What is the main reason behind the 17 hour battery life, mainly in comparison to a MacBook Pro? Does this come mainly from the battery size, power management in the OS or components?
Introducing Surface Book 2
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Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's right. But the i7 15-inch line starts from 2500 USD. I think lots of developers won't be able to afford at that price point.
i7 13.5" starts at 1,999. Still pretty crazy that prices are turning the opposite direction lately.
Thanks. Fixed this in my comment.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#73Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?
I tried to switch to Windows for work (for gaming it's the obvious choice) but I just couldn't.
Windows 10 is IMO the best Windows ever, but I was surprised that the ecosystem was really poor compared to macOS. Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems. Even modern software from major companies still has scaling problems such as Adobe CC or even the mighty Photoshop.
I also didn't find worthy replacements for my most used apps such as Alfred. Even something like iStatMenus doesn't have a replacement in Windows, all the alternatives are really poor in comparison.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#74Nvidia 1060 and 1050? Nice. I assume it is 4GB and 6GB respectively? This really makes it incredibly powerful. I run with dual 4k monitors off of a Dell XPS with an Nvidia 1050 with 4GB. Feels like a desktop. (Does this also support 32GB of RAM? That is required for development these days with multiple containers running locally. My Dell XPS 15" supports 32GB of RAM.)
It appears to max out at 16GB for the same reason as the rMBP (current Intel processors are limited to 16GB of LPDDR3).
Many Lenovo Thinkpads and HP ZBooks, the mobile workstation lines, support 64GB of ECC memory when paired with a Xeon. And 64GB of non-ECC when using a Core processor.
Hell even the "ultrabook" workstation from HP, the ZBook Studio supports 32GB of ram [0].
One has to trade capacity for speed. 16GB is such a wall now, it makes me think Intel crippled their latest chips because they are too good.
[0] http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04832209.pdf?ver=1...
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#75The pricing is brutal.[1] About $100-$300 more than the 15" Macbook Pro with the same amount of storage. The base model is particularly shameful, with only 8GB of RAM. The base MBP is 16GB for $100 less. You can't configure the RAM amount, so $2,900 is the cheapest 15" model with 16GB. [1] Or perhaps it's more that the configuration options are really inflexible, with every configuration having the highest-end CPU an…
Basically you are paying for a better CPU, you get the option of Intel's 8th Gen CPU..... and Nvidia GPU, arguably better then one offered by Apple.
I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac. At least then I know the GPU will be best at something Apple designed to do.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#76This is a good example of how Microsoft often does marketing poorly. The text reads like a script for an in-person product launch. On the page it doesn't even make sense "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What? And then after all of that, you click through to the store and there's no pricing informat…
Yeah it's really frustrating.
* this page is an ad copy with very little of interest
* the store page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-book-2/8MCPZ...) has no date, no price and only hints at specs (you can pick a model but have no idea that e.g. the 13.5" i5 is iGP and the i7 is dGPU)
* https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book... has the actual stuff you want, with a detailed specs breakdown and the price of every configuration although even there are incoherences (Tech Specs states the 15" has 16GB RAM, but "Configure" lists an 8GB 15" configuration)
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#77Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?
I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.
Armed with Putty and a browser, I only missed the touchpad of my macbook. I do most of my work in Jupyter and in vim. It's rather liberating to realize you are not tied to one ecosystem. My point is I thought I would never be productive without my mac but that simply wasn't true.
I suppose I am an edge case though as most of my work is performed on my headless linux workstation.
For those wondering, TSA held on to my macbook which I retrieved over the weekend.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#78How's the track pad on these things? The track pad on the latest XPS is atrocious and at times unusable.
I find the trackpad on the original Surface Book to be good. As good as any MacBook I've used, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't think I can speak to the more subtle differences.
Most reviews of the original Surface Book concur that it's "nearly" as good as the MacBook's trackpads. Also remember that the display is a touch screen.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#79Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?
That seems to depend on the task. The highest end CPU available, even the 15", is the i7-8650U which is a 1.9Ghz @ 15W part. This is also how they pull off 17hr battery life, they are putting an ultrabook processor in a 15" laptop. Current 15" MBP can be had with a i7-7920HQ, 3.1Ghz @ 45W which I would expect to be quite a bit faster for multi-core workloads.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#80Is anyone excited?
Laptop manufacturers messed up by not behaving like cell phone manufacturers. without planned obsolescence and scheduled component failures, there just isn't the same demand for iterative improvements.
I use a six year old Thinkpad and it feels like a new machine. This just doesn't look like it's worth ten of my laptop.