Microsoft Surface Book: Shiny slab with a Rottweiler grip on itself I've always wondered what people who pay more than £2,000 for a Windows laptop are thinking when they boot the machine. It's a bit like paying a fortune to gain admission to a secret and exclusive members club, only to discover once you're in, that it's run by the bloke who does the pub quiz on a Tuesday night at your local …
It doesn't look cheap. But then it doesn't do anything worth doing that a laptop a quarter of the price doesn't do. This is the Audi-VW-SEAT-Skoda model, but applied to PCs instead of cars - they take you for what you can afford, you get to upstage the neighbours with the badge. Whether you see value in this is up to you.
> But then it doesn't do anything worth doing that a laptop a quarter of the price doesn't do.
There's no laptop with pen input the quality of the Surface at 1/4 of the price. If you value the ability to annotate on PDF images, sketch as you present on a webex, or do artwork while travelling then you need that ability.
Get a pixel C. Better in every respect at a fraction of the price.
No it is not. Go troll elsewhere.
Pixel C is cheaper even with the $150 keyboard addon, but there's not a lot of something that's better:
resolution: 2560x1800 (Pixel) vs 3000x2000 (Surface)
memory: 3GB vs 8/16GB
CPU: 1.9GHz Tegra vs 2.4GHz+ i5/i7
Storage: 32/64GB vs 128/256/512/1024GB
I'd buy neither since both Pixel C and Surface Book seem to be plagued with bad software.
off topic, I remember having a skoda Estelle 120. It *was* built like their tanks, rear engine rear wheel drive was mucho fun in the wet or dry for that matter. An austin metro disintegrated when it rear ended me at some lights, I don't even think the bumper dented on my car, it had nice big "blocks" on the bumpers, a precursor to parking sensors :) The woman was in tears, I just laughed.
you were lucky to get more than 65 out of it of course, as it was made of pig iron and powered by a lawnmower engine. It also understeered and oversteered (unless you had luggage in the front "boot", then it wasn't fast enough to oversteer). Heating consisted of a number of pipes running to a landrover style radiator and fan, shite in winter, roasting in summer. It frosted more on the inside (there was a cooling leak somewhere in the car) than the outside (I remember spraying deicer on the inside rather than outside one time). The choke was a huge lever that acted as an "idle speed regulator" rather than choke and power steering consisted of a very large steering wheel. Reliability was epic, it took a good 20 seconds to start hail, rain, snow or shine but never broke down on me once. I think the brake drums were made of stone as they never got changed either. If it was advertised as having synchro mesh then they were lieing, double declutching was the order of the day (coming from a land rover this wasn't an issue for me). 1st and third were almost interchangeable too. Reverse was tricky as you needed to be absolutely stationary (not rolling backwards at all).
It ran for a at least 6 months on next to no oil, the oil light had burnt out and was only picked up on the MOT. After 2 years I traded it in for an XR3i (which was stolen after a few months, shame I liked the escort) but I wont forget the fun I had in it, it certainly taught me a few tricks.
I agree. It looks pretty cheap. The hinge especially (unless it somehow looks massively better in real life than in a pic).
If I was in the market for one of these I'd rather opt for HP Spectre x2. Matter of opinion, but I think the HP actually looks better, has nice(ish) backlit keyboard and is lot cheaper (granted, as I recall it has only 1920x1080 display, but for ~12-13" screen that is quite sufficient.
I don't think so... I've not tried yet to be honest, but given the whole 2nd GPU thing and X11's general inability to deal with unusual configurations it's highly unlikely that it will work - at least not fully. I've had mine since November (got it in North America) and I love it.. It's the only Windows machine I have, with Mint on all of my others... and I'd _love_ to put Mint on it... but I'm putting up with Windows because it generally works and the machine is simply fantastic... I doubt you'd be able to separate the keyboard with Linux so that makes it kinda pointless.
since our local tobacconist (well, only tobacconist) sells winternips, I have a bag of those with me on Mondays and Tuesdays. Fishermans Friends are not mints, they are in the same category as fiery imps - something to clear your nose in a hurry (or get rid of bad taste).
is the hardware compatible with Mint?
I can confirm, from personal experience, that you can disable Secure Boot in the Surface Book's UEFI firmware. If you do so, however, you get a great big red padlock banner at the top of the screen every time you boot - as if to warn "OH MY GOD SECURE BOOT IS DISABLED YOU ARE SO RECKLESS". Haven't tried installing an alternative OS yet but I imagine one might have problems with some of the SB's hardware.
Funny, I was wondering how easy it'd be to nuke w10 and stuff Debian on it.
Seriously? Only 2 usb ports? For this money and spec I'd have wanted at least 4. And an IBM type nipple as an alternatine to a trackpad. (I hate 'em).
And no bloody ethernet? With a machine this fast? Stuck on the bum end of a weak wifi signal that drops out every few seconds? Fail.
Anyone know whether it's got a decent non reflective matt screen?
The IBM style nipple pointer would be, by far the best input method for a Surface.
Ok, its (nipple pointer) mainly for touch typists, but it saves moving the hands away from the keys to operate the touchpad/external mouse. How Microsoft overlooked adding this to the Surface Book must be down to licencing issues, especially given Nadella's all encompassing approach. (anyone new sitting there interested in computing, still unable to touch type, put some time/money aside, it reaps so many benefits going forward)
Some things might seem 'stylewise' - dated, but if they work and the IBM nipple pointer does, it needs to be there on a product like this.
I never get why an extra few mm to hide that hinge within the casing isn't better than those protruding teeth, they look set up to scratch the screen, if you leave the handheld screen section lying on it. I like Lenovo's Yoga Pro 3's wristwatch strap hinge the best, but its sadly (or rightly) not detachable.
In terms of Linux Mint, old microsoft would specifically design all these; proprietary hinge, dedicated graphic switching options just so it wouldn't be compatible with Linux, but given the release of SQL for Linux, you have to assume, Microsoft are developing compatible linux drivers for these proprietary options, at this very moment ;).
Nope, my right finger has to move about 10mm to operate an IBM style nipple pointer, Using the touch screen repetitively like that, would be like asking me to operate the indicators in a car from a touch screen head up display, rather than stalks on the side of the steering wheel. Once fine, repeatedly, no thanks, I'll pass on that method.
@LDS: totally agree - but a quality MacBook-style trackpad is where this stuff really shines as you don't have to lift your hand away from the keyboard. Sure a touchscreen is excellent for things like drawing and annotation, but for the use cases above it's surprisingly clumsy.
The interesting limitation for me is that there is no USB on the tablet -- only on the keyboard. This makes simple storage expansion difficult, and limits your choice of audio devices you could use in an audio conference when you've only brought the tablet because it's lighter and easier to carry when biking somewhere.
Expensive hardware? Cheap hardware's only a relatively recent thing (I still remember my parents forking out £2k for our first pc... by god did I get a bollocking for changing the desktop picture).
As for MS doing hardware worth noticing, they used to have some of the better peripherals for years (I mean seriously... that damn hocky puck, need I go on?)
TL;DR - Just about all sides have produced badly designed, maybe it's time for MS to make something good.
The keyboard is pretty hopeless for editing text, with the Home/End/Page Up/Down keys sharing function keys F8 - F11, so you're frequently having to toggle or combine with the Fn key, and there's only one Ctrl key.
The clever hinge doesn't allow the screen to be pushed back far enough, so when it's sitting on your lap, the top of the screen is much closer than the bottom, which doesn't help those with presbyopia.
The Edge's scroll bar is very thin, on its high definition display, and contantly disappearing, so drag scrolling is a challenge.
The Surface mouse "scroll wheel" makes an electronic click whenever you touch it, which gets very irritating, and it's all too easy to touch it accidentally, causing whatever you were looking at to scroll out of view.
It's fast and the screen is high quality but, on reflection, I wish I'd bought another ThinkPad.
Windows has always sucked in this area.
I have just this at the moment. A W7 laptop with a USB3 drive connected. Windows says the equivalent of
'Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that'.
When I tell it to eject the drive.
Yet, there is nothing using it. I've even restarted explorer. Still no joy.
The only solution it to reboot the sodding computer unless I just yank the plug.
Can't they ever get it right? Perhaps I haven't paid homage to Bill Gates often enough?
Never happens to me on Linux (lsof to the rescue) or OSX
You can just yank it out if you're sure that nothing is writing to it. Since Windows 7, the "Safely Remove Hardware" tray icon is hidden by default for a reason. I'd imagine people starting to use Windows today wouldn't even know it existed.
You can just yank it out if you're sure that nothing is writing to it.
But can you be 100% sure that there is nothing cached and not yet flushed to the device? On Linux you have sync. On Windows ... well, lots of kids do mostly get away with it. But I have to wonder, how many of the corrupted USB sticks that despairing students have asked me to try to salvage got mangled by being unceremoniously yanked out of the socket?
"Windows says the equivalent of
'Sorry Dave, I can't let you do that'.
When I tell it to eject the drive.
Yet, there is nothing using it."
Something *is* using it, you just don't know what it is. Sure Windows ought to be better at telling you what is using it and in fact Windows 8.1 onwards does usually tell you.
Hey,
I suspect you have some kind of indexing / search turned on for your USB drives; so windows probably isn't wrong, just you have no idea what is using the drive.
My boss gets this whenever he doesn't turn off spotlight (mac) for USB keys; he's made a few of mine "not well" even though he says he always clicks the eject button.
"Its probably the cryptolocker virus hard at work on the USB drive, we're talking Windows after all."
You know there is a native Linux version and a Linux NAS version of Cryptolocker? And that unlike the Windows versions, those don't require user interaction to spread?
First, I've noticed with Windows 10 there's 2 ways to get ejection permission: the symbol down in the lower right of the screen (which sometimes takes TWO tries to make it work!), and the eject option in Windows Explorer. Sometimes one will work where the other one will not.
Secondly, if all else fails and you're tired of turning the PC off to eject, you need to find out what's holding the device. Go get the free Microsoft utility Sysinternals Process Explorer (a Task Manager on major steroids, if you haven't used it) and it can tell you what's got it. I discovered a process created by my DVD software (!) was holding it, Lord only knows why. I use Process Explorer to kill the process after turning the PC on (or after the surprise Windows 10 Update reboot since I often leave the PC on). Then no more eject problems until next power down. (I keep Process Explorer pinned to the Taskbar, so it's easy to bring up.) So in this case it seems an ill-behaving app is my problem, not Windows - altho not being a super-techie I guess I can never be completely sure. (There are utilities for the specific purpose of releasing ejection holds, but I didn't really trust the few I looked at.)
Yes, there are some stupid applications, usually some photo/video ones, that registers themselves to be notified when a new device is plugged to search for photos and videos (they usually also install some background running software for that). They may also register to be notified is some files have been added, so they can put their greedy hands on them asap. They should also process "device is being removed" events, but not all developers car about that...
We got a few to try out. Some users want an "Enterprise" tablet, something that they can treat like a tablet but still have a full dock-able workstation, etc.
Got the idea that maybe one would make a nice device for a new guest check-in kiosk in our lobby, something that could sit on a pedestal that people could touch or type on. Then we looked at how to secure it.
For this price they couldn't include a slot for a lock?
Way back in the days of CRTs* worth nicking**, there was a precursor to the Kensington lock which you epoxied to the case.
But I fail to see why one would put one of these to kiosk duty in a public space when there are other machines that could easily fill that role for a fraction of the price.
* Stuff like an 21" Eizo or NEC Multisync
** "Did anyone see an Arnold Schwarzenegger lookalike trying to inconspicuously leave the premises with a rather bulging jacket?"
Not sure a Kensington Lock has ever saved a Laptop or other device in my experience - yet 4 expanding cheap 10mm bolts with large washers through the base of a Desktop, into a concrete floor, has. The mini tower server machine was kicked to sh.it, but it remained intact, and better the still the disk was there and still worked, some hardware survived, not the motherboard though. The times we live in I suppose.
If you have £50 to spare, I recommend ArtRage. It is a semi-pro drawing program which is so simple to use that 5 years old children can use it confidently (mine did), and the brushes and paint mixing and other tools are very well made. It works best with a Wacom tablet, but this laptop already have a pen anyway. My wife recently moved from ArtRage to gimp (to complete a drawing course) and she keeps repeating that ArtRage is better (and she keeps getting back to it). It may lack 90% of gimp features, but when it comes to actually drawing it is hard to beat.
If you're still locked into legacy software try Irfanview.
Claims to be a free image viewer. Which it isn't. OK, it's free (but not, at least when I last looked, open source), and if it can't open an image you'll probably struggle to find anything similar that can. It's actually also a very intuitive and capable image editor.
I believe it can be installed under Wine, but I've not tried myself
> If you're still locked into legacy software try Irfanview.
> Claims to be a free image viewer.
It is. As in free beer.
> It's actually also a very intuitive and capable image editor.
It's excellent, have used it for the longest while.
> I believe it can be installed under Wine ...
I use it under Wine in Mint 17.1
Cheers.
The boss has one of these. She likes the latest and shiniest stuff--finally dropped her Lenovo laptop for this one.
The only real problem seems to be that the 3000x2000 display doesn't really translate to anything else and external monitors sometimes don't wake up. The Microsoft dock we got didn't work at all for displays and the Dell dock we got works, but only one external display can be 4K to semi-match the desktop arrangement on the Book.
But the twin 4K externals we got for her do wake on a reboot, just not always when hitting the mouse or keyboard. Definitely irritating when putting in a full day at the office.
Price for this irksome setup? Over $4,000.
Just to get the full Windows 10/hybrid experience. At the moment, I think the OS is the Achilles heel of this device; Windows 10* still feels unfinished. That said, when I replace my old MacBook, in the next year, I will take a serious look at Windows and Surface.
* Though I do quite like the overall experience.
I looked at these briefly when they first came out here in Seattle.
The hinge is...Interesting. It is very well engineered and nice to look at. However, its a bit bulky and close up very tidily. mechanically it is fine, it just looks weird when it is closed.. The Lenovo is far superior and nicer to look at.
The price. You guys are getting screwed. I think it listed for $1500 or so.
The tablet gimmick. Meh. Tablets are fun for around the house, or as a chart plotter on my boat. For productivity, I have yet to see them in wide use in the enterprise.
Fit and finish are very nice (other than the weird hinge). I suspect that these are made by HP as the material feel is similar to the Envy I got instead; magnesium/aluminum. Keyboard looks very similar as well. (what, you thought Microsoft made these themselves? hahaha)
I think detractors for buying these are price and flexibility. I got my i7 (skylake) Envy for $850. It's half an inch thick, fast as fuck, and looks fantastic. I could almost buy two for the price of one Pro. Plus, I have Mint on it (dual boot win 10 for a few apps). Disable secure boot and you are off to the races with no nagging by MS.
To each his own, but I don't see this as more than a niche device.
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