Microsoft Surface tablets

The surface desktop sold out and new orders wont ship until January . Not bad for 4k computer. MS must be really happy with the reception. Also while the surface dial was a bit funny seeing Apple try to replicated it with the oled bar today really shows how useful it is

 

Those address 2 separate things. While there is some overlap, it isn't much. I doubt Apple was trying to replicate the dial. They were just trying to think of something to get people to upgrade their current MacBook to the newest MacBook.

Regards,
SB

 

Was I the only one thinking that bar is stupid and almost all of its functionality would be completely redundant if the screen itself had a capacitive panel?

I mean the DJ thing was downright ridiculous, with the guy taking enormous amounts of time traveling along that little stripe when it would make 1000% more sense to just use the fingers in the screen itself.



Ninja EDIT:
They should have made the laptops with capacitive panels instead.
Which is what we have with our Surface Pro computers.

Which is what this thread is all about.

 

Lets not turn this Microsoft thread into an Apple thread.

 

Well supposedly MacBook Pros are popular among DJs.

So they either do the scratching on the trackpad or one of those Technics turntables, right?

Thing I wonder is whether the Surface Book intro by MS the day before emboldened Apple to raise prices.

Coincidentally, both start at $2399 now, whereas previously, the entry price for 15 inch MacBook Pro was $1999.

 

p

I think Apple isn't bothered by MS. The price point would have risen without them launching anything. I mean this is a company that requires you to buy a dongle to charge their phone with their laptops .

I really want the surface pro 5 to have usb c for charging , but I hope they keep a full sized usb 3.1 . At some point I may have all my devices running on usb c but for now I have nothing and want to be able to ease into a transition instead of being forced into one

 

I bought the Surface pro 4 with i5 and 4Gt Ram for 900€ with the keyboard from a black friday sale. It's a really impressive device. So slender, but still packs a 15W laptop SOC and a PCIe SSD. The pricing on the models with more memory is Apple levels of ridiculous though.

 

900€ is a discounted price?

For only 4 GB of RAM?

 

I think it's €1,250 for i5 + type cover normally so yeah.. possibly even more if it is the 256GB SSD

 

Yup it's 1300€ incl. VAT with the type cover.

 

so the EVE V is still cheaper?

 

The pre-order price is cheaper by quite a bit, although not cheaper than the Black Friday price that Kyyla paid. Their Indiegogo page doesn't list the standard price after the pre-order period is over. But, for example, the top end i7 model is 1399 USD during the pre-order but retail pricing will be 2169 USD compared to the price of 2,199 USD (512 GB storage model similar to the Eve V, priced at the Microsoft Store) for the Surface Pro. The Surface 4 also doesn't come with a type cover, while I believe the Eve V does, so that'll also affect the final price if you get the type cover.

That doesn't include taxes (so Euro customers will need to add VAT onto that) for the Eve V.

Regards,
SB

 

Nice bug the other day when the pen registered a press a few mm from actually touching the screen. Then it cleared up. Gotta wonder how a pressure of zero could be considered a press...

On a plus note, which I rarely do as I mostly grumble about my SP, it is an amazingly functional device. Took it out filming and could film green-screen on site and test/preview on the SP4 with my full video editing software. It's a tablet with the power/versatility of a laptop which is ideal for productivity, no doubts about it. If only the user experience was nice and robust!

 

That's a relatively obscure (and annoying) bug that happens with the latest Pen on SP4, S Book & Surface Studio. Taking the battery out of the pen and back in fixes it (takes less that 5secs to do).

 

I did some testing on my i5 6300U surface pro 4. I read somewhere that the SOC is thermally throttled based on the temperature of the outer magnesium alloy shell. The reason for this is the outer shell being the primary heat sink and presumably to protect other internal components. I monitored the CPU package power consumption with hwinfo64 while playing Wasteland 2 (which ran rather badly). In the beginning CPU used the stated TDP of 15W and gradually throttled to around 8W. At this point CPU cores were running at 800Mhz (hello 1999!).

Placing the computer under an open window with mild freezing temperatures outside cooled the outer shell quite well and CPU power consumption jumped back to 15W, while CPU frequency was hovering around 2,5Ghz. GPU frequency jumped to 1Ghz as well. Obviously the game ran smoother.

So the surface is optimized for short bursty activity where it can boost the CPU frequency and indeed during normal desktop use it feels very snappy. Cooling isn't adequate for sustained 3D workloads. Short runs of CPU only workloads (XTU benchmark) don't seem to produce this throttling effect.

I found this an interesting compromise mandated by the form factor.

 

OK a longer run of the CPU only stress test in Intel XTU induces mild throttling to around 12-13W.

I don't see much point in buying the i7 version with Iris graphics. You are unlikely to find a workload where you will get to enjoy it very much.

 

That's actually a good point. No-one ever talks about throttling when discussing their platform's power, but it's a very real issue. Far better to have a lower peak performance system with better cooling than a monster system that has to tie both arms and one leg behind its back.

Also suggests value in an after-market dock with superior cooling. Could definitely create a contact water cooler connected to the back of a docked SP4 to keep temperatures to a minimum and performance to a maximum.

 

A water cooler certainly or just a fan blowing to the back would help. But I'm not that desperate. I have a desktop for games

Another point is that throttling can easily be overlooked in product reviews.

 

The i7 model actually has fairly different power management so while the chasis sensor throttling situation still applies, it is implemented in a different way. Thus you can't necessarily generalize results between the i5 and the i7. The i7 is still faster in sustained workloads, although it's certainly true that both are quite power/thermally constrained overall (nature of the beast).

 

Depending on the review media. I felt duped when I bought sony vaio tap 11 years ago.

Intel i5 with 11.5w tdp.

Turns out, Sony limit it even more to 5 watt sdp, and limited the turbo to max 10 seconds or something, even when you have thermal headroom.

Ugh

Then I read notebookcheck, BAM! The throttling is there. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Sony-Vaio-Tap-11-SVT-1121G4E-B-Tablet.107925.0.html