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New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

blogs.windows.com

911–920 of 989 posts

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#911
post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I am unlucky but I tried different adapters. The Apple ethernet adapter is not even plug and play on windows and requires a reboot. But even USB adapters take a while for drivers to load then I had all sort of problems: the connection regularly being recognised as 100Mbit when it should be gigabit or the USB adapter not being recognised after a couple of unplugging without a reboot.

The Apple Thunderbolt Ethernet Adapter is basically a PCIe devices over Thunderbolt. Unless your OS has hot plug PCIe, it's going to require a reboot.

At least Windows and Linux have supported hot plug PCIe for ages.

Although hardware PCIe slot register must support the optional presence detect bits. Also slot capabilities register must report optional hotplug support and surprise removal support.

I guess thunderbolt has those features supported by default.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#912

That's what the OEMs get for not being able to put out a laptop that could compete with Apple in all those years, they always managed to introduce some fatal flaw in their premium laptops, from weird keyboard layouts to bad fan management software. Let's hope the Surface Book will be succesful and Apple finally gets serious competition in the premium laptop market.

Take a look at "Building Microsoft Surface Pro 3." [1] Microsoft definitely has set the bar for this type of device. I personally have been waiting for such a device that all the other offerings were just not up to par as each seemed to have some quirk or problem. Bad hinge design, drivers not working, performance was subpar, battery life was lacking. Other manufactures will have to take notice. [1] https://channel9.…

Definitely worth a listen/watch. Just goes to show how seriously Microsoft is taking the quality of their products.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#913
post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a very long deliberation (few years:) I went with T450 (non-retina) this summer and I am very happy. I chose it over T550 due to slightly lower dpi (I have a a 15 inch Dell at work with T550's resolution and everything is unpleasantly small, on T450 it's fine). I took SSD, 16gb ram, no DVD, 2 cores (quad core was very expensive) and 2 batteries which makes it very light, yet with proper screen size; very fast a…

The DPI is really a software problem. More DPI should only be better except for battery use. IMO Touchpads/clickpads on those are a deal breaker. They are so bad that it is almost impossible to be nearly as productive as with a mouse. On the other hand, Apple really got the clickpad right.

I cant agree. I really dislike the feel of the MacBook touch pads. Besides that they work good

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#914
post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a very long deliberation (few years:) I went with T450 (non-retina) this summer and I am very happy. I chose it over T550 due to slightly lower dpi (I have a a 15 inch Dell at work with T550's resolution and everything is unpleasantly small, on T450 it's fine). I took SSD, 16gb ram, no DVD, 2 cores (quad core was very expensive) and 2 batteries which makes it very light, yet with proper screen size; very fast a…

The DPI is really a software problem. More DPI should only be better except for battery use. IMO Touchpads/clickpads on those are a deal breaker. They are so bad that it is almost impossible to be nearly as productive as with a mouse. On the other hand, Apple really got the clickpad right.

T450 has 130dpi, T550 has 140dpi. It is small but noticeable difference.

It is a software problem that for pragmatic reasons I don't want to get into. Good luck setting non-integer scaling on current operating systems (like 1.25 or 1.50). It's either not supported, or the effect is blurry. It's a different story for retina screens, you set scaling to 2.00 and you're fine. But I was talking about non-retina.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#915

Tech specs of Surface Book are very nice. But it does not look good and is too thick when the lid is closed. https://imgur.com/IXUzASs

Not sure the hinge of Surface Book is strong enough. If I put Surface Book and heavy things into a backpack, I will worry about the hinge. I don't worry if it is a normal laptop.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#916
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Lovely to see some innovation from Microsoft that's made it out of labs (the hinge alone looks fantastic). I'd be concerned about duplication of components between the screen and the keyboard though? I can't quite figure out from their website, but it looks like the keyboard part has the dedicated graphics and battery, and the rest (and more battery) is in the screen? I completely understand why Apple doe…

>the hinge alone looks fantastic The hinge is the only thing that bothers me. Close the book and it seems like you'll have a thin area of metal on metal grinding on itself and end up with a rather thick profile for putting it in a laptop bag. Also, at one point they showed the internal structure of the hinge and it looked like the Yoga's hinge that's covered with some sort of articulating plastic (god I hope not). I'…

I agree with you. If you open the lid, everything looks very good. But if you close the lid, it looks weird.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#917
post #48
post #8

I think they've pulled the rug from under other HW vendors, and that is well-deserved (for the vendors). MS essentially made the ultimate Windows PC (tablet, pen, long battery life, powerful GPU if needed), after waiting for the partners for years.

I guess moving to USB-C is asking for too much?

That would have been nice to see, since I expect these will have amazing longevity otherwise. Ideal might have been one USB 3.0 and one USB type-c. (Along with adapters in both directions if we're talking really ideal.)

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#918
post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then you loose the USB port. But the main problem of USB adapters is that they don't like being unplugged and plugged back which happens quite frequently with a laptop. With a real port connectivity is pretty much instantaneous. I used USB adapters for a while on a MacBook pro and came to the conclusion that I will never ever buy a laptop without ethernet ports. What I wonder is why they don't come up with a mini…

Remember these? http://www.recycledgoods.com/media/extendware/ewimageopt/med... Never quite sure why the small connector didn't become the standard for laptops.

The 15-pin I/O connector for ethernet was part of the PCMCIA CardBus standard, which is why dongles could be shared between cards. After PCMCIA picked up speed, a "non-practicing entity" pulled a patent out of their portfolio for a "programmable connector". Because the PCMCIA ethernet card itself plugged into the computer and presented a different connector to the outside world, the NPE was able to sue and/or settle with something like 90% of the companies making PCMCIA ethernet cards & modems.

3COM had a cool connector on some of their cards called XJACK. It was a little tray you slid out of the card. It had a hole that your RJ-45 plug slid into and some pins. It would certainly make for thinner devices today, but the connectors broke pretty easily and you ended up with an ethernet cable sticking out at a weird angle.

Before everybody standardized on RJ-45, there was a standard called AUI which used a 15-pin D connector. Your network card would have an AUI connector and you'd buy an adapter for whatever kind of network you needed to attach to. Apple had their AAUI which was much, much smaller (about the size of 2 mini Display Ports?). But I think licensing kept that from taking off as a standard.

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#919
I bought a Lumia 435 recently to test Windows 10 and see if it's worth going all in (they announced they would upgrade 435). Now MS are not going to upgrade this model. Behaviour like this is not how they will build credibility and new users.

Overall current version of Windows Mobile seems 80% there. Some things are done better than Android/iPhone, many other they don't. I was really looking forward to trying 10, but now will likely try out alternatives (Sailfish/Firefox/Ubuntu Touch?) as I can flash an existing phone.

I'd love to see a market where there are four+ OS's each with reasonable share seriously competing to be the best. It would be a consumers dream!

Re: New Windows 10 Devices From Microsoft

#920
post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wow, you can use the new pen with the SP3? Interesting.

Why wouldn't you be able to do that? Seems logical that it would work. Unless Microsoft changed the pen manufacturer (again).

In the presentation they went on about PixelSense and how they had re-engineered everything. Evidently the protocol between the pen and screen remains the same though.
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