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Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

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Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#111

Post by Tsiklon »

rsynnott wrote: post #58
cosmodisk wrote: post #50

What I really don't get is how companies get away with shipping any model that has 4GB of RAM. I mean,come on, it's 2020. The OS running idle probably needs more than that,not even mentioning opening a few tabs in Chrome.

They're trying to hit a headline price (albeit for a model that no-one should ever buy). This is fairly common, though it's a particularly egregious example; even Apple puts 8GB in their headline-price-don't-buy machines these days.

I think in Apple's case for many buyers (consumer and corporate) the "headline-price-don't-buy" machines are the machines that move the most units.

Anecdotally at both my current and previous employer - the "default" Apple notebook handed out was a 13" 2 port non-touchbar machine, which was for several years the least expensive MacBook Pro available.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#112

Post by AshamedCaptain »

als0 wrote: post #44

I really hate how Microsoft replaced the Sketch app with their Whiteboard app. It was perfect on the Go. The Whiteboard app now requires you to login in to cloud services just to draw a squiggles. I'd rather not have my notes forced into the cloud.

The sketch app would also start within microseconds of me pressing the pen button (ignoring BTLE connection latency).

The Whiteboard app first takes seconds to start, then it stays some additional seconds showing an empty screen until it decides to start the login process, then it needs a couple more seconds until you can actually sketch down your note. By which time I have already forgotten about whatever I was going to write down.

Setting the pen button to launch OneNote is now literally faster than Whiteboard and that's just ridiculous considering the idea of not putting OneNote in there in the first place was to have something quick & snappy to take quick notes.

The "just press the pen button and jot your ideas now" idea was broken the day they shipped Whiteboard. The "new" Microsoft is just as ridiculous as Google. They kill their own usecases as fast as they create them.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#113

Post by Ididntdothis »

tastyminerals2 wrote: post #93
rsynnott wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a laptop and suffers from a bit of "neither one thing nor another" syndrome; it can be used as either a kinda awkward tablet, or a _really_ awkward laptop (good luck using one on your lap on a plane or train or something, say). I think a certain amount of scepticism is warranted. If you _just_ want a laptop, a laptop will be far better than this thing. If you just want a tablet, an iPad will be far better…

I disagree in case of Surface Book. I didn't try Go. This is a powerful premium laptop which can be used not only for pleasant programming experience due to good keyboard and 4k screen but also gaming due to powerful GPU card. It does not get hot and loud as much as any traditional gaming laptop with the same GPU card because GPU and CPU are separated (GPU under the keyboard and CPU in the detachable screen). I mean…

Funny how different people come to different conclusions. I have a Book 2 and I regret it almost every day. The dock constantly runs out of USB resources, when I detach the tablet the external screen configuration gets f...ed up in random ways forcing me to rearrange screens and font sizes for a few minutes, the tablet mode feels very awkward to use and for its spec and price the Book 2 is not very fast.

My company also HP Zbook laptops. Next time I will get one of those those again instead. Not a very elegant laptop but it works.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#114

Post by freeone3000 »

tastyminerals2 wrote: post #93
rsynnott wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a laptop and suffers from a bit of "neither one thing nor another" syndrome; it can be used as either a kinda awkward tablet, or a _really_ awkward laptop (good luck using one on your lap on a plane or train or something, say). I think a certain amount of scepticism is warranted. If you _just_ want a laptop, a laptop will be far better than this thing. If you just want a tablet, an iPad will be far better…

I disagree in case of Surface Book. I didn't try Go. This is a powerful premium laptop which can be used not only for pleasant programming experience due to good keyboard and 4k screen but also gaming due to powerful GPU card. It does not get hot and loud as much as any traditional gaming laptop with the same GPU card because GPU and CPU are separated (GPU under the keyboard and CPU in the detachable screen). I mean…

I have a 1st-gen surfacebook, and this thing for sure is not quiet or cool. It can barely run MTG Arena at 720p, much less stream it at the same time. Forget about any serious game. It gets incredibly hot, especially on the GPU, as there's only one fan for the keyboard area pointing at the screen, and it's tiny. The fan on the tablet portion is woefully inadequate for an i7, so spins up shortly after start and never spins down. And the full metal chassis means the entire computer gets hot.

Perhaps the battery life might matter more if it actually slept when it was closed, but the large number of spurious wakeups in bag caused me to assume the battery will be drained whenever I arrive.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#115

Post by rsynnott »

Tsiklon wrote: post #111
rsynnott wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're trying to hit a headline price (albeit for a model that no-one should ever buy). This is fairly common, though it's a particularly egregious example; even Apple puts 8GB in their headline-price-don't-buy machines these days.

I think in Apple's case for many buyers (consumer and corporate) the "headline-price-don't-buy" machines are the machines that move the most units. Anecdotally at both my current and previous employer - the "default" Apple notebook handed out was a 13" 2 port non-touchbar machine, which was for several years the least expensive MacBook Pro available.

Oh, I'm sure it is for the Surface Go, too.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#116

Post by jpm48 »

cosmodisk wrote: post #51
Obsnold wrote: post #40

I bought a Go for my wife for Christmas as I had heard good things about them. To us it seemed like a rubbish tablet combined with an awful laptop with the terrible windows 10 on it. In the end she has just gone back to using her 8 year old laptop with Ubuntu. Does any one have any suggestions for similar devices running Linux?

Was there any reasons Windows couldn't be installed in it?

I found windows to be getting too slow and sluggish, switching to Linux has made it much better, also battery seems a little better too.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#117

Post by giancarlostoro »

tastyminerals wrote: post #54

I feel like MS laptops are getting bashed left and right by various online experts these days without a decent reason. Apple products are not less cheaper and follow the same "100EUR for a charger" scheme. If you calculate the totals, MS laptop is no more experiensive than the Apple one. Except with MS products you also get a true mobile experience if that is what you are after. The only drawback is Windows and its t…

The nice thing about them is they're not just laptops but tablets as well. I love my Surface Book 2, the only iffy thing is the detachable portion, it is not 100% stable and if they can fix that I'd be set and buy only this laptop type for the rest of my life, not sure if they fixed it in the SB3 or not though.

I would love to buy a Surface Go but Windows 10 lacks some apps I'd like to see on a tablet that are already on both iOS/iPadOS and Android. If they matched the top 25 apps both platforms have in each respective app category, they'd probably have a better chance to have me buy Microsoft only tablets. I guess their niche they can fill is Office on the go, but life's about more than just Office.

Mind you, I tried the PWA version of some of the top apps, but they lack features on Windows 10 (who apparently adds PWA's to their store).

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#118

Post by sergiosgc »

Obsnold wrote: post #40

I bought a Go for my wife for Christmas as I had heard good things about them. To us it seemed like a rubbish tablet combined with an awful laptop with the terrible windows 10 on it. In the end she has just gone back to using her 8 year old laptop with Ubuntu. Does any one have any suggestions for similar devices running Linux?

I would go with a Thinkpad X1 Yoga. I don't have experience with the Yoga variant, but I've owned X1s since the original 1st gen. Nothing but good experiences running Linux on them. Apart from the awful idea of a touch strip for Fn keys on the 5th(?) gen, nothing but good stuff to say on the hardware side of things. They're not cheap, though.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#119

Post by codethief »

no_gravity wrote: post #45
als0 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first Surface Go can run Ubuntu pretty well. The Pentium Gold processor is a bit of a let down, though.

Do you have a link where someone describes how he got Ubuntu to run on the Go natively without installing software from outside of the repos? The user reports I saw did not get WiFi to work with what is in the Ubuntu repos.

I'd be interested in this as well, though I'm not getting my hopes up. For instance, this relatively recent tutorial[0], too, says you have to install a custom kernel to fix the WiFi on Linux Mint. :\

[0] https://bytewelder.com/posts/2019/08/13/surface-go-linux-min...

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#120

Post by solarkraft »

numlock86 wrote: post #61
cosmodisk wrote: post #50

What I really don't get is how companies get away with shipping any model that has 4GB of RAM. I mean,come on, it's 2020. The OS running idle probably needs more than that,not even mentioning opening a few tabs in Chrome.

IIRC Windows 10 is able to run with as few as 256 MB of RAM these days.

And what modern application is?
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