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Introducing Surface Laptop

blogs.windows.com

261–270 of 613 posts

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#261

The bad news is they're targeting students. Who wants to see his children being locked into MS Windows software by school? Besides, we just found out Windows 10 has almost complete control over your system and calls home, now sending your kids private data as a bonus! I would never accept my kids using a device like this on school. Schools are just ignorant and stupid if they make a deal for these laptops with MS. Sc…

You talk as if Chromebooks with Google Apps for Education don't send everything, including browser history, to the mothership.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine that Microsoft looked into that closely. I actually don't have a problem with it - you can install firefox through the store easily enough, and opening local html files is a niche case. It'll be mildly tedious if coding docs appear in Edge, but I'm probably not coding on Windows 10 S.

The FAQ is deceptive. AFAICT you can't make Firefox the default for opening links in other apps either. That, together with "no changing search to google" is going to make many people hate Windows S, I bet.

> "no changing search to google" is going to make many people hate Windows S, I bet.

I highly doubt it. The majority of customers won't care at all. Edge and Bing are both really, really good. Most customers that I've worked with when during technical support don't really notice and usually just keep the defaults. Chrome's touchscreen support is absolutely awful so Edge is usually the best go-to option for a touch screen PC anyway.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the only downside. Machine looks great but that fabric material in the keyboard looks like it will be easily stained with sweat (a common problem with surface pro keyboards). No USB-C seems like a big missed opportunity as well.

> a common problem with surface pro keyboards Hmm, I thought the fabric was a nice touch. I've had my surface pro for a few years now and have never even come close to staining the keyboard. I wonder how common this issue really is.

It probably depends on the person and how much they sweat; I'd imagine I sweat more than the average person and I'd be nervous about staining this.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ThinkPad X1 Carbon had just been "coreboot" supported ( so it will be soon the libreboot best/newest one ? ) : that's one big add-point to Linux . ( Sorry if I misunderstood something , it's my first post and I'm not so geeky :) , english too is not my native language )

The model supported by coreboot is the first generation X1 Carbon, which is 4-5 years old now. I'm talking about the 5th generation, which has only been available for a few months.

@lorezhs : Thanks.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#266
post #250
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of misses the point for school use. But yes, for personal use you're right

At schools, during exams internet connectivity is disabled on purpose. How Chromebooks work then? EDIT: Why the down votes? My wife is a teacher and disabling internet access during any kind of a test (not to mention exam).

At schools that use Chromebooks, they take away the Chromebooks during exams -- unless the exam is being taken on the Chromebook, which is a thing that happens.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#267

A fabric covered keyboard... wondering how that's going to look in a year of use. 1 USB 3.0 port and a proprietary Surface Connect port... So more surface-only dongles if you want to connect to a VGA/DVI/HDMI display. Is the Surface Connect port completely proprietary or is a rebranded Thunderbolt? Starts at $999 for a 13.5" i5/4GB/128GB SSD, and then you have to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro for $49 if you want to use S…

The pricing is one thing I don't understand. If you're asking a customer to pay the same price as a MacBook air, which comes with productivity apps and a basic cloud service for free, why don't you let them use O365 for free, in perpetuity, at least on that machine? The other thing I don't understand is the overarching message. The line we've been fed from Microsoft's marketing team is that the "convertibility" of th…

I heard from a surface book user that he never use the tablet mode in practice, outside sometimes to make it a tablet in a plane.

I owned a surface pro myself, and I tend to agree. It's a terrible device as a tablet. Slow to wake up, buggy, low battery life, not really the kind of device you can carry around and check something on it quickly. And if you use it as a laptop, it's better to have a proper laptop with more ports, a true keyboard, a screen which can stay up while sitting on your laps.

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#268
post #234

Do any of you have children at a school using Google Chromebooks and Google Drive? Calling Windows S a Chromebook competitor completely misses the point. Chromebooks are instant on, and your profile/data is 100% cloud based. You can grab any Chromebook from the rack in the back of the classroom, open it up, log in and immediately get to work on your report or whatever. I got an original Chromebook from Google I/O yea…

Until you loose internet connectivity (happens from time to time), or go abroad and don't want to pay high fees for net access. Or when Google decides that you broke some of their rules (frequently happens in AdSense) and blocks all of your accounts.

Do you really think you can't use a Chromebook in offline mode?

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#269

Windows S is completely backwards. If the Windows Store was actually any good, they should make a version without store apps (win32 only) and let customers pay a premium to use signed, vetted, store apps. (Only half kidding...) But this way around, store apps will always be viewed as the cheaper, less featured option.

Mostly I don't get the different between Windows RT and Windows S. Did they just change the name?

Re: Introducing Surface Laptop

#270
post #250
post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of misses the point for school use. But yes, for personal use you're right

At schools, during exams internet connectivity is disabled on purpose. How Chromebooks work then? EDIT: Why the down votes? My wife is a teacher and disabling internet access during any kind of a test (not to mention exam).

You take digital exams on computers without internet access? Where and how?
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