Slashdot Mirror
Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost
SmartAboutThings writes "The original Surface Pro didn't have quite a good battery life and that's why Microsoft tried to fix this with the Surface Pro. After the Surface Pro 2 has hit general availability, Microsoft has silently pushed out a firmware update which, according to some new battery benchmarks run by Anandtech, made significant improvements to the battery life of the Surface Pro 2. After the new web browsing battery life test it was discovered that the Surface Pro 2 now manages better battery life than the ARM Surface 2, which is pretty impressive. With the firmware update, Microsoft was targeting over 8 hours, and AnadTech's benchmarks show Microsoft has succeeded, registering a 25% increase in battery life over the no-firmware version. The unpatched Surface Pro 2 lasted for 6.68 hours while with the firmware update installed, its battery life increased to 8.33 hours. The video playback test involved playing a movie until the battery died, and here, albeit smaller, improvements with the battery life have also been noticed: 7.73 hours compared to 6.65 hours."
I like better batteries. Good.
What is a surface? Isn't that some kind of musical device to make clicking noises during a dance sequence?
Ah, Surface. The tablet that "could", but won't.
Not because it can't. No, because the Web 2.0 won't let it. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if its x86 and is able to run your programs. It doesn't matter if it has gobs of RAM and a ton of disk space, and it can do real multitasking. Oh yes, and it's faster than your silly android tablet which is mostly an Angry Birds or Candy Crush machine.
No.
It's microsoft. It's not Android. And it's definitely not Apple.
It's a shame. It's a nice tablet. Too bad its destiny is decided by "geeky" douchebag-hipsters. Just like the Zune, which, regardless of how much the Zune store sucked, it was shot by iFans mostly because it was brown.
I like these things, hell, I bought one. I've often been accused of being a Microsoft shill on these pages, but even I think this is too dull a story for the front page.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs," I said. "we have a protractor"
what's the battery life of it if you install Android?
just sayin
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's more or less a standard x86-machine though, so you should be able to install Linux, no? Actually, if that's confirmed possible, I might be quite interested in one...
what's the battery life if just running an alarm clock?
just sayin
If only because it's a heck of a lot cheaper than Wacom's offerings. Holy crap! $2k for what is essentially a 13" surface pro?
Pointless article, no offence.
News = "You now get more chicken in the supermarket for less £££"
Actual Facts (what this needs) = "Chicken now contains added water to make it look bigger"
So whats the downside?:
- Are they lowering the clock rates from advertised?
- Have they actually optimized/fixed the OS code (wishful thinking)
- Are they dropping rendering frames from a video?
Who knows!, clearly not this article lol.
I remember when I would go 8 days without charging my mobile. Now people get excited about 8 hours.
....with no firmware?
Apparently, the origonal version they programmed the Marvell Wifi chip wrong, so it didn't go into power save mode and now they fixed it
The good news is that there's a significant increase in battery life. The bad new is that it's still running Windows.
You can install whatever operating system you want on the "Pro" version.
Slashdot said so, and it must be true! Windows sucks at battery life!
It's more than possible. Just reboot into UEFI and disable secure boot (or add your shiny new OS) - and you might want to keep a keyboard handy.
Movie playback exercises the GPU acceleration, not the CPU core.
How about trying the tests while actually using the device for something? After all, one of Microsoft's biggest pushes for the Surface line is that they're for work, not play.
Oh, I forgot. You can't do real work without a keyboard.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I think you're confusing the Pro with the RT. The Pro and Pro 2 are no more "locked down" than a desktop running Windows because they're running the same OS.
The confusion and ire is understandable as the RT is a useless piece of shit. But they're two entirely different products.
Are they locked down in terms of bootloader?
Heh, 'deterred' for a capha, kind of like my thoughts on buying a locked down tablet.
what's the battery life if ya brick it and use it as a convenient door-stop?
just sayin
No, I dual-boot Ubuntu (which I must sadly admit is a complete piece of crap without an attached keyboard) with mine. You do have to change a 'BIOS' setting, but there's only three options so it isn't hard. You need an OS that supports UEFI (which is why I'm using Ubuntu compared to something else).
The hardware is excellent, but the pressure touch screen is too sensitive. I can't take notes like I wanted because when my hand brushes the screen all the programs think I moved the pen and I end up with stray lines and marks everywhere. I'm not sure if this is an OS level issue or a program issue. It causes more problems on Ubuntu than Win8, though Win8 is smart enough to know it's a pen and not a mouse. Yet the pressure sensitivity works on Ubuntu... When I was working on DIY touch screens/walls the main touch detection libraries had the option of ignoring palm presses if it detected finger presses. What happened to that?
Yes, I know, but better than iOS doesn't mean it's good.
Would love for someone to calculate this.
Each time a manufacturer releases an update that gives greater battery life what they are really doing is lowering power consumption.
If the firmware was released in its most efficient guise, how many millions of tonnes of CO2 would be saved for every electronic device out there?
Well, there's the issue of driver compatibility. For instance, does the touch screen work as expected? The stylus? Camera and mic? Could be really neat to run Plasma Active if all that works, then have it switch to the regular shell if you connect a keyboard.
Still a bit behind you know whom and what. Still, i think i like teh s2 pro. Expensive, but a good idea from ms. Not much of a threat to the Apple franchise, but a good effort for the win crowd that wants a power portable. I consider it a laptop more than a tablet, and the price suggests that, too.
I'd be more worried about... "Secret" updates that could be doing anything to my system more than a small boost to my battery life...
[The Universe] has gone offline.
It's 1/4! Who the fuck care about whether their tablet can last 4 or 5 hours?
Now if they only add a zero - to 250%, that would be a significant improvement, at least easily noticeable.
Then again I guess we could just hold our pens different.
Actually the Surface 2 is a very well built piece of hardware that meets many people's needs. Browsing / email / light gaming. Granted, it should include the keyboard but marketing is where MS always stumbles.
I really don't see myself running FreeBSD in a VM on my tablet. It'd be hell to control the GUI stuff, let alone do the keyboard input. Tablets are used mostly for consuming, not for development or simulation.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Apple started it. Android tablets had to be cheaper *and* faster to get a hold of that market. MicroSoft had both the OSes and multiple Android hardware vendors to deal with in an already well established market. They should have positioned their product against the top of Android at a price competing with the mid range of that tablet market.
Also, they shouldn't try and position a pimped up tablet that was too crippled to take on netbooks, notebooks or ultrabooks at a price point higher than these. If you're selling it as an ultrabook with detachable keyboard, make it like that. the notebook/laptop/ultrabook/netbook format machines have hinges for a reason. It means you can position your device on any three-point surface with the base and adjust the screen so that you can look at it semi-comfortably. A kick stand doesn't work that way, because you need a totally flat surface at the correct hight in order to make use of your device with such a contraption.
The sad part here is that the UI and the fact that you could use a lot of your code base for both desktop and portable device applications are lost because of these marketing decisions. If you ignore history and fanatic MicroSoft bashing and just look at the ergonomics of the tile interface and judge it by it's merits on a touch screen device, it's pretty good. The reason why Nokia's entry level phones are actually selling in Europe is not just because of the camera, the UI isn't half bad either and it's quite zippy on the lower spec hardware. For that money, you can't get an iPhone and the Android offerings at the same price point aren't stunning.
I think they would have actually had a chance and may still have if they would get their head unstuck from between their buttocks and would just start competing their devices at whatever point the market puts them. That may mean they'd lose on every device they were selling for a few years. They were willing to take that risk with the Xbox and it looks like they have a solid gaming division set up now. Sell the tablets as tablets, price them so people would buy the one that's "so much better than the ipad/android at the same price" and hook them into xbox live as a unique selling point. By crossing over xbox games onto the tablets, you can make people do parts of the games on their tablets. The dog in GTA5 is a very good example why this sort of thing works and MicroSoft would be stupid not to use their xbox customers to extend their tablet market.
Before you'll be calling me a fanboi, I'd much rather see good things happen to open source. Google has closed off most of Android apps, the kernel is totally forked from Linux and most hardware drivers are closed source. Even CyanogenMod has gone commercial now. I'm hoping one of the other Linux attempts at tablets or some *BSD attempt, will actually kick off and make a difference. The reason I am saying this is that even though I don't like MicroSofts business politics, I think the world would benefit from some good competition on the tablet market. MicroSoft genuinely has done quite a few things right, despite screwing up a lot of other things.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Apple fans gonna say: MS sucks, iPad rules. But let's be honest: the iPad with iOS7 is now used by pedophiles as a substitute for candy to lure kids into their vans. Right?
Have you tried Plasma Active? I'm quite interested in a Surface Pro 2, but only if it actually works decently with some Linux-version. Plasma Active seems like it'd be fairly usable with tablets (and I certainly prefer KDE for DE to Unity and Gnome), but I don't really want to buy a Surface without knowing for certain beforehand.
I was able to try out a Surface Pro 2 for a few hours yesterday, and I was unable to get the digitizer anywhere near as accurate as my X Series Thinkpad convertible tablet or my Samsung 500T (Atom based Win8.1 tablet with a WACOM digitizer) - even after multiple calibrations, the SP2 was always at least 0.5 cm off, compared to 0.1 mm on the other devices.
Was the unit broken or is this a widespread issue? The first Surface Pro was supposed to have much better digitizer accuracy than the X series tablets, so I'm a bit confused...
Probably a defect. Ive heard here and there of some people having tracking issues with the pen. Myself however, for whatever its worth, picked up a SP2, and find the digitizer accuracy top notch. At first it had a fair bit of drift in the corners but after installing wacoms wintab drivers and calibrating it even the corners have been well behaved (or at least as well behaved as I've seen on any wacom digitizer, x series included)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Corner drift is perfectly fine and normal - I was referring to the center of the display. Guess the display unit they gave me was off then... No matter though, damned thing's too heavy for me anyway - I'd kill to have that display in my Samsung 500T though (or at least that resolution). No need for active cooling or an i5, but higher screen resolution than 1366x768 without sacrificing the 10+ hour battery life would be a dream come true...
Sounds like a driver/config issue. SP has a completely separate digitizer for the pen and when Win8.x detects that the pen is close to the screen it completely disregards touch input. If you were to lift the pen from the screen a bit then it would probably pick up your wrist or palm but otherwise it shouldn't detect both at the same time.
On the contrary - I think it's a fascinating story. But not because MS made the surface 2 battery test last 25% longer. Rather than a "simple" firmware update increased the battery life of *any* computer by 25%. That's fucking incredible, and shows how much could be done to make Windows machines more efficient. It also shows how much Apple has been doing to make their portables last longer by combining both firmware and software tweaks. Let's face it - when you put Windows on a Mac, the battery life drops by 30%. Same hardware, same firmware, new OS = battery life fail.
I would like to see Microsoft concentrate more on providing vendors with OS-Firmware optimizations to allow windows machines to squeeze more battery efficiency out of modern laptops.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
By "whatever operating system you want", he meant Linux. Not Android. Full Linux. Full stop. Possibly OSX, too. Again, not iOS. OSX.
In fact, iOS and Android are two operating systems that CAN'T run on Surface Pro 2.
It's not the tablet that's the problem. It's RT. RT has no reason to exist. It doesn't fill a gap, it creates one.
Apple: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions).
Android: Tablets and phones run the same software (with a small number of exceptions).
Microsoft: Surface Pro and Desktops run the same software (with a small number of exceptions). This is freaking awesome and isn't offered anywhere else.
Microsoft: Surface and...NOTHING run the same software (with a minuscule number of exceptions). This is freaking stupid and makes no sense at all.
The confusion and ire is understandable as the RT is a useless piece of shit.
It's no worse than an iPad, the only difference is the iPad has more apps by virtue of getting to market first.
Well, there's the issue of driver compatibility. For instance, does the touch screen work as expected? The stylus? Camera and mic? Could be really neat to run Plasma Active if all that works, then have it switch to the regular shell if you connect a keyboard.
That question depends on what you are installing, it's standard hardware so if there are drivers for it and the software you are installing is written to support it then it should work. You have that same issue of driver compatibility on every system.
Surface RT is entirely based on Metro apps. All Metro apps also run in Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8.
Microsoft: Surface and Windows Phone 8 run the same software (with a minuscule number of exceptions).
FTFY. This does seem like a good plan but WP hasn't gained enough traction to make WinRT attractive to end users. Though given that it does have the desktop you would think that opening it to desktop development would hugely increase its attractiveness as a platform.