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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

The Surface Pro 2 hits two of the biggest weak points of the original design: battery life and heat/noise. The battery life is underwhelming relative to say the MBA 11" (which has a smaller battery), but the Surface Pro 2 takes that from unusably bad to just bad.

That said, I don't think it's "good enough." It's not a cheap machine: 8GB/256GB model reviewed by Gabe retails for $1,299. It's got a small screen and a keyboard/touchpad combo that, on an Ultrabook, would be considered absolute trash. I think you have to really love that Wacom pen to justify the Surface Pro 2, and that makes it a pretty niche product. Of course, "niche" can be turned into "market-creating" but with continued mis-steps like underwhelming battery life, it's not clear Microsoft can make the "pen tablet PC" market happen.

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You compare the battery life, but not the screen to the macbook air? The screen is higher resolution, has a better coating, and is touch. Other than that, it's smaller and lighter (around 20%, actually), and comparably priced ($1299 for 256GB/8GB surface, $1299 for 256GB/8GB Air). It also has a micro SD card slot, to add further provisions.

This isn't a tablet competitor, it's an ultraportable competitor.

e: made a bit more concrete

And has a (certainly decent for a tablet but) awful keyboard and trackpad compared to other ultra-portables. There are clear trade-offs here (there always are and there is nothing wrong with making clear and opinionated trade-offs) and I’m not sure whether the Surface Pro makes the right ones. No doubt Microsoft made all the right trade-offs for some people, the question is only whether those some people are more than a niche.

Right, at least the bad trackpad is offset by the fact that you can touch. The need for apple-level trackpad is offset by the fact that you can manipulate pages with your fingers, instead.

And from what I've heard and used, both the touch and type cover aren't "awful" or "terrible". They're not 'good' either, but I'd certainly put them in the 'usuable' category. Would I write a book on it? Hell no, but I'd also be tempted to swap my mac's chiclet keyboard for a mechanical keyboard anyhow. There is certainly room for improvement, but people in HN seem to have an particularly high disdain for the surface's covers... they're not the demon they're made out to be.

I think you slightly misunderstood me. I think the cover is pretty awesome. To me it seems like a winning combination with a $500 tablet. But a $1000 tablet/ultra-portable with the keyboard and trackpad? Is that the right trade-off to make?

If the products competing here are $1000 ultra-protables with pretty great keyboards and $1000 tablets with crappy keyboards, which has the bigger audience?

> which has the bigger audience?

What is the most accessible creative occupation? Writing? STEM fields? Or drawing? We could draw before the written word existed. We could write before we created more abstracted languages like modern symbolic math.

I think the end game is to include high resolution, precise, accurate stylus input, a'la Wacom technology or something like it.

I cry a little every time I see a Microsoft product with Wacom built in and an equivalent Apple product without it. What I'd really like is something like a Surface 2 running Ubuntu or SuSE, but with an Apple-worthy battery life.

Maybe it can be done beyond the niche. My current guess would be no but I’m not super sure about that. Admittedly, do not expect any great insights from me in this regard, all I’m going on is that drawing (with a stylus) has been a (pretty big) niche application in computing for a very long time now and always nothing more. It’s useful for some people, but very far from everyone. Maybe that can change. Actually, I don’t really doubt that (look at all the previously niche-tech that’s in current smartphones because it became cheap enough and that had to find its mass-market applications first, stuff like gyroscopes) but I’m not sure whether it’s the Surface Pro that will do it.

But it has, admittedly, a better shot at doing it than anything else that came before it.

As it is, I think it's still in niche territory, but I think with some polish it could be a really great product. The big question is whether microsoft can pull off the polish, which historically they haven't been able to (maybe with the new management this will change).

There have definitely been many microsoft products I've seen that were incredibly impressive, but were simply not taken the rest of the way.

Maybe a 3rd party manufacturer can take where the surface is now, and provide that polish, which I think was the goal of the surface anyways. Show what is possible to 3rd parties and let them take the ball the rest of the way. If that can happen, then the surface will have done its job.

New management, and don't forget the very talented Nokia engineers that are inbound...

Hopefully they fare better then the talented Kin engineers...

Surface Pro actually has a worse GPU than MBA, too (Intel HD 4600 vs Intel HD 5000), which contributes to that, plus a higher clocked CPU. And we already know that Windows' battery life is terrible [1].

It's all a perfect storm of bad decisions the reason why Surface itself has bad battery life.

[1] - http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-ha...

Windows doesn't have the best power consumption--the facts are irrefutable--it's empirically visible.

In the Surface's defense, it is running a wacom digitizer over a 1080p IPS display. Not only is it pushing 2x the pixels as the 11" MBA, but it's doing it over IPS (up to 15% greater power consumption according to Wiki).

But yes, Windows has much poorer battery life, my speculation is that since Apple targets their hardware to a few small (comparatively) number of hardware permutations, they can take this to their advantage, and power-optimize the shit out of everything.

The most effective optimizations will probably be on the driver level, which microsoft would have little say over (in terms of the surface, they should but they're weak in the hardware game).

Here's a question complaining about 1/2 battery life for ubuntu, and an answerer said they were able to match the battery life by using proprietary drivers. http://askubuntu.com/questions/158778/why-does-ubuntu-have-a...

Remember how everyone used to give Microsoft a free pass on its awful installation process (driver hell) because it supported so many options, but then Knopper (one guy!) created a Linux distro that auto-installed on almost anything. Microsoft makes tons of money on Windows and has tons of engineers, it could power-optimize for a heck of a lot of configurations. Given that a fairly small number of chipsets account for a huge proportion of PCs, I think it would be easier than we think.

Actually, that's not really true re: the GPUs. They're pretty roughly comparable, and trade off different specs (execution units vs clock speed) with the result that the HD 4600 is actually better in some benchmarks and worse in others.

See http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-4600.86106.0.... and http://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-HD-Graphics-5000.91978.0....

Although, that said the Surface Pro 2 actually has an HD 4400 which is definitely inferior to the HD 5000, though the difference is not that really huge (probably roughly 20% overall), which in most cases is not enough to make a difference in playability of games - if you're getting 25fps average on the HD 4400, 30fps on the HD 5000 will be noticeably better but still bad IMO, especially in high load scenarios when the framerate dips. Personally I prefer to play with over a 60fps average so that even in more intense scenes it doesn't drop to below 30fps.

And if you're not playing games, it's really not even relevant.

I've seen it suggested that the higher EU count of the HD 5000 allows it to be clocked lower and thus operated at a lower voltage, adding up to a net power savings for the same level of performance. I imagine this could be particularly significant at moderate GPU loads, rather than fully loading the GPU with a game.

I don't think of it as an ultraportable competitor. The Surface pro seems to be running into the same issues with the very first tablet computers that ran Windows, they were/are a niche product. Great if you have a need for a stylus, but simply not worth it compared to a regular laptop. Like others have mentioned, to make it ultrabook capable,(getting a keyboard/storage upgrade) it's far more expensive than nice Windows based ultrabooks.

This is the point everyone seems to be missing. Microsoft tried releasing tablets with styluses, keyboards, and a desktop OS before - they failed, big time. The market hasn't suddenly changed in the intervening years to one that wants that kind of form-factor. As Apple proved, the market wants a very minimal tablet, with an on-screen keyboard, a great touchscreen, and an OS optimised for those features. For FUN, not for work. A handful of people will use tablets for 'work' and for being creative, a couple of niche industries will find they can integrate tablets into their workflow, but for the average office worker who wants to watch some videos, the iPad is perfect, the surface is 'overkill'.

(edit to correct incorrect autocorrect on ... iPad ;-)

> The market hasn't suddenly changed in the intervening years to one that wants that kind of form-factor.

I'll agree that most of the market doesn't want that kind of form factor, but two segments in which the convertable tablet has really taken off are in the education and health care industries. I work with a few schools that manage to hand out tablet + stylus + keyboard laptops to all of their students and do pretty well with it.

My school isn't a fan of the Surface due to serviceability issues (non-replaceable battery being a big one) and that it is a great tablet, but gives up some ground in the general-use laptop area to do that. The other schools in our group share the same sort of sentiments.

It's an everything competitor. It's the tablet/ultrabook answer to the way smartphones merged PDAs and cellphones.

And like those early smartphones, it's got some growing to do. But the market it's trying to carve out strikes me as a real one with real demand. I'm surprised we're not seeing more doctors and other specialists-on-the-go wielding them.

Kinda tired debating the surface pro on HN, but you hit the nail on the head. This is a desktop computer that sacrifices very little, yet is the size of an iPad with comparable usability. Anyone who voluntarily indoctrinated themselves on the merits of toy mobile operating systems will never understand how awesome the Pro-range surfaces are.

Much like the HTC Dream was basically a first generation joke, I'm hopeful and very much intend to be carrying one of Surface's offspring in my backpack in a few years time.

Hell, I'm interested in using one with Linux (if they've got the wacom issues sorted out, that is).

The only problem with using Linux is that there isn't (as far as I can tell) a good Linux UI that's very touch-friendly. The closest one is Unity, and well, that's all I need to say there. (I realize some people like it, but I'm just not one of them, sorry...)

I'm excited to see what comes of the Ubuntu tablet distro, but at the same time, they were the ones who made Unity, which isn't really good at anything. So I'm not super optimistic either.

Windows's "metro" UI is obviously touch friendly, but even the desktop can be made touch friendly-ish via its DPI scaling, which I think works pretty well. I haven't been able to get that same usability out of any Linux desktop environment yet. (If someone has, I'd love to know about it!)

> The only problem with using Linux is that there isn't (as far as I can tell) a good Linux UI that's very touch-friendly. The closest one is Unity, and well, that's all I need to say there. (I realize some people like it, but I'm just not one of them, sorry...)

I hope Jolla and Sailfish will help in that department.

Does this mean that the surface pro 2 is a good choice for those of us who don't mind Unity?

Yeah, from a technical standpoint, it runs pretty well. There's still at least one hardware compat issue to be resolved (when I last tried Ubuntu Saucy beta, the wifi didn't work), but it was very performant, and looked nice.

That's good to know. No wifi would be a pretty big buzzkill though. I like the idea of replacing my Mac/iPad combo with a single device. It sounds like the high-DPI screen would be a reasonable replacement for my iPad (a.k.a. PDF journal reader) but I'm far too invested having a competent Unix-like environment on the computer side to live in Windows. Ubuntu's "convergence" tablet vision cannot come quickly enough.

KDE is further along than Unity but still needs a little development to be perfect:

http://plasma-active.org/

Wow, thanks! I didn't know about that. I'll try it!

I run my dev servers in VMWare in Ubuntu on my Surface Pro. It's good enough, but more than a little fussy when it comes to touch (or the wacom issues), so I tend to just use it with the keyboard.

I don't know why Microsoft is doing this to themselves. Instead if being the best in one market they try to create a new one which competes with the tablet and ultrabook market. But their product can be never as good as a tablet or ultrabook. I just don't think that there are many people who are willing to accept that trade-off.

Being the best on one market isn't always as beneficial as being good in a couple of markets. Apart from that you're looking at it from a single perspective making you see only certain trade-offs (which are only there for those expecting a tablet or ultrabook anyway) and not the other side of it. Other people might just see a full-blown laptop running a desktop OS with touch and Wacom. And when you get rid of the keyboard you're left with something that's quite usable as a tablet ans still runs a full desktop OS.

There are professionals on the go who want to carry one device, not two, and have both the use-case for a tablet and a notebook. You can't use a notebook standing up, and you can't run real Windows software on a tablet.

I'm surprised every single doctor in a hospital doesn't own one of these yet, for example.

I guess you mean why every doctor doesn't own 2-3 of these, because battery won't last a day...

That's what the power cover is for.

That's what the power cover is for.

And now it's too heavy to carry around all day every day.

Part of the reason for this is that a lot of the 'Windows' apps I've seen for healthcare are really, really bad (and have UI much too small/complex to use on a touchscreen), whereas the iOS apps I've seen are much more polished, user-friendly, and accessible because they're designed for touchscreens from the start.

It would be impractical in a hospital. It's relatively heavy and where would you put it when you don't need it without risking theft? And how would you prevent unauthorized access to hospital records when stolen? I think the whole tablet at hospitals thing is a fantasy.

All of those concerns exist with a clipboard of papers, and you can't encrypt those.

Right. But who would want to steal a clipboard?

It really isn't though. I own a Surface Pro 1 and as much as I like it, it's a terrible portable computer. I hook mine up to a monitor, keyboard and mouse 90% of the time.

I would respectfully disagree, as i had one too and used it pretty much on the go 30-40% of the time. But then, I do not know your use case.

I think they have all the right elements to make something really great. I think they still need to nail the price point, but with new tech products, that shouldn't be a problem in a few years. The surface is very appealing to me in terms of form factor and features though.

Why is the battery life bad? It seems like you can get it to last up to 8 hours if you're careful. Gabe was using photoshop which is an energy intensive application and got 6 hours. The new iPad is supposed to get 10 hours if you're careful, so does a difference of 2 hours make the battery life bad? I'd call it acceptable.

Agree. I really want to like this, but at about $1450 (with keyboard) for the 8GB/256 model (and 8 GB is minimum I consider for a laptop/ultabook)....I'm not sure I want the Wacom Digitizer that badly. I can still use my Wacom Intuos 3.

The screen looks great, though.

I'm kind of curious now how the Dell XPS 11 turns out. I'm looking for some alternative to MB Air 11", but with better screen and digitizer pen input/hybrid.

I've had a Dell XPS 12 and been really happy with it, so the XPS 11 is on my list along with the 11" version of the Yoga 1 when that comes out. Oh, and of course the Surface Pro.

This weekend when I checked out the SP2, I also looked at the 11" Yoga and the 13" Yoga 2. The screen on the Yoga 2 was just spectacular. I'd really like something similar on the 11 (I think the Yoga 11" I tried this weekend was a 3rd gen intel, though).

Yeah, the 4th gen-based yoga 11 doesn't exist yet, AFAIK. don't even think it has been announced...yet

Well, if you look at Macbook Air and then Surface 2, they both are high end and expensive. I dont understand why to complain when you guys already use Macbook Air.

Are the keyboard options significantly improved?

After reading Gabe's reaction to the original Surface Pro (and as an artist of sorts myself) I was determined to buy a Surface Pro but was stymied by the awfulness of the keyboard covers (which is silly, since it was the stylus that attracted me, but if I'm getting a do-everything machine, I expect to do everything on it), which I found less useful than the iPad's "glass keyboard".

So far, there are some Sony convertible tablets that almost seem to make the grade, but that's about it.

I love my Mac Book Pro Retina, but I admit, it's grueling whenever I have to use Windows on it. Either really slow emulation or complete boot over to boot camp, which is a pain in the ass maintaining another OS. I could easily see someone wanting a native Windows options if they had to do the things I do in Windows more often. Many SDKs only work in Windows, like Intel Perceptual Computing, Samsung AllShare, etc. unfortunately. Right now I keep a spare Windows netbook around, but definitely considering upgrading to a Surface now that they are competitive.

Running windows on a netbook is faster than running it in a virtual machine on a macbook pro? That doesn't seem right.

Funny. I posted below on why I like my Surface so much (Pro 2), but didn't touch on screen size.

The screen size is perfect for me. The resolution is phenomenal so I fit more onto it than my old Samsung Series 7, which had 11", same as my MBA. The other problem with 11" is that it's the tipping point for bag size. I like to travel light, and the 10.3" of the Surface fits onto as large a bag as I like to comfortably carry over one shoulder.

Luckily price is not a factor for me.

Don't most people compare this to other tablets i.e. the ipad given the form factor and touch screen? I would think comparing it to a macbook air would be inappropriate.

Well, they always targeted it as a niche product. It just happens to be a bad one.

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