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Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

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Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#171

Post by tracker1 »

dgellow wrote: post #57
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 only drawback is Windows and its tooling. I switched last year from using Linux and macOS for 10+ years to a surface laptop. At the beginning Windows was going on my way all the time, but now that I’m more familiar with its system and powershell, it’s way better, and I really enjoy it as a dev environment. The main pain comes from a lack of familiarity. Once that’s behind, you can be quite productive using Wind…

I'm almost the opposite... been on the insiders channel for WSL2 and Docker + WSL2 support has been really good since switching in early March. I did try it a bit over a year ago and wasn't nearly as pleasant... when WSL2 etc will hit mainline, who knows for sure, if it hasn't already.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#172

Post by tracker1 »

jrace wrote: post #139
NikolaNovak wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My instinct is the same - I have two computers with 32GB RAM, and it always feels well-utilized :) But I also have two cheapo media computers with Win10, 2GB RAM, 32GB MMC hard drive. They've been working BRILLIANTLY over last ~2 years. Even went through major Windows self-updates... no clue how. Is there a version of Win10 better optimized for smaller footprints, or it's the same version but recognizes its limitatio…

My experience with hundreds of win10 machine in an enterprise environment has been that disk speed has a far greater impact than ram. 16GB ram with a HDD is a much slower and sluggish experience than 4GB ram with a ssd. This is for the general office use case.

Until you're using more than 16gb of ram and hit a wall... If you're doing full stack development with a few containers, database(s) and other services (rabbit, etc) you can easily eat 16gb. I rarely go much over 20gb though.

What pisses me off looking for a new personal laptop (not my work one) is so many of the best options have oddly gimped single-channel memory upgrade options (8gb soldered, 8gb in single slot) or have oddly limited GPU options on higher end AMD models (4800H in particular).

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#173

Post by leetbulb »

ibdf wrote: post #89

Completely related to the article but completely unrelated to surface.... what's going on with those product pictures? The blur is all messed up... on the last picture the left side of the surface is gone.

Fake, crappy smartphone DOF. Just lazy.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#174

Post by pfranz »

dgellow wrote: post #57
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 only drawback is Windows and its tooling. I switched last year from using Linux and macOS for 10+ years to a surface laptop. At the beginning Windows was going on my way all the time, but now that I’m more familiar with its system and powershell, it’s way better, and I really enjoy it as a dev environment. The main pain comes from a lack of familiarity. Once that’s behind, you can be quite productive using Wind…

I had the opposite experience. Similar background, Used Windows heavily from DOS through XP. Started a job as Windows 10 had some major incremental releases and was eager to learn PowerShell and see what Windows had done in 10 years.

I earnestly wish I documented my disappointment when I encountered the same annoyances I hadn't seen since I left Windows because after awhile I forgot what they were. Annoying things like updates requiring reboots at least once a month, when an application was busy I couldn't move it out of the way (to do something else while I waited to see if it finished). I found PowerShell too verbose for everyday use, the "terse" commands too different and undiscoverable, everyone I worked with was still entrenched with BAT files, and to run PS1 files I needed to wrap it in a BAT file for security.

I glommed onto WSL, but found myself logging into an Ubuntu box we had because it was nicer.

I was happy my next job was a lot less heavy on Windows. I'd switch to Linux as my daily-driver and dual-boot Windows if I had to.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#175

Post by pfranz »

realharo wrote: post #100
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…

Windows does have its flaws (e.g. the useless built-in search), but its window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen - the live previews on hover, the way it interacts with middle click just like browser tabs/links, the window snapping with multiple monitors, etc. We'll see what WSL 2 brings to the table.

> window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen

I /really/ missed in Linux where MMB-drag and RMB-drag to move resize windows without grabbing small UI dressing. The taskbar fills too quickly (you can't read the window text) and when it groups by Application it's not really any different than macOS' dock. I didn't find the stickiness or snapping that helpful.

I tried to embrace the window management and taskbar UI, but I greatly prefer both macOS and the many Linux options. I later tried add-ons to get Windows to add features I missed and unsurprisingly found those clunky as well.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#176

Post by sergiosgc »

lorenzhs wrote: post #125
sergiosgc wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it was the 2nd gen that had the awful touch strip (if you haven't seen it, think of it as a shitty implementation of the touch bar). I have the 5th gen (2017) and it's a fantastic machine that works really well with Linux. The 6th gen had some issues with Linux, however, those were mostly Intel's fault iirc.

My memory is lousy. You are most probably right about the generation, or somewhere near. If I had a 1st gen, I certainly skipped at least one generation, so I'd put it at least 3rd generation. Not as late as 5th though.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#177

Post by lostmsu »

mattferderer wrote: post #145
realharo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows does have its flaws (e.g. the useless built-in search), but its window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen - the live previews on hover, the way it interacts with middle click just like browser tabs/links, the window snapping with multiple monitors, etc. We'll see what WSL 2 brings to the table.

What's wrong with the built-in search? I'll agree the start menu search can be slow on occasion & instead of giving me an app will give me a Bing search on IE. That's my only complaint. Otherwise I like how I can search for just about anything with it. I'm a huge fan of the processes/windows search (Ctrl+Win) to help me find an app on a different visual desktop or a browser tab hidden among the weeds.

> processes/windows search (Ctrl+Win)

Just tried that combination, and it did nothing. What feature are you referring to?

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#178

Post by realharo »

pfranz wrote: post #175
realharo wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows does have its flaws (e.g. the useless built-in search), but its window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen - the live previews on hover, the way it interacts with middle click just like browser tabs/links, the window snapping with multiple monitors, etc. We'll see what WSL 2 brings to the table.

> window management and taskbar UI is the best of any OS I've ever seen I /really/ missed in Linux where MMB-drag and RMB-drag to move resize windows without grabbing small UI dressing. The taskbar fills too quickly (you can't read the window text) and when it groups by Application it's not really any different than macOS' dock. I didn't find the stickiness or snapping that helpful. I tried to embrace the window mana…

>The taskbar fills too quickly (you can't read the window text) and when it groups by Application it's not really any different than macOS' dock

I just use the default setting where it doesn't show the text ever (only grouped icons), but I don't need it, because when you hover over a multi-window icon, it very quickly shows the previews (with just the right small amount of hover delay). They are live previews, so if some animation is happening in a window, you'll see it.

https://i.imgur.com/85Ct0Fp.png

As far as I know, macOS doesn't do anything like that, without 3rd party apps at least.

You can also middle-click on the app icon to launch a new instance of the application - e.g. a new terminal window in this case - no need to hunt for a "new window" menu item. This is analogous to how browser links and other UI elements (bookmarks, back button, etc.) behave.

You can middle-click on one of the previews to close it - so you don't have to aim for the small X in the corner. Any workflow is much faster when you can get away with imprecise movements.

Hovering over the preview hides all other windows for the duration of the hover (dim transparent rectangles of non-full-screen windows remain) which is useful if you just need a quick glance without switching to the app - you can do that with just mouse moves, no clicks needed - which means you can always go back to your original view by moving the cursor away.

There is a project that tries to recreate this in Linux (https://github.com/M7S/dockbarx), but it has a number of bugs and lacks polish in general.

I also miss alt+right click to resize and alt+left click to move a window from Linux - having to be precise is annoying and slows you down, but overall I still like the Windows UI better.

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#179

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Surface Go 2 review

#180

Post by numlock86 »

chrisan wrote: post #73
numlock86 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It depends on the use case https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/design/min... 256MB for IoT without display, 512MB with display For Mobile or desktop editions they say to have 1GB or higher for 32 bit (which I assume is the use case for a Surface)

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/windows-10-192mb-ram
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