The life and times of Surface, Microsoft's odds-defying fondleslab Difficult as it might be to comprehend, Microsoft has been shipping Surface for just under five years. Historically a software company, Microsoft's decision to branch into hardware – or at least designing and selling – was widely dismissed. In 2012, after Microsoft revealed its plans, then Acer chief exec JT Wang advised …
The form factor is horrible, especially without the expensive keyboard
The device itself is far too expensive
Microsoft can't even get their own hardware to work properly with their own OS
Data slurping .......
Greatly overestimated battery life
I would probably buy it if it was the last PC on earth, but there are far better solutions out there.
It's still better than anything Apple sell though :)
The article was about the Surface range, but you've focused on the convertible tablet model.
Yeah, sone of them have had software issues at launch - in a way Apple MacBooks rarely do - but I suspect most of us here are the type to wait a few months after any product is released.
Form factor of the Surface Tablet is subjective and dependant on what it's being used for. The Surface Book appears to be not too compromised as a laptop.
Ultimately, the good news for users is that other laptop / convertible vendors have upped their game, especially with respect to touchpads and screens. And hey, there's now even some damned good laptops being sold with Linux and 1st party drivers and support.
Indeed. I in fact waited until just before the launch of the SP4 before I bought myself and La Señora a pair of SP3s! Have not regretted the purchase for a moment. We have (thankfully) been spared the battery/sleep issues and both devices have done sterling service for almost 2 years now and suit our user case admirably. You are of course correct with regard to your point about the effect on the lazy greedy barstewards OEMs given several of the devices now being emitted by HP, Dell and Lenovo (for example) showing more imagination and quality than we have ever before seen from that bunch. The improvement in what is available for Linux aficionados is also, of course, to be welcomed - variety and genuine innovation is after all what serves the consumer best.
The can't make up its mind if it's for a phone, tablet or desktop OS kills it.
The appalling lack of GUI customisation for user kills it.
The appalling updates model kills it.
The default slurp everything to MS kills it.
The increasing emphasis on turning Windows Cloud based like Chrome OS and unfinished and more for consumption than creation like Android kills it.
A nice idea staggeringly badly done.
I have Lenovo Tablet/laptop with Wacom stylus & touch screen. It was garbage with Win 10, almost reasonable with Linux Mint + Mate + Redmond theme etc.
I have Linx x86 1010 tablet with Keyboard and Win10. No doubt the surface is far superior HW, but can the Windows 10 be that much difference. Worse than Vista or ME. I've used EVERY windows since 2.0 and Windows 286. Windows 3.1 was first usable, In many ways Win 10 is worse.
Yep, you can avoid the Microsoft slurp by avoiding Microsoft products. That only leaves the Google slurp, the Facebook slurp, the Telco slurp, <insert your national security agency here> slurp, credit agencies, banks, utility providers, ...
Straight face icon because that's how North Koreans avoid being picked off the street and interrogated
Perhaps those managers /execs / board members remember being told when tablets were hot that laptops were dead and they could use a tablet instead. And then they tried to do some real work and got burned!! Hence why laptops and proper convertibles like the Surface Pro are still so popular.
I have a Surface Pro 2, with keyboard, it's our perferred travel computer. Like having a PC in your bag. Lighter and more powerful than the Win7 laptop we had at the time. Bought a BlueTooth mouse for it, Only reason we haven't bought a newer one is that it does everything we want, so there's no need.
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The device is very nice - the issue was and is pointy haired bosses who believe there should be the same UI regardless of the human interface devices used.
There's no way a touch UI can be the same of a keyboard and mouse one. "Metro" works well when you use a Surface in tablet mode, but gets in the way when you use it in laptop mode. OS and applications should become smart enough to change UI depending on the mode, and it wouldn't be very difficult to achieve it.
For example Outlook could switch to a simpler, touch oriented interface when in tablet mode and you're simply reading emails (and maybe just writing a quick response), and switch to the more complex "desktop" one when a keyboard has been attached to write more complex emails. I understand it requires more code, but that's the only right way.
The stubbornness of designers and executives on inflicting the same UI on users regardless of the context is hard to understand.
Oh well, even web sites became just a waste of screen space since designers decided to force mobes oriented ones on every user, with just big images and no information...
MS gave up on the universal Metro interface when Windows 8 failed. Win 10 now happily lets desktop users ignore Metro and people with tabletty things can have Metro on the tablet and desktop when the keyboard's attached - or even just desktop. So I don't really see what you're complaining about?
The weird thing in my opinion is how Metro everwhere failed to win at Microsoft even in the glory days of Sinofsky - when he was forcing Windows 8 down everyone's throats. He didn't manage to get enough resources to the phone division to get that to match with the desktop - which was surely the whole bloody point of the exercise. Meanwhile the Office team ignored him completely, and carried on operating as it touch didn't exist, which seems to be their attitude still.
You can completely avoid Metro in Windows 8.1... I use 8.1, and I wouldn't tolerate any of that Metro nonsense, just as I won't with UWP. I use a little program called Metro Killer, and it does just what it says on the tin-- Metro is inaccessible. I don't need it anyway, as 8.1 has a perfectly functional Control Panel except for a very few things, but those can be done in other ways (MMC snapins, for one). Nearly all of the functionality of Control Panel is still intact in 8, and you can remove all the apps and block out Metro and still have a completely functional PC.
You can't avoid UWP in 10, since the entire settings app is in UWP, and it's gradually taking over Control Panel's function with every new Win 10 update. The idea is to eventually be rid of Control Panel, which is exactly opposite of what I want-- nothing but Win32 interface on my non-touch PCs. Metro and UWP are for touch devices, and I don't have one of those (and I never plan to).
Is settings in Win 10 so bad? It seems perfectly fine to operate with either mouse or touchscreen - so what's the problem?
The thing that I see as bad is that there's a separate settings and control panel at all. This stuff should all be in one place. But I don't particularly care which it is. And they may as well make it tablet friendly as not.
At least FIVE places on Win10 to go and change stuff. Some "settings" vanish according to window mode or how you navigate to them.
It's a mess. It's not even stable. Basic GUI aspects customisable for the last 25 years are gone.
Things are tucked away in inappropriate places. See setting Metered connection on your WiFi and setting and exception for driver downloads. Or ALL the GUI privacy settings apart from Policies or Services. Is that text a description or a setting? No GUI clues.
Anyone that thinks W10 is any good at all is only doing trivial stuff with default settings and doesn't care about privacy, stability, performance. productivity. If I wanted a chrome book, I'd buy one.
"Anyone that thinks W10 is any good at all is only doing trivial stuff with default settings and doesn't care about privacy, stability, performance. productivity. If I wanted a chrome book, I'd buy one"
I would say that if you spend all day everyday changing your settings, rather than doing them once, and forgetting it, YOU are the un-productive trivial user.
My windows 10 is rock solid, I don't need to change the settings every 2 minutes, and the only instability I have had is when pushing overclocks too far.
I manage to program games, and make music without any issue. May I suggest your inability to leave the computer alone is the cause of your issues?
No, I want to change them ONCE, when I unpack it.
Or change metering on WiFi if I move to a place using capped broadband.
Some things I'd like to change I can't
So now the w10 stuff has either been wiped (to an OS where I CAN change the stuff once!) or gathering dust.
@staggers
You change the settings once, by writing a powershell script, then you add the script to start up. It checks if the settings have changed and corrects any that have. Think of it as a config file.
It's a proper 'Change Once' tactic that I as a power user, use. I could spend time faffing about with GUI control panels as per the original poster, but hey, that's just unproductive...
Sadly NO. UWP is the same thing except worse. Because now they sell less phones and it's stupider graphics style and less customisable. It's designed for a market that MS has lost and alienating desktop users. Where MS MAKES money.
it's a fact too, that an application is either designed for keyboard & mouse OR Touch or Stylus. Widgets are OK with touch. Serious application are crap with touch and tiring and slower with a stylus. Unless they are sketch centric.
The Win10 is a horrible mix of touch and mouse/Keyboard GUI, with a Tablet & Desktop mode that is stupid. MS touch has really improved since XP Tablet edition, if you have ONLY "modern" AKA Metro style apps (widgets) and Tablet mode on a 7" or smaller screen.
MS Stylus has hardly progressed for REGULAR applications on Windows since XP Tablet edition.
You have a few flagship surface stylus programs, the phone style tile based apps and then the bulk of productivity software needs keyboard and mouse for day long use. It's attractive in showroom or the first few days, then it it's crap compared to Windows 7.1 or Linux or XP or older OS X versions on laptops or ultrabooks.
Nice HW, but where is the widespread innovative application support and a consistent GUI? Changing the things you still can change in Windows 10 is mess. You sometimes even have to run powershell scripts to re-fix edge after updates.
People that think W10 is good obviously have little experience PROPERLY setting up computers or using alternate versions of windows (properly installed), never mind OS9, OSX, Linux, NT4.0 etc.
Windows 10 interface on both Surface and phones is far worse than the 8 one. Again, they tried to force the same interface, just the other way round this time, with a strange hybrid with tiles inside the menu, and a taskbar that is far less usable in tablet mode than swiping from the left side.
The hamburger menu in the upper left corner is quite a stupid idea from a usability perspective. It's where Windows 2.0 system menu was, but probably was the wrong place even then - that's why we got a "close" icon on the left side, instead of having to click the system menu twice. The right lower corner ellipses was better thought, as swiping from the bottom (I don't hold a tablet from the upper side).
Office has been redesigned too to be touch friendly - don't know what version you're using but 2013 and 2016 are designed for touch too - but they still lack a "touch first" interface in tablet mode.
"Metro" is dead. It was the touch-centric UI toolkit for Windows 8.x. Desktop users (understandably) hated its large controls, and it never got momentum as a tablet API.
Windows 10 UWP, the replacement, is best described as a touch-friendly desktop application toolkit. Hover your mouse over a scrollable pane, and the scrollbar appears, but if you drag the panel with your finger, it does intertial-flick scrolling as people now expect. More subtly, the item spacing of popup menu items is wider when you tapped to reveal the menu, but narrower when you clicked with the mouse to do so.
The downside is that app developers have to provide access to features through both mouse actions and finger gestures, but it can be done.
However, the big deal for Surface has been the stylus/pen. Unlike earlier attempts at PC-stylus interaction, the stylus and your finger are recognised as two separate types of input device, so you can pan and zoom with your left hand while writing with the pen in your right.
Actually, if you've got a pen, do get the "Plumbago" app from the Store - I've found it's the best replacement for a paper notepad for sketching out ideas (basically: it works like a good old-fashioned paper pad that also has undo and cut-n-paste)
However, the big deal for Surface has been the stylus/pen. Unlike earlier attempts at PC-stylus interaction, the stylus and your finger are recognised as two separate types of input device
My old Vista tablet PC did this. It had the Wacom stylus and a resistive touchscreen. It had really good palm recognition, so you could rest your hand on the screen with the tablet, but still point at stuff with the other hand - and it had gesture controls you could still operate with the other hand. Though the gesture controls were unreliable, and I think I eventually got pissed off and switeched them off.
I really liked it, but not so much that I didn't replace it with an iPad the month they came out. But I've missed having a stylus on my iPad most days since. Now the iPad 3 finally needs to be replaced I'm thinking through what to get. iPad Pro, Android tablet (cheapy or maybe Samsung still do the Note line) or Surface.
Plumbago is immeasurably more user oriented than the horrific OneNote (which forces you to exit the application and go to a website you've never previously visited if you want to do something unexpected like.. delete a note).
It's still sadly flawed; once it matures it could become an excellent product but the rough edges make it get in the way when you're trying to take notes in meetings or using your tablet as a two person whiteboard in a face-to-face meeting.
Today I splurged £2.49 on Nebo. So far it's proving bloody excellent. Handwriting recognition is very good (but not perfect - not that anybody would believe a claim that it was), the way it lets you organise notes is logical and very usable, pen pressure support sadly missing, but where it's really won me over is its ability to translate and prettify hand drawn diagrams. I'll need to test it in live meetings and see if it holds up to those pressures, but even if it needs 2-3 minutes of tidy up following a meeting before producing PDF output it looks like it could be really rather marvellous.
Not that it supports PDF. It'll output to Word or HTML, so I need to play. But this looks like the tool that takes my shiny new Surface Pro from 'toy' to 'business tool'.
it's hard to argue that Apple's iPad Pro is not inspired by the Surface Pro's success
It isn't you know: many of us were using the term I-Pad Pro before there was a Surface. It was the market that Apple went after once I-Pad sales started to fall. Apple has deliberately avoided going down the same route because it wants to avoid cannibalising laptop sales and it also avoids difficult decisions on the UI.
The Surface Pros are nice computers largely because they became laptops with touch screens rather than tablets that grew keyboards. As to whether they can be considered a success would I suspect depend on sales numbers and I haven't seen anything to suggest that this is the case. They might well be the best laptops for Windows but this is a shrinking market. In the meantime it looks like Apple is doing a better job at milking its market and coming up things like Samsung's DeX look likely to eat even more of Microsoft's lunch.
Those OSX users who benefit from a high quality stylus driven screen (digital artists) have always had the option of using Wacom kit - for a hefty price. They have been in the past good reason why people in that sector used OSX and not Windows (colour management, display scaling etc - but I AFAIK Windows has caught up).
That use-case has to be a parent of the iPad Pro as much as the Surface.
The Surface 2 Pro can be easily packed into a lot of photo bags which don't accept a 12" one. In the field, and when traveling, the size is much more comfortable, and the screen is not really "too small" unless you need to work on large spreadsheets... it was the perfect replacement, and much more powerful, for netbooks, something you can always carry around.
So Microsoft flogged off the original RTs to schools on the cheap, to clear the stock.
Great they said.
No management, no cloning. Tiny drives endlessly filling up with Windows crap. Days to install updates. Constant worries about them being on the wifi un-patched. Kids resetting them and messing up the settings.
A great legacy.
We recalled around 60 of them recently, at least the ones that didn't fall down the stairs and smash. They won't be going back out.
MS has done a good job recently with Surface after the disasters that typified the device before SP3. They've created quality built, interesting form factors and wacky accessories which genuinely interest people (though not always enough to buy them) like the endearingly pointless yet futuristic Surface Dial and they have courted the creative market as well as the business market well. They also have listened to the criticism of previous devices and responded well. If you take the SP 2017, battery life is now amazing in most scenarios and the pen is really good.
Lappability will always be precarious, it's just the nature of a kickstand device. The price will always be high as this is a machine of almost Apple-like quality using premium materials and design intended to almost be a reference Microsoft device, and you do get what you pay for despite what some people think. Microsoft don't want it to be the cheapest option, that's what put people off of the PC market to begin with...cheap plastic sh*te from Acer (amongst others) with too many corners cut and filled to the brim with bloatware and stickers.
Not having a viable mobile option on MS is a massive, massive mistake on MS's part though, which makes people reluctant to get into the Windows ecosystem unless they have to for business and threatens to make them simply irrelevant in the future from a consumer standpoint. I personally own a SP3 and have had good use out of it as a business device but would have gone back to the MacBook pro if it wasn't so wallet bustingly expensive now, so that my phone and laptop were from the same ecosystem. Upgrading to SP 2017 is similarly expensive for the model I want though, so will probably bite the bullet and get the MBP as I miss the bigger screen and the proper Apple feel. £2000 for a convertible laptop (with all the accessories I need, even one as nice as the Surface feels at least twice what it should cost.
For that kind of money, I expect something I can keep using even after the original battery fails, as they do when they're discharged and recharged a bunch of times. Nothing that expensive should be disposable, and that includes Apple devices too. Dell's XPS 13 gets a 7 of 10 for repairability on ifixit.com, and it's thin and light... it can be done if a maker wants the device to be repairable instead of disposable.
(It normally is whatever the hardware, to be fair.... New toaster? Yeah, nice toast, but can I blat it and put a PROPER linux on there?)
Pfft, Linux on my toaster? Not likely mate!
You can have my Surface Pro 3 when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers. Actually my second -- I trashed the screen on my first and replaced it recently with ... a Surface Pro 3.
Portable, quick start, quick stop, and now plugged into my 34 by 15 monitor. Will soon take two seconds to disconnect it, and open it in a meeting at a client's office.
The article is correct -- the laptop makers would not pay attention to Microsoft's advice to build a Surface, so the software company did. Now Microsoft is now concentrating on Cloud, IOT, and SAAS. The rest of us ignore their advice at our peril. And once again Redmond will tell us "We warned you".
The only fly in the ointment I can see is if the OEMs decide to do something like complaining to the EU antitrust bodies - if MS control their own hardware and their own software on the Surface book, how can they get away with telling us we can't sell Android laptops?
Because don't tell me Android laptops wouldn't sell. You know they would. To be honest, I can see a use case for them replacing Windows laptops at a corporate level - there's enough office-like apps on Android the average management type wouldn't need much other than that.
They're called Chromebooks - many of which will soon be able to run Android apps. An Android-only laptop? No thanks.
Chromebooks can be updated by Google more easily than Android, since the IS doesn't require support from the original silicon manufacturers. Plus, they have their own apps which were designed to work with mouse and keyboard in the first place.
No, Chromebooks aren't laptops that run Android. Think Android Remix.
And my point was that given MS previous anti-competitive behaviours, they undoubtedly have an anti-Linux clause in the OEMs - "thou shalt not deliver non-Windows laptops unto the retail channel".
Yes, you can get laptops that run Linux or Android, as well as Chromebooks. But I've never seen one on sale outside Amazon, have you?
Once they sorted out the drivers I've found it to be a great laptop. It's expensive, but IT dept pays so that isn't my problem!
I like the look of the Surface Pro (5) as well, but the Surface Book is more stable and I like the feel of a proper keyboard.
I had the choice of the Dell XPS instead, but the screen ratio wasn't right - the 3:2 of the Surface Book works much better for me.
If you went back to even 2014 I can't see that I would have believed that I would be happy with a Microsoft own brand laptop, but here we are!
What about the ASUS Transformer? - to pick a similar device from the same timeframe
The article talks about apple having shiny laptops and the PC having square plastic boxes - true, to a point.
The reason for this was because it was cheaper - you get what you paid for. You spent about the same amount on PC hardware as you would on a Mac, you got equivalent hardware. Also my mid-priced laptop from 2008 still looks pretty sleek and modern (though obv not at ultrabook slimness)
Have been using an SP4 now for a year or so and very pleased with it. When I'm travelling or in a plane, the device is compact and light to travel well. I can even use it 'during takeoff and landing' as the airline crew see it as a tablet even with keyboard folded behind.
Back in the office, with a magnetic click, it charges and docks to two 24" monitors and is just a comfortably powerful PC but exactly where I left it previously.
Remember that requirement is what *I* need from a PC solution. One format doesn't fit all.
We have some of the similar Dell tablets/PCs and they just don't cut the mustard in terms of quality, battery life, etc. Yes, they are cheaper but that is a price:position thing.
The biggest thing that lets down the use of the Surface is the bugs and quirks in Windows 10 that aren't specific to the SP4. As mentioned previously, why doesn't Outlook have a proper Tablet mode, not just a function with slightly wider scroll bars for fat fingers?
Yes, sure there are other O/S and client programs but Win7 & 10 + Office 2010/365 are business standard tools which are good enough and so widely used.
People are buying Surface as a laptop to run PC software on, NOT as a tablet nor are they running tablet software on it! People are buying iPad Pro as a tablet to run tablet apps, not as a laptop to run Mac software (since it can't) The idea that the iPad Pro is a copy of Surface is laughable, they serve two completely different markets!
I will give Microsoft credit for getting the "ultrabook" right, after the PC OEMs had taken the original concept that aped Macbook Air of a quality ultralight laptop and cheaped it out into plastic junk. Microsoft went the other way and charged even more, but built a quality device (at least the one with the proper keyboard, not the typepad)
The idea that the iPad Pro is a copy of Surface is laughable, they serve two completely different markets!
They don't, really. And that argument has been used multiple times in the opposite direction to explain why tablets like iPad didn't matter to the PC market, and it was equally incorrect then. You can get Microsoft Office on iPads these days, and that covers over half of the things people use computers for in "industry" - for everything else, there's RDP/Citrix.
The iPad Pro is absolutely Apple's copy of the Surface, and you'd have to be living well within Apple's world not to realise this. It adds the same physical advantages that Surface had over using an iPad for prolonged productivity work, and it adds them exactly the same way: with a bigger screen (obvious), a clip-on keyboard (why not a clamshell? why not wireless?) and a pen (oh, sorry, it's a "pencil"...)
One can claim that iPad Pro is "a better iPad for doing work" (not your words, but it's the gist of Apple's marketing of it), but that slogan also describes Surface.
For what it's worth, I've a Macbook Air and a Surface 3. The Macbook has a nicer keyboard, but the Surface lets me use it as a notepad. My next laptop will have touch input.
The original iPad has had keyboards available from third parties since before the first Surface came out and "invented" the concept. So the only thing it brought was a bigger screen and a pen (which it doesn't come with, so hardly everyone is buying/using it) Some might say it copied Samsung, not Microsoft.
I've yet to see anyone using an iPad Pro as a laptop, though they will use it that way in limited fashion if they have to do more typing than is convenient with the screen. Just like some people used the original iPad for years before that. I've seen exactly ZERO people using a Surface Pro as a tablet, everyone I know with one uses it as a PC 100% of the time.
Things most people (particularly non-geeks) want:
1. Reliable hardware - i.e. they don't have to return it because the hard drive or some component died after 2 months.
2. Reliable software - if it shows any bootup or error messages, forget it.
3. Something which looks aesthetically pleasing.
They want the whole package. Not to have to know about different vendors or manufacturers offerings.
And everyone acts surprised about why MacBooks have sold so well!
Instead of letting world + dog put together a bunch of random components in different cases, use the same set of hardware to produce a given model. Make sure the software is free of errors or incompatibility with said hardware (easier when you know exactly what the hardware is).
Microsoft have finally started to grasp the concept of you cannot just throw any old shit into a plastic case, install a buggy OS and expect people to put up with it. The trouble is, they have a reputation for doing just that, especially with all the Surface crap that came before this.
You can bash Apple all you want, but nobody else has come close to giving people what they really want in terms of a laptop, or tablet + keyboard combo. And when I say "people" I don't mean just people who read The Reg. I mean ordinary, every day people.
I was making a living in IT for at least five years before anyone ever made a pointing device part of my standard hardware setup, so .... I'm pretty comfortable with a keyboard.
Apple, MS & others have been shoving pointing devices & GUI's down my throat for so long that I've finally gotten to *like* them! Then along comes the phone and the tablet and "gestures" which originally just caused browsers to scroll oddly if I was too far right on the touch pad ... (better stick to that keyboard after all) and you know what?: I got used to them too! In the meantime, they brought multi-tasking to the masses by introducing the notion of windowed interfaces which could be minimized, and brought up side by side on the same screen, and...
Then Windows 8 comes along trying to capitalize on the fact that the Apple juggernaut had two completely different interfaces (iOS & MacOS X) even as they were rapidly converging their hardware offerings. Unfortunately, by trying to be all things to all folks (<Alt>-C & start typing! OR touch the far right side of your screen, OR...) they failed everyone. (Metro of course puts paid to the whole multi-tasking as multi-windowing paradigm as well of course).
That said, my Win 8 notebook (never upgraded to .1 but configured to be desktop-centric: I literally never see the Metro interface) is starting to flake out, and rather than get a Win 10 replacement I bought my first Mac Book Pro. It's got a decent bash shell, a nice responsive UI, .... what's not to like (other than Safari, but it served to download Chrome & Firefox quite well)!?
Now, if only it had a touchscreen....
A bit late to reply, but I've gone the other way to you (about two decades of Mac use, but got a bit tired of Apple's hardware removing connectors I used, and their OS releases assuming that my whole computing life revolved around an iPhone, one of which I have never owned).
With Windows 10, I not only have touch, but also a better bash shell than MacOS did... (unless you specifically want the BSD versions of the core Unix commands, that is; and while I wholeheartedly agree that BSD is a better Unix than Linux in many, many ways, people won't pay me to build software that runs on it, so Linux is what I need...)
Having apt-get alone has convinced me to stay with Windows, rather than go back to Macs. And having now used one recently, I'm pretty much decided on an i5 Surface Laptop as my next hardware purchase (as opposed to a 13" MacBook).
I still use my Surface 2 RT - its perfectly serviceable for browsing and light office work. The battery life is still good and the device has held up well despite mild abuse.
I also have a Dell XPS 13 which is very very lovely but am still tempted by a SP 2017 model for 'convertable' use.
Acer chief exec JT Wang advised their partner not to do it, saying: "It is not something you are good at so please think twice."
Could say the same thing about Acer, their hardware is cheap garbage. Admittedly I haven't tried anything from Acer in the last couple of years but a number of years back I did some work for a client who had all Acer hardware - servers, PC's & laptops. The server would rebuild it's RAID array on every reboot, a firmware update would fix this but also destroy all the data. The PC's had enough USB power to run a USB thumb drive but not an external 2.5" USB drive from a single USB port. The laptops were so flimsy they'd bend by just looking at them.
Last time I touched an Acer was when a family member bought a cheap Acer laptop and asked me to set it up for her. So riddled with bloatware from the factory it was ridiculous. Never seen anything like it. Format C: and reload Windows from scratch was the best cure.
As an experiment every year or so I try out the latest version of Linux Mint as an alternative to Windows. This year all went well until I got to two things that my use case needs. The first is to properly use my HP 7520 all-in-one as I do a lot of scanning of both documents and photos. My short comment on this is that no sane person would be prepared to put in amount of work required to get this running even adequately compared to how it functions automatically under Windows. The second is getting my NAS box to connect and run. Sure you can do it but the effort involved! For people who just want to get things done Linux on the desktop is still a long way from usable I'm afraid. Also, to my surprise, for my small development needs these days it's easier to configure and run Python on Windows than on Linux Mint. Having said all that I am perfectly happy with Linux on the Raspberry Pi - a good use case I guess. By the way I am an old guy who last worked on proper Unix in the 1990's running large RDBMS, even then the front end was always Windows - easier to develop and looked nicer for the end user.
..at least not in the business world. I feel they are a nice toy for home use or perhaps light use by someone who has simple IT needs. They do have a beautiful display and an accurate touch screen.
That said, the lack of USB ports, cardboard pizza box keyboard, and awful touchpad make these terrible to use IMHO compared to a proper laptop. We bought these like hotcakes when they came out. (not our decision, but made by management) After the first few, "machine envy" took over: "Ooh, when can I get one?!" The clincher is the poor reliability we experienced, combined with the glued-together chassis making battery replacement, upgrade, and data recovery difficult when they fail. We have a drawer full of broken Surfaces and ones that were returned by users who wanted to go back to their old laptops. The docks were very troublesome too.
Dell's line of tablets show some promise, and they are serviceable. (mostly) Annoyingly, Dell's USB docks have been troublesome, and there is no video output to connect to equipment in situations where wireless is not available.
I think I'll hold on to my laptop for the time being and I try to dissuade users from wanting a tablet. I rather like Asus' line of "convertible" laptops though.
"Microsoft's OEMs were pushing out cheap plastic boxes, low-resolution screens and unreliable hard drives..."
Agree with that except the last part about unreliable hard drives. Yeah SSDs are faster and more reliable but they are also more expensive and offer limited capacity compared to HDDs. And generally, I find hard drives incredibly reliable. I can't remember the last time I saw a failure. Yes there will be people on here that have had bad experiences and will never use a hard drive again but for most people most of the time, hard drives are fine and the extra capacity they bring is useful when you need to do real work.
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