MS Surface

Yeah, a lot of people like the SP over real laptops for exclusively laptop-use. I don’t get that myself, but your preferences may vary.

Thanks, great info! I have two Surface 4 pens that work fine right now, so I’m not looking to change that at the moment–I’m not a hard-core pen user. But good to know!

I’m in this boat. For me, it was form factor (the Surface is so easy to tote around), the ability to switch between pen input and keyboard pretty seamlessly, and the general speed/performance in the sort of tasks I do, including very good wireless and Bluetooth performance. Of course, I am comparing it to my now-ancient MacBook Pro, which is like a '57 Studebaker next to a '16 Vette compared to the Surface, so if you have a real, modern laptop, I’m sure YMMV.

I still want to see the surface Book 2 that is supposed to be coming out later in 2017.

Well if you like the pen input, then you don’t prefer the SP exclusively as a laptop, as you’re using it as a true hybrid tablet. I completely get that use case, although I don’t share it myself.

It’s about 80/20 for me, but yeah, the hybrid appeals to me. I never got the hang of taking notes purely on a keyboard.

Denny, I’ll check out the surface pro 2017. This will be my only PC (no desktop.) One question, when I go to the Microsoft site, they only say “i7” but they don’t tell you which one. Surely there is a place where I can get the full specs?

Yeah, it’s really annoying that they don’t include the processor model beyond Core i7 on the specs page.

The CPU is the Core i7-7600U.. That’s a dual-core, 4 thread i7.

If I was getting a laptop specifically with video editing in mind, I’d get a true quad-core with a GPU, but that generally puts you into heavier 15-inch models like the one you’re looking at replacing.

The winning combo for video editing is still a kickass gaming desktop with as many cores as you can afford, and a fast dual-core notebook bundled with extra patience for when you’re on the road. Video editing is one of the few categories where desktops still run circles around laptop options. You can put together a fast desktop for video editing and get a light modern notebook for the same price as a high-end gaming notebook and it’s a better solution for video editing at home and for use on the road – the only time it’s not better is video editing on the road. Personally, I do 95% of my video editing and 80% of my photo editing when I’m at home on my big monitor anyway.

I am writing this post to indicate I agree with the above sentiments. Thanks for reading it.

New studies conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center estimate that 25 percent of Microsoft laptops and tablets will present their owners with problems by the end of the second year of ownership.

“Microsoft’s real-world return and support rates for past models differ significantly from Consumer Reports’ breakage predictability,” Microsoft said in an emailed statement. “We don’t believe these findings accurately reflect Surface owners’ true experiences or capture the performance and reliability improvements made with every Surface generation.”

This all sounds so familiar…

For an n=2, no issues at all and I love them.

Yeah weird I have owned like 5 surfaces to date and no hardware issues. I did have to get a yellowing LCD corner heat screen replacement on the SPro 4. but that also happened on my iPad Pro, so…

My original surface book is still going strong. I bought it shortly after release. Knock on wood.

Apparently in Intel’s promotional video for the 8th generation core processor, they have what appears to be a black surface book.

Yep one of our XPS 15s is definitely a lemon. It’s been in for two screen repairs, one required a mobo replacement, and now the boot drive no longer shows up. We suspect it’s due to some glitch in the mobo replacement process.

I’d recommend staying far, far away from the XPS 15.

I guess I got lucky with mine from last year. I did have a problem where the system entered some sort of panic state and throttled the processor to .76Ghz until I unplugged the battery, but other than that it’s been very stable.

But the Dell subreddit is just full of people with problems. I’m very cautious about installing new BIOS files or even updating any Dell apps for this reason.

Yep, I read the threads on notebookreview every day. The problem is there really aren’t any good equivalents that I can find, with a quad core i7, very thin and light, and battery life at 8+ hours (with a 1080p non touch screen, which is all I need/want.) All the Lenovos, HPs, etc, that seem close have dual core only CPUs.

“8th gen” intel chips coming out next month will fix that. They’re a Kaby Lake refresh with more cores. The 15w U line, used for ultraportables like 13" laptops, will have 4 cores. The 35w H line used primarily in 15" notebooks is still officially unannounced but it will likely have 6 or 8 in the i5 and i7 variants. Desktop CPUs should be 6 or 8 cores also.

This is obviously intended to compete with AMD on core count. Competition is good!

Excellent, thanks for the info. What I lust for is a true ultraportable, very thin, very long battery life, 15" screen (maybe 14) with the CPU power to let me edit 1080p videos on Cyberlink Powerdirector 15. Which basically just needs a decent quad core CPU. I’d be happy with the computing power of this old Alienware M17x (probably 4 years old) as it does just fine. I really do all my serious gaming on my PS4 so my needs for my laptop aren’t very stringent, though since it is my only PC I do need it to have a lot of storage, ability to host my Plex media files (at least until I bite the bullet on a NAS home server,) and have a decent number of ports (e.g. an HDMI out for when I need to connect to a TV, an ethernet connection, USB ports.)

I am in the middle of a 128 page thread on how to fix the heat problems on the XPS 15, using repasting, thermal pads, various things to fix the poorly engineered heat sinks/pipes, plus the billion page XPS 15/9560 thread with all the fixes and everyone starting out by wiping the drive and installing various new ISOs,etc. I love tinkering but I don’t want it to be required.