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Introducing Surface Book 2

blogs.windows.com

351–360 of 520 posts

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#351

I went into a Microsoft store, sort of for a laugh, mostly to see if they did a good job with the surface book. My main takeaways were: 1) There is no bevel on the base which makes it hard to pick up unless you grab it my the screen. You can't get your fingers under it. I lost my grip and dropped it from about 1cm off the table. 2) The screen is awkward to use on it's own. It's huge. 3) It wasn't obvious to me how to…

You sound incredibly fat.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#352
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe treat yourself to the Thinkpad X1 Yoga gen 2?

for some reaon Chinese spyware tastes appaling

(1) Superfish isn't a Chinese company -- it was founded in Tel Aviv and moved to Palo Alto; (2) Superfish wasn't installed on ThinkPads; (3) it wasn't on Lenovo laptops for long: they uninstalled it and apologised.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#353
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.

Microsoft measures their battery life by movie playback duration, which may or may not reflect a realistic use case.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#354

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.

How do you feel about the textured cloth they put around the keyboard? I was really tempted to pull the trigger on one of these but my hands get really sweaty when I eat too much sugar (took me years to figure out what triggered it) and I'm guessing it'd become a mess really quickly.

I've only had it a couple months, but it's not as bad as I feared.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#355

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…

Out of curiosity, what does your SB have the dedicated GPU in the keyboard?

I haven't had any issues with my SB falling back on the display, (the keyboard is nice and heavy on mine) so I'm wondering if it's the graphics card or something else.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#356
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What phone charges with USB-C? From here: https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-book-2-tech-specs "Microsoft is still using its proprietary Surface Connect for power and the optional Surface Dock." aaah.. at the end: "Users can also recharge the Surface Book 2 with a USB Type-C charger as long as it is powerful enough. Devices can be charged from the Surface Book 2, such as a phone using USB Type-C."

Where have you been for the last... like 2-3 years?

In the Apple walled garden, I guess...

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performan…

> Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. This is changing fast if not changed already. Xbox One, DX12 lock in on Universal Windows Platform and finally, > Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically. https://www.vg247.com/2016/10/14/dota-2…

You don't have to use UWP to use DX12, and you don't have to use DX12 in Windows Store games. DX12 does require WDDM 2, but that's a different bucket of worms.

Xbox Game DVR predates Game Mode; you can enable/disable them independently.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

I have better things to do with my life than prefix every command with a g.

Let's be honest here, no you don't.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#359
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of those product pages has a photo of the keyboard. I know they are trying to sell it as a surface device with other great input methods, but come one, people still want to type on their notebooks.

There's a photo of the keyboard on the "innovation" page linked from the Tech Specs one: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

This page not only shows a perpetual loading icon and an un-dismissable cookie notification on my phone, it also traps me on the page and requires not one, not two, but three presses of the back button (quickly, before it notices!) for me to escape the page on both mobile and desktop.

This does not exactly inspire faith in the product.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#360
post #334

After reading through the product announcement I had to chuckle a bit... If you'll pardon the shameless plug, I just purchased a used Lenovo X230 Tablet (ThinkPad) a couple weeks ago and my bet is that for the average HN reader use case it scratches all the same itches as the Surface Book. Granted it's bulkier and slower, but it's about $2300 cheaper. On the other hand it's easily repaired and upgraded, and has an ea…

If I read correctly that's a 3rd gen CPU. This will be really inferior in terms of virtualization.

For the 2300$ more, you get a better and fully-featured CPU, GPU, a great screen (My eyes hurt at 1920x1080 already), great battery life, a lightweight tablet, great touchpad. I think the sentence "my bet is that for the average HN reader use case it scratches all the same itches as the Surface Book" isn't that true in practice.

I usually think it's good to make no compromises on my main development machine. It just boosts productivity and fun in the end.

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