„Built on Windows”. That’s like anti-ad these days. Maybe, maybe worth looking at if you can run other OS than Windows on it, but that will probably take some time.
Surface has seen so many iterations, some terrible, some nice. Still rocking the discontinued surface laptop studio as Wacom on the go, smallish footprint (14”) creative development machine. I just love its quirkiness and the fact that I can jump on photoshop to touch up an image, use it as tablet for movies, or vs code for (not great nowadays) 6h on battery. It is an odd intersection.
I wonder what kind of brightness that 2000 nit screen will actually deliver? Everyone rates their screens on peak, but then SDR is the same 250-350 nit range for most systems.
What's the actual connectivity? USB4? with or without PCIe tunneling? How many ports?
How much is it going to weigh? Battery life? Battery capacity?
DGX Spark desktops idle close to 20w on Linux: that's a lot for a laptop. I'm expecting Nvidia+Microsoft stepped up their driver game some for this release, but it's wild how few creature comforts or nicities DGX Spark came with. Launched with and still has almost no power monitoring or power management capabilities. If you turn on the highspeed NIC it turns into a 40W hotbox even at idle. Nvidia has such a weird mix of supporting what they want to support well, but doing absolutely nothing else. The way Shield TV is still occasionally getting some updates is impressive for example, but it's stayed on an ancient Android version & went a good fraction of a decade without update. Similarly, keeping folks locked on rickety old Linux4Tegra and now DGX Spark heavily modified Linux OSes has been brutal. It's hard to believe this system is going to be much better than a fantastically expensive bag of barely managed idiosyncratic quirks.
I've had about 4 generations of surface devices. Never again. The frustration of that SP4 where every bodies screen would jitter and they would just stoiclly send me a replacement with the same problem. Until warranty expired.
Or every model after that just slowed down to a crawl after a year. Or the keyboard connection not working reliably.
What's conspicuously absent, is the CPU that's going to power this thing. Yes, it's got an Nvidia GPU, but does it have an Intel CPU, an AMD CPU, an Nvidia ARM CPU, or someone else's ARM CPU?
The SPEC benchmark is useful to estimate the performance of computers that will run programs that are not optimized for their specific architecture.
The Ryzen was already faster in SPEC, but when running programs that use AVX-512 the difference in speed between the Ryzen CPU and this NVIDIA/Mediatek CPU will be much greater than in the SPEC benchmark.
This might actually be cool hardware! I'm just wondering why anyone would waste all the overhead for the Windows OS. There's probably only 48 Gigs of unified memory left when your log-on completes...
Wondering about Linux support. Would it take Asahi-level community commitment? For Windows, ~no one will switch from their macs for some (seemingly) single-year-generational gains. It would need some distinctive feature, not only performance. For me, the 2in1/tablet aspect was that, which they drop now.
I will never buy a Surface device ever again. I've been using an SL4 for the last four years with Linux on it, thanks to the surface-linux kernel.
It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux.
Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device.
I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that was how it went when it first happened about two years ago). An AI answered, did not understand what I was saying at all, hung up the call. I called again; it told me to check the website and hung up, not even giving me a chance to say anything.
Okay. Guess I'll never buy anything from you ever. Ordered them off of Aliexpress and moved on.
I work at an ewaste recycling company. We're inundated with Surfaces often, from Gos and Pros, to Hubs (the TV-sized touchscreens). You haven't played solitare until you've played it on an 84-inch touchscreen.
I use a Surface Go at home (running BlissOS) and a Surface Pro as my work "laptop" (running Debian KDE). I forget which generations they are, but they're probably 8-ish years old, so if they haven't died yet, they're probably good. They both work well for what I use them for, and are better laptops than actual laptops for what I need a laptop to do.
For many, the appeal of a Mac is that it isn't running Windows. I'm not seeing how this won't be a repeat of the OG ARM Surface, just with a higher spec'd GPU.
And for many others, the appeal of a Windows PC is that it doesn’t run macOS. But I agree that ARM is still a caveat for those machines, in particular long-term driver support.
What do you mean by the OG ARM Surface? The Surface RT from 2012, or the later Qualcomm-powered ones? The Qualcomm-powered ones are vastly more capable than than Surface RT was.
I've been using a Qualcomm ARM laptop for the past year, and pretty much everything I use runs natively on it.
Very true, it’s a shame apple software and OS has gone to shit lately.
I have been leaning more into framework myself. My current devices are aging out but I am in a place where I am fully separated from apples walled in garden so switching is easy
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadWhat's the actual connectivity? USB4? with or without PCIe tunneling? How many ports?
How much is it going to weigh? Battery life? Battery capacity?
DGX Spark desktops idle close to 20w on Linux: that's a lot for a laptop. I'm expecting Nvidia+Microsoft stepped up their driver game some for this release, but it's wild how few creature comforts or nicities DGX Spark came with. Launched with and still has almost no power monitoring or power management capabilities. If you turn on the highspeed NIC it turns into a 40W hotbox even at idle. Nvidia has such a weird mix of supporting what they want to support well, but doing absolutely nothing else. The way Shield TV is still occasionally getting some updates is impressive for example, but it's stayed on an ancient Android version & went a good fraction of a decade without update. Similarly, keeping folks locked on rickety old Linux4Tegra and now DGX Spark heavily modified Linux OSes has been brutal. It's hard to believe this system is going to be much better than a fantastically expensive bag of barely managed idiosyncratic quirks.
What does this mean ? How can you make the world ?
Ask Shakti, Shiva's creative sister.
Reminds me of all that "Lions. Not Sheep." gear I see people rockin'. LOL
Or every model after that just slowed down to a crawl after a year. Or the keyboard connection not working reliably.
No thank you very much.
https://www.servethehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/cpu2...
The SPEC benchmark is useful to estimate the performance of computers that will run programs that are not optimized for their specific architecture.
The Ryzen was already faster in SPEC, but when running programs that use AVX-512 the difference in speed between the Ryzen CPU and this NVIDIA/Mediatek CPU will be much greater than in the SPEC benchmark.
> And with all-day battery life[ii]
If they managed to get anywhere near Apple, they'd have confidently published some kind of actual hour figure without a scare citation.
Chances for Microsoft and Nvidia combo doing the same are questionable. Better look for other non-Microsoft laptops on the same platform.
It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux.
Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device.
I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that was how it went when it first happened about two years ago). An AI answered, did not understand what I was saying at all, hung up the call. I called again; it told me to check the website and hung up, not even giving me a chance to say anything.
Okay. Guess I'll never buy anything from you ever. Ordered them off of Aliexpress and moved on.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt...
I use a Surface Go at home (running BlissOS) and a Surface Pro as my work "laptop" (running Debian KDE). I forget which generations they are, but they're probably 8-ish years old, so if they haven't died yet, they're probably good. They both work well for what I use them for, and are better laptops than actual laptops for what I need a laptop to do.
Yeah, sure... And that kind of work is...???
The only device I'm still happy to own from them is the Classic IntelliMouse.
For me, anything else, be hardware or software, I stay very far away from them.
I've been using a Qualcomm ARM laptop for the past year, and pretty much everything I use runs natively on it.
I have been leaning more into framework myself. My current devices are aging out but I am in a place where I am fully separated from apples walled in garden so switching is easy
A slightly more sober announcement is available at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352627.