LTE? Or do they really want to sell phones that badly...
New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
721–730 of 989 posts
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#722I have been skeptical after a lot of Microsoft misses but the Surface Book Pro might just put Microsoft on the high road. Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground. If I understood it correctly, the GPU is in the keyboard which you can attach to get more power. In detached mode the screen itself has an i7 processor that's plenty powerful. So they managed to let you hot-plug the GPU while the OS is running?
> Splitting up the hardware breaks new ground.
I'm not saying you're incorrect (I think the Surface Book indeed appears innovative and useful), I just wanted to share the history of at least one product class -- Panda Project's Archistrat workstations and servers - that separates CPU, memory, and I/O into allegedly independent and upgradable subsystems connected by a passive backplane.
BYTE wrote about it, and the Internet Archive luckily saved the interesting preview:
https://web.archive.org/web/20080907024539/http://www.byte.c...
As I searched for this article, I happened across Panda Project's patent for their backplane, published almost 17 years to the day:
http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5822551.html
It's probably just coincidence (I'm guessing MS wasn't waiting for this patent to expire before releasing the Surface Book), but it was a fun find.
Edit: "Pics or it didn't happen", courtesy Infoworld via Google Books:
https://books.google.com/books?id=qj4EAAAAMBAJ&lpg=PA59-IA3&...
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#723Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting. The general consensus I get when talking to people, especially devs, is that it's about apple's quality of hardware.
For me it's the software+hardware, and the killer feature is a unixy OS with great battery life and little to no fuss. Is it possible I could get similar results out of Linux on commodity hardware? I'd put it at long odds, but even so I bet I'd have to shut off features (losing convenience) and spend a lot of time tweaking it to make that happen. It's not even just the OS. I've switched to Safari because losing 1.5-2…
> Is it possible I could get similar results out of Linux on commodity hardware?
I'm using a Sony VAIO Pro 13 with Ubuntu and EVERYTHING, yes everything, works perfect. Touchpad, standby, brightness, wifi, ...
Also a friend of mine is running the Dell XPS 13 with Linux and also has no problems AFAIK.
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#724[deleted]
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#725Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When looking for a competitor to Apple, go for the T-series, but also take a look at the X-series. Sure. Joe Average has no clue about that though. Most of the main vendors suffer from the same proliferation of models. Look at Dell: Latitude - For Business Vostro - for Small Business (WTF? Why is this a different model from Latitude?) Inspiron - For Home and Home Office (Seriously? Why isn't this satisfied by eithe…
Plus their sites are abysmal. It's like they were built with technology from the 90's and nobody told them about UX.
It's like they were built with technology from the 90's
HTTP, HTML and Javascript?
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#726Earlier quoted context omitted.
Somewhat off topic, what're Vaio users migrating to? I look every year or so to see what the current laptop offerings are, and nothing has convinced me to leave my 5+ year old Vaio.
I have a Sony Vaio Pro 13.3", 1080P, i7, 256GB SSD, 8GB, 2.3lbs, touchscreen; dual booting, but primarily running in Linux. It will cover me through this entire tech cycle. The above mentioned "premium fatal flaw" in this case is the terrible internal wifi, but a micro-usb wifi has corrected that. I also fixed IMO the glossy display with a screen protector. Other than those two issues, I really like it. When it's fin…
Another Vaio Pro 13 user here :)
Have you tried the internal Wifi with a newer Linux distribution? I'm using Ubuntu 15.04 and it works great :) No disconnects, speed good be better though ...
Regarding a replacement: What do you think about the Librem 13? It's one of my favorites along with the Dell XPS 13 and the Lenovo X1 Carbon.
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#727Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a traveling consultant, the durability of the Thinkpad design is nice, but holy hell does it suck to carry through an airport, or to shove under the seat in front of you. I've had to switch to a backpack for my laptop, since a normal bag puts too much weight on one side of my body. A backpack is so much less professional than a laptop bag. And then I drop it from a table onto a cement floor and the body cracks and…
It doesn't sound like you are making fair comparisons between Thinkpads and Macbooks. My 15" T550 is just .2 lbs heavier than a 15" Macbook Pro. The charger for my T550 is much lighter than the one I have for my Macbook Pro, so the overall weight might actually favor the Thinkpad. The 13" business-class ultrabooks that Lenovo sells are pretty close in weight to the 13" Macbook Pro and the Macbook Air. It sounds like…
Thinkpad W520. Core i7, like a Macbook. 16GB of RAM, like a Macbook. Spinning hard drive, worse than a Macbook. Has a desktop video card that is required in order to use video out, but you have to reboot and enable the video card, then it won't sleep until you reboot and disable the card... unlike a Macbook. Because Nvidia won't make Linux drivers for Optimus. No, it's not in the same class as a Macbook, that's half my point. It doesn't do anything a Macbook won't do, and it's less than a year old. It has all the downsides of being a Thinkpad with none of the upsides of... being a Thinkpad. Modern Thinkpads are not as durable or reliable as people make them out to be.
My company is switching everyone from Thinkpads to Macbooks, and this is a company that was built on Thinkpads. That's how awful modern Thinkpads are compared to basically anything else.
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#728That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years, they always managed to introduce some fatal flaw in their premium laptops, from weird keyboard layouts to bad fan management software. Let's hope the Surface Book will be succesful and Apple finally gets serious competition in the premium laptop market.
I dunno; My Acer S7 was definitely a competent MacBook Air competitor. They were out there, if you looked.
No function keys though :(
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#729Microsoft has been chasing Apple for a while now, but chasers never win, because they depend on whom they are chasing for instructions. They even hired the Apple store firm to do their stores. Now they are making notebooks at Apple's price points. What's ironic is Microsoft has often tried things first. They tried tablets and hybrid laptops and smartphones before Apple. They even tried flat design before Apple. They…
> the conversation is always about Apple being better
Apple has done well. They have made great products and when my daughter needed a phone I bought her an iPhone.
But today is not a moment in time where the conversation is about Apple being better. In fact, people seem genuinely enthused with what Microsoft has created today.
Microsoft has been around a long time and so has Apple. The company that can continue to adapt will continue to stay in business. Microsoft has shown a capacity to do this and today reflects this well.
Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft
#730Earlier quoted context omitted.
.docx, .xps, .pdf
I'm hoping to find something editable. If the document is complex, with multimedia, are the .docx exports reasonably functional? Some conversions to .docx and some multimedia content in that format can be unstable.
Can you suggest a commonly used format that would allow complex multimedia editing like you're suggesting?