Microsoft's Surface Book is the MacBook Pro we didn't get
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Microsoft's Surface Book is the MacBook Pro we didn't get[^] This thing looks sweet! Anybody have (or has used) one?
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Microsoft's Surface Book is the MacBook Pro we didn't get[^] This thing looks sweet! Anybody have (or has used) one?
Is there a weven version? XP, even?
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Microsoft's Surface Book is the MacBook Pro we didn't get[^] This thing looks sweet! Anybody have (or has used) one?
I was tempted by one except 1. The price 2. The weight (minor niggle) 3. The silly hinge. It just looks naff. 4. The appalling battery life. 5. No USB-C My Macbook Air finally started falling apart so I've just spoiled myself with a Macbook Pro (the 2-port cheaper version). So far so good, except Windows 10 (at least on bootcamp) is not great with retina displays when you have a multi-display setup and switch displays. Surprisingly I've found Windows 10 to be more stable than macOS on the machine. Finder stops working fairly regularly, and this is a new out-of-the-box machine. With respect to the USB-C thing: we need to move on. I hate micro-USB. I have bike lights that use them and the centre pins keep getting bent meaning I can't plug the cable in without the application of a sharp knife. And USB 3.0 micro B? What a Frankenstein's monster that is. USB-C is where everything's going, and I plan on having this laptop for years. I grabbed a couple of these[^] to see me through the transition time. [Edit: I popped into the local BestBuy to have another look at the Surface book and the fact that it's so thick when closed is a deal breaker for me. I need thin when travelling. I often only do carry on and it's hard to slide laptops in and out of luggage as it is. Making it as thick as they do (in 2016) is just silly. I just am not a fan of that dodgy hinge]
cheers Chris Maunder
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Microsoft's Surface Book is the MacBook Pro we didn't get[^] This thing looks sweet! Anybody have (or has used) one?
In contrast to @Chris_Maunder, I actually like my Surface Book very much. I agree that the cost is high, but 1) it's comparable to Macs at that performance point and 2) the company I work for paid for it. :) The hinge seems to bug some people, but doesn't bother me at all. The extra thickness hasn't been a problem for me when I travel or walk around the building to go to meetings in various conference rooms. It's plenty thin and light for my needs. The battery lasts most of the day while I'm doing lots of meetings and dev work. YMMV. I absolutely adore having both the large trackpad with multi-finger functions with the touchscreen. Some people seem to think that a touchscreen on a laptop isn't "ergonomic" or something, but I find it to be very conducive to quick and easy screen use and navigation. Most of my colleagues who use various PC laptops or Macs bring with them a small mouse (mostly wireless) which takes up one of their USB ports, and is just something else they have to bring around with them. I don't bring a mouse at all, which makes my Surface Book seem more portable to me - I don't need various dongles or extras just to do basic things with my laptop. The screen is gorgeous, and the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've used. The fact that it separates into a tablet isn't something I use very often, but when I DO need to use it, I'm glad that I have the option to do so. It's great for taking notes or drawing diagrams/schematics during brainstorming or training sessions, and being easily able to save it or display the screen to others through a projector/tv. It's got good enough power to run 2 or 3 instances of VS2015 while having Outlook and several other applications running - so it's fine for dev work. I hook it up to the dock and have 2 large screens with my ergonomic keyboard and mouse for doing normal work at my desk, and just leave Outlook up on the laptop screen off to the side, and it swaps in and out of this mode very nicely for me. All around, it's the best work laptop experience I've had.
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I was tempted by one except 1. The price 2. The weight (minor niggle) 3. The silly hinge. It just looks naff. 4. The appalling battery life. 5. No USB-C My Macbook Air finally started falling apart so I've just spoiled myself with a Macbook Pro (the 2-port cheaper version). So far so good, except Windows 10 (at least on bootcamp) is not great with retina displays when you have a multi-display setup and switch displays. Surprisingly I've found Windows 10 to be more stable than macOS on the machine. Finder stops working fairly regularly, and this is a new out-of-the-box machine. With respect to the USB-C thing: we need to move on. I hate micro-USB. I have bike lights that use them and the centre pins keep getting bent meaning I can't plug the cable in without the application of a sharp knife. And USB 3.0 micro B? What a Frankenstein's monster that is. USB-C is where everything's going, and I plan on having this laptop for years. I grabbed a couple of these[^] to see me through the transition time. [Edit: I popped into the local BestBuy to have another look at the Surface book and the fact that it's so thick when closed is a deal breaker for me. I need thin when travelling. I often only do carry on and it's hard to slide laptops in and out of luggage as it is. Making it as thick as they do (in 2016) is just silly. I just am not a fan of that dodgy hinge]
cheers Chris Maunder
The retina thing is a pain - I tend to use parallels more than bootcamp (I still run the bootcamp partition, but from parallels) and it seems to handle multiple screens / retina without a problem.
.\\axxx
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In contrast to @Chris_Maunder, I actually like my Surface Book very much. I agree that the cost is high, but 1) it's comparable to Macs at that performance point and 2) the company I work for paid for it. :) The hinge seems to bug some people, but doesn't bother me at all. The extra thickness hasn't been a problem for me when I travel or walk around the building to go to meetings in various conference rooms. It's plenty thin and light for my needs. The battery lasts most of the day while I'm doing lots of meetings and dev work. YMMV. I absolutely adore having both the large trackpad with multi-finger functions with the touchscreen. Some people seem to think that a touchscreen on a laptop isn't "ergonomic" or something, but I find it to be very conducive to quick and easy screen use and navigation. Most of my colleagues who use various PC laptops or Macs bring with them a small mouse (mostly wireless) which takes up one of their USB ports, and is just something else they have to bring around with them. I don't bring a mouse at all, which makes my Surface Book seem more portable to me - I don't need various dongles or extras just to do basic things with my laptop. The screen is gorgeous, and the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've used. The fact that it separates into a tablet isn't something I use very often, but when I DO need to use it, I'm glad that I have the option to do so. It's great for taking notes or drawing diagrams/schematics during brainstorming or training sessions, and being easily able to save it or display the screen to others through a projector/tv. It's got good enough power to run 2 or 3 instances of VS2015 while having Outlook and several other applications running - so it's fine for dev work. I hook it up to the dock and have 2 large screens with my ergonomic keyboard and mouse for doing normal work at my desk, and just leave Outlook up on the laptop screen off to the side, and it swaps in and out of this mode very nicely for me. All around, it's the best work laptop experience I've had.
Excellent feedback. Thank you very much.
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I was tempted by one except 1. The price 2. The weight (minor niggle) 3. The silly hinge. It just looks naff. 4. The appalling battery life. 5. No USB-C My Macbook Air finally started falling apart so I've just spoiled myself with a Macbook Pro (the 2-port cheaper version). So far so good, except Windows 10 (at least on bootcamp) is not great with retina displays when you have a multi-display setup and switch displays. Surprisingly I've found Windows 10 to be more stable than macOS on the machine. Finder stops working fairly regularly, and this is a new out-of-the-box machine. With respect to the USB-C thing: we need to move on. I hate micro-USB. I have bike lights that use them and the centre pins keep getting bent meaning I can't plug the cable in without the application of a sharp knife. And USB 3.0 micro B? What a Frankenstein's monster that is. USB-C is where everything's going, and I plan on having this laptop for years. I grabbed a couple of these[^] to see me through the transition time. [Edit: I popped into the local BestBuy to have another look at the Surface book and the fact that it's so thick when closed is a deal breaker for me. I need thin when travelling. I often only do carry on and it's hard to slide laptops in and out of luggage as it is. Making it as thick as they do (in 2016) is just silly. I just am not a fan of that dodgy hinge]
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
- The appalling battery life.
I thought the battery life using it as a laptop (the tiny battery in the slate is admitted crap) was the standard optimistic 10 hours of light use that everyone else targeted as well. A year ago I looked at it hard but decided to get an XPS13 instead because I didn't want to buy an MS 1.0 product. A big part of what interested me in the SB was the better GPU available in the thicker base; it was a tradeoff I was more than willing to make. I was also hoping to be able to upgrade the GPU dock separately since a 5yo CPU is still perfectly good in the way that a 5yo GPU is utterly useless for gaming; OTOH at least initially they're not offering the updated GPU dock without buying a whole new system. :doh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
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In contrast to @Chris_Maunder, I actually like my Surface Book very much. I agree that the cost is high, but 1) it's comparable to Macs at that performance point and 2) the company I work for paid for it. :) The hinge seems to bug some people, but doesn't bother me at all. The extra thickness hasn't been a problem for me when I travel or walk around the building to go to meetings in various conference rooms. It's plenty thin and light for my needs. The battery lasts most of the day while I'm doing lots of meetings and dev work. YMMV. I absolutely adore having both the large trackpad with multi-finger functions with the touchscreen. Some people seem to think that a touchscreen on a laptop isn't "ergonomic" or something, but I find it to be very conducive to quick and easy screen use and navigation. Most of my colleagues who use various PC laptops or Macs bring with them a small mouse (mostly wireless) which takes up one of their USB ports, and is just something else they have to bring around with them. I don't bring a mouse at all, which makes my Surface Book seem more portable to me - I don't need various dongles or extras just to do basic things with my laptop. The screen is gorgeous, and the keyboard is the best laptop keyboard I've used. The fact that it separates into a tablet isn't something I use very often, but when I DO need to use it, I'm glad that I have the option to do so. It's great for taking notes or drawing diagrams/schematics during brainstorming or training sessions, and being easily able to save it or display the screen to others through a projector/tv. It's got good enough power to run 2 or 3 instances of VS2015 while having Outlook and several other applications running - so it's fine for dev work. I hook it up to the dock and have 2 large screens with my ergonomic keyboard and mouse for doing normal work at my desk, and just leave Outlook up on the laptop screen off to the side, and it swaps in and out of this mode very nicely for me. All around, it's the best work laptop experience I've had.
I concur completely. I was actually impressed for a change from a MSFT product. LOL. The pen is nice too when you need that. But battery life is not bad, we usually have the keyboard attached. Beats the 7lb Dell that came before it. LOL.
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Chris Maunder wrote:
- The appalling battery life.
I thought the battery life using it as a laptop (the tiny battery in the slate is admitted crap) was the standard optimistic 10 hours of light use that everyone else targeted as well. A year ago I looked at it hard but decided to get an XPS13 instead because I didn't want to buy an MS 1.0 product. A big part of what interested me in the SB was the better GPU available in the thicker base; it was a tradeoff I was more than willing to make. I was also hoping to be able to upgrade the GPU dock separately since a 5yo CPU is still perfectly good in the way that a 5yo GPU is utterly useless for gaming; OTOH at least initially they're not offering the updated GPU dock without buying a whole new system. :doh:
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason? Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful? --Zachris Topelius Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies. -- Sarah Hoyt
Battery life of the Macbook Air is impressive - and something I've relied upon many long flights. Battery life of other devices I've used have often fallen way below what's published.
cheers Chris Maunder