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Microsoft Surface Book 2 Puts Desktop Brains in a Laptop Body (wired.com)
David Pierce, writing for Wired: As Microsoft went to create the Surface Book 2, the company once again tried to bust categories. The result is the most combinatory device Microsoft's made yet. It's a laptop (screens measure 13 or 15 inches; there's a keyboard and trackpad) -- and it's also a tablet (the screen detaches, you can use a pen, everything's touch-friendly), and it's also a desktop. A stupendously powerful one, at that: It runs on Intel's new eighth-generation quad-core processors, in either a Core i5 or Core i7 version. The higher-end models come with Nvidia's GeForce discrete graphics, up to 16 gigs of RAM, and as much as 1 terabyte of solid storage. All that in a fanless body that gets up to 17 hours of battery life, and weighs about 3.5 pounds for the smaller model or 4.2 pounds for the larger. What does all that mean? Microsoft claims the smaller model is three times more powerful than the last Surface Book, and the 15-inch runs five times as fast. Those are meaningless comparisons, but the point holds. This thing screams. More useful are the comparisons to Apple's latest MacBook Pros: Microsoft claims up to 70 percent more battery life, and double the performance of Apple's laptops.
Faster than a macbook air 13" with intel's ultra slow high efficiency processor or faster than the high end mac book pro with the hex core, and 2 graphics cards. NOT. Even the new Iphone from apple is faster than the slow mac book (not making that up). On the other hand MS tablet actually weighs more than the entire laptop from apple.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Can you totally get rid of Windows and install Linux natively on these?
Lets see, they've got almost all the major ports one would need but missing ethernet and an external video port. Can the USB-C connection support two simultaneous video signals so that I can plug in two external monitors (with the relevant dongles)?
Lets be clear. It's not about the age of the CPU or the RAM, although that's obviously a factor. The biggest reason anyone would want to leave Apple is because of bullshit games they're playing with their hardware. Soldered unupgradable ram and storage is unacceptable. USB-C/TB3 only in a world that has no intention of going exclusively USB-C within the next decade is unacceptable. A keyboard that is an ergonomic nightmare is unacceptable.
But Microsoft is playing their own bullshit games, and in many ways what Microsoft is doing is FAR worse. On OSX I don't worry that Apple is siphoning data and files without my permission. I'm not worried that from one day to the next, my computer will become a very expensive brick cause Apple forced an update without my consent and that update bollocksed up my machine. The surface 2 could have a quad-xeon with 1TB of RAM and a 100GBbaseT network connection to a cray supercomputer but that doesn't mean anything if every boot up feels like you're playing a game of roshambo.
At least with Apple, there are ways to work around most of the hardware limitations. It's just that those ways usually involve spending even more money. But with Microsoft? You have no choice at all that doesn't involve a huge and permanent investment in time and additional resources. Basically there's no way to make Windows 10 a reasonable alternative unless you have a full IT department behind you.