How many times have you read "...the power of a desktop, the versatility of a tablet, and the freedom of a light and thin laptop..." and found the reality is that it isn't as good as the best of breed of any of these, and more expensive. It may be a really nice laptop. Isn't that enough? And that's even before getting into how difficult it is to wash all the too-small touch targets and other gotchas out of a mouse-first UI.
Introducing Surface Book 2
251–260 of 520 posts
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#252Looks 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 was a Linux diehard for years but I'm very happy with my Surface Book. With "Ubuntu on Windows" you can run the usual unix command line tools; if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.
> if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.
1. By and large, OSX ships the BSD userland not GNU
2. You can trivially add up-to-date GNU tools to OSX: install homebrew, install whichever GNU stuff you want
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#253Nvidia 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.)
What I want to know is the TDP limits of each of these. I saw that the 13" had a (39?) small power supply, and the 15" had a 95 (?) W power supply. My Alienware 13R3 has a 180W power supply, of which if I am not mistaken fully half goes to that 1060, and 45W goes to the i7-6xxx quad-core CPU.
My guess is that this laptop will have heavy thermal restrictions on the 1060's performance, not to mention a lack of power to actually run it at it's max TDP.
I wonder if they're using nVidia's new technology which underclocks/underpowers the GPUs at (their claim of) only modest cost in performance.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#254Having recently used a XPS 13, original Surface Book, Surface laptop, Surface Pro, and Lenovo T560, the Surface laptop is the clear winner for me. Definitely worth a look if you're looking for good Windows hardware, and don't need the discrete graphics capability of the Surface Book.
Is this for software development (assuming yes since we're on HN)? I'm currently in the process of making this choice. Looking at Lenovo T470p/Dell XPS 13/15. If I'm doing linux development is it worth even thinking about the surface laptop?
Google's PixelBook could be a good option if you don't have any need for Windows. It will run Linux easily via crouton.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#255Could somebody please tell me: How do they bend this thing so that the keyboard and the display face upwards as shown with the device on the right?
The screen is detachable. It can attach to the keyboard facing either direction.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#256This 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…
...and trying to visit the page on an Iphone 5 is almost impossible. Half the page is blocked by a cookie banner of which the "I agree" button does not function.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gaming, the world has changed and this generation of Apple users has way more Gamers then what they had before. Why do they continue to ignore Gamers on the Mac Platform.
I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer. Until then, maintaining a desktop gaming PC and buying the base MacBook Pro model every now and then seems to be more cost effective.
> I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.
The primary issue for gaming on OSX is and has always been drivers. You can generally get 80~100% better framerates by running the same game on Windows (via Bootcamp).
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#258Nvidia 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.)
What I want to know is the TDP limits of each of these. I saw that the 13" had a (39?) small power supply, and the 15" had a 95 (?) W power supply. My Alienware 13R3 has a 180W power supply, of which if I am not mistaken fully half goes to that 1060, and 45W goes to the i7-6xxx quad-core CPU. My guess is that this laptop will have heavy thermal restrictions on the 1060's performance, not to mention a lack of power to…
FWIW the SB2 runs a 15W CPU (possibly upTDP'd to 20W?), I can't imagine they run the GPUs much higher than 30W.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Which they run at 20W
Do they really? Wow...fuck Apple. I have been using Mac for years but I don't want to pay that much for severely handicapped hardware. Especially when it's just in pursuit of thinness and aesthetics.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#260Earlier 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.
It’s unfortunately the expected thing, as powerful general purpose computers become a specialized niche tool for developers, since regular consumers are being satisfied with phones and tables and inexpensive laptops. The market is no longer growing, it’s shrinking.