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Introducing Surface Book 2

blogs.windows.com

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Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#261

Post by zeusk »

pier25 wrote: post #231
gressquel wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I tried to go the other way but just couldnt. The ecosystem on windows 10 is poor but then again I just download from one of the million win32 applications. I just don't use "apps" from store.

But those million win32 applications tend to be really outdated and poor in terms of features compared to the macOS ecosystem. At least that was what I experienced.

Regardless, they're at-least usable and Microsoft cares about backward compat.

Just last week I played a game of Age of Empires II with my cousin, a game which was "released" in 1999 on a Surface with Windows 10. While on my MacBook I have issues because every major OS upgrade breaks something and I have to repurchase newer versions or give up if the dev isn't interested/around anymore.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#262

Post by jrs95 »

waegawegawe wrote: post #22
fhood wrote: post #3

Why does every single high end laptop need to look exactly like a macbook? I want anybody who doesn't believe me to google up a picture of one next to the other.

I think what you mean is, "why do so many high end laptops have thin, metal, unibody chassis?" But, when you ask the question that way, it kind of answers itself. People like metal, because it feels more high end than plastic. Unibody chassis don't need to be fastened together, which is good for manufacturing and looks. People like thin laptops because they are more portable than thick ones.

Unibody helps make it thinner, too. A traditional laptop design had to have both structrual components and outer casing -- unibody designs do both and save space

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#263

Post by SomeHacker44 »

tcfunk wrote: post #207

I suppose the tech is too new for this product launch...but I would have loved to see 1070 max-q in this version of the surface book, especially at this price point. edit: I checked the price.

My Alienware 13R3 has a 1060 GPU which runs at 90W. So, I imagine their 15" 95W laptop is running the 1060 using "Max-Q" to keep it well under 90W in power draw as well as thermal dissipation in such a small form factor.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#264

Post by jsl1212 »

Fnoord wrote: post #192
staticelf wrote: post #94

So many negative comments just because it's Microsoft. If you don't like the OS, obviously this machine is not for you. Personally I think it looks nice, but I have a Surface Pro 2 that works just perfectly fine and I love it. The hardware on it is still good and I don't see any reason to upgrade.

If you don't like the OS, can you not slap Linux on it? I found this thread on that subject [1] not sure how feasible it is. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3qcqha/ubuntu...

Yep. I run latest Ubuntu on my Surface Pro 4 and it's great. The touchscreen doesn't work, although there are plenty of custom kernels out there that would fix that.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#266

Post by anjc »

ksec wrote: post #75
rayiner wrote: post #17

The pricing is brutal.[1] About $100-$300 more than the 15" Macbook Pro with the same amount of storage. The base model is particularly shameful, with only 8GB of RAM. The base MBP is 16GB for $100 less. You can't configure the RAM amount, so $2,900 is the cheapest 15" model with 16GB. [1] Or perhaps it's more that the configuration options are really inflexible, with every configuration having the highest-end CPU an…

Basically you are paying for a better CPU, you get the option of Intel's 8th Gen CPU..... and Nvidia GPU, arguably better then one offered by Apple. I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac. At least then I know the GPU will be best at something Apple designed to do.

> Basically you are paying for a better CPU

And detachable tablet, and digitiser?

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#267

Post by kalleth »

Jaqua wrote: post #21

Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?

You can absolutely use this for work.

My windows workflow involves a Virtualbox VM, with ~/ in the guest mounted as Z: on the windows host.

Use gvim installed direct on windows (so long as you don't need super complex plugins which shell out to utilities) to edit files in Z: which exist on the host, with PuTTy and tmux as your terminal. Done.

The thing holding windows back right now is a terminal emulator to sit ontop of WSL, and WSL's ability to run background processes properly without closing them all when i close a terminal (and to have things autostart on boot).

There are workarounds right now to solve this, though.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#268

Post by binthere »

ksec wrote: post #83
Jaqua wrote: post #21

Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?

Gaming, the world has changed and this generation of Apple users has way more Gamers then what they had before. Why do they continue to ignore Gamers on the Mac Platform.

- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.

- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.

- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#269

Post by olympus »

Looking at the specs, (linked in another comment), it appears that the USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3. Seriously, Microsoft, you can't charge this much for a laptop without TB3. I know that TB started as an Apple standard, but you're not killing this port like you did with Firewire. Your case of NIMBY has cost you my sale. I'll wait and get the next premium Lenovo/HP/ASUS/etc Ultrabook with 8th gen i7 AND TB3.

Re: Introducing Surface Book 2

#270

Post by masklinn »

leadingthenet wrote: post #230
avcdsuia wrote: post #46

Now I want a 3:2 MacBook Pro 15'', the display ratio that Mac notebook used to have(PowerBook G4). 3:2 is much more comfortable working with, enough vertical space for reading code and no sacrifice for horizontal space.

I’d love this. 16:9(10) is probably the worst aspect ratio ever to be made standard on laptops. How the hell did people think it was a good idea?

> 16:9(10)

16:9 can't be equated to and is significantly worse than 16:10, which is worse than 3:2, which is worse than 4:3 (which is coming back on tablets). There were even 5:4 displays at one point (early days of desktop LCD, I still have my 1280x1024 19" ViewSonic VP191b).

Assuming 15" diagonals on all of them:

* a 16:9 display is 96 sq in and 7.4" high

* a 16:10 display is 101 sq in and 7.9" high

* a 3:2 display is 104 sq in and 8.3" high

* a 4:3 display is 108 sq in and 9" high

* a 5:4 display is 110 sq in and 9.4" high

As you can see, 16:10 -> 16:9 is actually the largest loss in surface area and second-largest loss of height (largest being 4:3 -> 3:2).

However if you're watching a movie, the 16:9 has 100% coverage for 16:9 and 75% coverage for Cinemascope, every other format gets lower in both relative and absolute coverage, down to 70% (77 sq in) and 53% (58 sq in) for a 5:4.

> How the hell did people think it was a good idea?

Black bars on movies, better view angles in FPS, and cheaper.

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