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Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book Reviews
An anonymous reader writes: Anandtech posted reviews of the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 and the Microsoft Surface Book today. They write: "After launching Surface Pro 3 with Haswell in 2014, Microsoft — like so many manufacturers — opted to skip the short-lived Broadwell generation of Intel CPUs in favor of making the larger jump to Skylake. Skylake brings with it notable increases in both CPU and GPU performance, particularly in the mobile space thanks to a series of optimizations and the use of Intel's leading 14nm manufacturing node," about the Pro 4 and with regards to the Book, "The basis of the Surface Book is that it is designed to be used as a laptop most of the time, but the display can be removed as a Clipboard for use with the pen. The Surface Book is certainly not the first device to do this, but it does some things in new ways that are pretty interesting."
Looking to do so...
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Way above what I need, both in price and in capabilities.
We're testing Skylake processors and Z170 chipset motherboards for moderately priced POS systems. The Core i5-6500 based system is 3X the performance across the board of an i7 based system from 2.5 years ago at 1/4th the cost. The relatively low cost, low power (read quiet operation), and performance are amazing. Putting these into a surface pro has got to be really awesome.
Greed is the root of all evil.
from all the reviews the hardware is exceptional, The OS is obviously personal preference, win 10 being probably the best MS based OS so far and unlike what the trolls and shills try to claim it isn't malware, people making those claims only hurt the rest of the Linux community as it makes us look like a bunch of clueless zealots.
I am not trolling, I do not understand the target market for this costly laptop.
1. Developers would rather have lots of RAM and disk space, they can have those systems with better CPU for far less than what this thing costs
2. Obviously not for gamers, the system does not have powerful GPU
3. Regular users now are moving away from laptop.
MS had to write off on Surface inventory recently as well. What does MS achieve from this Surface book and Surface Pro when it is not making profit?
Windows 10 is the worst MS has ever produced. Worse than Windows 8, Vista and Me because at least they didn't spy on you or deliver ads right to your desktop.
Go shill somewhere else, tool.
I'm forced to work with Windows 10, but the best OS so far? The letters of many programs are fuzzy, borders are not straight, everything looks flat and it is hard to see what window is active, computer has become slower than with Windows 7 and it is not easy to find programs installed on the computer. Meanwhile the computer stalls a few times a day which basically means it's time to go for a coffee and a chat because my computer becomes unresponsive while it is doing its high HD activity thing.
I don't like Windows OS but 10 is not the best MS based OS so far. I would even count it to one of the worst OS on equal level with Windows 95 and Windows ME. Especially the marketing campaign of the MS sales people who have convinced our bosses and marketing people to choose to become a Microsoft only shop. I even had to give back my Ubuntu developers laptop since the MS Cloud/Office Online/SharePoint crap can only be programmed with Visual Studio with a license that is exactly 8,999 euro more expensive than my Ubuntu developer tools.
Sales and marketing people blinded by the 'free Windows 10' thinking that handing their customers over to MS cloud platform will ensure their future. We'll become nothing but Javascript developers in the near future. And that's thanks to Windows 10 and its cloud shit. An attempt from Microsoft to take over customers from the middle man who might offer competing products and sell the online services directly.
Bad move and a bad time for me so it will be hard to find a new job for me at this time (my family needs me and my stable income).
We bought two Surface 3's for our sales guys. The hardware is good but not great. We seem to often have networking problems with them.
The keyboards are flimsy, and when you dock them, the keyboard interferes with the sliding dock. There is no power LED that I can find on the dock to verify i the plug pack is working. Plus Win8 is a dog, even on a tablet.
What surprises me, is whenever a surface is discussed, it is like an Angel of God descended. Is the hardware really that good, or is MS upping their shill budget?
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So you don't use Google products then? Or apple?
Guess you like to live on the edge and run some random Linux flavor of the month? Good for you!
Most people would designate a piece of software that would phone home, track, keylog, and continue doing so regardless of your preferences as malware.
That's not a troll. And I'm not shilling a damn thing.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
... The letters of many programs are fuzzy ....
I think I can help with this one. Open the properties dialog for the executable (or shortcut) of that program. Click on the Compatibility tab and check the box for "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings".
Except that will leave the program running too small to see. The reason that option exists at all is because way too many Windows programs flat-out ignore the DPI setting and just assume everyone's running at the same DPI Windows 95 ran at.
You're basically screwed thanks to Microsoft's decision to go with a 150% scale factor - either these old programs are made blurry by scaling them up 150% using a bilinear filter, or they're way too small to see thanks to being 66% smaller than they "should" be. Apple's "retina" display being exactly double was genius in that it allowed them to just do a straight nearest-neighbor scale on "legacy" apps: old apps were still visible, new ones look crisp. Microsoft's 150% scale is only better in that it doesn't waste pixels that you can't possibly see.
Nice FUD, shill. Don't you have personal data and confidential files to give to M$?
Microsoft's highest achievement was stealing the late Steve Jobs' distortion field when they announced the Surface. It kinda went like this: "Holy shit, it's an iPad for Windows! And it has a kickstand we stole from Archos! Running a tiled window manager we lied about market-testing! And some people have to do real work on it, so we made up this floppy disaster of a keyboard, because hinges are so yesterday!"
Yeah, we see how that went. Sad missionaries from Redmond trying to balance a flipped-back keyboard on their knees, or seeking a flat table when they have to type... Truly, the specs of the tablet were good, but a limp, flaccid keyboard was just unfathomably stupid on a device intended to run Office. Sure, the thousands they distributed to employees at the time were greeted with interest, but after a few days with the floppy felt touch keyboard, more than half just got boxed back up and stuck on a shelf while something with a HINGE got used everyday.
And now they tacitly admit the floppyboard sucked, by claiming they invented/reinvented/discovered the hinge. Brother, please. How about just saying "yeah that was a screwup, but we've come up with something nice"?
I think not...(*poof*)
Yeah, we see how that went. Sad missionaries from Redmond trying to balance a flipped-back keyboard on their knees, or seeking a flat table when they have to type... Truly, the specs of the tablet were good, but a limp, flaccid keyboard was just unfathomably stupid on a device intended to run Office.
Sounds like someone who should have bought a laptop. The keyboard is for convenience and nothing more. It's quite a crappy thing, perfectly usable for typing and office type work, but as you rightly say you need a table. This thing is not a LAPtop.
Still suits for an incredibly large number of use cases.
I thought the Macbook Air was expensive when it first came out. Not sure I would consider either Microsoft Surface pro 4 or Surface Book a gold standard for Windows PC's. But I give Microsoft credit for no holds bar development on a notebook. But put a price like $1500 or more on a small notebook and it better hold up under scrutiny.
And for the price it should be exceptional. Fucking spectacular in fact. You don't even get a keyboard despite the absurd premium of the tablet. Personally I think I'd wait for other manufacturers to catch up and avail of the substantially cheaper prices for equivalent performance.
This is the teacher/professor's laptop of choice. Most of the things they need to access are web based anyway; the most graphic intensive thing they'll run is using it for a video presentation. My husband is still lugging around his original Surface Pro and has decided to ask for one of these Surface Books as a replacement when it's time for a refresh rather than a Surface 4 or 5 or whatever number they'll be at then.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
It falls short in both respects, while costing more than most decent laptops.
This may come as a shock, but l33t gamer laptop isn’t the only valid market for portable Intel based hardware. I’d venture to say greater than 80% of buyers wouldn’t know an i5 from an i7 if you poked them in the eye with it. They don’t need to, because the difference between those CPU’s doesn’t actually give them anything they’ll make use of.
The CPU & GPU are more than adequate for running the business applications, email, web browsing, etc. that most people buying this device will use it for. Going overkill on CPU/GPU needlessly increases the price, decreases battery life, increases cooling needs, fan noise, etc. Very few applications outside of gaming are actually CPU or GPU bound. Better to spend the money on more or faster storage or more RAM.
“Moar Power!!!” isn’t always the correct solution when building a portable device.
That 80% aren't going to be buying Surface Pro tablets, now are they?
The fact is the 6650U is significantly less powerful than even a mobile Sandy Bridge. That is pathetic. All of the U series CPUs are garbage and only a moron would pay those prices for such shit specs.
Well, this has fixed at least ten programs for me and I haven't experienced a program being "too small". I just resize the window - every program that I use accommodates window resizing.
-1, Uncomfortable Truth. Looks like the MS shills and tools got mod points today.
The highest CPU they offer is an i7 6650U, which is a piece of shit. The GPU is also crap.
Windows 10 is the worst MS has ever produced. Worse than Windows 8, Vista and Me because at least they didn't spy on you or deliver ads right to your desktop.
Go shill somewhere else, tool.
Most people would designate a piece of software that would phone home, track, keylog, and continue doing so regardless of your preferences as malware.
That's not a troll. And I'm not shilling a damn thing.
--
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And for the price it should be exceptional. Fucking spectacular in fact. You don't even get a keyboard despite the absurd premium of the tablet. Personally I think I'd wait for other manufacturers to catch up and avail of the substantially cheaper prices for equivalent performance.
Personally, I'm waiting for Apple to release the ARM port of OS X that they have (obviously) been working on, so I can get an iPad Pro for my "walkabout" computer.
So you don't use Google products then? Or apple?
Guess you like to live on the edge and run some random Linux flavor of the month? Good for you!
Leave Apple out of this. They simply don't do that shit, period. Or don't you read?
Prove me wrong, or STFU, COWARD.
Sorry if I implied that the CPU itself is 3X faster - by across the board I meant I meant the whole computer PassMark rating as reported by PerformanceTest 8.0 from CPUComparison.com for an i5 system (3210) and an i7 system (994).
I'm comparing three computers, the HP RP3000 POS system we used to sell, the Desktop I use daily and a new i5 computer we are considering to use instead of the RP3000.
The RP3000 uses an Atom Processor and its associated Intel chipset video and 4GB PC2-6400 ram and WD 500GB Caviar Blue HD
My desktop is a Core i7-920 2.67Ghz on an Asus Sabertooth X58 with an NVidia GT610 graphics card with 24GB PC3-12800 ram and WD 1TB Caviar Black HD
The new Skylake system is a Core i5-6500 on an Asus Z170M-Plus with 8GB PC4-19200 ram and Samsung EVO 128GB SSD
Here are the rating details:
PassMark RP3000 - 260, CPUMark 249, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 63/NA, MemoryMark 242, DiskMark 332
PassMark i7-920 system - 994, CPUMark 4916, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 435/158, MemoryMark 1436, DiskMark 664
Passmark i5-6500 system - 3210, CPUMark 7366, 2d/3d GraphicsMark 622/1092, MemoryMark 2713, DiskMark 4373
Conclusions:
The i7 processor and GT 610 video card on my desktop computer was not the highest performance model 2.5 years ago but the model that fit my budget at the time. I went back and checked the costs and I exaggerated that- it was 2x the cost of my i7 system and not 4x the cost.
The new Skylake CPU and Z170 chipset is much cheaper and faster than systems from several years ago.
For about the same money, the i5 system is more than 10x faster than the HP system most of our customers have for about the same cost.
Finally, the power utilization is shockingly low. According to CPUID HWMonitor, the power of the whole system is usually under 5 watts in the i5 system versus over 100 watts on the i7 system. Using BurnInTest Pro, I could not get the i5 system to draw more than 38 watts.
While its clear that Moore's law in the CPU category is in trouble, the overall system performance with the integrated graphics, DDR4 memory and SSD storage has made up for it. As an added bonus all this is been made available with low power capability suitable for tablet/laptop systems.
Greed is the root of all evil.
You have rage issues.
You have rage issues.
And you are an Anonymous COWARD, COWARD.
FOAD