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Comment by b3lvedere | Hacker News Reader

I never liked the Surface series that much. It looks very nice, until you actually start working with them. Then they feel like a weird tablet with slow Windows on it. You can optimize it a little, but not much. Quite expensive as well and sometimes support is horribly slow.

I gave my wife an old Lenovo Yoga 2 in 1. That thing works nice using it as a flipped tablet to watch Netflix, but here also the performance isn't great.

Maybe just don't expect that much from these weird computers pretending to be tablets.

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My wife and I have been very happy with our Surface Pro 8 16Gb we bought last year running Windows 11 Pro. Mostly we use it with the keyboard attached.

My wife needed a personal device because her company issued laptop was so locked down that she couldn't do a lot of basic personal admin stuff on it (for example online ordering of groceries).

We considered an iPad, but in the end chose the Surface Pro because it allowed multiple user profiles. Windows Hello works super well that for either of us as we pick it up and look at it it's pretty much instantly on the correct profile and thanks to cloud sync with OneDrive and Microsoft Edge, I'm at home on either my own machine or the Surface.

Only thing to mention is that the out of the box experience wasn't as good as I would have liked, especially compared to my experience with iPhones (despite liking iOS over Android, I have no love for macOS).

Firstly, it wasn't running the latest feature update of Windows 11 and trying certain apps (like Instagram) off the Microsoft Store failed to install with a largely undescriptive error. Eventually I realized it wasn't running the very latest Windows 11 feature update which resolved the issue once installed.

The other problem was that my user profile was laggy, but not my wife's. For example the Start Menu was very slow to come up. After a few days of this and no luck Googling the issue, I just formatted and re-installed Windows using Microsoft's official ISO download image. I normally do this with any new Windows PC I get, but assumed it wouldn't be essential for full on Microsoft hardware, but even though there was no obviously extra bundled rubbish software, something was clearly not 100%.

It depends on your reference point, but IMHO there's no device right now that hits all the right point, so yes, Surface Pro is one of these flawwd machines.

On the other side you'll have devices that feel really well built and graceful, but can actually do very little, or other ones fitting a very average vision of what a computer needs to do, and you'll be paying for additional devices to deal with the edge cases.

Imagine an iPad that automatically switches to MacOSX if plugged into an external monitor, keyboard/mouse.

It'd be glorious, not that I'd ever happen - for multiple reasons. One of which being that ipadOS is essentially iOS, so no overlap with MacOS

The real big roadblock is Apple, but if the DMA forces them to let third party software, we could get a fully exposed subsystem opening the door to what users really ask for.

Right now the joke is Windows XP emulation making it what it always needed to be, getting containerised/emulated Mac apps with decent Perfs from low level access would be a huge win. We could be close to your ideal, with the iPad still running, and a Mac instance pinned to the external screen.

>not that I'd ever happen

In my eyes, Apple's transition to ARM on Macbooks looks like a stepping stone on that path. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced something like that for the iPad Pro eventually.

As a first step wouldn't it be amazing to have multiple user accounts on an iPad that doesn't require MDM.

But such technological wonders are but a fantasy.

So iDEX? There have been multiple attempts at that from motorola, the nokia n900, sailfish, ubuntu touch, linux on DEX, DEX, maruOS, windows whatever, citrix,...

Sounds nice in theory but people rarely actually use it.

It actually works very well. Phones/tablets are now more capable than many PCs/Macs. When you've literally got more compute power, RAM, storage, and network bandwidth than supercomputer centers had 15-20 years ago in a phone or tablet-sized package, all you really need is a nice dock to plug it into for display (I'll take a 42" multitouch/pen setup like the Surface Studio, please), keyboard, mouse, and network.

BTW, I've done exactly this daily with the only slightly larger Surface Pros and docks for over a decade, so the concept definitely works, and there are probably millions of people using it, contrary to your assertion.

It's a very small step from doing that with a PC or tablet to doing that with a folding phone design, and there are a few such solutions like that today. (Though they should run the same OS/interface, just morphed slightly for the hardware that's active.)

After having this setup, I will never, ever, go back to an old caveman laptop or desktop computer.

This is my ideal setup. And I'd have it switch to macOS mode just with keyboard/mouse, so inside the magic keyboard it is just the most slick 11" macbook air ever built. Pop it out and you are dropped back into iOS.

I'd easily pay $3k for a top end version of such a device. I think this is Apple's main holdup - if the iPad can run macOS in this dual mode setup, the MacBook Air becomes pretty boring and a pretty bad deal. And they can no longer sell people two devices that accomplish the same task, only differentiated by one having a touchscreen.

IMO the advantage of the Surface is that it's one of the only tablets out there which is (a) reasonably priced for what you get, (b) has a x64 processor, and (c) can have Linux installed on it without too much difficulty. So if you want a Linux tablet, the Surface may end up being one of your only viable options.

The Steam Deck is also a great option nowadays. Its a lot bulkier than a tablet, but I personally prefer it having a controller attached. Its biggest advantage is that it comes with Linux out of the box, so you don't have to go through the headache of installing an OS yourself and messing around with drivers.

Not trying to be snarky, but I'd like to understand who you think the steam deck would appeal to? The original article, and the comment you're replying to seem to want pen input to do work/draw art, and like the tablet form factor (presumably for the large display), neither of which the steam deck provides.

With "only" 16gb of ram, a relatively meagre 8 core 6800 series APU, and small screen it wouldn't make sense for most software developer workloads, and because of the attached controller(s) it's not super portable so not great for content consumption.

Other than gamers, who likely don't even care that the steam deck runs linux (and in fact are hindered by it in some ways) is there a group you can imagine that would appreciate preinstalled linux so much that the steam deck makes sense over the surface pro or even a framework?

While i have a LCD Steam Deck and i agree you can do almost anything you want on it, i do not think you should use it for a production environment. The design and supported OS is clearly intended for gaming the way Steam wants you to game on it. This works almost perfect. Couple of minor glitches here and there. But all Steam Deck verified games work perfect. As was intended.

Of course i tinkered with it. Steam doesn't care and gives you lots of options. From installing Windows on the go to a sd card, to emulation software, to a full linux desktop environment. This is almost pure freedom, but it works far from perfect and is also not the intention. It's a superb tinker device. You can almost mod it to anything, overspec it, put it to other uses, etc. It's your call. It is like if Steam says "Hey you do you, go and have fun. We will not officially support it, but if you want to go ahead".

How about the new Lenovo Tab? It's very reasonably priced, but I have no experience with it.

All I can see right now is that it has a battery bump that people might object to.

My goals with any device is to be as slim and as vanilla Android as possible, which means Samsung can go to hell.

A friend said he liked the OnePlus tablet.

Not sure which Lenovo Tab you mean specifically, but I just had a glance at a few now and none of them were x64. If we're talking about ARM tablets, there are an abundance of those. It's Linux-capable x64 tablets which are rarer.

I think Surface Pros are very use-case dependent. It's perfect for mine, to the point I'm astounded there is no real competitor.

Use case: While traveling or at coffee shops, be able to switch between full laptop mode (as long as you have a table; doesn't work on your lap), and use with the pen for taking notes, drawing things etc. While not as critical as pen use, being able to take the keyboard off quickly when reading or watching videos saves space, and lets me get the screen closer.

I liked the first two iterations of the Surface Pro line, but it dropped off the radar for me when they went to NTrig digitizers.

The Samsung Galaxy Book 12 was about the perfect computer for my needs:

- decent-size high-resolution screen

- small enough to fit in a bag for when traveling

- Wacom EMR stylus --- I find this essential for drawing, sketching, annotating, and when I'm not inclined to connect a keyboard, writing

Performance was quite good, but then Fall Creators Update crippled the stylus down to an 11th touch input which scrolled in web browsers and made selecting text quite awkward, as well as making using older applications quite difficult. I rolled back to 1703 twice and stayed there until circumstances forced a replacement --- the best option I could find was a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 --- I have to keep the Settings app open so I can toggle the stylus between acting/not acting like a mouse.

It kills me that we had such great innovation in the tablet space once-upon-a-time (the ThinkPad was so-named because it was originally planned as a stylus computer) and my NCR-3125 (since donated to the Smithsonian) running PenPoint was one of my most-favourite computers and things seemed so promising w/ Windows 8... at least it's easy to write into text fields again.

Hopefully the Lenovo Yogabook 9i will be popular enough that someone will make a dual-screen device using Wacom EMR.

I disagree. I'm typing this on a nice Lenovo Yoga 2-in-1 and though it's quite nice and well-built, it's the worst computer I've bought in decades, because it's stupidly designed: It's got all the compromises of a tablet, but is too heavy and thick to really be used as one. The pen is marginal (and there's no way to carry it with the laptop except in a pocket!), and it gets way hotter than any of my Surfaces have.

It was clearly designed to be used as a laptop, and never really as a tablet. This shows in myriad ways, from being uncomfortable to hold as a tablet (though its rounded edges are infinitely better than the Surface Studio Laptop's razor-sharp edges (which really can cut you when holding it as a tablet!), to there being NO GOOD WAY to adjust volume without opening it back up to get to the keyboard!

To be fair, half of what I hate about the Yoga is Win11. I'm definitely moving to a Linux desktop next time, if that's viable. The Starlabs StarLite would be perfect if I could get it with 32-64 GB of RAM and a fast ARM processor like the one used in the new Surface Pro

In all fairness all the missus does on it is watch Netflix :) A cheap ass android tablet could to that of course.

I'm a big fan of used Surface Go models. They tend to be for corporate use which seems to have a knock on effect of them being sold off very cheaply when people want rid and with seemingly minimal use. For use when traveling they're pretty exceptional, I even managed to get away doing a few days dev work on one while railing around Japan

Have gotten multiple people a Surface Go 1 with 8GB ram and the keyboard and have never paid more than £80. Bizarre that they even made a 4GB model, let alone that they kept it until the second most recent version

I use a surface pro 9 for development, diagramming, note taking, media, light fusion 360 (on the iGPU), and gaming (with an egpu). it's a great machine with a few minor flaws, primarily battery life and cooling performance. at a go anywhere device, it's hard to beat. the price is obscene though, especially considering it's not OLED.

I'm keen to try the arm version though, and the Minisforum V3 is interesting tho not much of an upgrade

The Surface Pro X (with Linux) runs pretty well. When I was running Windows on that, it worked nicely too

How's the peripherals support on Surface Linux?

I've been wanting to switch to Linux on my Pro X SQ2 for a while due to the WSL2 support on it being terrible (might be fixed now [1]) but always thought that most stuff such as LTE, webcam and surface connector wouldn't work [2].

[1] https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/11274#issuecomment-2... [2] https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x/issues/1#issu...

The peripheral support is slowing getting there. The major issues are the ones you've mentioned (including the inability to use external displays), but I'm seeing more and more upstream commits for the sc8180x by Maximilian - so I'm confident that these issues will be solved relatively soon.

Wi-Fi and BT works btw, which IMHO makes it already usable as a daily driver. Audio works via BT

I just bought a Surface Pro 11 and love it. I've jumped from mac into the surface line every few years and I totally agree with you - the fans on the old models were spinning just by having a few chrome tabs opened.

But...if you can live with Windows on Arm (Which has improved greatly in the past year) the SP11 has been great. Battery life is incredible.

For me I was never looking to fully replace my actual laptop, but more to replace my iPad with something that is actually capable of doing any sort of development work if needed. The iPad is a much better tablet, hands down, but even just updating a static website on an iPad is an absolute chore and requires multiple apps to function.

> ... with slow Windows on it.

Was yours a 4GB ram model like the article author's?

I really can't remember, but my guess is you are right. Having just 4gb of ram makes Windows 11 quite slow. Just saw a couple of desktops running insanely slow and yup, only 4gb ram.

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