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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

#401

Post by Krasnol »

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've been managing dozens of Surfaces for work.

Never had any issues with them. Solid hardware and a good alternative to the Lenovo Thinkpads we're also using but "don't look so nice".

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

#402

Post by z3ratul163071 »

com2kid wrote: post #305
exmadscientist wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with some of the people responsible for the Surface Book, Surface docks, and specifically the Surface Book's dock. These were hardware people (EEs), not software people, and this was after their time at MS. Unfortunately I don't remember specifics (both because it's been a few years, and because I'd probably have to fuzz details anyway), but... : Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly ho…

My team (Microsoft Band) discovered the reason why the surface's keyboard sometimes wouldn't work when connected. There was a hardware bug in the cortex MCU the keyboard used involving waking from deep sleep. One of our FW engineers spent several months figuring it out and eventually reported it to the manufacturer, and to the Surface team. IIRC it was something about wake on interrupt in a specific deep sleep mode a…

[flagged]

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

#403

Post by z3ratul163071 »

thewebguyd wrote: post #133
EagnaIonat wrote: post #5

Earlier 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).

they had competitor also in the Snapdragon X. however the OS is ruined beyond recognition, so no matter what they do, the combo will be bad.

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

#404

Post by davb »

mschuster91 wrote: post #256
whateverboat wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They ordered in every single competing dock they could find, from that era's products, and found that every last one was garbage in some way or other, usually fatally so. It is so hard to believe that when more than 1000 employees at my employers are also using at least one dock (Dell and Thinkpad both) and using them very well.

We are talking about a situation some years past. I member there were USB docks that if you had them attached to external power and ethernet, but not a laptop, they'd instant-kill the network by sending garbage frames that would cause switches to fault off. Only around 2024-ish the situation with USB and TB docks seemed to stabilize.

Yes!! The Dell WD19 was notorious for that. My wife’s company used those - we couldn’t leave her WFH dock connected to our home network because of the wild broadcast storms causing our core switch to stop processing frames from her home office desktop switch. My org used HP Dock G5 units which behaved much better (besides the occasional firmware update killing video output until a power cycle, and inconsistent MAC address pass through between hardware revisions).

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

#405

Post by wilted-iris »

z3ratul163071 wrote: post #402
com2kid wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team (Microsoft Band) discovered the reason why the surface's keyboard sometimes wouldn't work when connected. There was a hardware bug in the cortex MCU the keyboard used involving waking from deep sleep. One of our FW engineers spent several months figuring it out and eventually reported it to the manufacturer, and to the Surface team. IIRC it was something about wake on interrupt in a specific deep sleep mode a…

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Respectfully, no, not even a little bit. That’s normal everyday microcontrollers for you.

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

#406

Post by vitally3643 »

z3ratul163071 wrote: post #402
com2kid wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My team (Microsoft Band) discovered the reason why the surface's keyboard sometimes wouldn't work when connected. There was a hardware bug in the cortex MCU the keyboard used involving waking from deep sleep. One of our FW engineers spent several months figuring it out and eventually reported it to the manufacturer, and to the Surface team. IIRC it was something about wake on interrupt in a specific deep sleep mode a…

[flagged]

You clearly have never tried to implement sleep on a microcontroller. It has nothing at all to do with ACPI. And this kind of eldritch bug is par for the course. It has nothing at all to do with Microsoft or PCs at all. Microcontroller sleep just sucks in a lot of incredibly weird ways.

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

#407

Post by vitally3643 »

whatever1 wrote: post #386
thewebguyd wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Docks are horrifying products. Thunderbolt docks are doubly horrifying. I believe it. From all my years as a sysadmin, docks were by far the second largest source of headaches (after printers). Super high failure rate, all kinds of quirks, shoddy power delivery. And these weren't some cheap amazon basics dongles, I'm talking the $250+ docks from Dell, Lenovo, etc.

Docks ok. But why printers are such a hot mess? For the past 20 years they could have been just webservers that we send REST requests to. But no, we had to install random drivers on our machines, get blue screens and have to plug and unplug the printers until they get reset properly.

Because printers must be as cheap as possible and require a recurring revinue stream, which includes malware. Sorry, "valuable special offers".

It costs more money to make a printer with good firmware, and you're more likely to throw away a buggy printer and buy a new one with new special ink cartridges.

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

#409

Post by jo-m »

daemin wrote: post #396
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…

One concern I've heard about the move to ARM cores is that it is done in order to lock down the devices more so they're more like a phone rather than a computer.

What does locking down the device have to do with the CPU architecture?

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

#410

Post by oaiey »

evolve2k wrote: post #81

Would love to see many more manufacturers read this as the slight taht it is from Microsoft and to follow Lenovos lead in making windows a paid add-on, going with a big Linux distro as the default. Maybe instead of hardware they should just stick to the knitting and deal with their quality issues around both the OS and the Office suite right now.

The whole forum here is bashing Windows for being thermal / performance disaster compared to apple products. I do not see how a laptop running Linux will evade the same fate (at least the bashing :).
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