Earlier quoted context omitted.
Counter-point the Surface Studio was one of the best PCs for drafting and design we've ever owned.
and love the 3:2 monitor aspect ratio
Yeah that was really the cherry on top. Just sublime to use.
Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
231–240 of 686 posts
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#232A former employer of mine, owned by a retired NFL player, purchased Surface devices for the sales staff in addition to their laptops. This was presumably because Microsoft and the NFL had a deal where everyone on the sidelines were using Surfaces and they thought it was a good idea. I say that because no one was asking for them, and when we received them I was inundated with tickets about poor performance: "my surfac…
> an ARM device that had the battery life of Apple Silicon, yet was a real computer that wasn't locked down, ensured/promoted ARM compatibility with their ecosystem Isn’t that what this is? (Or is supposed to be?)
I don't see any real explanation of the CPU in this thing. Is it going to be Grace like on GB200 and Spark?
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#233Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ya, i dont know of anyone wanting to run very large AI models in a windows environment. Or, frankly, on a laptop. Why not just VPN into a dedicated server?
How much does a dedicated server with 128GB vram cost a month.
How well will the local LLM run when your laptop is in your bag while you're walking around?
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#234A former employer of mine, owned by a retired NFL player, purchased Surface devices for the sales staff in addition to their laptops. This was presumably because Microsoft and the NFL had a deal where everyone on the sidelines were using Surfaces and they thought it was a good idea. I say that because no one was asking for them, and when we received them I was inundated with tickets about poor performance: "my surfac…
That's what modern Surfaces are. The consumer models have been Qualcomm SnapDragon based since 2024, they are pretty fast, battery life is pretty good and you can do whatever you want. Although native Linux support isn't quite there but I mean MS isn't exactly making it their priority.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
solid glass haptic trackpad instead of a clicky, mechanical piece of junk one?
The only MacBook sold with a mechanical trackpad in the past eight years is the MacBook Neo.
Right, I meant most PC OEMs are still shipping janky mechanical trackpads in all but the highest end models.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#236A Spark-like machine in a laptop form factor is certainly exciting and interesting competition for Apple. I wonder about Linux compatibility, given NVidia's history with proprietary drives. I am absolutely not willing to go back to Windows, though.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
The emphasis on the fans kicking off also had a bit of a turn-off.
Can't believe they led with that in the promo video. They potentially have whats finally a competitor to an apple silicon MBP, and they lead with fans?? I love my macbooks precisely because they are silent (among other things, obviously).
When I clicked, I thought that it was going to smash the turbine blades from the animation to suggest something like "all the performance without the thermals," but nope, they just became laptop fans. And seconds later, it started blowing heat/steam out of them!
That's the most uncanny marketing for an ARM laptop I've ever seen.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#238The biggest problem here is the operating system. If they could fix that, this might be enticing.
If they put Linux on it I'd buy it, but with Windows 11, no thanks.
Maybe I'm being overly hopeful, but given the DGX Spark only runs Linux, and this is apparently a sibling in a laptop form factor, maybe it won't be too difficult to get Linux up and running effectively? Probably (a lot) more easily than Asahi on Apple Silicon, anyway.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#239My 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…
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...
I had a similar issue with the Nikon Z5 full frame camera. It can be charged via the built-in USB-C socket only if the battery still has some charge.
If the battery is fully dead, you have to remove it and charge it using the separate battery charger.
That means you can't travel with only a USB-C cable.
Re: Microsoft builds MacBook Pro rival with NVIDIA-powered Surface Laptop Ultra
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
> the software I might want to use doesn’t support arm Doesn't Windows come with something like Apple's Rosetta to do on the fly translation? I expect it wouldn't work with games, but most other kinds of software should work. Rosetta worked quite well for Apple so I would expect Microsoft could do something similar.
Yes, its called prism, supposedly Microsoft is making improvements to it also specifically to go along with this release. It's not as good as Rosetta 2 was, but its still pretty good. Problem is not everything runs through emulation though. There's still a lot of edge cases for super old enterprise crap.
I kind of find it hard to believe they would use the name prism...
When I read it, the first thing I thought of is the NSA program named PRISM.
Anyway, I was curious so I googled for differences between the Apple and Microsoft programs and Apple included x86 translation circuitry on their CPU. I wonder why Microsoft didn't do the same?