"These new PCs represent a major step forward in customer-focused design and are packed with features that business customers have been requesting – from amazing performance and battery life to more ports, better security and custom, durable anti-reflective displays."
Not sure if only sold to businesses or what. It seems like Surface is a brand name synonymous with home consumers and they're trying to target business users, so they've added some necessary ports and did a bunch of marketing saying this is all "AI" focused, which seems to mean it'll have some annoying software that I hate like an intrusive thing in Excel to automatically make a chart out of my table when they pretty much already have that.
It's some MS channel/Conway thing. They have long had a different web site for "business" and sold models (e.g. the Surface Go with LTE) that were only available to "business" customers.
Actually, Dell had the same thing going on until recently.
CAD with heavy 3D modeling, GIS processing, hydrology/hydraulics calculations, word processing, reading and jumping through 1000+ page PDFs, spreadsheet models, emails, video conferencing, screen sharing, and all of the above at basically the same time by necessity.
Yawn, what is this ad driven nonsense, just give us a spec sheet. Who really wants to scroll through 5 pages of marketing drivel to get the details.
>From a performance perspective, Surface Laptop 6 is 2x faster than Laptop 52, and Surface Pro 10 is up to 53% faster than Pro 9.
The competition here is macbook and ipad, not last years stuff.
Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel? I am confused to what shady backroom deal is going on but it seems rather silly for Microsoft/Surface. They can't compete because they don't have the most performant per watt, nor battery efficiency. They used to have AMD ones, and we know they work with them for other tech a la xbox, azure, etc... so what is up with the surface line getting this exclusivity?
> Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel? I am confused to what shady backroom deal is going on but it seems rather pointless for both parties.
2) Apple Silicon are the only ARM parts that aren't dogshit slow compared to desktop processors.
This is why Apple is building the future and virtually no one else is: Apple controls the entire hardware and software stack from the silicon on up. A hybrid hardware-software solution, in the form of Rosetta 2 plus special modes in the M1 and later chip to enforce x86 style memory access, allowed Apple to emulate x86 apps at acceptable speed.
They may get kickbacks, but if they want to eat Apple's pie it makes little sense for this kind of move which would massively hamstring growth.
Also don't really see the benefit for Microsoft for the kickbacks (are they desperate for cash?) at the cost of growth and potential DoJ scrutiny.
This sector is already a slim line that is dwarfed by office, windows, azure so what is the point in doing all of this nonsense?
If they want to grow their own silicon, push ARM, if they want to compete, do so. To me it sounds like kickbacks to specific people in the surface group which seems shadier.
It has 6 performance and 8 efficiency cores, with the peak frequency as high as 5 Ghz.
It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison because benchmarks are sensitive to instruction sets, available compilers, etc... but this CPU is definitely competitive with the Apple M3. E.g.:
The Intel laptop is 60% faster for multi-threaded workloads, but it is 19% slower for single-threaded performance.
PS: The Intel laptop comes with up to 64 GB of memory and it can build and run x86 Docker images natively. If you're a developer, it's the far more attractive option...
Why would anyone be doing this on their glued in laptop? If they are needing a dev machine, are you really trying to argue this is better than the mbp, thinkpads, hps or dells?
You are claiming performance figures at what 115W max turbo? What is the max consumption on the macbook 55W on CPU, 33W on GPU?
If performance matters, they should be doing the heavy lifting remotely.
Most people will be using single threaded performance, and the key metric here for this product is what is the battery life. They didn't even give a figure for that which speaks volumes.
They didn't even bring up the pen which is the main selling point of this product (i.e. ipad pro but for Windows).
Most people don't want desktops. So powerful laptops are preferred. Macbooks don't support Linux officially. But Intel laptops do support them. So no matter how fast and efficient Macbooks are, people will still buy decent Intel laptops instead of the best Macbooks.
Have you tried running Linux natively on a secureboot Surface?
If you are running Linux in a vm, both are fine.
Most people want battery life, and if someone can afford to get either of these devices, they would be better off renting their heavy compute somewhere else.
Maybe for their personal device. But for work provided device, who cares if it is decent enough. Most people just keep them connected to power while working on a desk anyway (in my opinion).
Passmark is known to be a bad benchmark, something like Geekbench which has results that closely match with the industry standard SPEC would be a better comparison for real life performance.
I'm deeply disappointed there is no longer an AMD surface laptop with one of the custom designs pushing for a mobile Xbox level of GPU (no ray tracing) just so we can do business and light gaming or video or 3d modeling or whatever when you plug in even. AMD has some wild igpu designs in low power envelopes so I'm baffled that Microsoft just bailed on the line. I have a surface laptop 4 13in AMD model and love it but it only was worth it on sale really.
This. By far the worst part of Surface is 3D. Each time they show the improvements in the latest Intel range I get excited and hope finally I can just impulse buy a new game, but even if in theory the chip could handle it, the industry gives the middle finger to anything not AMD or Nvidia, to the point some recent games just refuse to start up at all.
Now I check https://old.reddit.com/r/SurfaceGaming/ before buying anything, and the results are always disappointing. I don't know whether to blame the game developers or Intel, because there are games that run perfectly fine in reduced quality, but it's such a crapshoot.
> The competition here is macbook and ipad, not last years stuff.
No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.
> Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel?
Because no viable ARM options exist in the Windows world. Windows on ARM is improving and somewhat workable for simple things, but it’s not ready for heavyweight things (like virtual machines, a lot of development tasks, device drivers, etc).
Performance per watt isn’t the most important thing for many people. It’s pretty rare to need 12 hour battery life when you’ll never have access to a power outlet. More efficiency is nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
They didn't even give a battery life figure over here. That tells volumes at how good this device is.
Apple front and center on all-day, 18 hour battery life.
>No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.
We don't live in the same world as the past, connectivity is king and the heavy lifting can and should be done elsewhere. If someone needs to do heavy lifting on windows, they wouldn't go with this glued mess.
If they want cheap with discounts, this would probably fail compared with HP, Dell or Thinkpad.
>Most newer Surface devices are designed to facilitate the repair or replacement of primary components like the solid-state drive (SSD), keyboard, or display. With the purchase of a new commercial Surface for Business device, you can maximize your investment with services and repair1 options.
The way normal rational people buy computers is as follows. First they decide what they want to do, then they choose applications that do those things. Then they choose an operating system that can host the application. Finally they choose a hardware platform that runs both the operating system and the application.
Under this process, few users face a choice between a Mac and a Surface.
Many of us in software development work in companies/organisations of sufficient size that IT-operations will enforce a Windows policy because it fits with their entire infrastructure.
I don’t mind too much, these days windows doesn’t really get in the way. With everything being done in an IDE and run/build in containers anyway. I do think it’s a little hilarious that the beast of a Lenovo that was 5x the price of my personal m1 air is basically worse in every way. From the terrible performance, the noisy fan, the horrible trackpad and the 1 hour battery life. (To be fair a lot of the resource drain is due to whatever enterprise stuff IT-operations runs on it). But for the most part it just sits closed in a dock with its fan thing pointed away from me, and I bring an extension cord with me to be able to hook it into power in our poorly planned meeting rooms.
Anyway, corporate is often a windows world even for SW engineers.
Lol, dark patterns. Recently got a M2 mac for CI purposes.
Step 1 was deleting all the preloaded apple-ware apps that they want to people to use for datamining from the dock, they make it as painful clickfest to remove the 20 fucking default docked apps with even removal animations. Not to mention I ran one fucking update from macOS 13 to 14 and it added all the fucking apps back to the dock.
At least on Windows I can run a one line command line statement to remove all the preloaded junk.
They're the only viable option to have a "work" (or call it "pro") tablet at this point.
Apple will need to come up with an iPad with software on par with the mac to make the Surface Pro irrelevant. Until then, living with Windows stays a better tradeoff.
Lenovo Thinkpad X12 is also a good option of "work" Tablet. A refresh is coming. Having been using it for SolidWorks, Altium, C development for a few years now.
I was eyeing at one, Dell also have some, but both only had FHD screens. Asus has the Z13 line with higher end specs (in particular discrete GPU options), but sadly less accessory compatibility than the Surface Po line.
Lenovo has been doing a lot work on their laptop lines recently, a new X12 with a refreshed screen would be a super nice machine.
You couldn't pay me to take a Mac. Apple is an organisation that is actively hostile towards developers. I will program on Intel silicon and ms or oss operating systems all day long, thanks.
What’s the comparison like for the battery life and GPU? Afaik it’s the areas that really lag on the Intel side. I’m hopeful they’re competitive now on both.
Intel roughly doubled their iGPU performance with the latest Meteor Lake generation, but the low-power U series parts cut the GPU in half. So they'll still be in last place.
I'm still waiting on my current, 60 hours of use a week, mid-2019 MacBook Pro to die or have any sort of malfunction so I can justify buying a new one. Its battery life has seen better days but that's basically it.
Other anecdote, I cycle-toured for a year camping in all kind of uncomfortable places, and my Surface Pro 7 survived. The screen is cracked in a million places from getting smashed around with all my other kit, but it still works. The Type Cover is a bit crap, though. After going through one of them while on the road (PowerToys Keyboard Manager is your friend) now I've been living in an apartment with a roof and everything, and another one died from what I can only assume to be humidity. I gave up and switched to a cheap bluetooth keyboard instead, which kinda feels more cool and futuristic anyway.
Surface Pro 4 had broken OpenGL driver. Every software that requires OpenGL (basically all CAD software) crashes on it. Microsoft has all the incentive to cripple OpenGL. A generic Intel graphic driver cannot even be installed on surface. You have to use the Microsoft supplied one. Never bought a single surface again.
Build Quality refers to how well a piece of equipment has been made [1]. The Surface's tablet has a sleek design with a great construction, uses quality materials and a quality finish that feels like a slab of luxury aluminum and glass in your hand.
In contrast poor build quality would be a thick piece of cheap plastic that creeks and rattles to touch.
The cherry on top of the unreliability is the high price of repairs. Even battery replacement runs around $400 for a Surface Pro, while a MacBook Pro battery replacement costs $250
The so-called "AI PC" is nothing more than a marketing gimmick. It has no new features, just a Copilot button on the keyboard and the same background editing function for web conferences that has been available for a long time.
DirectML is a low-level API that provides a common abstraction layer for hardware vendors to expose their machine learning accelerators. DirectML works with any DirectX 12-compatible device including GPUs and now NPUs. Support for Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel AI Boost was developed in close collaboration with Intel.
They aren't fungible, but even for a high-end 512GB SSD, $200 is rip-off pricing. In fact, a top-end SSD range won't even offer 512 sizes because aside from not really being worth it, transfer-rate performance is lower with smaller chips.
I wonder how much of a market there is for people who already know how to do BGA soldering (i.e. many phone repair shops) to offer RAM upgrades at a fraction of that cost.
I liked it when their wonderful hardware design team tried really daring things with their form factors. The Studio giant screen you can tilt and draw on. The Surface Book that has the tilting screen. The one with the detachable screen. The Surface Duo and Neo.
The next real change will bei AMD Strix with a good integrated GPU or Intels Arrow Lake which should draw much less power than the current generation. If possible with on-die memory for performance and less power usage.
I'm still waiting to this idiotic unlappable design trend to pass and some company to come up with a 2-piece convertible similar to the original surface book.
This is the same company which puts ads all over the OS, can't stop trying to upsell people into using onedrive, forcefully signs you into onedrive, syncs your local files into their cloud without consent, tries really hard to not let you sign in with a local account and most likely does other shady things.
Their hardware is more or less garbage. My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device. It had other issues before the battery killed it.
Why would people give money to Microsoft for such bad hardware? They treat their customers like garbage.
>My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device.
Statistically, all devices suffer from swollen batteries. I've even see iPhones and iPads die from swollen batteries. There's a certain tiny % fallout in manufacturing of battery cells where they may degrade and fail prematurely and swelling is a safety feature.
I had two surfaces die from swollen batteries. The problem was frequent enough that Microsoft Store staff (rip) would exchange it immediately, no questions asked.
This was back during the Surface Book 1 days. I’ve been a happy surface user ever since, and haven’t had any other battery or build quality issues since.
Eventually, almost all LiPo batteries will puff up. But there are definitely some devices that reliably cause this problem far sooner than it should occurr, due to poor charge management and thermal management.
Yeah, although, having owned a Surface Book 2, and being a .NET developer, the only Windows sytems I'll have in my home will probably be Microsofts own, unless someone makes laptops that are as nice, for half the cost. Things just work on my SB2. The only reason I'll buy a new one is if it either dies, or I see a really good deal. I've had it since 2017 iirc and its been pretty great thus far.
My next laptop will likely be a Mac, mines hit the mark where Apple wont let me update anymore, kind of makes me angry that Apple does that to perfectly usable hardware, but I like the ecosystem and my laptop was a min-spec anyway, needs to be upgraded, just waiting on a deal yet again.
Try https://dortania.github.io/OpenCore-Legacy-Patcher/ I recently used it on a 2014 5k iMac to install Sonoma (14.3) and it's been flawless in my experience - everything is buttery smooth as you'd expect.
I also installed on a 2015 Macbook (12"...horrible Intel mobile processor.) It works, but the CPU is just too underpowered to do basic stuff like web browsing and messaging...if you're impatient like me anyway ;)
OCLP gives up on security when it modifies the OS to use drivers from an older OS. Machines which use OCLP don't get firmware updates to patch severe security vulnerabilities.
It's fine if you just need to make use of some hardware for a bit longer with macOS. Linux may be better in terms of security. It might not be a good fit for many.
I did see that, but I heard someone suggest that it might not be the best idea since your OS could become unstable. At some point I may just consider installing Linux on that Macbook, but not before replacing it, since my wife would be upset if she was stuck with Linux. She prefers to just use macOS.
Dotnet on Linux is superior in every way to windows. No ads, no crap, vscode is better on Linux than windows and since .net framework is dead, no reliance on windows in any way, shape or form.
I mean, you’re probably deploying to Linux containers anyway.
Surface is pretty well regarded as I understand it. Microsoft set out to make 'the sortof macbook equivlaent for windows' and largely succeeded. Although obviously macbook remains the champion overall I guess. I'm sorry you had a battery problem.
For some of the best Windows hardware on the market, look no further than Microsoft’s Surface brand - WIRED
Also: I dont ever see ads in Windows, but I guess somone must be getting them. Not sure what I'm doing right to avoid them.
Just swipe left to right on Windows 11. The widget page is like 60% ads disguised as news by default. It's so easy to trigger accidentally on Windows tablets. I feel like Windows 11 is the Windows 8 for tablets. They took pretty much every gain and good thing Windows had as tablet OS and made it garbage.
Do you sign in with a Microsoft account? If you do, that's probably the reason why you don't see ads in Windows 11. The system settings UI on Windows 11 always shows an ad which says that an account should be used to use office and other apps.
Microsoft has updated apps even on Windows 10 to recommend other apps. The Photos app was recommending a video editor app recently. Windows 11 shows ads, suggestions and installs a lot of garbage apps to upsell people into office 365, Onedrive and other things.
I recently had to reinstall my office that I bought. It signed me into an account without permission and uploaded documents there. I had to sign out of that account to prevent it from uploading documents automatically. Most of the documents I edit contain my PII. I can sue them.
> The system settings UI on Windows 11 always shows an ad which says that an account should be used to use office and other apps.
Macs also do this with their iCloud accounts, with little widgets all around the place prompting you to log in to their app store, etc... if you don't have an account. Possibly those prompts or ads are even more "in-your-face" than Windows? Probably most Mac users don't notice them because most just create an account
The new Windows mail app has ads in it that look almost exactly like normal emails. They pushed me to adopt it from the old mail app and I'm regretting the decision. Apple's mail apps never do that.
My Surface Laptop from 2019 wasn’t supported by Win11 because of TPM limitation (I guess there was a registry hack) but I expect the requirements for Win11 were defined by 2019 for its 2021 release, yet they skimmed on a very expensive prosumer laptop under their own Microsoft brand.
My SurfaceBook has a better build quality that my MacBook Pro model from the same era (2019) - MacBooks have improved a lot in the last few years though with the new chips I guess?
I prefer the MacOs to Windows, but MacBook hardware was definitely disappointment on this model. I had numerous graphics & power issues on the MacBook Pro, plus touchbar was annoying.
Dell & Lenovo are crap, I've given up on them. Surface is good, and I'm happy with my LG Gram.
There is selection bias in their ownership experience. But I really concur. Microsoft hardware is better than stock Chinese PC hardware, but still not as good as Apple hardware (all produced in China).
My ThinkPad has okay support with the on-site option, but you're right on with all the other things.
I don't understand why Lenovo (and Dell and the other major PC makers) can see the $/sq.ft. that an Apple store generates and not open their own stores? I'd feel a lot more comfortable recommending a ThinkPad to a friend if there was a local place they could shop at, get repairs, and take classes.
Shhh. Don't break the Microsoft/Windows bashing sentiment, they really need to feel superior with their Apple ePeen.
But yes, if you look at the market, 2K in a PC laptop will usually get something better than what Apple would like to sell you.
You'll get worse battery life but generally better power for most workloads, and if you use it lightly like all those MacBook fanboys seems to do it won't be nearly as big of a difference they like to claim.
But hey gotta justify the extortionate price somehow...
I have had a few surfaces for work. They are actually really nice hardware, but the Surface Book had one design flaw, which would periodically disconnect USB headsets. That was my only real complaint.
the special firmware that microsoft uses in these machines breaks network, USB, anything that you attach to it. it just can't get power management right. I've been saddled with one of these for 5+ years and it just never got better.
Imagine: If Microsoft pushed so hard for Modern Standby and even THEY cannot get it right, why should you trust any laptop designed for Windows to have proper power management?
The microsoft hardware and OEM devices that MS sold directly were historically THE ones to buy because they were optimized to show off Windows, so no crapware, good drivers, limited BS. I don't know when that changed, but it has.
>> are packed with features that business customers have been requesting
This is a total lie, unless they're referencing THEIR customers trying to sell you all this shit. The developer story from Microsoft is as good as it's ever been, but the consumer side just sucks. As a historically Windows developer who now does most of their work in .net core or totally outside the MS ecosystem, but still plays the odd triple-A game I don't know what to do for my next computer.
Honestly, I find this to be such a weird argument. Apple does the same crap with iCloud and people put their hardware on a pedestal when it has the same inherent flaws, often for a much higher price. And maybe you share this opinion, I just want to point out that this hardware from MS is relatively benign in the grand scheme of the PC world.
That is because apple doesn't ask you, it just turns it on. If you don't accept changes to their terms of service (As I haven't) you'd get these notifications fairly regularly.
Granted, I have iCloud turned on (for syncing notes and calendar) but I have it turned off for everything else. I’ve never had it ask me to turn on any of the other iCloud features like iCloud backup or drive / desktop sync. (And I’d guess if it synced things without my knowledge it would show up in my iCloud storage usage?)
Completely agree that Apple does the exact same stuff with account management and iCloud notifications, but I don’t understand where these arguments keep coming from that Apple is more costly.
The 13.5 sLaptop 6 for Business is, i5/8gb/256gb is $1200
Compare that the 14” MBP (M3/8gb/512gb) for $1600. The diff in SSD storage offsets some of the cost, but not the whole $400
However, the 13” MacBook Air with the same specs (although a much better CPU) - M3/8gb/256gb is actually $100 cheaper.
Until someone builds an actual M3 competitor, Apple’s making better laptops for cheaper.
I have an M1 16” MBP that’s still running laps around any other laptop I’ve ever owned, including the 15” sBook 2 with a 1060. The Windows Arm laptop I have sucks compared to the M-series.
Anyway, totally agree that Apple does the same cross-sell garbage as Microsoft, just think it’s way off to argue that their hardware is more expensive, at least meaningfully so when you compare the performance, longevity, and battery life.
Windows 11 changed the OOBE to have users sign in, though this can be bypassed fairly easily if you're tech-literate. Sometimes for installs I'll bypass, other times I'll log in with a Microsoft account, then create a local user, switch to that user, and then delete the computer account for the MS account.
My original comment was that macOS is no better. They require an account for downloading any app on the app store. The Microsoft store does not require one.
Well that depends where you buy, and I would argue that buying Surface device outside of sales/special offers is not a very wise decision.
Those are MSRP not necessarily the price people will buy them at (unlike Apple).
Even then, a Surface Laptop is somewhere in between a MacBook Air and MacBook pro depending on configuration.
Where I live, if you start adding necessary options, at the announced price a SL6 16/512GO is more expensive than a MacBook Air 16/512 (1879 vs 1759 euros) but much less expensive than a base MacBook Pro with 16/512 (2229 euros) and it arguably perform closer to the latter (especially with the dedicated 8GB of VRAM).
Then again, I would not buy them at launch and at the very least one should wait for their consumer-oriented offering.
Where I agree with you, is in Microsoft being almost as idiotic as Apple are with their pricing.
I'm glad I moved over to Mac. I know it's not perfect, but it's much better than Windows. They seem determined to lose customers.
I really like the concept of the Surface Book and got one several years ago. The keyboard no longer works when detaching the screen, so it's practically useless. Even a full reinstall didn't fix that issue.
Their new hardware is moot because ARM is just on a different level. Yeah, they can stick an H class Intel processor, but that will seriously heat up the laptop and eat the battery.
The only reason I still use a windows machine is because of gaming. I'm sure lots of users are on Windows because they have no choice.
> ...can't stop trying to upsell people into using onedrive, forcefully signs you into onedrive, syncs your local files into their cloud without consent, tries really hard to not let you sign in with a local account and most likely does other shady things.
This portion of the complaint was a playbook that was defined by Apple and icloud. Feels like an out of the frying pan into the fire situation.
>Their hardware is more or less garbage. My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device.
Macbook has swollen battery issue as well.
Microsoft Hardware is more or less the best on the PC market. The only company that spend R&D money from I/O, Speaker, Keyboard, Trackpad etc to try and match Apple MacBook if not exceed it. And a lot of these innovation or improvements gets filtered through to other PC OEM over the years.
You can shit about Microsoft software all you want. But in terms of PC Laptop market, they have done far more than most of the other companies. Had Pro Gaming / Pro Sumer Laptop not been a thing most other laptop manufacture would continue to milk and sell absolute garbage a la HP or Dell not a long time ago.
When I purchased a laptop last year I went with MSI:
32GB RAM
1TB SSD
4080 12GB
3 USBC
2 USB3.2
$2100 CAD.
My only complaint was Windows 11 which was immediately rectified. Though not before having a full screen Xbox Live ad that couldn't be closed through any means.
Since removing MS the laptop functions perfectly, runs models locally without any fuss and powers any game I want at 4k60hz or 3k144hz(1440p).
What is the reason for the high pricing of Surface models?
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[ 21.9 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] threadNot sure if only sold to businesses or what. It seems like Surface is a brand name synonymous with home consumers and they're trying to target business users, so they've added some necessary ports and did a bunch of marketing saying this is all "AI" focused, which seems to mean it'll have some annoying software that I hate like an intrusive thing in Excel to automatically make a chart out of my table when they pretty much already have that.
Actually, Dell had the same thing going on until recently.
So... Depends. In my case: a lot.
>From a performance perspective, Surface Laptop 6 is 2x faster than Laptop 52, and Surface Pro 10 is up to 53% faster than Pro 9.
The competition here is macbook and ipad, not last years stuff.
Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel? I am confused to what shady backroom deal is going on but it seems rather silly for Microsoft/Surface. They can't compete because they don't have the most performant per watt, nor battery efficiency. They used to have AMD ones, and we know they work with them for other tech a la xbox, azure, etc... so what is up with the surface line getting this exclusivity?
Probably massive kickbacks or massive discounts. Just remember, Intel put out this graphic when Zen was just released -- https://cdn.wccftech.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Intel-vs...
Or the oxygen in that space has been sucked out by Apple.
1) Windows on ARM's x86 emulation sucks;
2) Apple Silicon are the only ARM parts that aren't dogshit slow compared to desktop processors.
This is why Apple is building the future and virtually no one else is: Apple controls the entire hardware and software stack from the silicon on up. A hybrid hardware-software solution, in the form of Rosetta 2 plus special modes in the M1 and later chip to enforce x86 style memory access, allowed Apple to emulate x86 apps at acceptable speed.
Also don't really see the benefit for Microsoft for the kickbacks (are they desperate for cash?) at the cost of growth and potential DoJ scrutiny.
This sector is already a slim line that is dwarfed by office, windows, azure so what is the point in doing all of this nonsense?
If they want to grow their own silicon, push ARM, if they want to compete, do so. To me it sounds like kickbacks to specific people in the surface group which seems shadier.
Apparently “Nancie Gaskill” who wrote it.
They're using Intel because there's no other option for a Microsoft product running Windows.
Also, Intel is rapidly catching up to TSMC in the lithography race, and will leapfrog them very soon, likely by the end of this year.
The top-end model uses the Intel Core Ultra 7 165H, which is this thing: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236851/...
It has 6 performance and 8 efficiency cores, with the peak frequency as high as 5 Ghz.
It's hard to get an apples-to-apples comparison because benchmarks are sensitive to instruction sets, available compilers, etc... but this CPU is definitely competitive with the Apple M3. E.g.:
Apple M3 scores 18,947: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Apple+M3+8+Core&id=...
Intel 165H scores 30,596: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+Ultra+7+...
The Intel laptop is 60% faster for multi-threaded workloads, but it is 19% slower for single-threaded performance.
PS: The Intel laptop comes with up to 64 GB of memory and it can build and run x86 Docker images natively. If you're a developer, it's the far more attractive option...
You are claiming performance figures at what 115W max turbo? What is the max consumption on the macbook 55W on CPU, 33W on GPU?
If performance matters, they should be doing the heavy lifting remotely.
Most people will be using single threaded performance, and the key metric here for this product is what is the battery life. They didn't even give a figure for that which speaks volumes.
They didn't even bring up the pen which is the main selling point of this product (i.e. ipad pro but for Windows).
If you are running Linux in a vm, both are fine.
Most people want battery life, and if someone can afford to get either of these devices, they would be better off renting their heavy compute somewhere else.
You can turn off secureboot quite easily: https://parinzee.github.io/linux-surface-overlay/docs/Instal...
Maybe for their personal device. But for work provided device, who cares if it is decent enough. Most people just keep them connected to power while working on a desk anyway (in my opinion).
M3: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/5411370
Intel 165H: https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/5387822
Around the same multi-core results, significantly better single core for the M3.
Now I check https://old.reddit.com/r/SurfaceGaming/ before buying anything, and the results are always disappointing. I don't know whether to blame the game developers or Intel, because there are games that run perfectly fine in reduced quality, but it's such a crapshoot.
No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.
> Why do the surface people keep hamstringing themselves with intel?
Because no viable ARM options exist in the Windows world. Windows on ARM is improving and somewhat workable for simple things, but it’s not ready for heavyweight things (like virtual machines, a lot of development tasks, device drivers, etc).
Performance per watt isn’t the most important thing for many people. It’s pretty rare to need 12 hour battery life when you’ll never have access to a power outlet. More efficiency is nice, but it’s not a dealbreaker.
Apple front and center on all-day, 18 hour battery life.
>No, it absolutely is not. Windows software (the vast majority that’s used in businesses) needs to run on Windows, and nobody is doing real work on an iPad.
We don't live in the same world as the past, connectivity is king and the heavy lifting can and should be done elsewhere. If someone needs to do heavy lifting on windows, they wouldn't go with this glued mess.
If they want cheap with discounts, this would probably fail compared with HP, Dell or Thinkpad.
Who is this product for?
Now I buy Thinkpads.
>Most newer Surface devices are designed to facilitate the repair or replacement of primary components like the solid-state drive (SSD), keyboard, or display. With the purchase of a new commercial Surface for Business device, you can maximize your investment with services and repair1 options.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/surface-service-an...
Heck, they even post an official repair guide as far as Surface Pro 7+ on Youtube[0].
[0]:https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNA-j_cL4mURqC1MFKHV-...
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/intel_graphics
"Since Intel provides and supports open source drivers, Intel graphics are essentially plug-and-play."
Apple silicon does not officially support Linux, it depends entirely on volunteers reverse engineering things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asahi_Linux
Under this process, few users face a choice between a Mac and a Surface.
Most of us (non SW engineers) do not have this choice.
I don’t mind too much, these days windows doesn’t really get in the way. With everything being done in an IDE and run/build in containers anyway. I do think it’s a little hilarious that the beast of a Lenovo that was 5x the price of my personal m1 air is basically worse in every way. From the terrible performance, the noisy fan, the horrible trackpad and the 1 hour battery life. (To be fair a lot of the resource drain is due to whatever enterprise stuff IT-operations runs on it). But for the most part it just sits closed in a dock with its fan thing pointed away from me, and I bring an extension cord with me to be able to hook it into power in our poorly planned meeting rooms.
Anyway, corporate is often a windows world even for SW engineers.
Lol, dark patterns. Recently got a M2 mac for CI purposes.
Step 1 was deleting all the preloaded apple-ware apps that they want to people to use for datamining from the dock, they make it as painful clickfest to remove the 20 fucking default docked apps with even removal animations. Not to mention I ran one fucking update from macOS 13 to 14 and it added all the fucking apps back to the dock.
At least on Windows I can run a one line command line statement to remove all the preloaded junk.
Apple will need to come up with an iPad with software on par with the mac to make the Surface Pro irrelevant. Until then, living with Windows stays a better tradeoff.
I was eyeing at one, Dell also have some, but both only had FHD screens. Asus has the Z13 line with higher end specs (in particular discrete GPU options), but sadly less accessory compatibility than the Surface Po line.
Lenovo has been doing a lot work on their laptop lines recently, a new X12 with a refreshed screen would be a super nice machine.
Meanwhile, all my Thinkpads and MacBooks still work today.
In contrast poor build quality would be a thick piece of cheap plastic that creeks and rattles to touch.
[1] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/build...
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/how-much-does-out-...
https://support.apple.com/mac/repair
DirectML is a low-level API that provides a common abstraction layer for hardware vendors to expose their machine learning accelerators. DirectML works with any DirectX 12-compatible device including GPUs and now NPUs. Support for Intel Core Ultra processors with Intel AI Boost was developed in close collaboration with Intel.
That was the situation brought with the Surface Pro 9 already, but I wish they did something to aleviate either of these.
It feels like the only decent upgrade from a Surface Pro 8 will be an Asus Z13 ?
- 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $1200
- 16GB RAM, 256GB SSD is $1500
This is much worse than Apple, and I thought MSFT was more sensible than that!
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/configure/Surface-Lapt...
Read/write speed, durability, and power efficiency are all variable.
Transfer speed is lower with fewer chips, and older less-dense flash memory doesn't stay in production forever, and is more expensive per GB.
Similar spec Samsung laptops (Galaxy Books) come with a regular USB-C cable and a fast charging power adapter that looks like any other plug.
Anybody know why Samsung can do this and Microsoft can't?
Only having to lug around a single cable and charger for all devices is a dealbreaker.
Samsung makes also HW. /s
Of course, you can just throw that away and charge by the usb c port instead, so I am a bit confused how that disqualifies anything.
The next real change will bei AMD Strix with a good integrated GPU or Intels Arrow Lake which should draw much less power than the current generation. If possible with on-die memory for performance and less power usage.
Their hardware is more or less garbage. My Surface had a swollen battery which killed the device. It had other issues before the battery killed it.
Why would people give money to Microsoft for such bad hardware? They treat their customers like garbage.
Education, workplace policy. Managers _love_ Microsoft.
Statistically, all devices suffer from swollen batteries. I've even see iPhones and iPads die from swollen batteries. There's a certain tiny % fallout in manufacturing of battery cells where they may degrade and fail prematurely and swelling is a safety feature.
This was back during the Surface Book 1 days. I’ve been a happy surface user ever since, and haven’t had any other battery or build quality issues since.
My next laptop will likely be a Mac, mines hit the mark where Apple wont let me update anymore, kind of makes me angry that Apple does that to perfectly usable hardware, but I like the ecosystem and my laptop was a min-spec anyway, needs to be upgraded, just waiting on a deal yet again.
I also installed on a 2015 Macbook (12"...horrible Intel mobile processor.) It works, but the CPU is just too underpowered to do basic stuff like web browsing and messaging...if you're impatient like me anyway ;)
It's fine if you just need to make use of some hardware for a bit longer with macOS. Linux may be better in terms of security. It might not be a good fit for many.
I mean, you’re probably deploying to Linux containers anyway.
For some of the best Windows hardware on the market, look no further than Microsoft’s Surface brand - WIRED
Also: I dont ever see ads in Windows, but I guess somone must be getting them. Not sure what I'm doing right to avoid them.
Microsoft has updated apps even on Windows 10 to recommend other apps. The Photos app was recommending a video editor app recently. Windows 11 shows ads, suggestions and installs a lot of garbage apps to upsell people into office 365, Onedrive and other things.
I recently had to reinstall my office that I bought. It signed me into an account without permission and uploaded documents there. I had to sign out of that account to prevent it from uploading documents automatically. Most of the documents I edit contain my PII. I can sue them.
Macs also do this with their iCloud accounts, with little widgets all around the place prompting you to log in to their app store, etc... if you don't have an account. Possibly those prompts or ads are even more "in-your-face" than Windows? Probably most Mac users don't notice them because most just create an account
+ Terrible battery
+ Terrible build quality
+ Terrible support
+ Noise of fan having a stroke
- Screen broke (Never left the desk)
- “Carbon” started to peel, looks like the laptop has dandruff
——
Lenovo
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/lenovo-class-settle...
So many relatives/friends buying €800-€1000 devices that become unusable after 1/2 years.
Plastic junk.
I prefer the MacOs to Windows, but MacBook hardware was definitely disappointment on this model. I had numerous graphics & power issues on the MacBook Pro, plus touchbar was annoying.
Dell & Lenovo are crap, I've given up on them. Surface is good, and I'm happy with my LG Gram.
I don't understand why Lenovo (and Dell and the other major PC makers) can see the $/sq.ft. that an Apple store generates and not open their own stores? I'd feel a lot more comfortable recommending a ThinkPad to a friend if there was a local place they could shop at, get repairs, and take classes.
Windows being somewhat bad, yes, definitely. However, the hardware auch as much higher res, OLED, touch, high refresh rate, pen etc. can be very good.
But hey gotta justify the extortionate price somehow...
They still are, as long as you don't make the mistake of using them on Windows.
I would say the comparison to Macbooks is fair.
I guess I should feel fortunate that for Apple, at least the ads are limited to its own range of products.
We have a bunch of Surface products deployed at work and those people seem to love them. I can’t think of any high-rate failures affecting them.
Edit: Wow, I guess we have a lot of angry Apple fanatics here. Am I wrong somewhere? Please point it out. FWIW, I use and prefer Apple products.
>> are packed with features that business customers have been requesting
This is a total lie, unless they're referencing THEIR customers trying to sell you all this shit. The developer story from Microsoft is as good as it's ever been, but the consumer side just sucks. As a historically Windows developer who now does most of their work in .net core or totally outside the MS ecosystem, but still plays the odd triple-A game I don't know what to do for my next computer.
On windows I literally get annoying notification to use OneDrive.
The 13.5 sLaptop 6 for Business is, i5/8gb/256gb is $1200
Compare that the 14” MBP (M3/8gb/512gb) for $1600. The diff in SSD storage offsets some of the cost, but not the whole $400
However, the 13” MacBook Air with the same specs (although a much better CPU) - M3/8gb/256gb is actually $100 cheaper.
Until someone builds an actual M3 competitor, Apple’s making better laptops for cheaper.
I have an M1 16” MBP that’s still running laps around any other laptop I’ve ever owned, including the 15” sBook 2 with a 1060. The Windows Arm laptop I have sucks compared to the M-series.
Anyway, totally agree that Apple does the same cross-sell garbage as Microsoft, just think it’s way off to argue that their hardware is more expensive, at least meaningfully so when you compare the performance, longevity, and battery life.
My original comment was that macOS is no better. They require an account for downloading any app on the app store. The Microsoft store does not require one.
Even then, a Surface Laptop is somewhere in between a MacBook Air and MacBook pro depending on configuration. Where I live, if you start adding necessary options, at the announced price a SL6 16/512GO is more expensive than a MacBook Air 16/512 (1879 vs 1759 euros) but much less expensive than a base MacBook Pro with 16/512 (2229 euros) and it arguably perform closer to the latter (especially with the dedicated 8GB of VRAM).
Then again, I would not buy them at launch and at the very least one should wait for their consumer-oriented offering.
Where I agree with you, is in Microsoft being almost as idiotic as Apple are with their pricing.
Comparing some third party provider against Apple isn’t entirely reasonable, unless they’re marketing a very similarly premium brand.
I really like the concept of the Surface Book and got one several years ago. The keyboard no longer works when detaching the screen, so it's practically useless. Even a full reinstall didn't fix that issue.
Their new hardware is moot because ARM is just on a different level. Yeah, they can stick an H class Intel processor, but that will seriously heat up the laptop and eat the battery.
The only reason I still use a windows machine is because of gaming. I'm sure lots of users are on Windows because they have no choice.
This portion of the complaint was a playbook that was defined by Apple and icloud. Feels like an out of the frying pan into the fire situation.
Macbook has swollen battery issue as well.
Microsoft Hardware is more or less the best on the PC market. The only company that spend R&D money from I/O, Speaker, Keyboard, Trackpad etc to try and match Apple MacBook if not exceed it. And a lot of these innovation or improvements gets filtered through to other PC OEM over the years.
You can shit about Microsoft software all you want. But in terms of PC Laptop market, they have done far more than most of the other companies. Had Pro Gaming / Pro Sumer Laptop not been a thing most other laptop manufacture would continue to milk and sell absolute garbage a la HP or Dell not a long time ago.
Who cares. Just make sure Apple isn't allowed to hold a line on doing things differently, then everyone else can compete fine?
32GB RAM 1TB SSD 4080 12GB 3 USBC 2 USB3.2
$2100 CAD.
My only complaint was Windows 11 which was immediately rectified. Though not before having a full screen Xbox Live ad that couldn't be closed through any means.
Since removing MS the laptop functions perfectly, runs models locally without any fuss and powers any game I want at 4k60hz or 3k144hz(1440p).
What is the reason for the high pricing of Surface models?
I mean this sincerely. People are willing to pay for good design.