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[Skelter]

True, but who's going to be playing a game that requires a dedicated GPU in tablet mode? Especially considering that the keyboard base doubles as the stand.

I'll gladly play Civilization V on it.

Ehhhhh for $1500 I'd just build a dang gaming PC. You can get a decent laptop for much less that'll do what you want from a portable perspective, e.g. run word processors etc. I've never understood the idea of a gaming laptop.

Some of us can afford to buy this and build a PC. Titan X SLI/5820k here. Doesn't mean I'm not interested the Surface Book. Look fantastic and could still use it for personal use, class, and all the other stuff I do on my PC.

 

[Renekton]

Ehhhhh for $1500 I'd just build a dang gaming PC. You can get a decent laptop for much less that'll do what you want from a portable perspective, e.g. run word processors etc. I've never understood the idea of a gaming laptop.

I guess you don't need to travel for your work?

 

[dhlt25]

I don't really want a touchscreen on my laptop.

it's actually great. Once you get use to it, non touch screen laptop just doesn't feel right.

 

[Vinland]

Having that form factor and up to 16gb ram makes it seriously lucrative for me as a development workstation on the go. Still rocking a 2012 mbp because I wanted 16gb ram at the time for the price.

Man this thing is sweet.

Edit: looked at the prices... Nope. I think my mcp does good enough. I could hire a stooge to carry my republic of gamer laptop around for me and save the greenbacks at them prices. I do think doctors at hospitals will get these things at much lamentation of IT depts. they are already balls deep into the surface pro 3 here at our hospitals.

 

[funkystudent]

Saw the GPU is only in the $1900 version. Knew there was a catch with the way they where wording things on stage.


Fuck that

 

[Crzy1]

Have you used one? Its night and day. I would never buy a laptop without a touchscreen nowadays.

Heh, I bought my laptop thinking I'd never use the touchscreen, but damn does it simplify some things.

Really curious about the GPU now, would be quite impressive if they fit a 960m in there. From the looks of it, there's a single fan in the unit, could run a heat pipe between the CPU and GPU to cool them both, that's how my laptop is currently set up. The GPU throttles very quickly, but I'd imagine the 960m is quite a bit more efficient than the 750m I have, so it could probably perform better. Not to mention the Skylake chips should be more efficient than my current Haswell one. There's no way they stuck a quad core processor in the thing, I bet, but that would be pretty awesome if they did and it didn't throttle like crazy, guessing it's an i7 6650U, though. I'd say it's doable, but you're going to have to put up with fan noise if you want to game on it.

Edit: I mean, they're fitting a desktop 980 into laptops, could definitely see them trying to push GPU power in ultrabook form factor more with a 960m that doesn't boost quite so high.

Edit 2: n/m the fan is in the keyboard dock? The hell is that all about?

 

[defferoo]

Heh, I bought my laptop thinking I'd never use the touchscreen, but damn does it simplify some things.

Really curious about the GPU now, would be quite impressive if they fit a 960m in there. From the looks of it, there's a single fan in the unit, could run a heat pipe between the CPU and GPU to cool them both, that's how my laptop is currently set up. The GPU throttles very quickly, but I'd imagine the 960m is quite a bit more efficient than the 750m I have, so it could probably perform better. Not to mention the Skylake chips should be more efficient than my current Haswell one. There's no way they stuck a quad core processor in the thing, I bet, but that would be pretty awesome if they did and it didn't throttle like crazy, guessing it's an i7 6650U, though. I'd say it's doable, but you're going to have to put up with fan noise if you want to game on it.

Edit: I mean, they're fitting a desktop 980 into laptops, could definitely see them trying to push GPU power in ultrabook form factor more with a 960m that doesn't boost quite so high.

Edit 2: n/m the fan is in the keyboard dock? The hell is that all about?

the GPU is in the keyboard dock, and it does look like there is a fan in the keyboard dock, which means the GPU is actively cooled. Looks like there's also be a fan in the tablet itself, see the anandtech pic below.

This is interesting because this means the CPU and GPU aren't sharing the same heatpipe/heatsink/fan, and could mean less throttling when both are being utilized heavily assuming the cooling solution is sufficient.

 

[TaterTots]

Looks amazing, but the price is too high for me.

Side note; I'm surprised at the gaming on a laptop hate. I need the portability. I love watching a movie with the lady while sneaking a turn on X-Com.

 

[Crzy1]

the GPU is in the keyboard dock, and it does look like there is a fan in the keyboard dock, which means the GPU is actively cooled. Looks like there's also be a fan in the tablet itself, see the anandtech pic below.

Interesting. Didn't catch that, but watching the reveal video again it obviously is. That just makes it even cooler, figuratively and literally, I guess.

 

[AlfonzoPalutena]

The Surface Book is crazy to me. I have a Surface Pro 2, and my enjoyment of it was soured by the relatively poor battery life, bad experience using it in bed or on my lap,and the odd screen ratio making taking notes with OneNote frustrating.

The Surface Pro 3 had the same ergonomics and kickstand issues

The MacBook Pro had no touchscreen or pen

The Pixel Tablet from Google was too small, top heavy, and ran an OS with no split screen multitasking

The iPad Pro seems top heavy and has an OS problem (for me anyways)

Other convertible Windows devices were either unreliable, ugly, had horrible battery life, no pen support, ect. ect.

The Surface Book checks literally every box, I could even get a separate GPU (I have no need for one so I won't be getting it, but still... options!)

I cannot believe it is real. Hopefully the pen is a bit improved over the SP3, and the hinge is reliable. I'll wait a month or so to buy in

 

[burger_shot56]

it feels strange that they didn't say anything about streaming xbox games on windows 10 phones. Don't understand why they wouldn't do this with the whole w10 continuum thing. Seems like a missed opportunity.

 

[Nostremitus]

XBO or XB1 is even shorter.
Save time, and since time equals money you save money, and you'll soon save enough for a Surface Book.

Surface Book as priced very well...

Like I said before, I paid $2500 for a MBP with dGPU and it doesn't have a touch screen or a removeable keyboard.

 

[neogaffer1]

are they including the stylus with the laptop or is it sold separately like the other surfaces? i literally went from "oh god i need this in my life" to "lol a convertible? fuck that" to "actually it's still pretty amazing and pen and touch is really what i've wanted all along" to "fuck that pricing, this is a joke" to "maybe it isn't so bad after all"

i mean, my current laptop works fine, even if it's missing some screws and only lasts an hour off of battery...

The Surface Book is crazy to me. I have a Surface Pro 2, and my enjoyment of it was soured by the relatively poor battery life, bad experience using it in bed or on my lap,and the odd screen ratio making taking notes with OneNote frustrating.

The Surface Pro 3 had the same ergonomics and kickstand issues

The MacBook Pro had no touchscreen or pen

The Pixel Tablet from Google was too small, top heavy, and ran an OS with no split screen multitasking

The iPad Pro seems top heavy and has an OS problem (for me anyways)

Other convertible Windows devices were either unreliable, ugly, had horrible battery life, no pen support, ect. ect.

The Surface Book checks literally every box, I could even get a separate GPU (I have no need for one so I won't be getting it, but still... options!)

I cannot believe it is real. Hopefully the pen is a bit improved over the SP3, and the hinge is reliable. I'll wait a month or so to buy in

technically they're fixing that

 

[CertifiedFP]

So, any word on WHAT the GPU is?

Because there's a metric fuckton of GPUs under the Nvidia Geforce brand.

Like, is it from the 800 series, or is it the 980ti that Nvidia has been bragging about getting into laptops?

 

[Stiflers Mom]

Wow, first Windows 10 looks more pretty and thought out than the new look of Mac OS X, and now their hardware trounces Apples'....

Whats next?

Dogs and cats living together?

 

[neogaffer1]

So, any word on WHAT the GPU is?

Because there's a metric fuckton of GPUs under the Nvidia Geforce brand.

Like, is it from the 800 series, or is it the 980ti that Nvidia has been bragging about getting into laptops?

we know for sure that it has 1 GB GDDR5.

outside of that, ms store support has been telling people it's a 960m with a custom driver by the Xbox team.

however, the fact that they haven't offiically stated what GPU it is has convinced some people that it's either a custom chip like the one Alienware put in the Alpha or that it's really low end (this second theory is somewhat backed up by the lackluster RAM).

the last thing to consider, if ms store support is telling the truth, then 1 GB GDDR5 may not be that big of a deal if the xbox drivers do some special shit to make it use both the dGPU RAM and system RAM together just like the XB1 does. who really knows.

 

[Panajev2001a]

This looks incredible, I do prefer OSX's workflow and I think Macbooks are great, but if there aren't some good improvements made to stability, performance and quality in OSX before I want a new laptop, I'll definitely think about switching to one of these.

Hardware is still great no matter how you feel about OS-X... Dual boot into Windows and have the best of both worlds .

 

[Nozem]

WTF?

You click on a Microsoft based thread saying that there is no OS X?

No shit Sherlock...

I say that while I think the product is really cool, the lack of OS X is the reason I personally won't buy one.

Perfectly valid post. Stop being dumb.

 

[Joco]

Wish I had a spare $1500. This thing looks great.

 

[Zil33184]

This looks incredible, I do prefer OSX's workflow and I think Macbooks are great, but if there aren't some good improvements made to stability, performance and quality in OSX before I want a new laptop, I'll definitely think about switching to one of these.

Never had an issue with OS X, and I've gone from Leopard to El Capitan on a 2008 MBP.

I've had significant issues with every single version of Windows. From broken network stack issues to the inability to shut down after upgrading to Windows 10. Windows has also randomly died on me after software installations and reboots. It's the only family of OS's I've had to nuke and reinstall on a variety of computers over the years, dating back to Windows 98.

The one time OS X acted up on me was due to a faulty third party SSD that had to be exchanged.

Performance, I'll give to Windows though. Maybe one day Apple with get around to improving GPU performance and replacing HFS+.

 

[neogaffer1]

Never had an issue with OS X, and I've gone from Leopard to El Capitan on a 2008 MBP.

I've had significant issues with every single version of Windows. From broken network stack issues to the inability to shut down after upgrading to Windows 10. Windows has also randomly died on me after software installations and reboots. It's the only family of OS's I've had to nuke and reinstall on a variety of computers over the years, dating back to Windows 98.

The one time OS X acted up on me was due to a faulty third party SSD that had to be exchanged.

Performance, I'll give to Windows though. Maybe one day Apple with get around to improving GPU performance and replacing HFS+.

if you think windows gives you problems you should try linux sometime. you try to do something clever in ubuntu, and suddenly you have to boot into safe mode and fuck with shit. still better than fedora though, i've had that shit randomly kill itself to the point where i have to reinstall it altogether. for no reason. windows might give you problems time to time but at least it still gives you a very slick and very modern interface and gives users a huge amount of control over their system without imploding from time to time.

 

[Ethelwulf]

From the FAQs:

Can I run multiple programs at the same time?

A: Your Surface Book allows you to run up to two apps side by side on a screen at a time. You can schedule meetings on your calendar while you respond to email, or edit your PowerPoint deck while you listen to music.

Can someone care to explain? Two apps only? That sounds extremely bad.

 

[Durante]

I actually really like the "folded" aesthetics with the hinge. And I think it should also be useful to grab/carry the device.

I guess you don't need to travel for your work?

I travel for my work (more than I want to), but since you can't do actual work on a laptop anyway all I need is something to run presentations off. This is complete overkill for that (and not even very convenient, I prefer having actual physical VGA and HDMI on my work laptop).

 

[GorillaJu]

Looks great. I won't buy one because I need OS X, but I will appreciate that it might make Apple more competitive with laptops. Love my MBP.

 

[LilJoka]

From the FAQs:



Can someone care to explain? Two apps only? That sounds extremely bad.

Assume thats "apps" not program windows, you could probably tile a few windows. It would be kind of pointless tiling 4 programs though, they would end up being tiny. Im sure you can manually arrange programs just like you do on a desktop too, remember its just the same windows 10 as on your desktop.

 

[mrklaw]

I actually really like the "folded" aesthetics with the hinge. And I think it should also be useful to grab/carry the device.

I travel for my work (more than I want to), but since you can't do actual work on a laptop anyway all I need is something to run presentations off. This is complete overkill for that (and not even very convenient, I prefer having actual physical VGA and HDMI on my work laptop).

Lumia 950 with wireless display adapter?

 

[neogaffer1]

From the FAQs:



Can someone care to explain? Two apps only? That sounds extremely bad.

probably just a poor way of explaining it. it's just running windows

 

[TerryLee81]

They said it's twice as fast as a MBP, which has an integrated GPU, right?

So it doesn't have to be an extremely powerful dedicated GPU to be twice as fast, I really don't believe there's anything like a 960m in there.

 

[SprachBrooks]

Looks slick; realistically how good would this be for gaming?

Please don't reply with 'just build a gaming PC' rhetoric.

 

[Ethelwulf]

Assume thats "apps" not program windows, you could probably tile a few windows. It would be kind of pointless tiling 4 programs though, they would end up being tiny. Im sure you can manually arrange programs just like you do on a desktop too, remember its just the same windows 10 as on your desktop.

probably just a poor way of explaining it. it's just running windows

Oh thank you! Now that I think of it that makes sense, yeah. Otherwise would've been terrible.

 

[Kysen]

A guy on Ars posted the system information, CPU is i5-6300u @ 2.4GHz. Waiting for someone to post GPU information from device manager.

 

[neogaffer1]

A guy on Ars posted the system information, CPU is i5-6300u @ 2.4GHz. Waiting for someone to post GPU information from device manager.

iirc device manager requires admin rights so we're not going to see what it is out of this event

 

[StoppedInTracks]

Why is MS hiding the specs (GPU) ? I don't understand it.

 

[munroe]

Love that advert. I like how it starts showing it off and then zooms out and just when you think the advert is over, bam! It starts showing off the detachable screen.

 

[Jo Shishido's Cheeks]

The MacBook boast is so embarrassing, jeez

 

[neogaffer1]

Why is MS hiding the specs (GPU) ? I don't understand it.

Three reasons: a. It's custom so this is an OK way to explain it in PR b. They want to do the Apple thing of obfuscate so that instead of "oh its this i5 why didn't they use this i5 instead, that one's more powerful" its "oh, an i5. It's prob fine for what I need." c. It's super weak and they don't want people to know.

It can be any one of those three

 

[Grazzt]

Actually this product makes me wonder if the next xbox will use something like the gpu on surface book. They said the surface team and the xbox team designed this product together.

 

[justsomeguy]

Lumia 950 with wireless display adapter?

Would be my suggestion too

 

[tensuke]

1) That hinge, lolwut

2) No detailed specs, no buy

3) Really, no word on the exact cpu/gpu? Fuck you then.

 

[kraspkibble]

looks cool but that hinge is ugly af.

and that price? lol nope.

 

[Lonely1]

Looks slick; realistically how good would this be for gaming?

Please don't reply with 'just build a gaming PC' rhetoric.

The cheap models will be okay for graphically light games and legacy software. Intel's integrated do a decent enough job nowadays. The higher end models with the Nvidia's GPU will be better, however it only has 1GB of VRAM which is a serious bottleneck nowadays. If it only had 2GB you could reach XBOne performance or even PS4 if it's indeed a 960m, but as it stands expect a lesser experience. Imo not worth it for the price (for gaming).

 

[mocoworm]

Microsoft’s Surface Book Will Redefine How PCs Are Made

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/microsofts-surface-book-will-redefine-pcs-made/?mbid=social_fb

... it’s hard to name another high-end hybrid laptop that’s quite so enticing. That puts everyone who makes Windows laptops—known as original equipment manufacturers, in trade lingo—in a curious position: What do you do when the partner that supplies your product’s brains releases a superior body?

“It is a shot across the bow of Microsoft’s OEM partners,” says Forrester Research principal analyst J.P. Gownder. The message is clear. If the Dells and HPs of the world won’t innovate, Microsoft will.

 

[szaromir]

Dunno, Dell makes some fantastic hardware, Dell XPS 13 is nothing to scoff at even after yesterday's Surface Book reveal.

 

[nib95]

I'm always curious about people who value this: do you not like wearing headphones? Pursuing speaker quality in this form factor is always more trouble than its worth.

I have multiple pairs of headphones, but in a social environment when you're just on the go, or downstairs in the kitchen or whatever, and want to show a particular video, song or whatever else to multiple people, or are in bed wanting to stream a show between you and your wife etc, laptop speakers matter.

There does not exist, a thin laptop with "good" speakers.

My Macbook Pro Retina 15" has decent speakers. What they lack in bass and oomph they make up for with good spatial sound separation, staging and detailing.

 

[Warnen]

i keep hover my mouse over the preorder button.... $2700... I don't need eat the rest of the year right?

 

[derExperte]

I say that while I think the product is really cool, the lack of OS X is the reason I personally won't buy one.

Perfectly valid post. Stop being dumb.

Perfectly vapid. We get it, no matter what MS releases you guys won't buy it because Windows. Should we maybe edit the thread title accordingly so absolutely no one misses this very relevant info? Also I'll make sure to jump into some Apple threads and be like 'no Android, no buy'. It'll be fun.

 

[watership]

Love that advert. I like how it starts showing it off and then zooms out and just when you think the advert is over, bam! It starts showing off the detachable screen.

The fact that they showed that video twice, first time stopped when it zoomed out, and the second time showing the tablet separation. Everyone's reaction seemed to be the same.. "holy shit."

The way they did the whole 2nd half of that press event was great. I hated the first half, with the audience cheering and the way the first hosts engaged them. Then Panos came out and it changed the atmosphere of the event.

 

[JohnnyMoses]

Wow, first Windows 10 looks more pretty and thought out than the new look of Mac OS X, and now their hardware trounces Apples'....

Whats next?

Dogs and cats living together?

Trounces? lol.

 

[Diablohead]

i5 2.4 is damn impressive for a tablet sized device, as long as the cooling is worthwhile so that power can be used all the time and not in tiny squirts.

The pro 4 is still sub 2ghz right?

 

[UltraJay]

Oh thank you! Now that I think of it that makes sense, yeah. Otherwise would've been terrible.

It is literally just talking about how you can have two apps fullscreen with a line in the middle that you can move. They've had it since Windows 8. You can also have one take up most of the screen and the other app "snapped" to the side. They brought it to Xbox One as well.

It's not talking about it being able to run only two things at a time. It is only talking about fullscreen apps in tablet mode. And it's only talking about the display. There can be WIndows Store apps and normal Windows apps running in the background as well. My Surface Pro 1 runs normal Windows with as many programs as I can throw at it.

It is only a comment on the Surface Book's productivity as a tablet.