I feel bad for MS stumbling around in a palsy… I liked Windows Phone. But I can’t stand Metro on a PC.
I’m trying out the Surface Laptop 2 (thanks Dell Finance) to see if it’s something I prefer to the MacBook 12 as a portable writing laptop, because Excel is a pain on a laptop of that size, and because all my industrial apps use Windows program, and because the 12 inch is getting a bit hard on the eyes, and because larger Macbooks are ridiculous in price.
My typing speed is about exactly the same as with the MacBook 12 w/ protective plastic key overlay. The key presses on the Surface are soft but mostly precise and without a ton of cheap-key wiggle.
The screen brightness curves are weird; anything below about 60% feels like what 40% or 30% would have been on another laptop, but 100% feels like dialing it to 11. Even in a dark room 1/2 brightness feels a shade too dark. The refresh rate also seems sub-par tbh, like its running at 30hz refresh rate or something. Scrolling through text or webpages is the opposite of modern iPads.
Like the USB-A, but would have liked an SD card slot though for photography and it’s nonsense that it doesn’t have one (it seems like it did have one but this spot was filled in?). The mini display port is a pretty random port at this point.
Visibility is still not as well done as the pixel doubling on Macs, and some applications don’t scale well. High DPI screens are something that MS still hasn’t mastered. But for Windows it’s good enough.
An annoying part of linking Documents folder to your MS account is that several games and programs partially live there; so now I have stuff about The Witcher 3 and Alienware showing up on my Surface laptop.
Macbook Pros suck for writing with that horrible 90d sharp edge; but Scrivener on Windows looks like something from the 90s, tiny aliased text everywhere. Only Macbooks or Macbook Airs are decent for writing for Macs (well and iMacs as well).
The track pad is sooo clicky. So clicky. I mean the cheap Inspiron trackpad feels of higher quality. A very loud hollow plasticky click sound. You don’t have to click all the way down, but when you do it isn’t a great experience. It is accurate, but so clicky.
It also takes a while to charge. I like the old school Apple style magnetic charger, but fast charging it is not.
Right now i’m going to give it a fair shake for a few weeks, but initial impressions are 3/4 chance i’m sending it back.
So I didn’t send it back because I can’t quite stop using it and i’m too busy to try. That’s probably the best recommendation I can give. I really like the typing experience and find ultrabook/MacBook air wedge shapes by far the best for typing. With the Alcantera it’s pretty hard not to like.