The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be • Hacker News Board

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#411

Post by King-Aaron » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 7:38 AM UTC

hactually wrote: post #404

NicoJuicy wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This issue comes again and again, I'm getting really tired of this "issue". After all this time this is the top comment, while discussing a really good convertible? He mentions that people don't trust Windows for savely restoring their session, but if i'm not mistaking, it's Ubuntu ( i think) that had such a bug for a VERY long time ( https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2321399 ). I have never heard such proble…

> Probably going to get downvoted to oblivion, but please respond with comments and not with (too much) downvotes. Probably due to the fact that you're using whataboutism[1] as a defence rather than tackling the fact that Windows does log user activity and report it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Personally I just downvote someone immediately when they mention anything about being downvoted in their post. It's called losing the game.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#412

Post by Const-me » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 7:45 AM UTC

eco wrote: post #176

makecheck wrote: post #103

It’s 2018 and I still see people walking around with Windows laptop lids open because they presumably have no confidence in Windows’ ability to sensibly preserve state after closing the lid. Software matters, and how it integrates with hardware. And I keep waiting for them to fix just the basics in Windows 10. Not utterly losing both the sizes and positions of all windows just because the laptop was undocked. Not fai…

I used to leave my (very old) laptop lid open not because I didn't think it would restore properly but because it took much longer than I liked to come back from suspension. My new Thinkpad X1 Carbon restore quickly (much quicker than my much more powerful desktop even). My understanding is that window size and positioning issues on Windows are a graphics card driver issue and it's up to the graphics card maker to fi…

It probably sleeps too deep. Because it takes that long to resume, It looks like your laptop hibernates instead of sleeping. It can be quick enough with a fast SSD and not too much RAM. I usually disable hibernation on my PCs, the sleep consumes some power maintaining RAM state but the amount is low, a laptop can sleep for days. Wake up from that state takes about 1-2 seconds.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#413

Post by thirdsun » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:57 AM UTC

schappim wrote: post #139

I have to second this. We are an all Mac company, but service customers on Windows. For testing purposes, our company purchased a Surface Laptop (not a Surface Book), and I was blown away by the quality coming out of Microsoft. As I use the Surface Laptop, I wish Apple would steal the design and apply it to a new MacBook Air. The screen is excellent, and coming from the Mac world it is surprisingly how good having a…

I guess most people, even in HN circles, agree that Microsoft as well as other PC manufacturers like Dell (XPS) or Lenovo (Thinkpad) can built beautiful, high quality hardware, but as you already state in your last sentence, that's not the problem at all. Windows is. Or the lack of macOS, for those of us that can't use Linux fulltime.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#414

Post by noir_lord » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 8:58 AM UTC

sridca wrote: post #314

noir_lord wrote: post #242

I looked at the surface book but ended up going with the T470P (i7-7700HQ/2560x1440) because it allowed me to put 32GB of RAM in it, 16Gb just isn't enough for my workflow (If I have a Win10 instance running in a VM for VS2017, a couple of vagrant instances and intellij open then I can eat 16GB in no time). Also I've been a Linux user for development for >10 years and a mixed linux/windows user for another 10 or so b…

I went with P71, running NixOS on it. The perfect development machine (with a 5k monitor to boot); way better than what MacOS or Windows can achieve.

I looked at the P series, nice machines will probably look at one of those next but I think I'll get some life out the T470P yet.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#415

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

wang_li wrote: post #211

coldtea wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sleep doesn't lose any application state.

It does if your application state happens to include TCP connections. When Windows wakes, prior to powering up the NIC hardware, it sends all applications a notice indicating that the network is down so everything kills their network connections. This happens on my hardwired desktop. It's one thing if the device can potentially be roaming and changing networks while the system is asleep. But for a wired network conne…

>It does if your application state happens to include TCP connections.

That's not really what's meant by state though...

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#416

Post by ztjio » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 10:09 AM UTC

voltagex_ wrote: post #384

ztjio wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This and other similar things are so often and easily ignored. I see people talking about Macs not supporting pro use. But hey, tell me, how am I going to power my 6 external displays on a Surface product of any kind? I get that people want some more variety and excitement, and maybe feel like the Thunderbolt port thing is problematic (despite absolutely enabling my most “pro” setup I’ve ever had on my ’17 13” TB MBP…

You must be close to PCIe limits pushing that many displays.

It’s up there. Well, kinda. The eGPU asks for all of the PCIe bandwidth available on its TB3 controller, actually, it asks for it twice, once for the video and once for the audio devices. But in reality it requires far less. For one, the entire screen data set isn’t sent constantly over TB3, that’s going to be highly variable but never especially demanding since I’m not running any games or anything like that there. And two, the displays on that are all 2k (2560x1600) resolution.

On the other controller, although it’s the one that doesn’t actually offer the full 40GBps, we have a 4k and a 2560x1400 display actually driven via DP over TB3 so that does eat up a lot of bandwidth. About 24Gbps. What’s left is basically powering a USB 3 hub with a handful of devices rarely using their full capabilities simultaneously. So it’s plenty of remaining bandwidth. But the official requested throughput is actually well above the real capability of the hardware so it’s hard to say exactly how close to maxed out it all is. Just that I’ve not yet had any issues or conflicts with the setup.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#417

Post by ggm » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 10:33 AM UTC

Apple don't want you to, but don't actually impede you installing native Linux.

I believe the surface is locked hardware but I'd be delighted to be told I'm wrong.

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#418

Post by JBiserkov » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 12:14 PM UTC

dpedu wrote: post #138

tombert wrote: post #12

Has anyone managed to get Linux booted on this thing and working well? I've been debating purchasing one, but I am afraid that I'll be stuck with Windows, which, for what I work on, makes hacking pretty difficult. EDIT: Just as a note, I know about WSL (I use it at work), but I would greatly prefer to have Linux working on root. I have a lot of custom systemd setups, and I've become somewhat dependent on XMonad.

I've been using Linux on my Surfacebook 2 13" since about January. Most of the hardware features work decently (including touchscreen), but overall it's still not great despite the excellent work put into a modified kernel for it, here [1]. IMO, the most notable items missing full support are: - the battery[2][3], charge or capacity status - "performance base" dedicated GPUs 1: https://github.com/jakeday/linux-surfac…

I haven't tried it myself, but over at /r/SurfaceLinux it says Surface Book 2 "dGPU: Working (both NVidia 1050 & NVidia 1060 models) - Using the NVidia driver, bumblebee can be used to change which GPU is being used"

https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/7kazwp/curren...

Ctrl+F("1050")

In fairness, Surface book 1 "dGPU: Not working – Not detected on any bus currently exposed to the Linux kernel, due to this, little to no research has been done"

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#419

Post by some_account » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 12:45 PM UTC

bradford wrote: post #403

andrei_says_ wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It will, after I see MS getting caught and going through a lawsuit which results in tools providing accountability.

MS already lets you see and delete what they collect on you at account.microsoft.com/privacy We did a lot of work to comply and provide these tools and people still think MS is part of some grand conspiracy.

Why do you expect people to trust corporations at their word? Specially someone like Microsoft!

Re: The Surface Book 2 is everything the MacBook Pro should be

#420

Post by JimA » Thu, Jun 28, 2018, 12:52 PM UTC

plattegrond wrote: post #406

justanothernerd wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mid-2012 MBP was one of the best laptops I've ever owned. Unfortunately I eventually broke the screen and it was going to be $800 to replace it. This happened about the time the MBP line got refreshed in 2016 so I got one of the new ones. My 2016 MBP has been the worst laptop I've ever owned... fails to sleep, fails to wake, physical keys keep dying, touchbar freezes and won't unlock the machine, it can't keep ext…

Sell it and buy a refurb from a reseller. I did to replace my busted 2013 with a 2015, and now I'm set hopefully for another few years until Apple comes to their senses. I use Windows just for games, and the sheer frustration even there is enough to turn me off of it. Basic things like launching apps and control panels from the search bar don't work. It fails to pick up the right resolution on my external monitor som…

Well said... Two more I would add to your list of things to fix - 1) Windows always starts out great, but in a couple of years needs a reinstall to get performance back. It needs a way to really uninstall and not depend on an app to make it's own uninstaller 2) Dismal battery life. The article indicates they helped with that on the SBP by using two batteries (plus using an 8th gen CPU), but that is a band-aid. Windows to apples on the same HW and running the same apps have vastly different battery life (provable when running boot camp), and in my experience Windows is more likely to have a rogue process or service which sucks power (although OSX can have that too, it's at least easier to identify and kill).

Just upgraded to a 2015 MBP, and still use Win10 for my home system which is fine there. For mobile tried a new Dell XPS with both Windows and Ubuntu for a couple of weeks thinking the shiny HW would make up for the OS, but it was not a good experience. Was a relief to get back to OSX...