Introducing Surface Book 2 • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#301

Post by nailer » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

I've owned and used a SB1 for nearly 2 years. Quick summary:

Pros:

- Longest battery life I've ever had in a laptop - bottom of the device is entirely battery (or maybe a GPU if you picked that one) and that's comparing it to a Haswell MBA.

- Excellent (huge) trackpad

- Studio mode is great for life drawing classes

- Face unlock just works on desktop mode

- Windows 10 is a nice modern OS (visually) and WSL /Powershell (if you want to learn it) are excellent.

- Surface Dock cable is awesome - a single magnetic charger / display / docking cable.

Cons:

- As a tablet it's too heavy.

- As a tablet face unlock doesn't work on tablet-type angles

- Silly Windows 10 apps. Like Instagram, which has a notification entitled 'Instagram', the contents of which are 'Instagram'.

- No international support - take the device overseas and need help and you're dealing with 'Old Bad Ballmer' Microsoft, who will send you back and forth between eg US and UK for years without fixing your hardware.

I'd buy an SB again, but I'd also look at the Surface Laptop (and maybe Surface Pro if someone I trust says you can type on that keyboard).

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#302

Post by MikusR » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

singularity2001 wrote: post #181

dm319 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe treat yourself to the Thinkpad X1 Yoga gen 2?

for some reaon Chinese spyware tastes appaling

It might, but do you have proof that it has it?

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#303

Post by 0xFFC » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:03 PM UTC

jsl1212 wrote: post #264

Fnoord wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't like the OS, can you not slap Linux on it? I found this thread on that subject [1] not sure how feasible it is. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3qcqha/ubuntu...

Yep. I run latest Ubuntu on my Surface Pro 4 and it's great. The touchscreen doesn't work, although there are plenty of custom kernels out there that would fix that.

Oh this laptop was bot detachable and didn’t have touchscreen!

Man, I would have bought it in heartbeat.

I don’t reason why Microsoft pushes touchscreen anymore. Considering their Win10Phone is dead already as they are the one admit it.

So we have detachable Surface Pro which is great. But we can a surface laptop without touchscreen, on it.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#304

Post by jrs95 » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:06 PM UTC

olympus wrote: post #269

Looking at the specs, (linked in another comment), it appears that the USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3. Seriously, Microsoft, you can't charge this much for a laptop without TB3. I know that TB started as an Apple standard, but you're not killing this port like you did with Firewire. Your case of NIMBY has cost you my sale. I'll wait and get the next premium Lenovo/HP/ASUS/etc Ultrabook with 8th gen i7 AND T…

Honestly, TB3 kind of makes one of the main features of the Surface Book irrelevant in my opinion. If you can just connect a dGPU at your desk, do you really need one in the base of the laptop? Is that worth the related driver issues and the extra cost of a Surface Book?

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#305

Post by MikusR » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:10 PM UTC

kn0where wrote: post #291

xenihn wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, you can somewhat easily run Windows on Mac hardware. The opposite isn't true.

Microsoft does an excellent job making Windows run on just about any x86[_64] device (excluding ancient hardware). Windows runs perfectly on a Mac, whether in a VM or via dual boot.

Even on Macs that can't run current Mac OS version

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#306

Post by cube2222 » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:11 PM UTC

jozzz wrote: post #186

TYPE_FASTER wrote: post #117

Having 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?

I have a sp2017 i7 16GB and it's great as a developer machine. I'm mainly using languages that are cross-platform like Go and the JVM. But I often end up using Windows Subsystem for Linux which works amazing.

I wouldn't buy any of the surface devices if you're planning to put linux on it (it's a little bit pointless), but maybe WSL + Docker on Windows are enough for you. (For me they are at least)

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#307

Post by maaaats » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:12 PM UTC

olympus wrote: post #269

Looking at the specs, (linked in another comment), it appears that the USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3. Seriously, Microsoft, you can't charge this much for a laptop without TB3. I know that TB started as an Apple standard, but you're not killing this port like you did with Firewire. Your case of NIMBY has cost you my sale. I'll wait and get the next premium Lenovo/HP/ASUS/etc Ultrabook with 8th gen i7 AND T…

I have a MacBook Pro and have never used thunderbolt. Why is it a big deal / what do you use it for?

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#308

Post by ksk » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:14 PM UTC

xenihn wrote: post #221

ksk wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to give a counter point - every single device we use at work (biotech R&D) requires windows. All of our equipment (plate readers, flocytometry, purification systems, PCR, fermentors, congutators,etc etc) runs on windows-only software. And these are all several hundred million dollar verticals. Personally, I haven't run into a single piece of equipment that works with MacOS. Except maybe one of our bioreactors, w…

As far as I know, you can somewhat easily run Windows on Mac hardware. The opposite isn't true.

Yeah, but I don't know if you can get your system validated, which is a requirement for us, and most people in this field. The HN audience is more aligned towards certain domains, and I merely wanted to present an alternate context. Not that it matters, but I like using OSX :)

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#309

Post by artursapek » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

jackielii wrote: post #126

artursapek wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinkpad?

Exactly! if only have have 3:2 screens!!! or better yet, a 4:3 screen! Currently I'm buying a old X61s and going to convert it to X62: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-X62-Laptop-Review.21159...

Is that ratio really so important? I have a wider ratio X1 Carbon and it has never bothered me, but I guess I wasn't used to anything in particular. The screen quality is really nice though.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#310

Post by futhey » Tue, Oct 17, 2017, 6:15 PM UTC

Excited to see a VR-ready notebook that doesn't look like garbage (higher-end configuration).

Kind of overpriced, but, as a non-gamer, it's been painful to "downgrade" to any of the clunky boxes that pass for gaming desktops (100% personal opinion).

Has been a seriously empty niche.