of not putting OneNote in there in the first place was to have something quick & snappy to take quick notes.

The "just press the pen button and jot your ideas now" idea was broken the day they shipped Whiteboard. The "new" Microsoft is just as ridiculous as Google. They kill their own usecases as fast as they create them.

Completely related to the article but completely unrelated to surface.... what's going on with those product pictures? The blur is all messed up... on the last picture the left side of the surface is gone.

Yeah, that's weird. If I had to guess, that's some sort of computational blur (like Apple's Portrait Mode, but who knows which implementation. Maybe the photo still has EXIF data to tell what the camera was.)

Fake, crappy smartphone DOF. Just lazy.

I've got a Surface Go 1 and it's kind of just "ok". It's not a great tablet or laptop. It's useful in that it can run Windows-only stuff in a portable form factor but I tend to avoid using it for daily tasks.

I've gone through several Surface tablets going back to the Pro 1. I'd hoped they would be nice portable Windows machines for tasks I need Windows for but small enough they would be easy to tote around or put away on a shelf.

Due to their size they are (for me) shitty tablets. The Pro 1 and 3 were just too bulky to use for more than a few minutes as a tablet and the keyboard covers are just finger trampolines and make terrible laptops. So they were just crappy desktops I could fold up. The Surface 3 was a little better as a tablet but a shitty laptop. Finally the Surface Go was a decent tablet, still a shitty laptop and foldable desktop but more capable as a tablet.

The Go is my last Surface though. It turned out to be my best deal since I got it on some clear-the-channel sale so got the 8GB model for like $250.

Last fall I bit the bullet and just got a cheap gaming laptop on a Black Friday sale. I was able to stuff in 32GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It's at least a good laptop and a decent desktop and I can still put it on a shelf. It beats all the Surfaces I've owned for Windows-only tasks.

The Surfaces look nice and have some of the best Windows pen interfaces you'll find but they are just too compromised. Their attempt to be tablets makes them shitty laptops and then they're pretty poor tablets.

I really like my Surface Go 1[0] and am looking forward to upgrading to the Go 2. I have a Surface Pro X as well but the Go 1 is more pleasant to use in my opinion.

[0]: https://andregarzia.com/2020/01/a-year-with-the-surface-go.h...

I bought a Go for my wife for Christmas as I had heard good things about them. To us it seemed like a rubbish tablet combined with an awful laptop with the terrible windows 10 on it. In the end she has just gone back to using her 8 year old laptop with Ubuntu. Does any one have any suggestions for similar devices running Linux?

Was there any reasons Windows couldn't be installed in it?

I found windows to be getting too slow and sluggish, switching to Linux has made it much better, also battery seems a little better too.

I've installed Pop!_Os on my Surface Go as the primary OS (deleted Windows) and it works really well. A few issues with the touch screen but I just disable that anyway. Using it for coding in C++ and Python and it works well.

I would go with a Thinkpad X1 Yoga. I don't have experience with the Yoga variant, but I've owned X1s since the original 1st gen. Nothing but good experiences running Linux on them. Apart from the awful idea of a touch strip for Fn keys on the 5th(?) gen, nothing but good stuff to say on the hardware side of things. They're not cheap, though.

I think it was the 2nd gen that had the awful touch strip (if you haven't seen it, think of it as a shitty implementation of the touch bar). I have the 5th gen (2017) and it's a fantastic machine that works really well with Linux. The 6th gen had some issues with Linux, however, those were mostly Intel's fault iirc.

My memory is lousy. You are most probably right about the generation, or somewhere near. If I had a 1st gen, I certainly skipped at least one generation, so I'd put it at least 3rd generation. Not as late as 5th though.

Any Intel Windows tablet will run Linux, most of them without any issues.

On the ARM side your best bet are Chrome OS devices (Chrome OS itself is a pretty mainline Linux and the devices run Coreboot), some of which are tablets. Most interesting to me currently is Lenovo's Chromebook Duet, which comes at 280$ for 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage or 128GB for 20$ more. Maybe that's enough for her.

Last time I tried Chrome OS on my tablet (Dell 5285, not a bad main machine and quickly falling in price) I wasn't very happy with it, but maybe it's better when pre-installed. It can in theory run Android and Linux apps, which seems pretty cool to me.

Unfortunately the Linux tablet experience in general is not nearly perfect. Your best bet is GNOME and even that kind of sucks (well, it's GNOME).

My Surface Pro 4 just died this weekend to the “screen scramble” issue. As I bought it more than 3 years ago, Microsoft are asking me to pay >$700 for a replacement. OK, I understand it’s out of warranty, and I’d accept its fate if this were genuine wear and tear, but this is an admitted manufacturing defect so it feels very raw.

I was a happy user while the thing worked, but I can’t bring myself to recommend any Surface model now, and I’ll be putting that $700 towards a replacement from a different vendor.

The worst part is they will replace the whole device, probably not with a new one.

Microsoft lost any trust I had in them for building hardware. Of the 5 people I know with a Surface, only 1 doesn't have any issues. The other 4 have problems with the touch input, boot loops and loud fans on low CPU load. Software issues that go for month and years unfixed. These issues only occur slightly out of warranty (I don't assume planned obsolescence, just bad engineering).

I trust them, as they've dealt with issues better than any other company I've had to do it with. My Surface Pro 4's battery started swelling out of warranty, and MS replaced it right away with one that had a different kind of battery (better battery life than ever). The first (reconditioned) replacement had a screen issue right away, which sucked, but they sent another immediately.

My work Surface Book 2 hasn't had any issues at all.

Samsung made sure that no company wants exploding battery press. I'm not sutprised they replaced your swelling battery.

They replaced my SB battery too - great service.

Apple would charge people for a replacement battery just the same.

(I had to pay to replace the top case of my 2013 MacBook Pro last year because the keyboard stopped working, possibly from battery bloat.)

If you are in the EU then you may be covered by EU consumer law if it is a manufacturing defect

I think the EU law is 2 years, minimum with additional warranties provided per state:

https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/dealing-with-customers...

Consumers are entitled to a repair or replacement, for proven manufacturing defects in the UK "Statutes of Limitations" consumers have this right for six years in England and for five years in Scotland.

My understanding is that under the Consumer Rights Act (UK, 2015) there is no statutory limit on the period goods should last except the expectation of consumers. So, realistically things should last "about as long as expected".

IMO this works quite well, a cheap but of electronics from a pound-shop has to last 2 years (until the end of the Transition Period), a washing machine would be expected to be running after a decade (or more) unless perhaps it was a really budget offering.

It's practical, though I'd like a steadily inflated underpin to warranty periods too force companies to remove their planned obsolescence and make things more repairable.

That issue has been incredibly frustrating for my company, after one of our clients bought a whole fleet of surfaces we had a period during the transition to working from home when we had about 20 requests for replacements in a few days.

With stock on short supply and Microsoft not warranty replacing most of them it was a painful time.

For what it's worth, Microsoft regularly scores 1/10 on ifixit repairability on most, if not all of their Surface products and they charge exorbitant prices for repair (or really, replacement). One of the reasons I didn't pull the trigger the Surface Pro.

And the reason I switched to a normal laptop when my Surface Pro was unusable for a couple weeks. The issue could have been solved in 30 seconds if the battery was removable. Instead even Microsoft themselves couldn't do anything because they glued it shut on all sides.

Also the power cord was thinner than cheap USB charging cables and didn't have any bend protection, quickly leading to defects. Absolutely unacceptable for a portable device and obviously intentional.

Never again.

So frustrating, I feel your pain.

The left CTRL key snapped in half on mine after ~8 months. While under warranty, I was told I had to send the whole thing away, 2-4 weeks. That was difficult to accept. I've had to occasionally re Sellotape it since then.

Later the tablet battery stopped charging, then stopped being recognised altogether. This means the screen cannot be detached without sticking a pin into a vent. This requires power down and I imagine not good to do frequently. I read it is a manufacturing default that won't be fixed.

After much inner wrestling I replaced it with a Lenovo. It had a hardware issue early on, but they sent an engineer around to my private residence within a few days with a spare part to fix it. Night and Day.

Never again.

Off-topic, but I wish they would make a "Surface Laptop Pro". The Surface Laptop is more like an "air" with its limited connectivity (ports). Whereas the more capable Surface Book is a bit awkward as a laptop.

I have surface book 2 and have been using it both for development via WLS + VS code and as a tablet for drawing, taking meeting notes etc. I would never come back to Mac or any Linux compatible laptop because I got used to its versatility.

I simply cannot comprehend how a laptop with detachable screen, which is powered by GTX1060 and has by far the longest battery life on the market can be awkward. Couple this with better than mac keyboard, good 4k display and corpus that never overheats like Mac. It is also more silent. Please tell me which laptop currently has all these features?

I own a Surface Book 2 as well. At work I use MBP 16. And before that I used ThinkPad W520 for 6 years. SB2 is the best laptop. There are issues like glossy screen or not repairable/sturdy/modular like ThinkPad, but ergonomics and performance is just too good.

Also in terms of TDP and lack of a dedicated graphics card. And then with the Surface Book, not only is it more awkward as a laptop but because all but the GPU is in the screen the hardware has the same constraints as a tablet. Even with the excessive thinness of the 16" MacBook Pro, it can run circles around any of the Surface devices in terms of performance.

For anyone contemplating on doing remote development on these otherwise underpowered devices, I just discovered Parsec (no affiliation) that is a free remote desktop solution with seamless mode and 60fps throughput. I wouldn't say that it is without problems (artifacting heavily on flaky connections, some hotkeys not being captured) but it opens interesting possibilities.

I've been a big fan of my Surface Go since getting it - the graphics are surprisingly robust on such a small tablet!

Look at that faux-bokeh effect on the product photos. They're so laughably bad that I'm baffled they included them with the article.

Yes, I was wondering why the left side of the Surface looks completely morphed. Like here https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/00100trPOR...

It looks like the reflection on the black part was identified as further afar and therefor has been blurred.

I wondered if there was something in the reflection they didn't want readers to see, coz it looks like someone just dragged a smear brush all over that side of the picture to hide it. Like they were smudging ink on a canvas.

Yeah, it's ridiculous that they didn't catch it before publishing the article. I don't mind faux bokeh if it works well (it's easy to spot around the hair if you look for it), but it's a complete mess here.

Too bad they're sticking with the kickstand design. Makes the device so unusable on the lap (as mentioned in the review). I have the original Go and I can't actually complain about the performance, but it's very hard to use without a flat surface. It's also unusable in your hand, e.g. to show something to someone while standing up.

i have a surface 3, how is it hard to show something to somebody ?

I have the exact opposite complaint :-) the kickstand is not a problem but performance is so abysmal I can basically keep only one application open at the time.

I often wondered what I was doing wrong since many people are reasonably happy with its performance but never found an answer, even after disabling everything that can be disabled.

Did you check the heat? Maybe you got a lemon and it was constantly being CPU throttled.

thanks, it's slow as soon as it starts while everything looks normal (CPU, temp, etc).

And I got the higher spec Go so proper SSD, max RAM, etc

Do you have the lowest-end model? It had 4GB of RAM and _eMMC storage_. In 2018. That should be expected to be extremely slow.

Even the top-spec model is pretty anemic hardware and is not going to be fast, though. I think you'd have to have pretty low expectations to be happy with the performance.

I bought the cheap one as I couldn't resist the form factor, but by god, I'd rather walk upstairs and do something quickly on a real computer, then stay on the couch and try to even open it or load a single tab. I can't figure out how it can possibly be that slow. I'm so disappointed :(

It sits there ready to go, but it's too painful to touch :/

Here is how i use it

1. netflix\youtube

2. outlook\office - perfect for writing emails and reviewing docs when out of the office

3. remoting into a more powerful computer - I RDC into my desktop at home or work if I need to run an ide or do any other heavy lifting

(i got the model with 8gb ram and the faster processor)

YLSMV (your lap size may vary) :). I have a Dell 5290 with essentially the same kickstand design, and it works perfectly fine on my lap :).

Is there a tablet that can run one of the major Linux distributions?

I am surprised that there is not a single commercial Linux tablet on the market. Given how many developers use Linux, one would think the market is big enough for at least one product?

And it seems no major distribution supports any of the tablets out there.

The first Surface Go can run Ubuntu pretty well. The Pentium Gold processor is a bit of a let down, though.

Do you have a link where someone describes how he got Ubuntu to run on the Go natively without installing software from outside of the repos? The user reports I saw did not get WiFi to work with what is in the Ubuntu repos.

https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...

Wifi should work out of the box.

This seems to be a compatibility list of Surface devices with a special kernel made by someone. I don't see how it is related to what is in the Ubuntu repos?

If anything, the exsitence of this kernel seems to be an indication that the major distributions do not cope well with the Surface and do not work out of the box.

They don't and I would not advise you to. I had Archlinux installed on Surface Book 2 and was dual booting for some time but the Linux experience was pretty bad. Camera is not working and never will. Touchscreen works as an alternative to mouse pointer, no multi-touch. You can't detach it. Battery life is worse and you can't use GPU and integrated card in parallel (it's an ever-present Linux issue for all laptops with two GPU cards). On top of that when you have Linux and 4k screen Surface integrated GPU card starts to suffocate and you notice a lag when programming in some IDE. It's just not worth the effort. Just use WLS with VS Code.

Does anyone know what the difference is between installing this custom kernel and merely replacing the WiFi's firmware as outlined here[0]? More generally, what features does the custom kernel add? (I've searched their wiki but the feature matrix they present there doesn't really say what features they added.)

[UPDATE]: Never mind, the repo's `patches` directory[1] answers my question.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/94hjxv/surfac...

[1] https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/tree/master/p...

I'd be interested in this as well, though I'm not getting my hopes up. For instance, this relatively recent tutorial[0], too, says you have to install a custom kernel to fix the WiFi on Linux Mint. :\

[0] https://bytewelder.com/posts/2019/08/13/surface-go-linux-min...

Wonder if Techcrunch ever observed a drop in visitors since GDPR? They really don't have any usable opt out interface.

On my home network it doesn't work at all since my pi-hole blocks whatever domain they route through for ads.

I've stopped reading TechCrunch since they've put up the data collection popup. It may technically be GDPR-compliant, but definitely violates the spirit of the law. That dark pattern of providing no opt-out for a "consent" form is insulting.

Probably, most people just click "Agree" without bothering with it.

It definitely is not GDPR-compliant, which is also why I don't read techchrunch anymore.

Damn, why are TechCrunch hijacking the browsers back button behaviour? I had to close down my browser instance complete and then open a new one to come back to this thread. Awful.

I believe it changes the URL when you move on to the next article

Hmm, it’s stopped happening for me now.

If you scroll down below comments section URL changes to https://techcrunch.com/ then if you press <- button in browser it changes to previous: https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/08/microsoft-surface-go-2-rev... If you do it 6 times you'll have to "go back" six times. Maybe not back button hijacking, but outcome's the same, and it's pretty annoying I admit.

TechCrunch apparently force a 307 Temporary Redirect to some advertising.com domain first :/

another reason to use Firefox

How's that? I'm using Firefox and seeing the same annoying back button behaviour.

Try right-clicking on the back button.

You can also right-click to display previously viewed pages in Chrome.

I blame browsers for implementing such an obnoxious anti-feature.

Humans don't kill people, guns do.

It is a great feature. Idiots doing this is at fault.

It's not directly an issue with TechCrunch but the lack of an api that does not push a history state OR pollute your history.

Ie you can't change the visible URL without at least one of these happening (and it's infuriating)!

Isn't that what the `History.replaceState()` method achieves?

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/History/rep...

Nope, it will result in a history entry added to your history (even if nothing is added to the immediate backwards forwards history).

TBH, Maybe HN should just avoid sites like TC, and stick to, say, https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/microsoft-surface-go-2

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