161–170 of 686 posts
What's conspicuously absent, is the CPU that's going to power this thing. Yes, it's got an Nvidia GPU, but does it have an Intel CPU, an AMD CPU, an Nvidia ARM CPU, or someone else's ARM CPU?
Cortex-X925 and Cortex-A725
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (Or is supposed to be?) I would be happy to eat my words "later this year" (per their timeline) but past Surface interactions lead me to believe it will be more of the same as in the past. Bad performance, bad battery life, bad build quality, bad compatibility. For the sake of competition and options, I really hope to be proven wrong... I just wouldn't bet on it.
> bad compatibility I’m curious what this means. Bad compatibility with Windows software? Or bad compatibility with Linux?
Who is the target market for this? As an Apple user who can’t make iPad OS work I am always tempted by the surface but.. Every time I contemplate the surface (I like the hardware / concept) it seems the software I might want to use doesn’t support arm..
I mean, I used to be - with the disclaimer that I worked at Microsoft for a while (left in 2019), there was a hot minute when Surface devices were good and on an upward trajectory to become great. Microsoft was doing interesting things with new form factors and interface devices-- the Surface Book, Studio and Dial weren't all hits, but they were some of the only noteworthy experiments in PCs-- and they actually cared…
These days I use a Samsung Galaxy Book 3 Pro 360 (w/ a spare which I panick bought when I wasn't sure if they would do a Book 4 --- now they're up to a 5), Kindle Scribe Colorsoft, Samsung Galaxy Note 10+, and have a Wacom One on my MacBook (both of which need upgrading....)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> (Or is supposed to be?) I would be happy to eat my words "later this year" (per their timeline) but past Surface interactions lead me to believe it will be more of the same as in the past. Bad performance, bad battery life, bad build quality, bad compatibility. For the sake of competition and options, I really hope to be proven wrong... I just wouldn't bet on it.
> bad compatibility I’m curious what this means. Bad compatibility with Windows software? Or bad compatibility with Linux?
Further, it doesn't seem like Microsoft made x86 emulation as seamless or performant as Apple did during the various MacOS CPU architecture changes.
Every use case I've looked at has been a minefield of app incompatibility and poor performance under x86 emulation.
For music production for example - https://www.sweetwater.com/sweetcare/articles/windows-on-arm...
Who is the target market for this? As an Apple user who can’t make iPad OS work I am always tempted by the surface but.. Every time I contemplate the surface (I like the hardware / concept) it seems the software I might want to use doesn’t support arm..
"Enterprise" people. There's this whole other world of legacy enterprise software where people do things that run companies, write large-scale software with an ancient version of .NET, and run this software on Windows servers.
Surface has seen so many iterations, some terrible, some nice. Still rocking the discontinued surface laptop studio as Wacom on the go, smallish footprint (14”) creative development machine. I just love its quirkiness and the fact that I can jump on photoshop to touch up an image, use it as tablet for movies, or vs code for (not great nowadays) 6h on battery. It is an odd intersection.
?!?
https://surfacetip.com/surface-laptop-studio/
notes:
>Supports Microsoft Pen Protocol (MPP)
which is NTrig --- or do you use a Wacom AES stylus? (bought a Bamboo AES stylus, but it wouldn't work w/ my Toshiba Encore 2 Write 10)
Or are you genericizing "Wacom" as "active digitizer stylus"?
> Built on Windows aaaaand... scene! No thank you, and goodbye
I will never buy a Surface device ever again. I've been using an SL4 for the last four years with Linux on it, thanks to the surface-linux kernel. It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux. Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device. I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that…
Also, USB-A in 2026? Really? That was already an automatic disqualifier for me at the start of the decade.
> Made for a kind of work that does not fit in a standard laptop. Yeah, sure... And that kind of work is...??? The only device I'm still happy to own from them is the Classic IntelliMouse. For me, anything else, be hardware or software, I stay very far away from them.
... until the Surface era, when they either had bizarre designs that didn't work well (like Arc) or else were of cheap build quality and had problematic Bluetooth chipsets.
The first Bluetooth mouse I got was Microsoft's circa 2002, which was an amazing piece of tech back then.