surface convert

[wintermute000]

I had a surface pro 2, thought it was mediocre and was always wishing for either a real laptop or a real tablet. Sold it for ~70% of the price after 6 months.



Typing this now on the low end m3/4Gb/128Gb Surface Pro 2017 and I am totally converted.
Bought it as a home laptop/tablet-in-1 and it absolutely rocks - there's a pricing deal where you get it and the keyboard for basically the same price as an ipad pro, so why not.
The only downside is the somewhat crappy touch interface but seeing as 99% of my touch use-case is reading PDFs, ebooks, browsing and movies its not really a big deal.


I'm so convinced that I'm going to go full surface instead of upgrading my desktop once the following criteria is met


- 8th gen procs
- LTE
- USB-C with 4-lane thunderbolt for eGPU support


Here's hoping my desktop and work laptop can hold out long enough LOL

[deanwebb]

The surface is definitely an eye-catcher and the fact it can go tablet is a big plus. I'm partial to them, but I still love my laptops and servers.

[Dieselboy]

I want their new(ish) all singing all dancing Surface laptop but don't want to pay $6000 bucks for it. I'd pay $1k may be $2k tops, if I was in a really good mood like if the gf had woke me up with breakfast in bed on a saturday or something like that. Then she turned to me, while I am mopping up the yolk with the last of the toast and washing it down with the rest of the tea; and says "going to take you to the microsoft store to buy you the new Surface laptop". THEN I'd probably stretch to the $2k mark. But $6k? No way my pedigree chum.

I did notice the small surface though, you gave a good review. I will check it out! 

[wintermute000]

nah I didn't buy the 'small' one (the new Go), I bought the lowest spec pro (12.3"). It is fucking sick as a secondary machine (home / travel laptop and tablet in one). It really does cover both use-cases EXCEPT touch only tablet games suck on win10. But then I can always bluetooth a joypad and run my entire steam library (well those that run on intel graphics lol), so that really does beat the snot out of ipad/android games IF you have somewhere to put up the surface. The kickstand is a bloody revelation, esp as its ANY angle, with or without keyboard.
Theres a deal @ MS Aus right now where you get the m3/4Gb/128Gb SSD + cover for 998 which is ipad pro territory, so yeah fuck apple

Don't go near the surface laptop until/unless they refresh the CPU to 8th gen+ quad core. They're still 7th gen i.e. dual core.


As soon as they release a refreshed surface pro with thunderbolt 3x4 and USB-C and LTE I'm all in, getting a eGPU enclosure and ditching my current home workstation / work laptop combo for one device to rule them all. I got a dual Xeon 16C/32T 64Gb ESXi 6.5 server for any VM lab duties.

[Dieselboy]

I'm keen for LTE so give me the heads up when it is available.

Check out the microsoft store, they have more than just ubuntu there now. I do about 50% windows gui and 50% ubuntu bash with my Windows 10 these days. Why would anyone want a mac these days... 

[deanwebb]

I'm keen for LTE so give me the heads up when it is available.

Check out the microsoft store, they have more than just ubuntu there now. I do about 50% windows gui and 50% ubuntu bash with my Windows 10 these days. Why would anyone want a mac these days... 

Because sales.

[wintermute000]

LTE is available, but only on the i5/8Gb/256Gb Surface Pro for some retard reason.


My work thinkpad has built in LTE and that is non-negotiable for me, esp. as I'm on the road a fair bit for work. The ability to just flip the lid and start typing in any coffee shop is worth admitting that fumbling to turn on hotspot mode on the phone is a first world problem you really don't want. Esp. with how Win10 can seamlessly switch from wifi to LTE and vice versa. And esp when you work for mega-telco and have free data SIMs


Also, eGPU friendly thunderbolt-4. Must retain the ability to hit 1080-hi @ 120FPS (heck make that 1440p-hi) when docked. Feels wrong if it can't. LOL


I have a feeling I'll be waiting a long time. Right now only a bunch of the better ultrabooks fit the eGPU and LTE criteria. The surface surely is coming with thunderbolt-4 but the record on LTE is abysmal. I've also heard some damning reports from people who do 'heavy' work on them (working on large DBs) and apparently the throttling is abysmal, nevermind the 16Gb limit. So likely I'll be just uplifting the guts of my workstation to a 9900k or whatever LOL. Its just the damned RAM prices - would be looking at over 1K just to maintain 32Gb, a top of the line CPU and mobo.