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Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

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41–50 of 120 posts

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#41
post #3

So the new pro-level laptop from MS+QCOM (they are bragging of the specs of the one with Snapdragon X Elite chip which starts at $1,500) and ships in a month beats last year's entry-level mac, which starts at $999 and has been shipping for a year?

Much as I love to bash MS, in this instance the M3 MacBook was announced March 4, so it’s not last year’s product.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#42

Can you run Windows 10 on these? Not interested in 11

Probably not considering Qualcomm ARM CPUs and GPUs will require new drivers Windows 10 never had.

Even the Intel and AMD machines coming later down the line will require Windows 11 to be utilized to their full potential. Intel Thread Director being an easy one to point out; Alder Lake onwards all run suboptimally on Windows 10 due to lack of support and awareness. Also new drivers for the NPUs, for whatever good they will serve.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#43

Do they sleep/wake properly though? If not, it's going to be absolutely useless for me.

Can’t believe it’s 2024 and Microsoft has not sorted this out yet. I switched to MacBooks 15 years ago because I liked being able to close the lid at any moment and stuff it into my laptop and go. Got burned one too many times trying to sleep/hibernate HP business laptops by closing the lid and they stayed on and got hot. Not once has that happened with a MacBook.

It's Windows Modern Standby, one of the stupidest choice Microsoft ever made. Basically the laptop stays on to connect to the Internet to still receive mail and notifications.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#44

Do they sleep/wake properly though? If not, it's going to be absolutely useless for me.

We're talking about the Surface line here, so yes, in my experience power management is flawless.

It gets everything we'd expect from a vertically integrated product. You still need to deal with windows' paradigms, but also get a real linux as a bonus.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#45

What concerns me the most is the repairability. We make extensive use of Macbook Air M1 and M2 units, and we have a support contract for repairing the devices onsite. We also have a support contract for repair of Surface Pro units, and when these die they get sent away to Microsoft and a replacement eventually arrives. From what I can tell, they have dreadful repairability.

MS is trying to improve Surface repairability, no idea how it is going...

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/surface-it-pro-blog/s...

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#46
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it compares, but my recent AMD ThinkPad uses about 1% of the battery per hour while in "modern standby." I figure I have at least three and up to 4 days of being unplugged before it's forced to shut down.

I assume they meant unplugged and in regular use, not unplugged and hibernating the whole time.

The system wasn't hibernating, it was just sleeping.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#47
post #3

So the new pro-level laptop from MS+QCOM (they are bragging of the specs of the one with Snapdragon X Elite chip which starts at $1,500) and ships in a month beats last year's entry-level mac, which starts at $999 and has been shipping for a year?

The one who starts at 999 is MacBooks M2. In this case,

Surface Laptop with X Plus also beats M2 and starts at the same price.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#48

What concerns me the most is the repairability. We make extensive use of Macbook Air M1 and M2 units, and we have a support contract for repairing the devices onsite. We also have a support contract for repair of Surface Pro units, and when these die they get sent away to Microsoft and a replacement eventually arrives. From what I can tell, they have dreadful repairability.

Surface for Business service and repair...

>Built with integrity by design, many Microsoft Surface devices are now easier to repair1 and maintain, providing commercial customers with greater flexibility while extending the use of devices.

>Commercial customers can obtain service for Surface for Business devices in several ways. You can get service directly from Microsoft or use a third party Authorized Service Provider. Or with skilled technicians, you can repair2 devices yourself following the applicable Surface Service Guide or article.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-service-an...

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#49
post #9

> As for battery life, Copilot+ PCs support up to 15 hours of web browsing or 22 hours of local video playback. The MacBook Air models offer the same 15 hours of wireless web browsing, but only 18 hours of local video playback. This is so underrated. I got a new macbook air as a temp while my m1 max gets repaired and it blows my mind how I had it unplugged for 2 days over the weekend and the battery is still going. I…

I don't understand why battery life in gaming laptops is so incredibly shit even when doing non-gaming tasks. I thought a while back Intel and AMD worked on hardware/software to automatically switch to integrated graphics when you don't need the discrete GPU? Did nothing come of that?

I don't expect the battery life to be as good as non-gaming laptops, of course, but I feel like it should probably last longer than like an hour and a half.

Re: Microsoft says new Surface Pro is faster than 15" M3 MacBook Air

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read more than just the headline you'd find that the third sentence of the article talks about battery life.

Yes but you'll note MS has made no specific claims about battery life and performance.

You can't have both. With the current M3 you also won't get 20h on battery while running an hadoop cluster on it.
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