Microsoft Launches Surface Laptop 6 for Business and Surface Pro 10 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Launches Surface Laptop 6 for Business and Surface Pro 10

blogs.windows.com

72 pointsdenistaran157 comments

This is the same company which puts ads all over the OS, can't stop trying to upsell people into using onedrive, forcefully signs you into onedrive, syncs your local files into their cloud without consent, tries really hard to not let you sign in with a local account and most likely does other shady things.

Their hardware is more or less garbage. My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device. It had other issues before the battery killed it.

Why would people give money to Microsoft for such bad hardware? They treat their customers like garbage.

> Why would people give money to Microsoft for such bad hardware? They treat their customers like garbage.

Education, workplace policy. Managers _love_ Microsoft.

Office and Active Directory (and related stuff)

>My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device.

Statistically, all devices suffer from swollen batteries. I've even see iPhones and iPads die from swollen batteries. There's a certain tiny % fallout in manufacturing of battery cells where they may degrade and fail prematurely and swelling is a safety feature.

I had two surfaces die from swollen batteries. The problem was frequent enough that Microsoft Store staff (rip) would exchange it immediately, no questions asked.

This was back during the Surface Book 1 days. I’ve been a happy surface user ever since, and haven’t had any other battery or build quality issues since.

Eventually, almost all LiPo batteries will puff up. But there are definitely some devices that reliably cause this problem far sooner than it should occurr, due to poor charge management and thermal management.

Yeah, although, having owned a Surface Book 2, and being a .NET developer, the only Windows sytems I'll have in my home will probably be Microsofts own, unless someone makes laptops that are as nice, for half the cost. Things just work on my SB2. The only reason I'll buy a new one is if it either dies, or I see a really good deal. I've had it since 2017 iirc and its been pretty great thus far.

My next laptop will likely be a Mac, mines hit the mark where Apple wont let me update anymore, kind of makes me angry that Apple does that to perfectly usable hardware, but I like the ecosystem and my laptop was a min-spec anyway, needs to be upgraded, just waiting on a deal yet again.

Try https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ I recently used it on a 2014 5k iMac to install Sonoma (14.3) and it's been flawless in my experience - everything is buttery smooth as you'd expect.

I also installed on a 2015 Macbook (12"...horrible Intel mobile processor.) It works, but the CPU is just too underpowered to do basic stuff like web browsing and messaging...if you're impatient like me anyway ;)

OCLP gives up on security when it modifies the OS to use drivers from an older OS. Machines which use OCLP don't get firmware updates to patch severe security vulnerabilities.

It's fine if you just need to make use of some hardware for a bit longer with macOS. Linux may be better in terms of security. It might not be a good fit for many.

I did see that, but I heard someone suggest that it might not be the best idea since your OS could become unstable. At some point I may just consider installing Linux on that Macbook, but not before replacing it, since my wife would be upset if she was stuck with Linux. She prefers to just use macOS.

Dotnet on Linux is superior in every way to windows. No ads, no crap, vscode is better on Linux than windows and since .net framework is dead, no reliance on windows in any way, shape or form.

I mean, you’re probably deploying to Linux containers anyway.

Surface is pretty well regarded as I understand it. Microsoft set out to make 'the sortof macbook equivlaent for windows' and largely succeeded. Although obviously macbook remains the champion overall I guess. I'm sorry you had a battery problem.

For some of the best Windows hardware on the market, look no further than Microsoft’s Surface brand - WIRED

Also: I dont ever see ads in Windows, but I guess somone must be getting them. Not sure what I'm doing right to avoid them.

Just swipe left to right on Windows 11. The widget page is like 60% ads disguised as news by default. It's so easy to trigger accidentally on Windows tablets. I feel like Windows 11 is the Windows 8 for tablets. They took pretty much every gain and good thing Windows had as tablet OS and made it garbage.

Windows 11 grew up from the Windows 10X remains, thus there is some truth to it.

Do you sign in with a Microsoft account? If you do, that's probably the reason why you don't see ads in Windows 11. The system settings UI on Windows 11 always shows an ad which says that an account should be used to use office and other apps.

Microsoft has updated apps even on Windows 10 to recommend other apps. The Photos app was recommending a video editor app recently. Windows 11 shows ads, suggestions and installs a lot of garbage apps to upsell people into office 365, Onedrive and other things.

I recently had to reinstall my office that I bought. It signed me into an account without permission and uploaded documents there. I had to sign out of that account to prevent it from uploading documents automatically. Most of the documents I edit contain my PII. I can sue them.

> The system settings UI on Windows 11 always shows an ad which says that an account should be used to use office and other apps.

Macs also do this with their iCloud accounts, with little widgets all around the place prompting you to log in to their app store, etc... if you don't have an account. Possibly those prompts or ads are even more "in-your-face" than Windows? Probably most Mac users don't notice them because most just create an account

The new Windows mail app has ads in it that look almost exactly like normal emails. They pushed me to adopt it from the old mail app and I'm regretting the decision. Apple's mail apps never do that.

Checkout Winomail

My Surface Laptop from 2019 wasn’t supported by Win11 because of TPM limitation (I guess there was a registry hack) but I expect the requirements for Win11 were defined by 2019 for its 2021 release, yet they skimmed on a very expensive prosumer laptop under their own Microsoft brand.

After getting a Mac I’ll never purchase a Windows device again.

+ Terrible battery

+ Terrible build quality

+ Terrible support

+ Noise of fan having a stroke

Every single windows device ever has "Terrible build quality"? Weird take

€3K Dell XPS

- Screen broke (Never left the desk)

- “Carbon” started to peel, looks like the laptop has dandruff

——

Lenovo

https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/lenovo-class-settle...

So many relatives/friends buying €800-€1000 devices that become unusable after 1/2 years.

Plastic junk.

My SurfaceBook has a better build quality that my MacBook Pro model from the same era (2019) - MacBooks have improved a lot in the last few years though with the new chips I guess?

I prefer the MacOs to Windows, but MacBook hardware was definitely disappointment on this model. I had numerous graphics & power issues on the MacBook Pro, plus touchbar was annoying.

Dell & Lenovo are crap, I've given up on them. Surface is good, and I'm happy with my LG Gram.

There is selection bias in their ownership experience. But I really concur. Microsoft hardware is better than stock Chinese PC hardware, but still not as good as Apple hardware (all produced in China).

My ThinkPad has okay support with the on-site option, but you're right on with all the other things.

I don't understand why Lenovo (and Dell and the other major PC makers) can see the $/sq.ft. that an Apple store generates and not open their own stores? I'd feel a lot more comfortable recommending a ThinkPad to a friend if there was a local place they could shop at, get repairs, and take classes.

Yeah, no. Macs are nice $2000 machines but are nothing special compared to other current $2000 machines.

Windows being somewhat bad, yes, definitely. However, the hardware auch as much higher res, OLED, touch, high refresh rate, pen etc. can be very good.

Shhh. Don't break the Microsoft/Windows bashing sentiment, they really need to feel superior with their Apple ePeen. But yes, if you look at the market, 2K in a PC laptop will usually get something better than what Apple would like to sell you. You'll get worse battery life but generally better power for most workloads, and if you use it lightly like all those MacBook fanboys seems to do it won't be nearly as big of a difference they like to claim.

But hey gotta justify the extortionate price somehow...

My macbook pro circa late 2000s would argue the last one. After switching completely to linux only windows I have is work issued.

Their mouses were great, back when the rest of the company was also a lot less user-hostile.

> Their mouses were great

They still are, as long as you don't make the mistake of using them on Windows.

I have had a few surfaces for work. They are actually really nice hardware, but the Surface Book had one design flaw, which would periodically disconnect USB headsets. That was my only real complaint.

I would say the comparison to Macbooks is fair.

the special firmware that microsoft uses in these machines breaks network, USB, anything that you attach to it. it just can't get power management right. I've been saddled with one of these for 5+ years and it just never got better.

Maybe they used to be better. I love my Surface Pro 2. Paired up with Linux, it's a kick ass little machine.

Imagine: If Microsoft pushed so hard for Modern Standby and even THEY cannot get it right, why should you trust any laptop designed for Windows to have proper power management?

It’s interesting that everything you just listed also applies to Apple — not that they’re the only alternative here.

I guess I should feel fortunate that for Apple, at least the ads are limited to its own range of products.

We have a bunch of Surface products deployed at work and those people seem to love them. I can’t think of any high-rate failures affecting them.

Edit: Wow, I guess we have a lot of angry Apple fanatics here. Am I wrong somewhere? Please point it out. FWIW, I use and prefer Apple products.

Apple hardware is not garbage, to start with.

iOS has push notifications adverts from Apple as well.

The microsoft hardware and OEM devices that MS sold directly were historically THE ones to buy because they were optimized to show off Windows, so no crapware, good drivers, limited BS. I don't know when that changed, but it has.

>> are packed with features that business customers have been requesting

This is a total lie, unless they're referencing THEIR customers trying to sell you all this shit. The developer story from Microsoft is as good as it's ever been, but the consumer side just sucks. As a historically Windows developer who now does most of their work in .net core or totally outside the MS ecosystem, but still plays the odd triple-A game I don't know what to do for my next computer.

Honestly, I find this to be such a weird argument. Apple does the same crap with iCloud and people put their hardware on a pedestal when it has the same inherent flaws, often for a much higher price. And maybe you share this opinion, I just want to point out that this hardware from MS is relatively benign in the grand scheme of the PC world.

I never seen any iCloud “ad” outside of iCloud settings item.

On windows I literally get annoying notification to use OneDrive.

That is because apple doesn't ask you, it just turns it on. If you don't accept changes to their terms of service (As I haven't) you'd get these notifications fairly regularly.

Granted, I have iCloud turned on (for syncing notes and calendar) but I have it turned off for everything else. I’ve never had it ask me to turn on any of the other iCloud features like iCloud backup or drive / desktop sync. (And I’d guess if it synced things without my knowledge it would show up in my iCloud storage usage?)

Completely agree that Apple does the exact same stuff with account management and iCloud notifications, but I don’t understand where these arguments keep coming from that Apple is more costly.

The 13.5 sLaptop 6 for Business is, i5/8gb/256gb is $1200

Compare that the 14” MBP (M3/8gb/512gb) for $1600. The diff in SSD storage offsets some of the cost, but not the whole $400

However, the 13” MacBook Air with the same specs (although a much better CPU) - M3/8gb/256gb is actually $100 cheaper.

Until someone builds an actual M3 competitor, Apple’s making better laptops for cheaper.

I have an M1 16” MBP that’s still running laps around any other laptop I’ve ever owned, including the 15” sBook 2 with a 1060. The Windows Arm laptop I have sucks compared to the M-series.

Anyway, totally agree that Apple does the same cross-sell garbage as Microsoft, just think it’s way off to argue that their hardware is more expensive, at least meaningfully so when you compare the performance, longevity, and battery life.

Does Apple require an Apple ID/iCloud account to set up a Mac? I thought that was a difference with windows 11?

They do not

Windows 11 changed the OOBE to have users sign in, though this can be bypassed fairly easily if you're tech-literate. Sometimes for installs I'll bypass, other times I'll log in with a Microsoft account, then create a local user, switch to that user, and then delete the computer account for the MS account.

My original comment was that macOS is no better. They require an account for downloading any app on the app store. The Microsoft store does not require one.

Well that depends where you buy, and I would argue that buying Surface device outside of sales/special offers is not a very wise decision. Those are MSRP not necessarily the price people will buy them at (unlike Apple).

Even then, a Surface Laptop is somewhere in between a MacBook Air and MacBook pro depending on configuration. Where I live, if you start adding necessary options, at the announced price a SL6 16/512GO is more expensive than a MacBook Air 16/512 (1879 vs 1759 euros) but much less expensive than a base MacBook Pro with 16/512 (2229 euros) and it arguably perform closer to the latter (especially with the dedicated 8GB of VRAM).

Then again, I would not buy them at launch and at the very least one should wait for their consumer-oriented offering.

Where I agree with you, is in Microsoft being almost as idiotic as Apple are with their pricing.

MSRP is the best way to compare. In the US, there are significant deals for Apple devices all the time.

Yes, my argument was not that the Surface was competitive in pricing. There are much more reasonable options in the Windows world.

Well you said “from MS,” so I took that as one would.

Comparing some third party provider against Apple isn’t entirely reasonable, unless they’re marketing a very similarly premium brand.

There are _many_ manufacturers that have premium products, including your "boring" manufacturers like HP, Dell, and Lenovo.

True, and all of their MSRPs are easily comparable to Apple’s similarly-specked hardware.

I'm glad I moved over to Mac. I know it's not perfect, but it's much better than Windows. They seem determined to lose customers.

I really like the concept of the Surface Book and got one several years ago. The keyboard no longer works when detaching the screen, so it's practically useless. Even a full reinstall didn't fix that issue.

Their new hardware is moot because ARM is just on a different level. Yeah, they can stick an H class Intel processor, but that will seriously heat up the laptop and eat the battery.

The only reason I still use a windows machine is because of gaming. I'm sure lots of users are on Windows because they have no choice.

> ...can't stop trying to upsell people into using onedrive, forcefully signs you into onedrive, syncs your local files into their cloud without consent, tries really hard to not let you sign in with a local account and most likely does other shady things.

This portion of the complaint was a playbook that was defined by Apple and icloud. Feels like an out of the frying pan into the fire situation.

You can use Mac without icloud. They don't push it nearly as hard as Windows.

On the other hand apple collects lots of telemetry out of sight.

>Their hardware is more or less garbage. My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device.

Macbook has swollen battery issue as well.

Microsoft Hardware is more or less the best on the PC market. The only company that spend R&D money from I/O, Speaker, Keyboard, Trackpad etc to try and match Apple MacBook if not exceed it. And a lot of these innovation or improvements gets filtered through to other PC OEM over the years.

You can shit about Microsoft software all you want. But in terms of PC Laptop market, they have done far more than most of the other companies. Had Pro Gaming / Pro Sumer Laptop not been a thing most other laptop manufacture would continue to milk and sell absolute garbage a la HP or Dell not a long time ago.

You need to get windows 11 pro. the home versions or anything less than pro is subsidized by ads.

Not sure where this info is coming from? Untrue from my experience.

> Why would people give money to Microsoft for such bad hardware? They treat their customers like garbage.

Who cares. Just make sure Apple isn't allowed to hold a line on doing things differently, then everyone else can compete fine?

The Windows division reports to the CEO of Advertising, of course it's gonna be like this.

Apple charges $200 more for 8GB to 16GB RAM. The new surface laptop is charging $300 to go from 8GB to 16GB :)

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/configure/Surface-Lapt...

At least the SSD is not soldered down.

Yup and looks like SSD upgrade from 256 to 512 is just $100.

I paid 30 € for a 512GB SSD.

Are SSD’s fungible? I thought there were varying qualities.

They are not fungible.

Read/write speed, durability, and power efficiency are all variable.

They aren't fungible, but even for a high-end 512GB SSD, $200 is rip-off pricing. In fact, a top-end SSD range won't even offer 512 sizes because aside from not really being worth it, transfer-rate performance is lower with smaller chips.

> transfer-rate performance is lower with smaller chips.

Transfer speed is lower with fewer chips, and older less-dense flash memory doesn't stay in production forever, and is more expensive per GB.

With the Ultra 5 and 32GB of RAM, the upgrade from 256 to 512 is $200.

Sounds to me like apples just baking more cost into the base price

I wonder how much of a market there is for people who already know how to do BGA soldering (i.e. many phone repair shops) to offer RAM upgrades at a fraction of that cost.

The so-called "AI PC" is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. It has no new features, just a Copilot button on the keyboard and the same background editing function for web conferences that has been available for a long time.

Welcome to 2024, everyone is marketing "AI" something something with their products. I've seen power tools with "AI" slapped onto the marketing.

And with the $10B they sank into OpenAI, I don’t expect anything local from a Microsoft product anytime soon.

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/introducing-neural-pr...

DirectML is a low-level API that provides a common abstraction layer for hardware vendors to expose their machine learning accelerators. DirectML works with any DirectX 12-compatible device including GPUs and now NPUs. Support for Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel AI Boost was developed in close collaboration with Intel.

When I purchased a laptop last year I went with MSI:

32GB RAM 1TB SSD 4080 12GB 3 USBC 2 USB3.2

$2100 CAD.

My only complaint was Windows 11 which was immediately rectified. Though not before having a full screen Xbox Live ad that couldn't be closed through any means.

Since removing MS the laptop functions perfectly, runs models locally without any fuss and powers any game I want at 4k60hz or 3k144hz(1440p).

What is the reason for the high pricing of Surface models?

With all due respect, the difference in looks between the Surfaces and your laptop is justification enough.

I mean this sincerely. People are willing to pay for good design.

Apple has built their entire company with people paying for good design.

Makes sense. I like how mine looks (dark grey with purple lit keys) so that was never a thought for me.

Tablet CPU is Intel Core Ultra 7 165U, which should perform similar to an M1 Pro: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/5825vs4584/Intel-Ultra-...

What’s the comparison like for the battery life and GPU? Afaik it’s the areas that really lag on the Intel side. I’m hopeful they’re competitive now on both.

Intel roughly doubled their iGPU performance with the latest Meteor Lake generation, but the low-power U series parts cut the GPU in half. So they'll still be in last place.

I liked it when their wonderful hardware design team tried really daring things with their form factors. The Studio giant screen you can tilt and draw on. The Surface Book that has the tilting screen. The one with the detachable screen. The Surface Duo and Neo.

Good build quality but unreliable. Bought a Surface, used it rarely, tried to pass it on to my eldest but it refused to start within 12 months.

We had similar experiences with my wife's Surface and her brother's Surface

If you havent try holding the start button for 30-60 seconds, seems like I have to do this for my surface go and surface laptop once every 6 months.

I can confirm. I’ve had two surfaces and both have had serious failures about 1-2 years into medium usage with no physical damage.

Meanwhile, all my Thinkpads and MacBooks still work today.

I'm still waiting on my current, 60 hours of use a week, mid-2019 MacBook Pro to die or have any sort of malfunction so I can justify buying a new one. Its battery life has seen better days but that's basically it.

Other anecdote, I cycle-toured for a year camping in all kind of uncomfortable places, and my Surface Pro 7 survived. The screen is cracked in a million places from getting smashed around with all my other kit, but it still works. The Type Cover is a bit crap, though. After going through one of them while on the road (PowerToys Keyboard Manager is your friend) now I've been living in an apartment with a roof and everything, and another one died from what I can only assume to be humidity. I gave up and switched to a cheap bluetooth keyboard instead, which kinda feels more cool and futuristic anyway.

Surface Pro 4 had broken OpenGL driver. Every software that requires OpenGL (basically all CAD software) crashes on it. Microsoft has all the incentive to cripple OpenGL. A generic Intel graphic driver cannot even be installed on surface. You have to use the Microsoft supplied one. Never bought a single surface again.

Good build quality is good because it is reliable. I don’t see how the good qualifier works otherwise.

Build Quality refers to how well a piece of equipment has been made [1]. The Surface's tablet has a sleek design with a great construction, uses quality materials and a quality finish that feels like a slab of luxury aluminum and glass in your hand.

In contrast poor build quality would be a thick piece of cheap plastic that creeks and rattles to touch.

[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/build...

The cherry on top of the unreliability is the high price of repairs. Even battery replacement runs around $400 for a Surface Pro, while a MacBook Pro battery replacement costs $250

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-much-does-out-...

https://support.apple.com/mac/repair

So the headphone jack is definitely gone, and we're stuck at 2 usb ports.

That was the situation brought with the Surface Pro 9 already, but I wish they did something to aleviate either of these.

It feels like the only decent upgrade from a Surface Pro 8 will be an Asus Z13 ?

Microsoft continue to ship their Surface laptops with over-sized power bricks, which is enough to disqualify them.

Similar spec Samsung laptops (Galaxy Books) come with a regular USB-C cable and a fast charging power adapter that looks like any other plug.

Anybody know why Samsung can do this and Microsoft can't?

Only having to lug around a single cable and charger for all devices is a dealbreaker.

> Anybody know why Samsung can do this and Microsoft can't?

Samsung makes also HW. /s

For the same reason as apple. They want you to use "surface connect" or "magsafe" instead.

Of course, you can just throw that away and charge by the usb c port instead, so I am a bit confused how that disqualifies anything.

Without a headphone jack, this device is an automatic no-buy.

I'll keep my old Surface for now.

The next real change will bei AMD Strix with a good integrated GPU or Intels Arrow Lake which should draw much less power than the current generation. If possible with on-die memory for performance and less power usage.

Had one surface from an employer, had to swap it out with a Mac because it was literally the worst machine I've ever used.

I'm still waiting to this idiotic unlappable design trend to pass and some company to come up with a 2-piece convertible similar to the original surface book.

I don't think people will buy Surface Laptop 6, the premium price make me looks to lenovo or Asus brand

Sadly, this is more of MSFT's "we can do what Apple does too!".

For a "business" oriented portable why is it so limited on ports? No wired Ethernet? As many others have pointed out, why are the 3D graphics so hobbled? People use laptops for CAD, visualizations and these days GPUs perform offload of a lot of other functions.

I saw someone "crap" on Dell and Lenovo but honestly I think most of the Lattitude laptops have really good build quality, decent availbility of parts and good longevity.

Lenovo X1 Carbons are far from perfect but they're pretty solid machines and still offer wired Ethernet (albiet via a breakout dongle) and a decent amount of ports. Linux works pretty decently here too.

I never understood what the value add of MSFT's Surface family was/is, supposedly a "first party" portable with Windows with the same quality and engineering as an Apple product but if you look at HOW they go about it they seem to keep missing the point. If you go to Wikipedia and punch in 'Surface' you'll see some crazy big table of devices they've churned out, all with varying degrees of issues.

I have a Surface Pro 2 which runs Debian Linux quite well (like another poster pointed out) so that's cool but it's has a lot of oddities that wouldn't be acceptable had the machine not been free.

Lenovo made an X1 Tablet family that's fanless and is honestly pretty compelling if you need a fanless, "tablet-like" PC that runs Windows. I use mine as a car diagnostics computer and the car software needs Windows.

If I were writing the specs for a "business computer" it'd include being fanless, excellent battery life, plethora of ports incl. legacy USB-A, light-weight and durable. I doubt any Surface will meet that.

Apple MBPs and Apple Airs BTW do NOT meet these criteria either, lack of ports, chunkier / heavier on the MBP line, can't do dual-displays on the Air, macOS really needing 16GB but Apple charging a crazy tax for 16GB+ of RAM, etc.

is there something actually AI related hardware wise or is everyone just jumping on the buzzword train to sell their PCs nowadays?

Why for Business? Can consumers not buy the Surface laptop anymore?

Based on a blog I read, Microsoft intends to launch these laptops for consumers at a later date, post their initial business-focused release.

Interesting strategy. Thanks. I think it risks decreasing the impact of the launch.

The latest Surface Go 4 still sold only for business for 6 months begs to differ.

"These new PCs represent a major step forward in customer-focused design and are packed with features that business customers have been requesting – from amazing performance and battery life to more ports, better security and custom, durable anti-reflective displays."

Not sure if only sold to businesses or what. It seems like Surface is a brand name synonymous with home consumers and they're trying to target business users, so they've added some necessary ports and did a bunch of marketing saying this is all "AI" focused, which seems to mean it'll have some annoying software that I hate like an intrusive thing in Excel to automatically make a chart out of my table when they pretty much already have that.

It's some MS channel/Conway thing. They have long had a different web site for "business" and sold models (e.g. the Surface Go with LTE) that were only available to "business" customers.

Actually, Dell had the same thing going on until recently.

They are launching the consumer models in May. Or you can buy a business one from any reseller like CDW.

Why this non-sense in pricing?

- 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $1200

- 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $1500

This is much worse than Apple, and I thought MSFT was more sensible than that!

No one needs more than… 8gb of ram.

At least 16GB isn’t the most you can get.

Bought a Surface Pro in 2013. After a few years the battery stopped charging. It is for all intents impossible to replace.

Now I buy Thinkpads.

For what it is worth...

>Most newer Surface devices are designed to facilitate the repair or replacement of primary components like the solid-state drive (SSD), keyboard, or display. With the purchase of a new commercial Surface for Business device, you can maximize your investment with services and repair1 options.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-service-an...

To be fair, the Surface we know for its 0/10 repairability 10 years ago is vastly different compared to today.

Heck, they even post an official repair guide as far as Surface Pro 7+ on Youtube[0].

[0]:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNA-j_cL4mURqC1MFKHV-...

Thanks for letting us know about a computer you bought 11 years ago. Very relevant and useful information.

I've had to replace the charger on my kid's surface pro 3 times now in 3 years.

Yawn, what is this ad driven nonsense, just give us a spec sheet. Who really wants to scroll through 5 pages of marketing drivel to get the details.

>From a performance perspective, Surface Laptop 6 is 2x faster than Laptop 52, and Surface Pro 10 is up to 53% faster than Pro 9.

The competition here is macbook and ipad, not last years stuff.

Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel? I am confused to what shady backroom deal is going on but it seems rather silly for Microsoft/Surface. They can't compete because they don't have the most performant per watt, nor battery efficiency. They used to have AMD ones, and we know they work with them for other tech a la xbox, azure, etc... so what is up with the surface line getting this exclusivity?

> Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel? I am confused to what shady backroom deal is going on but it seems rather pointless for both parties.

Probably massive kickbacks or massive discounts. Just remember, Intel put out this graphic when Zen was just released -- https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Intel-vs...

They make ARM surfaces.

Yeah... shitty ones. Microsoft just doesn't have the will to make top-performing mobile gear.

Or the oxygen in that space has been sucked out by Apple.

Snapdragon X surfaces will launch in near future as well. Hope they are more competitive with Macbooks.

Isn’t the issue there a software issue, not a hardware issue, in that a lot of windows apps don’t run well on ARM yet?

The issue is twofold:

1) Windows on ARM's x86 emulation sucks;

2) Apple Silicon are the only ARM parts that aren't dogshit slow compared to desktop processors.

This is why Apple is building the future and virtually no one else is: Apple controls the entire hardware and software stack from the silicon on up. A hybrid hardware-software solution, in the form of Rosetta 2 plus special modes in the M1 and later chip to enforce x86 style memory access, allowed Apple to emulate x86 apps at acceptable speed.

Also because they know devs aren't on board to make arm versions of the software...

They may get kickbacks, but if they want to eat Apple's pie it makes little sense for this kind of move which would massively hamstring growth.

Also don't really see the benefit for Microsoft for the kickbacks (are they desperate for cash?) at the cost of growth and potential DoJ scrutiny.

This sector is already a slim line that is dwarfed by office, windows, azure so what is the point in doing all of this nonsense?

If they want to grow their own silicon, push ARM, if they want to compete, do so. To me it sounds like kickbacks to specific people in the surface group which seems shadier.

> Who really wants to scroll through 5 pages of marketing drivel to get the details.

Apparently “Nancie Gaskill” who wrote it.

Specs: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/d/surface-laptop-6-for-busin...

They're using Intel because there's no other option for a Microsoft product running Windows.

Also, Intel is rapidly catching up to TSMC in the lithography race, and will leapfrog them very soon, likely by the end of this year.

The top-end model uses the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, which is this thing: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236851/...

It has 6 performance and 8 efficiency cores, with the peak frequency as high as 5 Ghz.

It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison because benchmarks are sensitive to instruction sets, available compilers, etc... but this CPU is definitely competitive with the Apple M3. E.g.:

Apple M3 scores 18,947: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M3+8+Core&id=...

Intel 165H scores 30,596: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+Ultra+7+...

The Intel laptop is 60% faster for multi-threaded workloads, but it is 19% slower for single-threaded performance.

PS: The Intel laptop comes with up to 64 GB of memory and it can build and run x86 Docker images natively. If you're a developer, it's the far more attractive option...

Why would anyone be doing this on their glued in laptop? If they are needing a dev machine, are you really trying to argue this is better than the mbp, thinkpads, hps or dells?

You are claiming performance figures at what 115W max turbo? What is the max consumption on the macbook 55W on CPU, 33W on GPU?

If performance matters, they should be doing the heavy lifting remotely.

Most people will be using single threaded performance, and the key metric here for this product is what is the battery life. They didn't even give a figure for that which speaks volumes.

They didn't even bring up the pen which is the main selling point of this product (i.e. ipad pro but for Windows).

Most people don't want desktops. So powerful laptops are preferred. Macbooks don't support Linux officially. But Intel laptops do support them. So no matter how fast and efficient Macbooks are, people will still buy decent Intel laptops instead of the best Macbooks.

Have you tried running Linux natively on a secureboot Surface?

If you are running Linux in a vm, both are fine.

Most people want battery life, and if someone can afford to get either of these devices, they would be better off renting their heavy compute somewhere else.

> Have you tried running Linux natively on a secureboot Surface?

You can turn off secureboot quite easily: https://parinzee.github.io/linux-surface-overlay/docs/Instal...

>Most people want battery life

Maybe for their personal device. But for work provided device, who cares if it is decent enough. Most people just keep them connected to power while working on a desk anyway (in my opinion).

Passmark is known to be a bad benchmark, something like Geekbench which has results that closely match with the industry standard SPEC would be a better comparison for real life performance.

M3: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/5411370

Intel 165H: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/5387822

Around the same multi-core results, significantly better single core for the M3.

I'm deeply disappointed there is no longer an AMD surface laptop with one of the custom designs pushing for a mobile Xbox level of GPU (no ray tracing) just so we can do business and light gaming or video or 3d modeling or whatever when you plug in even. AMD has some wild igpu designs in low power envelopes so I'm baffled that Microsoft just bailed on the line. I have a surface laptop 4 13in AMD model and love it but it only was worth it on sale really.

This. By far the worst part of Surface is 3D. Each time they show the improvements in the latest Intel range I get excited and hope finally I can just impulse buy a new game, but even if in theory the chip could handle it, the industry gives the middle finger to anything not AMD or Nvidia, to the point some recent games just refuse to start up at all.

Now I check https://old.reddit.com/r/SurfaceGaming/ before buying anything, and the results are always disappointing. I don't know whether to blame the game developers or Intel, because there are games that run perfectly fine in reduced quality, but it's such a crapshoot.

> The competition here is macbook and ipad, not last years stuff.

No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.

> Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel?

Because no viable ARM options exist in the Windows world. Windows on ARM is improving and somewhat workable for simple things, but it’s not ready for heavyweight things (like virtual machines, a lot of development tasks, device drivers, etc).

Performance per watt isn’t the most important thing for many people. It’s pretty rare to need 12 hour battery life when you’ll never have access to a power outlet. More efficiency is nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker.

They didn't even give a battery life figure over here. That tells volumes at how good this device is.

Apple front and center on all-day, 18 hour battery life.

>No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.

We don't live in the same world as the past, connectivity is king and the heavy lifting can and should be done elsewhere. If someone needs to do heavy lifting on windows, they wouldn't go with this glued mess.

If they want cheap with discounts, this would probably fail compared with HP, Dell or Thinkpad.

Who is this product for?

What do people even really do on their work computers? Just email? Powerpoint?

What?

CAD with heavy 3D modeling, GIS processing, hydrology/hydraulics calculations, word processing, reading and jumping through 1000+ page PDFs, spreadsheet models, emails, video conferencing, screen sharing, and all of the above at basically the same time by necessity.

So... Depends. In my case: a lot.

I use mine to get banned from reddit.

Sometimes I also use Excel

Whatever their job is, probably.

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