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Microsoft Surface Studio

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Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#481

Post by mastazi »

usaphp wrote: post #374
atourgates wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value proposition is the responsive touch-screen. The closest responsive touch screen you can buy today is a 27" Wacom Cintiq, which is $2,299 without a computer, and both lower-resolution (2560x1440 vs 4500x3000) and smaller (27" vs 28") than the Surface Studio. So if you assume that about $2,300 of the device's costs go to the display and touch screen, you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that dis…

> "you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that display" ~$700 gets you a pretty basic computer with 965m, you can build a desktop with gtx 1070 for 700$ to power a wacom display. And you will be able to upgrade it in the future, with Studio you are stuck with a 965m for $3000. And if you are getting a 980m for $4200 that leaves you with a $1900 to build a computer for Wacom, which can be way more powerful…

> you can build a desktop with gtx 1070 for 700$

I'm not familiar with latest prices in the US but I would say $700 gets you more something like an i5 + GTX1060 (and it has a much larger form-factor and you have to build it yourself, so probably it's not a fair comparison), but yeah the 1060 or even the new (and cheap) 1050 are still much better than the 965m

EDIT: NewEgg has this one that is prebuilt, 1060+i5, but it's a bit more than $700 (normal price $829, now on sale at $749) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16883230... so yeah, to get it within a $700 budget you would probably have to self-build.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#482

Post by 3327 »

gthtjtkt wrote: post #132

$2,999 and the best GPU option is a last-gen mobile card? The default 965M is a crappy budget card (half the performance of the 980M), and if you want the 980M you have to pick the $4,199 configuration. And hybrid drives!? This thing starts at $2,199 and you can't even get a full SSD? I know 2D designers probably won't mind the GPU, but they could definitely benefit from a true SSD. Hell, the recently announced Razer…

Microsoft likes to get shit out the door and gen3 is typically the good one. so wait 2 generations.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#483

Post by pier25 »

usaphp wrote: post #374
atourgates wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value proposition is the responsive touch-screen. The closest responsive touch screen you can buy today is a 27" Wacom Cintiq, which is $2,299 without a computer, and both lower-resolution (2560x1440 vs 4500x3000) and smaller (27" vs 28") than the Surface Studio. So if you assume that about $2,300 of the device's costs go to the display and touch screen, you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that dis…

> "you're paying ~$700 for the actual machine driving that display" ~$700 gets you a pretty basic computer with 965m, you can build a desktop with gtx 1070 for 700$ to power a wacom display. And you will be able to upgrade it in the future, with Studio you are stuck with a 965m for $3000. And if you are getting a 980m for $4200 that leaves you with a $1900 to build a computer for Wacom, which can be way more powerful…

> I think Microsoft should have sell that monitor by itself, but I guess this way they could not shovel win10 updates down your throat so it is not a good option for them...

I'd buy that monitor.

The easy way to shovel Windows 10 updates would be to make the product only compatible with Windows 10.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#484

Post by barkingcat »

KirinDave wrote: post #475
barkingcat wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure SSD's have come down in price so much that it's irresponsible to spec out a computer for professional use without one. The SSD impacts every single aspect of computer performance - from startup times, to application start times, to swap space speed, to reducing times when the computer is locked up loading from disk. And these days, a 1 TB SSD can be had for around $300 USD - at which point, there is no obvious n…

Just for a note, those 1TB cheap SSDs are not very good or very compact SSDs. The new ones we associate with such stellar performance are still more expensive. This device has some pretty intense performance requirements for the form factor. Could we wait a bit for some hands-on with reviewers before saying MS botched it?

If you look at the form factor, the hybrid drive is most likely a 2.5 inch drive. As far as I know there are no hybrid drives in the compact ssd size (either m.2 or msata format - the spinning platter wouldn't even fit). Just by listing that it uses a hybrid drive, they are already revealing what the form factor is - which is larger than a m.2 slot, and therefore competes head to head with the last gen 2.5 inch SSD with the SATA connector - which at 1TB is around 300 bucks these days.

And yes the SSD's are not as fast as the latest m.2 drives, but are still miles ahead of any spinning drive. I'm not really sure what you are trying to say ... like a Ferrari is faster than a Tesla in Ludicrous mode, so ... go for an electric hybrid like a Toyota Prius? I know that the car analogy doesn't always work, but can you think about your reasoning? That a true M.2 SSD (which can be thousands of dollars) is faster than a last gen 1TB SSD in the 2.5 inch form factor, so therefore MS should use a spinning hybrid drive???

You can wait for a teardown, or you can use logic and common sense.

The only other choice is for MS to use a non standard size spinning platter, maybe around the old Compact Flash drive size - but in that case, there is absolutely no point - they should have just gone straight to M.2, especially for something in that form factor.

To be honest, current generation hybrid drives pair up a really slow 5400 rpm drive with some flash. Now it can still get good performance, but in the end, you're dealing with a hard drive from a few generations ago. Seagate had 7200rpm hybrid drives last generation, but they recently changed to 5400 rpm drives, which makes the drive kinda slow, even with the flash addition.

Microsoft may certainly have gone custom with custom parts, but I don't think they have the volume, even in the wildest expectations, to go against the now popular ssd juggernaunt that is overtaking all of the slim laptop (Apple, Lenovo, Dell, Razer, etc), small form factor embedded pc, and high performance pc space - for good reason. It just makes sense, the parts are really widely available, and people are expecting that type of performance.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#485

Post by RandomOpinion »

mhomde wrote: post #71

I can't but feel sad that Microsoft somehow is dropping the ball on mobile despite them having been, briefly, in a prime position to succeed. They've executed well with their "One platform"-strategy. UWP is great and with the new composition API their finally moving into being able to compete in the modern software arena. Meanwhile on the hardware side Panos is basically doing what Apple should have been doing if the…

> yet they've seemed to given up on mobile

Though we'll never know for sure, there's some conjecture that that Intel's cancellation of the Broxton smartphone chip in May torpedoed MS's plans for an x86 Windows Phone this year.

5/3/2016 - "Late on Friday night, Intel snuck out the news that it’s bailing on the smartphone market. Despite being the world’s best known processor maker, Intel was only a bit player in the mobile space dominated by Qualcomm, Apple, and Samsung, and it finally chose to cut its losses and cancel its next planned chip, Broxton."

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/3/11576216/intel-atom-smartph...

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#486

Post by KirinDave »

barkingcat wrote: post #484
KirinDave wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for a note, those 1TB cheap SSDs are not very good or very compact SSDs. The new ones we associate with such stellar performance are still more expensive. This device has some pretty intense performance requirements for the form factor. Could we wait a bit for some hands-on with reviewers before saying MS botched it?

If you look at the form factor, the hybrid drive is most likely a 2.5 inch drive. As far as I know there are no hybrid drives in the compact ssd size (either m.2 or msata format - the spinning platter wouldn't even fit). Just by listing that it uses a hybrid drive, they are already revealing what the form factor is - which is larger than a m.2 slot, and therefore competes head to head with the last gen 2.5 inch SSD w…

Are they using 2.5gb drives? I know they make very small spinning drives now for custom gear.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#487

Post by mizzao »

rufugee wrote: post #6

If it will run Linux, I'll buy one immediately...

I've been running Ubuntu virtualized in Windows 10 on my Surface Book (VirtualBox) and it's a great way to get around driver issues - everything works great on W10 and it just gets passed through to the VM.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#488

Post by barkingcat »

KirinDave wrote: post #486
barkingcat wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the form factor, the hybrid drive is most likely a 2.5 inch drive. As far as I know there are no hybrid drives in the compact ssd size (either m.2 or msata format - the spinning platter wouldn't even fit). Just by listing that it uses a hybrid drive, they are already revealing what the form factor is - which is larger than a m.2 slot, and therefore competes head to head with the last gen 2.5 inch SSD w…

Are they using 2.5gb drives? I know they make very small spinning drives now for custom gear.

Think about it - 1 or 2 TB hybrid drive ? Do you think very small spinning drives come in that size? and would they pay for custom gear vs just going with an SSD (which can also be custom sized too don't forget)?

Microsoft has a lot of money, but I'm not sure that's where they should spend their money. An SSD in m.2 size is expensive, but less expensive than getting all custom gear.

This is about thinking things through ....

The logical thing is to have a 512G M.2 nvme paired up with a 2TB regular spinning drive (at 2.5") and calling it a day.

That's I would go with for a deluxe, small form factor, graphics pro oriented machine. That's the sweet spot. And it's really easy to build with off the shelf parts like the Intel NUC as a base.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#489

Post by m_mueller »

swang wrote: post #119
dragonwriter wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current use of "Surface" itself is an example of Microsoft watering down a brand in much the same way; it might be careless but it's absolutely consistent with Microsoft's past behavior.

Surface originally was a large windows tablet that doubled as a "table" it also had fancy sensors underneath that allowed you to do a couple of cool things and other way cooler things that never came to fruition. Seems like it would have died off as a huge blundering $10k per table mess by Microsoft. Or as a badly thought out Windows RT Surface tablet. I would have liked another Surface table (one that actually got b…

Seems like everyone is forgetting the original original surface... a table computer.

Re: Microsoft Surface Studio

#490

Post by dingo_bat »

I don't care about anything else but how come today's high end computers start out with 8gb of ram? That was probably enough 2 years ago. Now it's enough for a net book. My phone has 4gb ram now. And they expect me to pay ~$2500 and get 8gb in a desktop?
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