It has a USB-C port and an... SD card reader? Use that port for something useful!
That aside, I wonder if I can put Linux on it.
Introducing Surface Book 2
361–370 of 520 posts
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
With that price you get "twice as powerful as the latest MacBook Pro. ...up to 17 hours of video playback. That’s 70% more than the latest MacBook Pro."
The “twice as powerful” is almost certainly just about the GPU. The CPU is a U series part versus the HQ series part in the MBP.
Industry secret: apple throttles those cpu to 20W.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#363The surface page completely fails to load on my windows phone. That didn't take long! Sat what you will about Microsoft, but their making-discontinued-stuff-not-work-anymore department is amazingly good at its job
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems.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 di…
Oddly enough I think mac and windows switched professional users somehow. I don't know a single developer on a windows machine, however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.
> however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.
You can stick really fast processors, tons of RAM and one or two Nvidia graphics cards in a very cheap tower. If only Apple sold a cheesegrater-style tower that could do that ;-)
Thee are even some Windows laptops that do the job now. Wirecutter picked the Dell XPS 15 as The Best 15-Inch Laptop for Photo and Video Editing https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-15-inch-laptops-for-p...
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#365Earlier 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?
I’ve had an XPS 15 for about a year and I love it. Not least because it supports 2 4K monitors (60fps over USB-C, 30FPS over HDMI), but is also a solid laptop in its own right. Also, the model I have has 32GB of RAM. The only downside is the battery life, I get about 2 hours.
Really? My XPS 15 gets 4 hours easy and it is usually closer to 6.
Also it actually supports 3 (!) 4k displays at 60hz if you include the built in screen. With the TB16 dock it is a joy to use.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#366This 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.
This might be one of the best explanations I have seen for MS ad copy and marketing in general. Thanks for the insight.
I never actually considered it from an "internal customer" (i.e. the boss) perspective. I just always saw them as painfully out of touch, but it isn't an "out of touch" issue; it is a focus issue.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#367How'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.
While I do love the Mac trackpad, the important part is the amazing gestures built into OS X- things like workspace switching and window management are far easier in OS X as a result. But maybe that makes a more dramatic difference for me because I've always disliked alt+tab.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#368Earlier 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.
Which is super unfortunate considering it is an artificial limitation.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#369Earlier quoted context omitted.
One HUGE Issue Hardware. While the build quality is awesome the muscle power of most Macs graphically is just abysmal. Also the lack of a native Right Click! There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.
Macs have supported right click out of the box for many years.
With the Mac Mouse having a right click? No you buy an official apple mouse you have single click options only.
Also the laptops are also single click.
Re: Introducing Surface Book 2
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regardless, they're at-least usable and Microsoft cares about backward compat. Just last week I played a game of Age of Empires II with my cousin, a game which was "released" in 1999 on a Surface with Windows 10. While on my MacBook I have issues because every major OS upgrade breaks something and I have to repurchase newer versions or give up if the dev isn't interested/around anymore.
I agree, Windows is much better at backwards compatibility. OTOH I've found that it's not such a big deal in practice. In my 10+ years as a mac user I've only hit this problem a couple of times. Likewise in Windows I rarely open old outdated software. That is of course my anecdotal and personal experience.
It's not a big deal for consumers. It's a huge deal for STEM departments in universities (a software upgrade for a hundred-thousand dollar machine can sometimes be thousands of dollars).