
Why would anyone want any Microsoft Surface?
They seem to be over priced junk, without the glitter of Apple.
Businesses looking to pick up a Surface Pro tablet or laptop powered by Intel's latest generation of Core Ultra processors can expect to pay at least $400 more compared to Microsoft's existing Arm-based offerings. The expanded business lineup, announced by the Windows goliath Thursday, now offers customers a choice of Surface …
They always have been.. See Surface RT, Windows Phone, etc..
Useless, compared to an AMD or Intel device equipped with Linux/Wine, or indeed an Arm device with no trace of Microsoft shitware whatsoever, for those with no need for legacy software
They are trapped in a valley of doom with this, I fea.. rejoice
> They always have been..
As iFixit said of one of the earlier models: "The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it."
> See Surface RT
MS may have made numerous attempts at Windows on non-x86 hardware. And they may all have failed, with anyone who actually trusted MS abandoned and left unsupported with yet another of MS's throw-enough-mud-at-the-wall failures.
But *this* time is different. This time it'll be successful. Promise.
Unless it isn't, in which case it'll be Windows RT, CE, Windows Phone 7, 8, Silverlight, blah blah blah again and you'll be left with another lump of useless, abandoned MS tech.
At this stage, no-one in their right mind should be buying into a new MS technology until- and if- it's shown itself to be a proven and established success that won't be ditched six months or a year down the line.
"At this stage, no-one in their right mind should be buying into a new MS technology until- and if- it's shown itself to be a proven and established success that won't be ditched six months or a year down the line."
Which is close to a self-fulfilling prophecy of dooe.
> Which is close to a self-fulfilling prophecy of [doom?]
While I agree with this in principle- it had already occurred to me previously- at this stage that's MS's problem.
They dug that hole for themselves over the years, and it's no-one else's responsibility to sacrifice their time and money digging MS out of it. Especially when we all know there's a good chance it'll end the same way regardless.
Admittedly, some of their newer models have much higher repairability scores. Not all of their models have the same problems. Unfortunately, they seem to have decided that they can command much higher prices than comparable laptops. Maybe they do have buyers at those prices, but that won't be me. I don't see a Surface as having an advantage to justify its increased price. At least Apple has Mac OS, though they've also driven me away with repairability decreases and increasingly unjustifiable pricing at least for laptops.
At this stage, no-one in their right mind should be buying into a new MS technology until- and if- it's shown itself to be a proven and established success that won't be ditched six months or a year down the line.
Modern ARM based Windows is 7 years old, how long do you have to wait?
Windows RT was a flop, but a flop 13 years ago.
The current Windows on ARM is 7 years old, and despite being Qualcomm only for a good few of those is still around. Other ARM powered Windows laptops review well, so you're probably fine.
(Okay, I wouldn't get a surface, but unless you have any specific Intel requirements* then modern ARM based Windows portables seem fine; Plus you can always put Linux on them**).
* Which for some people may just be 'worry', which is fine too.
** Obligatory 'Run Linux' suggestion.
Yup. I used a Surface Pro X for five years as my main travelling machine, and it was glorious. So I bought a Surface Pro 11 as soon as they were released, and that too is glorious. Windows on ARM is not going away, I would say.
Buy what you like, but do not write off other people's choices based on some weird herd instinct.
GJC
>> The Surface Laptop (........) There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, <<
A generally great statement, however, my Surface Pro 3 from July 2015 was successfully updated to Linux Mint back in the day (it came with W8). Now current at LM 22.1 it runs just great. It's the only Microsoft product in the place, and will stay that way until its demise. When it dies, it'll get e-wasted of course.
We used them for some staff who travel a lot, although personally I was never that keen on them for business use.
Originally an Intel based Surface was price comparable with smaller laptops and had some advantages, but the price has risen considerably and procurement became difficult - at one point the MS Business store would not provide a VAT Invoice, apparently due to Brexit (no, I never figured that out either). At the same time smaller, lighter laptops have become the norm and, thanks to COVID, people don't travel as much.
Because you have a useful light tablet/laptop combo which can use real applications, not mobile apps. I use mine a lot, I can easily fix it to my tripod, for architectural phtography and still-life focus stacking, and run the real Lightroom on it (and other applications), and store images locally, not some "app" that can use cloud storage only. The pen is also very useful for such tasks - Apple too had to "rinnegate" Jobs and add a pen to its tablet.
That said, again Nadella shows the contempt he has for customers. Why the Intel models should be available to business only? Whlie Apple can force develoopers to switch to whatever CPU it has decided to use because it control the hardware stack, Microsoft can't, and those getting a Surface do it because of the applications it can run. If I was running just a browser I would get an iPad.
Actually, business people just running Office and a browser are those who can more easily switch to the ARM version, the longer autonomy would also fit them well. Power users, less so.
I can sort of see it with the tablets - I wouldn't buy them, but I can see that they are one of the main offerings in that niche, if you need that sort of thing.
But I really can't see why anyone would buy the laptops. They are overpriced, under-specced (unless you pay a fortune), and don't seem to have a great reputation for reliability. I can get something better from Dell, of an equivalent size and probably at a lower price (and quite probably similarly from Lenovo / HP as well - I've not checked recently what they offer in this sort of area).
Probably a Dell. My company now issues HPs, and my Zbook has a far lower build quality than my previous Dell Precision. And while I never got a BSOD with the Dell, they became quite common with the HP - there's something in the hardware that isn't good, although a memory test didn't report anything. Support just said to update BIOS, firmware and drivers - which I did more than once, they mitigate somehow the problem, but never fully resolved it. Never had a BSOS with my Surface as well.
You might be interested in Surface laptops if you need the touch screen, pen input and other accessories. For an average business use they might be too expensive, but that's true for Apple as well.
"You might be interested in Surface laptops if you need the touch screen, pen input and other accessories. For an average business use they might be too expensive, but that's true for Apple as well."
Touch screens are an option with a lot of Dell models now too.
Yep. The fing annoy me so the small handful of ones we had we're not getting rid of.
I personally had a Surface Pro 4 with the most RAM it could have. Thought I'd use it more but I didn't. The keyboard was annoying, the lack of ports and it just was overal shit. So sold it.
I'm not too happy that Microsoft arbitrarily decided that my first generation Surface Book laptop cannot run Windows 11 (which I dislike) and are soon going to abandon Windows 10. I chose it because I needed a touch screen and high resolution for software testing. It survived a replacement battery and is still good for developing software with Visual Studio. However I needed to build and test software for ARM64 processors so bought a Surface 7 laptop. It is much lighter, very fast and has good battery life. It has run all the x86 programs that I've needed without incident, so mustn't grumble - so far.
Staff where I work are offered a choice between a Lenovo Thinkpad (Intel) or Surface laptop (Snapdragon). The overwhelming majority are now on Surface, and complaints are few and far between. We're not in a situation where we're rolling out the absolute latest Intel generation yet, but Windows on ARM64 for 99% of people is absolutely fine. While we're a Microsoft shop, we really owe Apple for proving that ARM architecture works well in the desktop environment.
if I were Intel I'd be worried.
Who would want windows 11 on anything? That hellishly nagging piece of noisy spyware, that keeps changing the ground beneath your feet with no warning, A weird schizophrenic experience where you don't know if you're on some kind of psychedelic spying social media or an operating system.
No thanks!
I'll take the calm of a Linux desktop any day. I need to get shit done, you know
Surface Pro 9s (intel) worked brilliantly for us, they were far superior to 7s and 8s. Everyone who had one has been really happy with it which is more than can be said for the previous iteration.
Noting Surface Pro 9s were an older model, and the 10 for business was more expensive, we brought in a single Surface Pro 11 (ARM) to test. I’ve used it extensively and find it really good to work on, it runs all my powershell scripts, Microsoft Office, Teams, Firefox. That’s most of my work covered.
However, there were some core applications we use which wouldn’t work with emulation. Our AV/firewall software does have an ARM client so we switched to that and everything was fine. With VPN, printer and scanner drivers we were not so lucky, and when contacted both vendors said they had no plans to support Windows on ARM. It’s not that we are using an old product, or that they haven’t caught up yet. I expect if they’ve considered it at all they’ve concluded it’s not worth the effort to develop for Windows ARM considering its market share.
The icing on the cake was when I tried to find Windows ARM64 media for any potential reinstall and it wasn’t even available yet. Microsoft may have remedied this now, but everything about it smacks of a product rushed to market half finished.
Whatever your personal feelings towards Microsoft, it is a good thing for the market that they are still churning out their Surface line.
Surface came about due to the woeful state of the PC laptop market. The likes of Dell and HP believed that only Mac users valued quality hardware and any old crap would do for PC users. Microsoft launched Surface to try and combat the perception that Windows was being tarnished in comparison to MacOS due to such disparity between PC and Apple hardware. In doing so they turned the industry on its head and ushered in a new era of innovation in PC laptops with touch screens, 2 in 1, detachable keyboards and screens.
These days we have more choice for premium quality hardware, such as Dell Xps and Lenovo Carbon X1. A premium top end also raises standards in middle and basement tiers. The important thing is competition. We need as many manufacturers making top quality kit as possible. Otherwise we would all be paying the 10 x Apple tax of $1000 per 16Gb Ram and $1000 per 0.5 TB SSD drives.
Surface may be expensive but no one forces anyone to buy them. Some of us get real value of a high quality decently powered laptop with a detachable keyboard that runs a full OS and has touchscreen and pen integration. The market would be poorer without such choice.
"The likes of Dell and HP believed that only Mac users valued quality hardware and any old crap would do for PC users"
Not really true - more a case that they sell models at all levels of the pricing range, whereas Apple only targets the upper end. The Dell XPS range were for a long time excellent laptops, although I'm less convinced about the latest models with their invisible trackpad and lack of proper function keys (clearly, they haven't taken note of Apple's introduction then abandonment of the touchbar!).
The mid to upper mainstream business ranges are also quality machines, but as with the XPS are not cheap.
Because when it comes to real, desktop, local applications they just run on Windows or macOS. So you have to choose between those two. Linux sorely lacks too many real, modern, native desktop applications. If you run just a browser, you can run whatever OS you like. But if you happen to run Chrome, you're not in better hands than Microsoft.
I can only speak for myself. The Windows/Office/OneDrive ecosystem is beautifully integrated and removes any trace of dependence on individual machines. I can bounce from desktop to laptop without missing a beat, and if any machine gets stolen/broken/whatever I can buy a new one off the shelf and be back up and running with no data loss in minutes.
Use what you choose, and allow others the same courtesy. We all have out requirements and reasons.
GJC
>” The Windows/Office/OneDrive ecosystem is beautifully integrated…”
I presume the use of the word “beautifully” is sarcasm.
>” I can bounce from desktop to laptop without missing a beat”
It’s not that good; I have the joy of using 365 with a client, it can take 10s of minutes before a document I have saved appears on the Onedrive/Sharepoint drive.
The laugh is that because it is a public cloud service people accept the delays, if it were an in-house system people would be shouting how rubbish the system is…
I do like the additions that integrate (android) phone and (iOS) iPad, but these aren’t an MS exclusive. The irritation is that we have been talking about multi devices aka personal cloud for some decades, yet all the current offerings are very limited; just goes to show it’s easier to rearrange deck chairs (ie. UI) than to develop tools that would actually make computers more useful.
"Launched back in September, Intel's Lunar Lake chips were its first to exceed the 40 NPU TOPS performance requirement for Copilot+ PCs set by Microsoft last spring."
My suspicion is that no proper AI will be running locally anyway (well, maybe a better spelling/grammar corrector and file search). So all you need is ARM for a web front end.
Why Microsoft's Copilot will only kinda run locally on AI PCs for now https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/31/microsoft_copilot_hardware
How's that coming along?
They created their own iPads and MacBooks, making them more expensive yet less functional than the Apple equivalent. I used to have a Surface Pro. It was slower, by side-by-side test than an iPad Air (not an iPad Pro, an Air...) when running things like MS Office. Seriously, the Air beat the Surface at playing with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Exactly how MS managed to do that when Office is an MS product, and one would think that they would know how to get the best performance out of them, is left as an exercise for the student. The Air also cost less and weighed less than the Surface, which, admittedly, did have better battery life. A MacBook Air crushed the Surface Laptop, and this time, the two products had similar battery life, so MS couldn't even claim that win. The MacBook Air was able to give a respectable time in playing with Access, despite having to have Access in a VM because Access can't access Apple products, mainly because Access stinks and the stink gets worse when compared to File Maker Pro. (File Maker Pro ain't the world's greatest software, but it's better than Access. Damning with faint praise though that may be.)
Now, if I spent some extra cash and got a fully tricked-out Surface Pro and compared it to an iPad Pro... the sonic bang you heard was the iPad Pro lapping the Surface. And the best Surface Laptop was cheaper than the best MacBook Pro, and it showed; the MacBook Pro obiliterated it. Seriously, running Office in a VM on the MacBook Pro was faster than running Office natively on the Surface Laptop.
My figures are from a few years ago. Perhaps the latest MS Surfaces are better. I might have a look if someone else provides the test machines, as I will not be purchasing MS Surface devices for myself, nor will the office be buying them for business use.