Just got a Surface Pro 11. (Snapdragon X Plus, 16gb ram, LCD version). Swapped out the the 256gb drive for a WD 2 TB drive. So far I'm loving it. The only thing that doesn't work for me is Google Drive. But it's said to have an Arm version by the end of this year.
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Surface Devices
- Thread starter Dave245
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Curret Machine: M2 PRO
Arrived Today:
Surface Laptop, Copilot+ PC - 13.8 inch, Snapdragon® X Elite (12 Core), Black, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
Has arrived today and quite impressed with the machine. I do have a M2 Pro MacBook Pro and decided to give the Surface a try due to Windows 11 and the work coming out with Copilot + PC.
I'm pretty pleased I found this thread, I thought I'd be the only one. I find the productivity apps, Teams, browsing to be flawless. I've always been that guy that took a MacBook into the office whilst everyone has a Surface.
I will be going in with a Surface now, I am extremely impressed. I hope the battery life is as good and I do hope the I enjoy the hardware.
I think what Microsoft is doing along with Windows 11 is incredible. I did not think I would be going back to Windows side my first MacBook Pro with Retina display, I think that was 2011?
Arrived Today:
Surface Laptop, Copilot+ PC - 13.8 inch, Snapdragon® X Elite (12 Core), Black, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD
Has arrived today and quite impressed with the machine. I do have a M2 Pro MacBook Pro and decided to give the Surface a try due to Windows 11 and the work coming out with Copilot + PC.
I'm pretty pleased I found this thread, I thought I'd be the only one. I find the productivity apps, Teams, browsing to be flawless. I've always been that guy that took a MacBook into the office whilst everyone has a Surface.
I will be going in with a Surface now, I am extremely impressed. I hope the battery life is as good and I do hope the I enjoy the hardware.
I think what Microsoft is doing along with Windows 11 is incredible. I did not think I would be going back to Windows side my first MacBook Pro with Retina display, I think that was 2011?
Just found Google Drive Beta for Windows ARM is available. Works flawless for me so far.
https://support.google.com/drive/th...64-support?hl=en&sjid=12728808075253137738-NA
https://support.google.com/drive/th...64-support?hl=en&sjid=12728808075253137738-NA
Interesting, I have a littany of issues with my Surface Pro, but installing printer or other drivers is not one of them.
And you have the all new Copilot PC with Arm CPU? Which printer do you have that already has drivers for it?
Of course you can just use a generic driver but it is not the same.
I don’t have the latest Arm - you did mention the specific device a couple posts back - but AFAIK those few people in our group who were “refreshed” to the latest Surface Pro have no issues using our AirPrint capable printer ?
I've been looking for notebook for my wife, her 2017 HP Elitebook is now too old.
Buying a notebook is confusing because of their variations, from case, weight, trackpad, keyboard, screen, ports, battery life, price, longevity, etc. The notebook I liked best was the HP 840 Elitebook. It has a good keyboard, and one can access the RAM slots (2) and the internal drive. Wow.
For my wife, we've decided on a 15" Black Friday reduced Surface 16/1TB. The RAM was very expensive but the drive increase cost little - $US 60 extra at the moment. I do know one can upgrade the internal drive easily though but this way if something fails there would not be a warranty complication.
IMO the Snapdragon is early days, and I assume it will continue on. My wife only uses her notebook for M$ Office and video conferencing. The M$ version has a good keyboard, fast screen that looked fine, felt to be a solid build, good battery life if using Office, a proper touch pad and also a touch screen. Downsides are several, most critically for her, a lack of ports. Plenty off room IMO for an HDMI port in that case IMO. Logically will have to add a dock which means I guess, who needs ports?
If my wife was playing games or running other Apps, I'd have said buy a AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 365 (several flavours) Processor or a 2nd gen Ultra (also with good battery life and a fast GPU).
My 2nd favourite notebook and by far the most portable, was the Lenovo X1Carbon, really fabulous, cheap now too and its better quality than a Mac IMO. But for my wife, no AI yet iin that notebook (next year it may come and it won't be cheap most likely).
Why Ai for my wife? Because she is poor at computers and I am hoping she presses the button and actually gets some help. I also hope that it will be easy to dictate into Word rather than type. Time will tell I guess but it seems to me as well built as a Macbook Air and because it has a fan may be more reliable. I also thought its magnetic access to its interior without any screws a step forward compared to where Apple is going.
End of the day I realised:
PCs have almost caught up in battery life, and they will close the gap soon IMO.
That the Intel is using stacked CPUs said to be 7nm (whatever it really means) one does wonder how good they'll be if they get more compact and gain efficiency.
But AMD is very close IMO.
Qualcomm will have porting issues in Windows probably forever ... and I thought that perhaps, Microsoft got behind Qualcomm in order to get Intel and AMD going hard on battery life. Ai was just an excuse for that IMO. It will be tougher for Apple when most notebooks have 20 hours of browsing endurance.
Buying a notebook is confusing because of their variations, from case, weight, trackpad, keyboard, screen, ports, battery life, price, longevity, etc. The notebook I liked best was the HP 840 Elitebook. It has a good keyboard, and one can access the RAM slots (2) and the internal drive. Wow.
For my wife, we've decided on a 15" Black Friday reduced Surface 16/1TB. The RAM was very expensive but the drive increase cost little - $US 60 extra at the moment. I do know one can upgrade the internal drive easily though but this way if something fails there would not be a warranty complication.
IMO the Snapdragon is early days, and I assume it will continue on. My wife only uses her notebook for M$ Office and video conferencing. The M$ version has a good keyboard, fast screen that looked fine, felt to be a solid build, good battery life if using Office, a proper touch pad and also a touch screen. Downsides are several, most critically for her, a lack of ports. Plenty off room IMO for an HDMI port in that case IMO. Logically will have to add a dock which means I guess, who needs ports?
If my wife was playing games or running other Apps, I'd have said buy a AMD Ryzen™ AI 9 365 (several flavours) Processor or a 2nd gen Ultra (also with good battery life and a fast GPU).
My 2nd favourite notebook and by far the most portable, was the Lenovo X1Carbon, really fabulous, cheap now too and its better quality than a Mac IMO. But for my wife, no AI yet iin that notebook (next year it may come and it won't be cheap most likely).
Why Ai for my wife? Because she is poor at computers and I am hoping she presses the button and actually gets some help. I also hope that it will be easy to dictate into Word rather than type. Time will tell I guess but it seems to me as well built as a Macbook Air and because it has a fan may be more reliable. I also thought its magnetic access to its interior without any screws a step forward compared to where Apple is going.
End of the day I realised:
PCs have almost caught up in battery life, and they will close the gap soon IMO.
That the Intel is using stacked CPUs said to be 7nm (whatever it really means) one does wonder how good they'll be if they get more compact and gain efficiency.
But AMD is very close IMO.
Qualcomm will have porting issues in Windows probably forever ... and I thought that perhaps, Microsoft got behind Qualcomm in order to get Intel and AMD going hard on battery life. Ai was just an excuse for that IMO. It will be tougher for Apple when most notebooks have 20 hours of browsing endurance.
It will certainly be tougher for Apple when most Windows notebooks have 20 hours real world battery life.
The problem that forced me to buy my first MacBook in 2022, after two decades of Windows laptops, was that most Windows laptops greatly overstate their battery life.
My Surface Pro 8 boasted 16 hours but was barely able to last 4 hours with Teams meetings and some emails and Office work, even when brand new. The Dell XPS forums were full of complaints as well.
There are definitely some laptops that have good or even great battery life, but I wasn’t feeling like spending $1.5-2k on a top of the line Windows laptop just to find out whether I win the lottery.
OTOH, the MacBook battery life is very predictable.
The problem that forced me to buy my first MacBook in 2022, after two decades of Windows laptops, was that most Windows laptops greatly overstate their battery life.
My Surface Pro 8 boasted 16 hours but was barely able to last 4 hours with Teams meetings and some emails and Office work, even when brand new. The Dell XPS forums were full of complaints as well.
There are definitely some laptops that have good or even great battery life, but I wasn’t feeling like spending $1.5-2k on a top of the line Windows laptop just to find out whether I win the lottery.
OTOH, the MacBook battery life is very predictable.
Yes, and it doesn't sound like even the Windows ARM laptops are getting 20 hours real world battery life, so it may be a while.
I've been looking for notebook for my wife, her 2017 HP Elitebook is now too old.
I was going to buy today a 15" Surface but on investigating the capability of Co-Pilot to assist my wife (I was interested in voice dictation, Ai smarts for Outlook emails and in Word, and in getting assistance easily for Word, Outlook, Windoze or easily logging onto Teams vido conferencing)... I found that it costs $Au 30 a month to enable most of those requirements.
I reckon Apple will provide that without charge ...
Our cost for Office ( a home edition) is I think $Au175 =>$US115. But for us to have a workable Co-Pilot assisting function ... that becomes $Au360 $US235. So suddenly the cost of Office triples. We are retired and my wife (a lawyer) does free charity work, especially for an ethnic club, she's its secretary.
I think I may buy another computer and not worry about the Ai side of things.
Buying a notebook is confusing because of their variations, from case, weight, trackpad, keyboard, screen, ports, battery life, price, longevity, etc. The notebook I liked best was the HP 840 Elitebook. It has a good keyboard, and one can access the RAM slots (2) and the internal drive. Wow.
For my wife, we've had decided on a 15" Black Friday reduced Surface 16/0.5 TB. I do know one can upgrade the internal drive easily though but this way if something fails there would not be a warranty complication. The price for a 1TB was lower yesterday than today ...
IMO the Snapdragon is early days, and I assume it will continue on. My wife only uses her notebook for M$ Office and video conferencing. The M$ version has a good keyboard, fast screen that looked fine, felt to be a solid build, good battery life if using Office, a proper touch pad and also a touch screen. Downsides are several, most critically for her, a lack of ports. Plenty off room IMO for an HDMI port in that case IMO. Logically will have to add a dock which means I guess, who needs ports? At least it has a seperate power input though.
If my wife was playing games or running other Apps, I'd have said buy a Ryzen 9 Ai chip or an Ultra Intel (there's a 2nd gen ultra with much better power saving abilities). And only because they support Ai. But now ... I reckon its too expensive. If the computer costs lets say $US1200-$US1500 - does one want to spend 17.5% of the hardware cost per annum on basic software? That means if one keeps the computer for 5 years, that's 90% of the cost of the computer. But then ... inflation will increase the cost of the software. So likely the software cost of Co-Pilot when enabled and with Office, will cost more than one paid for the computer, in likely 4 years of use.
Seems a bit costly to me.
I was going to buy today a 15" Surface but on investigating the capability of Co-Pilot to assist my wife (I was interested in voice dictation, Ai smarts for Outlook emails and in Word, and in getting assistance easily for Word, Outlook, Windoze or easily logging onto Teams vido conferencing)... I found that it costs $Au 30 a month to enable most of those requirements.
I reckon Apple will provide that without charge ...
Our cost for Office ( a home edition) is I think $Au175 =>$US115. But for us to have a workable Co-Pilot assisting function ... that becomes $Au360 $US235. So suddenly the cost of Office triples. We are retired and my wife (a lawyer) does free charity work, especially for an ethnic club, she's its secretary.
I think I may buy another computer and not worry about the Ai side of things.
Buying a notebook is confusing because of their variations, from case, weight, trackpad, keyboard, screen, ports, battery life, price, longevity, etc. The notebook I liked best was the HP 840 Elitebook. It has a good keyboard, and one can access the RAM slots (2) and the internal drive. Wow.
For my wife, we've had decided on a 15" Black Friday reduced Surface 16/0.5 TB. I do know one can upgrade the internal drive easily though but this way if something fails there would not be a warranty complication. The price for a 1TB was lower yesterday than today ...
IMO the Snapdragon is early days, and I assume it will continue on. My wife only uses her notebook for M$ Office and video conferencing. The M$ version has a good keyboard, fast screen that looked fine, felt to be a solid build, good battery life if using Office, a proper touch pad and also a touch screen. Downsides are several, most critically for her, a lack of ports. Plenty off room IMO for an HDMI port in that case IMO. Logically will have to add a dock which means I guess, who needs ports? At least it has a seperate power input though.
If my wife was playing games or running other Apps, I'd have said buy a Ryzen 9 Ai chip or an Ultra Intel (there's a 2nd gen ultra with much better power saving abilities). And only because they support Ai. But now ... I reckon its too expensive. If the computer costs lets say $US1200-$US1500 - does one want to spend 17.5% of the hardware cost per annum on basic software? That means if one keeps the computer for 5 years, that's 90% of the cost of the computer. But then ... inflation will increase the cost of the software. So likely the software cost of Co-Pilot when enabled and with Office, will cost more than one paid for the computer, in likely 4 years of use.
Seems a bit costly to me.
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My wife's 5 year old arm Samsung book gets 20 hours and was out before M1 Mac,s and only cost $700
Its no power house for sure but for her dailies needs and VC it's great and was at the time a significant improvement over her 12' Macbook that was 5 years old and failing
My M2 and M3 Macbook pros have excellent endurance but it's not 20 hrs IRL 🙂
I ended up buying an HP Elitebook. Has all the features which are worthwhile to my wife, ports etc., except for the soldered RAM. So got 32 GB. Cost the same as the Microsoft Surface Pro with 16 GB of RAM, which also lacked in some other areas, but did have 15" display. I reeckon its targetted at the macbook 15" Air, which is fabulous in lots of ways. With an M4 and Thunderbolt it will be terrific. The HP doesn't have T- but because its internal drive is simple to replace, its much less of an issue. The rest of the notebook is replaceable too, and HP have their own access guides for doing so. Even the screws stay connected to the base of the notebook. Incidentally the Microsoft Surface doesn't even have screws - one accesses its interior via lifting the base which is magnetically attached. In Australia HP support is fabulous. Not so with other brands, excepting Apple's excellent service which I rate more highly, because one often gets to speak to someone in the USA or Australia if its a difficult issue. But HP will actually drive out and fix a failure, for at least three years. No charge but I guess they presume users will be able to fix it themselves. With HP one typically talks to someone in India, but those people are fantastic for support but I find its easier talking to a local or someone from the States. The HP you can replace the drive, replace the touch pad, the WiFi card, the battery, the finger print device (I wondered about security over that replacement) and even the motherboard, all pretty easily. The battery even has rotating tabs to make its removal simple and safe. The keyboard is coffee spill prove too.
I have a Macbook Pro 2012 13" and a Macbook Air 2015. The air become poor after a few years. And its not able to be upgraded. i needed notebook to upload videos from yers ago via a Firewire connection. The Macbook air was hopeless. But I opened up 2012 and put a new battery in it, two 8GB memory sims and also a 1 TB drive (its drive had failed, unrecoverable). And now it purrs along and runs superbly. its even got a nice feeling keyboard. After changing its battery, suddenly the track pad worked perfectly I had expected to be relying on a mouse. From my experience, the Pros are better built.
Surface Pro 11 price is currently $800 but trending down and expected to go lower if Lunar Lake refresh is released. You can often find it preowned on Facebook Marketplace for around $600 since people offload them probably due to software incompatibility. If you're referring to Surface Pro X, I wouldn't pay more than around $400 since it competes with new devices like the Lenovo Duet Gen 9 8GB/128GB (avoid 4GB RAM version) with keyboard/kickstand covers and pen. I stacked coupons, id.me and Lenovo rewards and got it for $307+tax.
Depends on workload. M4 Max has been observed above 100W power consumption at close to full load so with larger 16" 100Wh battery that's <=1 hour of battery life. Even with light workloads like Facetime and browsing it can decide to drain the battery on less power hungry M4 Pro:
I did not get one, but came close.
Strengths:
Long battery life
Microsoft Office apps
Hardware - nice screen, good build, 15" is unusual in the notebook space, space efficient for a 15", good keyboard, haptic track pad, fast with fully compatible apps
Can upgrade the internal drive easily
Easy log on options
Negatives
Price although it is good quality
Cannot upgrade the RAM
Won't run lots of software (X86 apps often being emulated)
Not for serious gaming and of the games, doubtful many are native
Lacks some ports - add the cost of a dock IMO
For my country warranty was poor
The most important consideration is if you need drivers. The arm platform needs new drivers for printers and everything else. There are very few arm drivers for anything out there. It will improve when the sale of arm pcs goes up, but it will take time.
I reckon it's aimed at the Macbook Air 15". In my case over Black Friday, they were discounted by I think 15% ... but for the same price of a 16/1 TB 15", I bought an HP Elite 14", 32/1 with an Ultra 7 CPU. It's much better quality than my Macbook Pro M3 Max IMO. Better screen, stronger body, far superior keyboard, claimed as good battery life, all fully self serviceable inside except for the soldered RAM, but some almost similar had user upgradeable RAM. Even came with a pen and a padded case with Airplane carry on slots and nice compartments in it and a zippered outside one too. It came with two chargers too - a clever way to achieve its fast charge capability. And while not thunderbolt 5, just upgrade the internal oneself, and its a very easy thing to do. And three years on site warranty.
In Australia I was very uncertain about Microsoft support too. Buying it for my wife, its a private purchase, and for software at least, Microsoft in Australia's non business support is hopeless. They rely totally on masses of on line pages and provide 20 pages of text advise without it seemed to me not fixing the issue. There is a Microsoft store in Sydney. But none anywhere else. I've found Apple support fabulous (although hardware issues can cost and iPad battery support is very poor) but also HP support if fabulous as long as you don't mind an Indian accent.
I was keen on the Ai side of things for my wife. But Microsoft charges a lot for it. I'm not sure what is going on with the HP, but its Ai works just fine and at the moment its free. Maybe I haven't pushed it enough for the notebook to request a M$ upgrade to their monthly payment Ai Plan. I presume Apple will not charge for it, and if that is the case, its a big plus to Apple IMO.
In Australia I was very uncertain about Microsoft support too. Buying it for my wife, its a private purchase, and for software at least, Microsoft in Australia's non business support is hopeless. They rely totally on masses of on line pages and provide 20 pages of text advise without it seemed to me not fixing the issue. There is a Microsoft store in Sydney. But none anywhere else. I've found Apple support fabulous (although hardware issues can cost and iPad battery support is very poor) but also HP support if fabulous as long as you don't mind an Indian accent.
I was keen on the Ai side of things for my wife. But Microsoft charges a lot for it. I'm not sure what is going on with the HP, but its Ai works just fine and at the moment its free. Maybe I haven't pushed it enough for the notebook to request a M$ upgrade to their monthly payment Ai Plan. I presume Apple will not charge for it, and if that is the case, its a big plus to Apple IMO.
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Surface has not only ARM, but also good models based on Intel.
I have Surface Pro 4 and Pro 8, both are excellent. And there are several chinese tablets with Windows, these are much simpler, but also quite usable. There is nothing to discuss with the models on Intel.
I also have Surface Pro X 2019, 8/128, the ARM there is old, before Snapdragon Elite. With software and games it is not serious, so the previous owner sold it for cheap. And I bought it for the Internet and office, because the screen is great, and for drawing with a stylus.
On Mac, unlike Windows, there is a lot of native software, there are many ported or adapted games. Of course, there is not everything, but there is a lot, and the average user is not forced to solve all the problems on his own. For example, on my Mini only native software. But this is not certain.
But on Windows all problems are user problems.
And while I like this ARM Surface, I will never buy another Windows on ARM device.
Because there are more and more energy efficient devices on Intel/AMD now.
I have Surface Pro 4 and Pro 8, both are excellent. And there are several chinese tablets with Windows, these are much simpler, but also quite usable. There is nothing to discuss with the models on Intel.
I also have Surface Pro X 2019, 8/128, the ARM there is old, before Snapdragon Elite. With software and games it is not serious, so the previous owner sold it for cheap. And I bought it for the Internet and office, because the screen is great, and for drawing with a stylus.
On Mac, unlike Windows, there is a lot of native software, there are many ported or adapted games. Of course, there is not everything, but there is a lot, and the average user is not forced to solve all the problems on his own. For example, on my Mini only native software. But this is not certain.
But on Windows all problems are user problems.
And while I like this ARM Surface, I will never buy another Windows on ARM device.
Because there are more and more energy efficient devices on Intel/AMD now.