So Microsoft made a laptop - Surface Pro 4 / Surface Book

by Simon 24 Replies latest social current

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  Simon

  if you buy a new computer you can have the latest edition of Microsoft Office loaded on to it of course, it cost $89, but Microsoft will now charge you yearly to use Microsoft Office, don't they have enough money ? I'm glad I still have the version of Office I got when I purchased my laptop in either 2006 or 2007

  Lots of software is moving subscription pricing. It smooths out the peaks and troughs of income for the manufacturer and the constant updates and pay-as-you-play is often better for consumers.

  It seems better to pay $9.99 per month for Adobe Photoshop and always have the latest version than $700 dollars every two or three years or, more typical, to end up and a version 2 or 3 behind the latest.

  Some of he multi-PC / family pricing for Office isn't too bad esp. if you have kids who need it for study / homework. As much as I love Google docs, they just still don't compare to the full power of Word and Excel.

  I can't help but think though, that if this was an Apple or a Tesla product the hinge would do that, and it would close flush.

  Yeah, that was my initial thought. It may end up being the best thing ever or there could be lots of issues. Anything super new and revolutionary is a bit of a risk. I'll have to try it to know.
  
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  RobertT18

  According to the MS store the most expensive edition of the Surface Book is out of stock. Limited inventory?
• 

  Finkelstein

  This new Surface Book design is certainly unique, being that it is I would personally wait a couple months before making a purchase on it. Let it go through some technical reviews and extended use.

  If it does come out to be reliable, it has the potential to take interest away from Apple and their line of Laptops.
• 

  Simon

  According to the MS store the most expensive edition of the Surface Book is out of stock. Limited inventory?

  They are all apparently out of stock now.

  It could mean there is a lot of demand or they could have been conservative with how many they made. It's not so long ago that they had a $1bn-ish write-down on a warehouse full of Surface RT tablets after all !

  Wait, Windows 10 doesn't mean ... they only made 10 ... does it?

  I agree, so much new tech really needs some thorough reviews before you can make an informed choice. Not just the design but the new Intel CPUs and GPU options. So much unknown right now.
• 

  Simon

  Well, we went to the Windows store today to check them out for our eldest's university study (and he's waited so patiently for his graduation present).

  First, they didn't have any of the Surface Books to compare the two. Kind of lame - there really aren't that many Microsoft stores that making sure they had demo units should be difficult.

  Second, while they had about 8-10 Surface Pro 4's on display every single one of them was the exact same model. Yup, you can't try the m3 or i7 to see what performance is like, only the same 4Gb i5 variation.

  The MS guy suggested that "you can't tell any performance difference from just using them" which made me question why "anyone would buy the expensive one then if it wasn't going to be any quicker?" (duh).

  The screen size and keyboard are definite improvements but oh dear, the pen - sorry Microsoft, it sucks.

  I tried writing on it and it was either missing the pen movement completely or randomly jumping. You just didn't get the feeling it was accurate and fully under your control to make the marks you wanted. It was unusable for writing to the point that the pen input seems like a gimmick rather than something genuinely useful. They need to buy Wacom. The ink-to-text was Apple Newton-esque in it's uselessness.

  Given that the idea of using it to take notes wasn't going to work then we decided to focus on the laptop experience instead and the Surface made less sense as an option.

  As there was no Surface Book available to try we went round to the Apple store and we think the 13" MacBook Pro was the best option - good battery life / performance and decent keyboard. I actually like the MacBook form-factor but the keyboard on it is a bit naff - it's like they focused way too much on making it thin but at the expense of making it usable. It reminded me of the flat card keyboard on the original surface tablet (oh, the irony).

  Marks deducted from Apple too - no iPad Pro to try (have to see if Apple's "Pencil" is as bad as Microsoft's "Pen").

  We'll still hold off so we can checkout the Surface Book but the price of that is way too high really, especially with our weak Canadian dollar right now so I sense a trip back to the Apple store soon.