Introducing Surface Book 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#271

Post by ocdtrekkie » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

deno wrote: post #189

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually really glad they have up until now left USB-C out. We're at a point in USB-C's life I'd consider it an anti-feature, and the Surface Book 2's no exception: This particular USB-C port is really only useful for adding a second display. It's more or less fine as an extra port, but anywhere it takes away a Type A port, or even the Mini-DP it replaced is a little sad. Marco Arment posted this a couple days ag…

For a mobile device one big plus of USB-C is USB-PD and the ecosystem of fast chargers and power banks it brings/will-bring. You can also use one charger for both your phone and laptop, which is useful even if you can’t charge both at the same time. Ignore everything else and it’s a nice upgrade just for this.

My Surface Pro charger (the same one that comes with the Surface Book IIRC) has a USB port for charging phones as well, and unlike a USB-C charger, charges both at the same time.

While I lament non-standard implementations, much like Apple's old MagSafe adapter and the Surface connector, sometimes the non-standard version is vastly superior.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#272

Post by criddell » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

markcmyers wrote: post #146

skywhopper wrote: post #66

This 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…

As a former advertising executive, I can tell you what the problem is here. The writer and his boss who approved the copy aren't addressing the customer, they're addressing the boss's boss. In a dysfunctional organization like Microsoft, communicating up rather than out is how you get promoted. It's a rare Microsoft employee who moves up the ladder by thinking about the customer.

I don't think that's what is going on here. The guy who wrote this (Panos Panay) is the VP in charge of the entire Surface brand. He is the boss.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#273

Post by slg » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:27 PM UTC

usaphp wrote: post #152

I wonder how accurate their battery life claims are, I highly doubt 17 hours of battery life with a nvidia Getz 1060 video card, I would love to be proved wrong thought.

It says 17 hours of video playback. I am guessing that video playback is using the integrated graphics in the tablet portion while the 1060 in the base is powered down.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#274

Post by zeusk » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

SomeHacker44 wrote: post #253

bhouston wrote: post #7

Nvidia 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…

The 13" gets 95W brick in dGPU config (same as 15") and houses a 1050 (~45W) and a 8650U (~20W).

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#275

Post by cowmoo728 » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:30 PM UTC

jrs95 wrote: post #254

jozzz wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I found myself really frustrated by the keyboard layout on the chromebook pixel, specifically the chromeos specific keys that replaced the function keys and were missing the equivalent of f11 and f12. I really wanted to get the pixelbook but doubt I will just because of that.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#276

Post by zeusk » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:32 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #87

sitkack wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.co…

> Many Lenovo Thinkpads and HP ZBooks, the mobile workstation lines The SB is not a workstation. It uses 15W U CPUs… > One has to trade capacity for speed. DDR4 trades battery for capacity, that's why "ultrabooks" concerned about the balance of weight and battery life are limited to 16GB: intel does not support lp ddr4.

They use upTDP (20w~24w). Also, you'd be surprised. Even while gaming, my current surface pro maintains 3.1 GHz and reaches 4.1 on short bursts.

Look around the web, if you can keep the surface cool enough, they never PL (power limit) throttle unlike most other Intel -U based devices.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#277

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

Talking about the hardware this is a pretty interesting offering. The got the new 8th gen i7 into the display half (which they failed to do for the new Surface Pro which seems like an odd omission).

Seems like a solid follow up to the original Surface Book (which I have). In my experience my Surface book is most usable in 'studio mode' (their name for folded back over the keyboard with the display up) and an external keyboard. That gives the maximum graphics power and its possibly to use the stylus to draw on it easily.

As a laptop the weight balance is off enough that there are a lot of orientations that just don't work (the system falls back on the display.

As a development machine with the dock to add extra displays I've found it both responsive and powerful enough. On the road my 12" Surface Book is a bit too little screen area and so I use my 15" macbook pro 2015 for that. The 15" version of the surface book 2 would be a win there but at 4.2lbs my shoulder will complain. (I briefly had the 4+ pound Sony VAIO and it was painful enough that I just never took it on trips as powerful as it was.)

At the end of the day I think Microsoft is doing a good job of exploring the mobile development workstation space in a way that is currently out pacing Apple. Microsoft is still behind (as far as I am concerned) in software but with things like WSL they are plugging the gaps which made them unusable for my purposes.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#278

Post by pier25 » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

neals wrote: post #211

Nice to see Microsoft bringing new consumer hardware to market. In the meantime, all Surface Pro 4 i7 devices become unusable due to graphic issues. The brilliant concepts by Microsoft are so amateuristically executed. I learned my lesson and am staying away. https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-s...

Woah 71 pages...

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#279

Post by overgryphon » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

zerr wrote: post #176

inetknght wrote: post #55

Can I wipe out Windows and put a better OS on it?

I'm more interested if one can put better Windows (Win7) on it.

You could, but not without sacrificing many of the features that make the Surface Book unique. The pen support in Windows 7 is significantly worse, and face authentication wouldn't work. Windows 7 isn't very usable on a tablet. To use the GPU when you reattached the tablet you'd likely have to reboot the machine, also a much slower operation on Windows 7.

If you don't want the above features, you could get a machine that runs Windows 7 well with good hardware specs for less money.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#280

Post by pierrebeaucamp » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

Having the 'original' Surface Book, I would love to just upgrade my base (keyboard and ports) and keep my current screen (CPU, RAM, Antennas).

I don't see why they can't sell screens and bases separately. This would be a huge plus if I could upgrade different parts of my laptop.