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Microsoft's New Surface Pro Features Faster Intel Kaby Lake Processor, 13.5 Hours of Battery Life (thurrott.com)
On the sidelines of Windows 10 China Government Edition release, Microsoft also announced a new Surface two-in-one laptop. The latest addition to company's hybrid computing line up, the "new Surface Pro" sports an improved design, and houses a newer processor from Intel. From an article: The new Surface Pro features the same 3:2 12.3-inch PixelSense display as its predecessor, providing a resolution of 2736 x 1824 (267 ppi) and 10 point multi-touch capabilities. Surface Pro is based on faster and more reliable Intel "Kaby Lake" chipsets in Core m3-7Y30 with HD Graphics 615, Core i5-7300U with HD Graphics 620, and Core i7-7660U with Iris Plus Graphics 640 variants, which should make for a better experience. As with the previous version, the Core m3 version of the new Surface Pro is fanless and thus silent. But this is new: The Core i5 versions of the new Surface Pro are also fanless and silent. And a new thermal design helps Microsoft claim that the i7 versions are quieter than ever, too. The new Surface Pro is rated at 13.5 hours of battery life (for video playback), compared to just 9 hours for Surface Pro 4. That's a 50 percent improvement. urface Pro can be had with 4, 8, or 16 GB of 1866Mhz LPDDR3 RAM. The new Surface Pro is built around the USB 3-based Surface Connect connector and features one full-sized USB 3 port and one miniDisplayPort port. Microsoft also announced a new Surface Pen (sold separately), and claims that the new pen is twice as accurate (compared to the previous version). No word on the pricing but it will be available in all major global markets in the "coming weeks." The new Surface ships with Windows 10 Pro. (Side note: Earlier Microsoft used to market the Surface Pro devices as tablets that could also serve as laptops. The company is now calling the Surface Pro laptops that are also tablets.)
Take 2 and call me in the morning
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
They might upgrade.
Obligatory.
just think how much longer the battery will last with Linux installed. ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
If they paired this with their Windows 10 Chinese Government operating system.
How good are the thermal characteristics of these types of device? I bought an Intel Compute Stick with the m3 processor, and was quite disappointed with the performance, which was apparently limited due to power and/or thermal performance limiting. I suppose the performance of the Surface Pro would depend on whether the limiting was due to power (in which case the Surface Pro should live up to the promise of the m3 benchmarks), or was due to thermal considerations, which might still be somewhat of an issue here.
My used (to me) Surface Pro 3 surpasses my expectations, and I'm used to Dell Latitude top of line laptops. Screen is lovely, touch works, i5/8GB/256GB model does all I want. KVM, Virtual PC, etc all work. Really. Battery life is fine, even for a used unit.3rd party chargers are weak, but heh.
If only I could justify the $.
The only complaints, big ones, they still don;t put a keyboard (Type Cover, $129+) in the box, purchased separately, and now no Surface Pen ($60). Cheap.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Congrats Slashdot.
Still just maxes out at 2 core....
Well, like Windows Operating system, MS has accustomed us to overhaul every two version so I thought the Surface Pro (5?) would have move changes. Sadly, it's simply a Surface Pro 3 v3 (and the Surface Pro 4 was the v2). Talking about this, scapping the numbering is dumb and now I will have a lot of trouble to find support for my "old" Surface Pro (the first). Well, not as dumb that Surface Pro One at least.
Better battery and CPU/GPU are to be expected, nothing amazing there.
New LTE support (only for latter model) are interesting, but data over LTE cost a little too much here to be useful (I something create a Wifi with my cellphone and and, after a quick web browsing while drinking my coffee, I had over 50mb used because of the habits of MS and it's program to automatically use the internet for anything.
Not including the pen anymore is a bad decision imho because it's the killer feature this product. If you're not using the pen, then buying this over another Ultrabook with similar spect at almost half the price doesn't make much sense. Also, the pen is too easy to lose (it took me about a year to lose mine) so I do think that MS should find a way to "dock" the pen on the tablet more firmly. The magnet that I saw on the Surface Pro 4 isn't enough. Oh yeah, and since the pen is quite pricey (50$-60$) + the keyboard at 130$, it's also a subtle way to make the Surface Pro a little more expensive that the labeled 799$. In reality, the real cost of the most basic Surface Pro (new) is really 1000$.
Still only one USB 3 port. MS seriously need to step down and add USB-C to their Surface product. Since it's pretty clear that the USB-C will become the new standard, I don't want my brand new Surface Pro to be obsolete in 2-3 years.
The i5 version is now fanless....well I don't particularly care about this and I usually prefer a laptop that blow hot air instead of a laptop that become hot itself.
Kudos to MS for calling them "Laptop" now. Compared to "real" tablet, the Surface Pro is doing a very bad job for, well, "tablet" uses. Hardware is good, but the Apps availability difference is just too big.
So, yeah, an "ok" upgrade but I'll kept my Surface Pro (the first) for now.
Elok
So what, they're bored with the simple incremental numerical naming scheme already?
Are they rebooting the franchise?
Did they also fix the headphone out audio quality? Measured it the other day, and the signal did not look pretty. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Does it run *BSD?
...there are no programs to run so you just shut the thing off.
Call me when these come with a fucking thunderbolt 3 port. The ability to have an extremely thin and light laptop/tablet when mobile, but connect to an eGPU for gaming (or any other graphically intensive task) would be fantastic.
side note, why has Intel gone out of their way to gimp eGPU adoption? =/
Five revisions of the Surface product and they haven't sold a single one. You would think they would get a hint.
I'd rather kill myself than stare at a 2736x1824 screen.
WTF kind of sense does that make? Absolutely everything will scale like ass.
Couldn't go for 2880x1920? That's still in your dumb 3:2 aspect ration but lets people scale 1920x1080 content at 1.5x, which isn't great but is a hell of a lot better than the 1.425x the 2736x1824 screen needs. At 2880x1920, 4K goes down at 0.75x, but at 2736x1824 it's an absurd 0.7125x.
Going to 2880x1920 is less than 11% more pixels than 2736x1824, but it would make a world of difference for displaying video and games.
Especially at such a low density (267 pixels per inch, which itself would be slightly improved by going to 2880x1920).
collect your data with my dear....
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Still with the flaccid keyboard?
I regularly fly through SEA, native habitat of the traveling microsoftie, where one can observe both variations of the species -- salesdroids and geeks -- going through all sorts of contortions to compensate for the flaccid member protruding from the front of the surface. In the boarding area you can see the surface balanced on one thigh with front edge of keyboard pressed against bellybutton while the kickstand still sloooooowly slides back over the knee. On the plane, you can see the kickstand retracted or dangling in empty air as the tablet leans against the seat in front, while the softie hugs the keyboard ever closer. On Alaska Air's first class side-mounted tables, the whole thing collapses front and back, unless the silverback of the softie species places it atop a firm leather pad cover from a recent Ignite or TechEd, turned at an angle for a little extra space. Only in the comfort of its home conference room or spacious ergonomic standing desk can the Surface both recline its torso and flop out its full flaccid glory to be appreciated for... the normal functionality of other laptops.
In all seriousness, the surface line is a nice showpiece, but the OS makes it a mediocre tablet, and the floppy+kickstand mess makes it a profoundly handicapped laptop that takes up more room front-to-back than a typical 17in laptop. And they don't seem to be promoting the version that does have a good hinge system. FFS, it doesn't matter how much battery life the damn thing has if the ergonomics are so infuriating that I'd rather use a chromebook -- which iirc still connects to gogo internet for free.
I think not...(*poof*)
Since Microsoft refused to give the "new surface pro" a model number, I unofficially declare it the Surface 4.20
Nine mentions of Microsoft and ten mentions of Windows on the front page ..
Does it already run Linux ?
aaaaaaa
The word "sports" serves very well as an indicator of someone who is paid to write an advert, giving up any pretence of speaking or writing like a normal human being. Or maybe it's just camouflage for someone who has no talent for copywriting.
The goal of this report is to make the existence of Intel CPU backdoors a common knowledge and provide information on backdoor removal.
What we know about Intel CPU backdoors so far:
TL;DR version
Your Intel CPU and Chipset is running a backdoor as we speak.
The backdoor hardware is inside the CPU/Bridge and the backdoor firmware (Intel Management Engine) is in the chipset flash memory.
30C3 Intel ME live hack:
@21m43s, keystrokes leaked from Intel ME above the OS, wireshark failed to detect packets.
[Video Link] 30C3: Persistent, Stealthy, Remote-controlled Dedicated Hardware Malware
[Quotes] Vortrag:
"DAGGER exploits Intel's Manageability Engine (ME), that executes firmware code such as Intel's Active Management Technology (iAMT), as well as its OOB network channel."
"the ME provides a perfect environment for undetectable sensitive data leakage on behalf of the attacker. Our presentation consists of three parts. The first part addresses how to find valuable data in the main memory of the host. The second part exploits the ME's OOB network channel to exfiltrate captured data to an external platform and to inject new attack code to target other interesting data structures available in the host runtime memory. The last part deals with the implementation of a covert network channel based on JitterBug."
"We have recently improved DAGGER's capabilites to include support for 64-bit operating systems and a stealthy update mechanism to download new attack code."
"To be more precise, we show how to conduct a DMA attack using Intel's Manageability Engine (ME)."
"We can permanently monitor the keyboard buffer on both operating system targets."
Backdoor removal:
The backdoor firmware can be removed by following this guide using the me_cleaner script.
Removal requires a Raspberry Pi (with GPIO pins) and a SOIC clip.
Decoding Intel backdoors:
The situation is out of control and the Libreboot/Coreboot community is looking for BIOS/Firmware experts to help with the Intel ME decoding effort.
If you are skilled in these areas, download Intel ME firmwares from this collection and have a go at them, beware Intel is using a lot of counter measures to prevent their backdoors from being decoded (explained below).
Useful links:
The Intel ME subsystem can take over your machine, can't be audited
REcon 2014 - Intel Management Engine Secrets
Untrusting the CPU (33c3)
Towards (reasonably) trustworthy x86 laptops
30C3 To Protect And Infect - The militarization of the Internet
30c3: To Protect And Infect Part 2 - Mass Surveillance Tools & Software
1. Introduction, what is Intel ME
Short version, from Intel staff:
Re: What Intel CPUs lack Intel ME secondary processor?
Amy_Intel Feb 8, 2016 9:27 AM
The Management Engine (ME) is an isolated and protected coprocessor, embedded as a non-optional part in all current Intel chipsets, I even checked wit