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.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
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.
>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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
>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.
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.
> 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.
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.:
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...
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.
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.
farawayea|1 year ago
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.
codeulike|1 year ago
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.
charlie0|1 year ago
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.
RajT88|1 year ago
I would say the comparison to Macbooks is fair.
delfinom|1 year ago
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.
giancarlostoro|1 year ago
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.
jjeaff|1 year ago
hulitu|1 year ago
Education, workplace policy. Managers _love_ Microsoft.
userbinator|1 year ago
pid-1|1 year ago
ksec|1 year ago
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.
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
Ecstatify|1 year ago
+ Terrible battery
+ Terrible build quality
+ Terrible support
+ Noise of fan having a stroke
pathartl|1 year ago
runjake|1 year ago
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.
skeeter2020|1 year ago
>> 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.
pests|1 year ago
HackerLemon|1 year ago
oldpersonintx|1 year ago
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Terretta|1 year ago
Who cares. Just make sure Apple isn't allowed to hold a line on doing things differently, then everyone else can compete fine?
ankurdhama|1 year ago
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/configure/Surface-Lapt...
userbinator|1 year ago
e44858|1 year ago
jncfhnb|1 year ago
AraceliHarker|1 year ago
sp332|1 year ago
codeulike|1 year ago
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.
delfinom|1 year ago
iinnPP|1 year ago
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?
iknowstuff|1 year ago
I mean this sincerely. People are willing to pay for good design.
e44858|1 year ago
dagmx|1 year ago
underlogic|1 year ago
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tetrisgm|1 year ago
mythz|1 year ago
dannyw|1 year ago
Meanwhile, all my Thinkpads and MacBooks still work today.
ycui1986|1 year ago
MarkSweep|1 year ago
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-much-does-out-...
https://support.apple.com/mac/repair
alisonatwork|1 year ago
lotsofpulp|1 year ago
bbkane|1 year ago
makeitdouble|1 year ago
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 ?
factsaresacred|1 year ago
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.
diffeomorphism|1 year ago
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.
hulitu|1 year ago
Samsung makes also HW. /s
nipperkinfeet|1 year ago
KingOfCoders|1 year ago
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.
probably_satan|1 year ago
nsonha|1 year ago
tomato45un|1 year ago
vrinsd|1 year ago
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.
ekianjo|1 year ago
anoncow|1 year ago
7thaccount|1 year ago
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.
denistaran|1 year ago
orev|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
sharno|1 year ago
- 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!
sixothree|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
ametrau|1 year ago
jahlove|1 year ago
Now I buy Thinkpads.
hnburnsy|1 year ago
>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...
8K832d7tNmiQ|1 year ago
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-...
mvdtnz|1 year ago
cpuguy83|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]
kd913|1 year ago
>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?
greenknight|1 year ago
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...
orev|1 year ago
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.
jiggawatts|1 year ago
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...
hypercube33|1 year ago
jjtheblunt|1 year ago
Apparently “Nancie Gaskill” who wrote it.
unknown|1 year ago
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glub103011|1 year ago
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helf|1 year ago
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dohello|1 year ago
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amannm|1 year ago
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unknown|1 year ago
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scarface_74|1 year ago
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snitzr|1 year ago
Enginerrrd|1 year ago
So... Depends. In my case: a lot.
slowmotiony|1 year ago
damiankennedy|1 year ago
justusthane|1 year ago
dboreham|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
[deleted]