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Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

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Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#441

Post by paj26 »

RankingMember wrote: post #170

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out…

I similarly bought a surface laptop during Covid WFH - better Remote Desktop experience for the windows shop I was working at. Assumed that spending the extra for premium Microsoft hardware, “it just works” - not at all. I ended up using my Mac’s USB-C Ethernet dongle because the dock would just lose the Ethernet driver. Insane for an ecosystem fully owned by one company, but very telling of the company.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#442

Post by jwrallie »

N-Krause wrote: post #438
jwrallie wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on how easy it is to run Linux on this as opposed to the new MacBooks may make this attractive for Linux users. Anyway, the whole trend to change from x86 to Arm on laptops is bad news for compatibility. It might be that the era where you can download an iso and expect Linux to run on a random laptop is over, and Linux users will have to stick to only a couple of devices with well known support. Did Valve r…

> Depending on how easy it is to run Linux on this as opposed to the new MacBooks may make this attractive for Linux users. Why? Just to get ARM? Buy a brand that actually works with the kernel and distros to get their hardware working with linux. Get your money to the people that actually help the software ecosystem. When you spent premium, put your money where it makes a difference.

For laptops, what I had in mind is excellent power management and efficiency, it seems to correlate with ARM but I think most people don’t really care for the details of architecture.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#443

Post by fodkodrasz »

pmontra wrote: post #435

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…

I'm curious about the openness of the platform. As long as the openness and standardization of the PC platform is not present, this platform is not a contender of x86 in my eyes. We can see with the highly praised Apple M platform on the example of the Asahi Linux what the lack of openness brings: people are locked in to operating systems by the vendors, and planned obsolescence, even with long support periods. On the other hand the PCs abandoned by Windows 11 support (sometimes even 1 year old models!) had the freedom to choose from a variety of operating systems, all thanks to the openness of the PC platform.

Repairability is important, but why repair something when you can only use terrible, soon out of support operating, which spy on you? (This means practically any OS vendored by large corporations)

For ARM systems openness boils down to the custom boot process, and of course the driver support. Has ARM PC vendors standardized on a boot standard yet? I cal recall the horror on reading articles how Raspberry Pi boot was working, or how M1 Mac bootloader is locked down.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#444

Post by paaradise »

10000truths wrote: post #249
anonymars wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My absolute favorite fact about the Surface is that if the battery runs out, the Surface Dock power is unable to bootstrap it. You have to plug in a charger Not sure if that's still the case but truly astonishing https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-dock/tro...

To be fair, my MacBook Pro had the same issue - if the battery was dead, charging via USB-C wouldn't work, it would need the MagSafe charger. Presumably because the USB controller needs power in order to negotiate power delivery.

Seems weird. What charger? AT least 60W USBC?

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#445

Post by gambiting »

chihuahua wrote: post #262
als0 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was still better than the competition Plenty of cases where Surface isn't. Microsoft like to think they can make hardware but they're no better than other OEM and it's clearly not a focus for them

When I worked at Microsoft (years ago), some employees had Surface laptops. They frequently had issues where the laptop just wasn't working right and required rebooting, at the start of a meeting where they wanted to connect the Surface laptop to a projector. Always the Surfaces, never the Lenovos. One of the Surface things split into two parts, the screen (containing the actual computer) and the keyboard. There was…

>>Then Microsoft had the episode where some of their Surface hardware would not reliably stay in sleep mode and cooked itself while being transported in a bag

To be fair, I've had exactly this with a Dell, MSI and a Razer laptop in the last few years. The only way I can reliably get it to stop waking up while asleep(and never going back to sleep) is disable sleep entirely and use hibernation instead. It's insane that such a basic functionality seems to be broken across a whole range of hardware.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#447

Post by VerifiedReports »

ActorNightly wrote: post #390
HexDecOctBin wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can disable all the annoying AI/Advertising shit What Stockholm Syndrome is this? Why should you have to do this in the first place?

Are you pretending that Apple doesn't spam you with endless advertisements?

They don't. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't use a Mac.

Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra

#450

Post by camillomiller »

pmontra wrote: post #435

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote. Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of…

>Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of the screen. The screen seems to be particularly bright, which is good. There are claims of good self repairability, we will see when it starts to sell.

Oh you mean like the incredible MacBook Pros of the last two generations that have been selling like hotcakes and have a surprisingly similar design to this device? "Redmond, start your photocopiers" never gets old.

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