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> The most versatile laptop. ...that doesn't ship with a keyboard (pen isn't included either). No USB-C. 16GB RAM maximum.
by Longhanks 9y ago
> The most versatile laptop.
...that doesn't ship with a keyboard (pen isn't included either). No USB-C. 16GB RAM maximum.
- nilved 9y agoAre you saying that 16 GB isn't enough?
- dawnerd 9y agoI would considering it's a "pro" device. 16 should be minimum.
- georgeecollins 9y agoOK its pro, but it is also mobile. Who has a mobile device (not something that just sits at your desk all day) with 32 GB of ram?
- mgkimsal 9y agoLenovo has laptops with 32g. HP does too. ASUS... gosh... lots of companies offer it... What's the point of the question? Lots of end users want a laptop with 32g.
- dagw 9y agoI think the point they're trying to make is that the sort of person who wants 32 or 64 GB of RAM in their laptop (and I'm definitely in that group) also wants a fast processor and a decent graphics card. The number of people who need 32+ GB of RAM and are happy with a slow processor is probably quite small. The sort of work I'd use my Surface Pro for doesn't need more than 8GB of RAM and the sort of work I need 32+GB of RAM for I wouldn't do on a Surface Pro.
- tracker1 9y agoBut, depending on your workload, fast enough may well be... laptop i5/i7 are pretty fast, again depending on workload... if I'm trying to simulate a tech stack, with modest data loaded, I'm the only user, so it's plenty fast, but memory can become constrained pretty quickly... Windows overhead, Visual Studio, Linux VMs, multiple docker containers, local dynamodb, sql database, queues, etc. If you're developing locally against a workflow with a few VMs in the mix, 16gb can be an incredible constraint. I'm not trying to simulate hundreds of users, just one across a stack.
- kayoone 9y agoBut that is probably not the usecase most people who will buy a Surface Pro for. It's a very portable device and 32GB would consume more power and probably be only bought by a very small amount of users.
- tracker1 9y agoNot sure... "PRO" should probably be a label for "PRO" versions of something, and 16GB should probably be a minimum in that case. Lots of people doing heavy image work or video may be better served by more than that as well. Which is well within that segment.
- kayoone 9y agoThats a matter of definition. Surface Pro originally was to distinguish against the Surface RT, where it made sense. Same goes for iPad Pro which is clearly not meant in the same way you are suggesting, Macbook Pro is the same. The PRO label is meant to distinguish them against their own lower tier products. Imo the demand for 32GB RAM Laptops is pretty limited right now, which is why you usually find that in workstation laptops only. I don't know any 13" Ultrabook with 32GB to be honest.
- dawnerd 9y agoMaybe it's limited because companies are only putting it in workstation class laptops instead of giving consumers a choice.
- reactor4 9y agoLenovo has laptops with 64g ECC.
- jamespo 9y agoYes, there are workstation class laptops available for exactly that purpose. This isn't one of them.
- kayoone 9y agoBut are they ultrabooks and 13" or lower ? I can't think of any ultrabook with those dimensions and 32GB RAM.
- Const-me 9y agoPeople who needs lots of RAM usually willing to pay extra for i7 and other expensive parts, and hardware manufacturers know and exploit that. Fortunately, there’re some ultrabooks on the market with user-upgradeable RAM. This article says Intel CPUs supports 16GB DDR3L modules since Broadwell, i.e. you should be able to install 32GB yourself: http://www.techrepublic.com/article/16-gb-so-dimm-ram-modules-everything-you-need-to-know/ http://www.techrepublic.com/article/16-gb-so-dimm-ram-module...
- mondoshawan 9y agoI specifically bought my System76 Galago Pro (when considering it vs. the Purism Librem 13) because it can do 32GB of ram.
- jmkni 9y agoI have the XPS 15 with 32GB ram, it's an amazing laptop. It becomes essential once you start running VM's or Docker etc
- dagw 9y agoSure, but even if the surface pro came with 32gb of RAM (all other specs identical), would you consider trading your XPS 15 for a surface pro? We're really talking about two different market segments here.
- agmcleod 9y agoI dunno, I do all that with 16gb of RAM, and have for years.
- kerryritter 9y agoSame. I don't get it. My machines are 16gb and have zero problems with VMs, docker. What am I missing?
- kayoone 9y agothe surface pro is more comparable to the XPS 13, which does not come with 32GB either.
- dawnerd 9y agoWhich makes it comparable to the 12" MacBook which is far from a pro device.
- kayoone 9y ago12" Macbook only comes with a Core M CPU and 8GB Ram max, the Surface Pro is much more capable than that, basically on Macbook Pro levels.
- dawnerd 9y agoDepends on the exact model. The xps has an "i7" but it's pretty much just a core m with a few little extras. Remember, this is a fanless design so thermal throttling will be insane, just like on the macbook and the xps13.
- zghst 9y ago"pro", not "specialist" or "expert" device. It's still a consumer class device, just sits on the higher end of the chain.
- bpicolo 9y agoThe space of people needing >16gb are typically looking at more fully-fledged workstations, is maybe the idea here? Not that an upgrade option wouldn't be good, it just seems a bit at odds with the surface's goals
- baq 9y agoHaving a couple of idling VMs is hardly a workstation level load and 16 GB is just barely sometimes enough.
- gambiting 9y agoIt absolutely isn't. I'm a C++ programmer working in games industry, my work machine has 64GB and all our work-issued laptops are 32GB(which is not enough to actually start local servers of our game, so doing any mobile work is quite limiting). why does this apply here: because I can easily imagine artists using this to modify some assets and trying to run the game to see what they look like, but with 16GB of ram they won't even load the editor, much less the actual server+client combo.
- nilved 9y agoYour game needs some serious work. Maybe if your developers had 4 GB RAM on their computers the constraint would benefit them.
- gambiting 9y agoThe main map of the game is almost 30GB on its own and is a result of work of hundreds of people - suggesting that limiting ourselves to 4GB on work machines would be "beneficial" is silly. But hey, we're always hiring!
- la_oveja 9y agoWho in hell does run a game server on a laptop, and outside office? by the way the integrated graphics are real shit in this laptop, better go get a MSI or something. This PC's are clearly not for high end work, it's just Macbook Pro kind of "pro". PD: I think if you're running the whole map on the RAM you're doing something wrong.
- 8draco8 9y agoIt vastly depends on your work flow. If you are like me and just using editor, browser, small LEMP stack, git, gulp, ssh and some other small tools then you are fine and 16GB is plenty but when you start doing virtualisation, docker instances, data crunching, in memory dbs etc. then suddenly 16GB doesn't look like much.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIf I were doing all of the latter, I think I would just ssh into a real server. But, I get it is to each his own.
- m_fayer 9y agoEither ssh into a real server, or use (or ssh into) that clunky behemoth gaming desktop I have sitting under a desk, which I sadly use way more for work than for gaming.
- Nullabillity 9y agoHave fun every time your unreliable coffee shop wifi breaks down. It quickly gets far more convenient to just connect the power cord and do everything locally.
- 8draco8 9y agoYeah and slow down every time connection is a bit slower or you want to search something across whole project. Very often I am doing search trough all files directly in Sublime and I can do that because I am restricted only by throughput of my SSD and CPU.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIf you're searching across a whole project, the server is footing the brunt of that. it's only sending back the results. That's not usually a lot of data, so your connection would have to be in the kilobits to be that big of a burden.
- mikeash 9y agoI would personally consider it to be sufficient, but merely being sufficient is not enough to be "the most versatile."
- josefresco 9y agoHow many devices, with similar form-factors offer expandable ram beyond 16GB?
- baq 9y agoNone, and that's the problem.
- mmahemoff 9y agoYes I'm saying it's not enough. It's the same RAM that was available 4 years ago on Macbook Pro (and still not available any higher on MBP either). It's common to run several types of server in production, these all need to be run on localhost for development purposes. Also virtual environments so server architecture can easily be scripted. 16GB works for me, but is far from ideal. I was hoping MS would one-up Apple here, but not yet.
- odonnellryan 9y agoI agree. I don't do anything crazy, but I consider 16gb the "starting point."
- rsynnott 9y agoTo go over 16GB right now on Intel mobile chips you need to sacrifice battery life (going from LPDDR3 to plain ol' DDR3 or 4). This will be resolved with Cannon Lake/Coffee Lake, but until then don't expect to see many ultra-thin form factor computers with >16GB.
- Joeri 9y agoI have a lenovo t460p which has 32 gb of this supposedly power hungry RAM and it can make it through a workday on a charge just fine. From what I can tell, the power needs of non-LP RAM are overstated. AFAIK, the reason ultrabooks have LPDDR3 is because it is very low profile when soldered. If thin is your thing, you want LPDDR3. My t460p has a smaller footprint than a MBP, but it is as thick as a whole stack of them.
- rsynnott 9y agoThat has a 72Wh battery; the Surface Pro 4 has a 40Wh battery, and this is presumably similar. So it's a pretty big difference. The difference between LPDDR3 and DDR3 isn't dramatic in actual operation; LPDDR3 uses about 70% of the power of DDR3. It becomes a bigger deal when the machine is in standby, however; LPDDR3 uses 10% the power of DDR3. This would be a big deal for Apple, which also insists on using LPDDR3, and has historically sold machines with standby times measured in weeks or months. Not sure if people have particular expectations of standby times from Surface Pros, but if they're used like tablets you'd want it to be decent. Keeping the memory powered is nearly the only power used when a computer's in standby, so 10x the power usage would be a huge deal.
- rbanffy 9y agoFor most people it'd be, but some people need to bring up a cluster of machines that quickly eat away that memory.
- j45 9y agoRAM is lung capacity for a device, as well as longevity. Longer device life and usefulness comes come from additional ram than a beefier processor. Apple mentioned somewhere the 32 GB laptop jump involves dealing with a battery usage hit. While 32 GB arrives, a few vendors like Lenovo seem to have the 32 GB offering available in laptops, but not their Surface Pro clone.
- LoSboccacc 9y agoyeah it's already pricey for what it does and on top of that you get to shell out a bunch more for accessories
- 8draco8 9y agoPlus that kickstand always looked so inconvenient to me. On normal laptop I can adjust screen angle however I want. The kickstand also require a bigger surface to put it down properly. On normal laptop I am fine as long as the bottom half can fit on the table (or any flat surface), here there is need for much more space, seems very inconvenient especially when working in tight spaces like server room, car, or small coffee table.
- josefresco 9y agoSo buy a f*cking laptop! I'm only half-kidding - but criticizing an integral part of a product, when there are multiple alternatives with exact the feature your desire is ... silly.
- techer 9y agoThis looks like a laptop to me! Having read your comment I imagine I have to reassess. But in my head while watching the video I was evaluating it to replace by old MacBook Pro.
- lmm 9y agoIt is a laptop, or at least a laptop replacement. Try the kickstand setup and see whether it's good enough for what you want to do or not. Criticising the kickstand is absolutely reasonable, but do so based on experience rather than speculation.
- pdabbadabba 9y agoWell...the product GP is criticizing does bill itself, right up top, as "The most versatile laptop."
- josefresco 9y agoIt's a throw-away marketing headline not some super-technical classification. One-click away is a comparison grid of Surface products which includes ... a laptop.
- subspaceman 9y agoApparently the surface connector can do usb-c through a dongle: http://m.windowscentral.com/why-no-usb-type-c-new-surface-pro http://m.windowscentral.com/why-no-usb-type-c-new-surface-pr... Which, honestly, I might prefer right now since I still use mostly usb 2&3 devices.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoAs someone who has a bunch of SurfaceConnect devices, and still has zero USB Type-C devices but plenty of regular USB accessories... This product wouldn't be appealing to me if they'd put Type-C on it instead of SurfaceConnect and Type-A.
- crb 9y agoThey'll "give" you a USB-C dongle. https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15674254/microsoft-surface-usb-c-dongle https://www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15674254/microsoft-surfac... > Microsoft is planning to release a dongle that will plug into the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop devices and provide USB-C support. It’s like any dongle you’d expect, and it simply slots into the Surface connector port on the device. “If you want to charge a device with a Type-C charger, you can. If you want to put data back and forth with a Type-C peripheral, you can,” says Panay.
- Roritharr 9y agoDoesn't say Thunderbolt 3 though. :/
- smilekzs 9y ago> “If you love Type-C, it means you love dongles,” jokes Panay. “We’re giving a dongle to people who love dongles.” And of course I would prefer to have a magnetic charging connector over USB-C all day. Makes even more sense if your USB-C is from this very same connector.
- ghrifter 9y agoYou can also buy a $200 dock for plugging in the Surface Pro to a monitor and it has some more USB ports. Jesus christ this is insane.
- megablast 9y agoBut why not replace the display port of power with usb-c. You get a versatile port for free?
- partiallypro 9y agoI don't fault Microsoft for doing this, the USB-C connector is so far from being off the ground in the market, there's no reason to support it on major devices yet. Most new technologies are going wireless, you move data wirelessly, you charge wirelessly. The need for USB connectors is dying, the old USB connector is nice to have on the Surface out of sheer convenience with some legacy devices, but I only use it maybe 2 times a year.
- pier25 9y ago... and that is a pain to use on your lap.
- zghst 9y agoWill RAM capacity remain a true valid complaint until the end of time? How much power on one device do we really need in the age of cloud computing and multi-device ownership?
- dijit 9y agoDevelopers use more memory because it's available. Most developers seem to assume their program is the only program running on the system. This is why my girlfriend can't have multiple browsers open. For a "demanding" workoad (IE; IntelliJ IDE, browser, mail client) windows can easily consume 15/16G already. Personally I use a stripped down linux machine but I'm regularly over 8G, where's the future-proof option?
- zghst 9y agoThe way we use our machine matters along with the continual upkeep and fine tuning of our tools. It is our responsibility to not put the foot down on the gas completely all the time. The real world constraints on this machine do not seem unreasonable for me and my type of work (software, web) at this time. Fortunately, in my arena of software we distribute work off of the computer and our programs are more piecemeal. Very few software engineers need a large amount of resources locally.
- pjmlp 9y ago> IE; IntelliJ IDE, browser, mail client I run all of that on a 8 GB machine, it works perfectly.
- intoverflow2 9y ago> No USB-C What would you even plug into it? It's not like USB-C accessories are readily stocked everywhere, I'm still carrying around dongles all day for my TouchBar MBP. If the laptop shipped with USB-C people would be whinging they need dongles, literally can't win.
- jonknee 9y ago> If the laptop shipped with USB-C people would be whinging they need dongles, literally can't win. How about multiple USB ports, say 1 USB-A and 1 USB-C?
- wooter 9y agoi think we're pretty much done with USB-A given any form factor besides desktop(-replacement?) these days. I'd rather not sacrifice the space for the next 3+ years when its basically relegated to phone charging duties - and barely that given this generation of battery life.
- melling 9y agoWhat connector do you think you'll need in two years, five years, 10 years? The transition to USB-C has begun. For most of the life of the device, you'll probably want USB-C. I'm sure Microsoft will get to it in the next release.
- ashark 9y ago> two years USB-A. > five years Both—not having either will mean tons of dongles. > 10 years? USB-C. [EDIT] actually the 10-year will probably be "some other stupid new connector, with USB-C dongles"
- melling 9y agoUSB-C is already shipping on cheap desktops, a lot of smartphones, and many laptops. In two years Apple won't ship any computers with USB-A. USB-C has arrived: http://www.bestbuy.com/site/shop/laptops-with-usb-c http://www.bestbuy.com/site/shop/laptops-with-usb-c
- ericfrederich 9y agohaha... you're right. How do you call something you cannot use on your lap (even with the keyboard attachment) a laptop?
- gurkendoktor 9y ago> No USB-C. I'd say that HDMI would be make the machine a lot more versatile than USB-C (or MiniDP, for that matter). Showing a few photos on a TV, using your client's projector for an unplanned demo, using an absent coworker's screen - I can't remember how often I've envied MacBook Pro Retina users for that port. It's magic. TVs and projects are not going to switch from HDMI to USB-C either, so waiting won't solve that problem.
- jcl 9y agoHeh... the current MacBook Pros only have USB-C ports, so MacBook users now similarly need display adapters until USB-C becomes common.