Tech Microsuck first ever laptop

[magnifier661]

Gotta admit... This thing is pretty slick!!!

Microsoft just introduced its first-ever laptop and it's insane

Microsoft

Microsoft just introduced its first-ever laptop on Tuesday, called Surface Book.

Weighing in at a little over three pounds, Surface Book is the fastest 13-inch laptop ever created, and it's two times faster than Apple's MacBook Pro, according to Microsoft.

We've tested the computer for a few minutes at Microsoft's launch event, and it definitely feels like a strong competitor to Apple's MacBook Pro.

It will be available October 26 starting at $1,499.

Check it out.

The Microsoft Surface Book is machined out of a single piece of magnesium.

Microsoft

The laptop is built with a dynamic fulcrum hinge.

Microsoft

The display has a muscle wire lock so you can remove it entirely and use it as a tablet.

Microsoft

You can even flip the display around to draw on it like a clipboard.

Microsoft

The trackpad is made with precision glass that can support five-point multitouch.

Microsoft

Surface Book is powered by Intel's sixth-generation Core i7 chip and an incredibly fast graphics card from NVIDIA. It also comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 1 terabyte of storage space.

 

[barfo]

I do want to know what a 'muscle wire lock' is. Otherwise, sounds like just another laptop.

barfo

 

[speeds]

We should reinstate Microsuck. That guy was a stellar community organizer.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Great, you can get lost in user settings at 2x the speed!

 

[bodyman5000 and 1]

Be funny if it caught fire and nobody could put it out. Or terrible.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I'd be scared it was a terminator.

 

[andalusian]

I do want to know what a 'muscle wire lock' is. Otherwise, sounds like just another laptop.

It can actually separates the screen part from the keyboard portion and become a big clipboard/tablet - the interesting part about it is that the hinge can change it's size based on how it is used - and contains power and data wires in it (when the screen is separate - it uses the built-in Intel GPU - when connected to the keyboard part, in addition to the extra battery - it has a stand-alone NVidia GPU so can be used as a high-end workstation for CAD or video-editing, or as a high-end gaming notebook).

The "Muscle wire lock" bit is just marketing propaganda - the same way that Apple does not sell you a fingerprint reader, they sell you "Touch ID" - but the clever part of this is that it provides secure, rigid notebook like connection that supports 360 degree rotation (like a Lenovo Yoga) - but can also detach while providing more than just minimal connectivity as needed by just a keyboard.

Expect Apple to poo-poo it and "innovate" in 3 years by bringing a clone to the market (as they just did with the iPad Pro being a Surface clone just recently).

I have to admit that while I do not need it - I am tempted to get one anyway, my Yoga Pro 2 is almost 2 years old already...

 

[magnifier661]

It can actually separates the screen part from the keyboard portion and become a big clipboard/tablet - the interesting part about it is that the hinge can change it's size based on how it is used - and contains power and data wires in it (when the screen is separate - it uses the built-in Intel GPU - when connected to the keyboard part, in addition to the extra battery - it has a stand-alone NVidia GPU so can be used as a high-end workstation for CAD or video-editing, or as a high-end gaming notebook).

The "Muscle wire lock" bit is just marketing propaganda - the same way that Apple does not sell you a fingerprint reader, they sell you "Touch ID" - but the clever part of this is that it provides secure, rigid notebook like connection that supports 360 degree rotation (like a Lenovo Yoga) - but can also detach while providing more than just minimal connectivity as needed by just a keyboard.

Expect Apple to poo-poo it and "innovate" in 3 years by bringing a clone to the market (as they just did with the iPad Pro being a Surface clone just recently).

I have to admit that while I do not need it - I am tempted to get one anyway, my Yoga Pro 2 is almost 2 years old already...

Start the new Microsoft army!!! Buy stuff you don't need because it's cool and the Microsoft way of life!

I actually like this rig. Don't like the clunky OS though.

 

[Natebishop3]

Start the new Microsoft army!!! Buy stuff you don't need because it's cool and the Microsoft way of life!

I actually like this rig. Don't like the clunky OS though.

Your mom is a clunky OS.

 

[andalusian]

Start the new Microsoft army!!! Buy stuff you don't need because it's cool and the Microsoft way of life!

I actually like this rig. Don't like the clunky OS though.

Probably wait another year for my notebook update, the yoga is surprisingly good -I still really enjoy it.

The wife might get a surface pro 4 soon, my daughter by mistake bashed her little Asus notebook - so it might be time to treat the boss.

 

[Denny Crane]

The Microsoft store at the mall is always mostly empty. You won't have to wait in line.

 

[barfo]

The Microsoft store at the mall is always mostly empty. You won't have to wait in line.

That is a big advantage. Downtown Portland the Apple store and the Microsoft store are on the same street, 1 block apart. It's pretty funny to walk by both of them, one is packed day and night - the other staffed by a few lonely Maytag repairmen.

barfo

 

[Natebishop3]

People still go into stores? Why would you do something like that?

 

[Denny Crane]

Apple store is DisneyLand for techies.

 

[andalusian]

Apple store is DisneyLand for techies.

Disneyland - the place where bored adults go to stand in line for acts they outgrew a long time ago because they need to entertain their kids.

Yes, this analogy works.

 

[Denny Crane]

Disneyland - the place where bored adults go to stand in line for acts they outgrew a long time ago because they need to entertain their kids.

Yes, this analogy works.

Apple Store is where consumers go to drool over all the neat stuff.

If Microsoft had neat stuff, people would go to their stores, too.

Apple Store last christmas:



Microsoft store last christmas:



The store are in the same mall on the same level, about 3-4 stores distance between them.

 

[Denny Crane]

Apple Store



Microsoft Store

 

[andalusian]

First, I have a Mac Mini, an iPad and 2 iPhones here, so I am not an Apple hater, I just do not like the googly eyed fandom that some people have where Apple is all there is - they make some beautiful stuff, but they also make some stuff that annoys me (just like any other company, honestly) - Anyone that wrote software for both the App Store and Google Play can tell you which one is harder to deal with - with some crazy requirements that do not make too much sense (Google have their own quirks as well - I suspect it is true for any time you work with some big company that needs to adhere to millions of developers).

Second - I am not surprised that the Apple store is busier, Apple has been a much stronger consumer brand for a while now - Microsoft has really gone all enterprise in the early 2000s - because that is where the big money was for their growth and they already had the consumer market - and they did not bother with the consumer market properly, which is why Apple and Google kicked their butts from 2007 forward - and deservedly so.

Microsoft is however starting to turn that ship around - and they make some great consumer devices and services now - I do not expect them to be as big as Apple in the consumer world for many years - but you will see a lot more consumer stuff now that they have the products. Last year they had the XBox One and just came out with the Surface Pro 3 which was the first truly worthwhile consumer device they had in years. This year they will have the XBox One, Surface 3, Surface Pro 4, Surface Book and the Band. You will likely see more traffic there.

 

[Denny Crane]

Why do people forced to use Microsoft OS at work come home and (consumers) use Mac?

It's actually been a fairly long ongoing trend that IT managers have had to deal with people bringing in their own Mac laptops to use on the company LANs.

As I see it, the war is between Linux and BSD. Microsoft will lose share as long as they're pushing Windows (which is not Linux or BSD).

Linux is the OS of choice for enterprise servers and the basis for Android and ChromeBooks. BSD is Mac and iOS.

 

[andalusian]

Honestly, in the enterprise it is not an OS war anymore, this is a past war - which is not that important in the long run.

The current war is the cloud war - and as far as enterprises are concerned there seem to be 2 big competitors - AWS and Azure - Sure Google dabbles and you have Rackspace and others - but from what we have seen for enterprises, when they start looking at the cloud, the two they go with are AWS or Azure.

I know many people, especially consumers do not think of Amazon as anything other than a commerce outlet, but they are a very big deal as the backbone of the independent App market with AWS. FWIW - We are an AWS shop on the back-end - and I am sure that more and more enterprises will move to the cloud partially or completely as time moves on - when your database is in the cloud - who cares what OS it is running on?

We use S3, SimpleDB, DynamoDB, SQS and have both Windows and Linux machines running our software. Honestly, the API is the cloud services, no-one cares about the OS anymore. If a Windows AMI is cheaper than a Linux AMI - you go with it and vice versa.

For enterprises moving forward - if they have a lot of Windows in their local installations - Azure is likely easier - but you can have just about anything on AWS AMIs as well. If you start from scratch, I feel that AWS has more to offer at this point compared to Azure - it is just more mature and has a lot more services.

There is a good reason that Microsoft's new CEO was their cloud lead before - and why Microsoft seems to be turning around in their understanding of where the computing world is going.

 

[Denny Crane]

Enterprise includes cloud services. People stuck with using Microsoft stuff due to legacy issues will be setting up their Windows Servers in the cloud instead of on physical boxes, and VPN for security.

While it's true Microsoft is spending vast sums of money on cloud infrastructure, most of the rest of their businesses are dismal at best. The one exception is XBox.

This chart doesn't include AWS PaaS for some reason. AWS dominates because people are running Linux instances and AWS is better suited for that than the others.

Also, Amazon basically stole Rackspace as parter away from Microsoft recently.

 

[Denny Crane]

 

[andalusian]

AWS dominates because they were first to the party and committed - Bezos understood quickly that he can abstract all the investment he made for running Amazon.com and create clear interfaces to it - to let people run whatever they want on it. They had a 4 year head start that happened to happen at the exact same time that the mobile revolution happened and people needed a back-end that was easy to deploy if you did not have a lot of investment in a server room.

Deploying a Linux VM on Azure is a one button click, just as it is a one button click to deploy a Linux VM on AWS. The reason AWS is ahead has nothing to do with Linux availability, it is all the other services that they have around it that removes some of the pain points of managing your back-end.

They had NoSQL cloud service way before anyone other than maybe Google, but you had to use only Google tools to access it at the start with Google, they had queue services a lot earlier than anyone - AWS just has tons of stuff that is integrated - and for many years, if you did not want to manage all these services yourself - they were the only game in town. Sure, you could run your own NoSQL or RDS instances on your own AMI - and install queue services and BI services - what AWS gave you is the ability to deploy AMIs for just your own code and have all these services already running and available via simple APIs.

I really think you give way too much importance to the "Compute" portion of the cloud offering - AWS is successful because they were first to commit and were smart enough to look for the pain points and try to remove them by offering no-setup services.

 

[Denny Crane]

Only 20% of instances on Azure are Linux.

They're effectively catering to Microsoft shops that are too deeply invested in the tech over the years to get out and into something better.

AWS is successful because they offer the best quality of service and the richest feature set.

Consider I tried hosting SportsTwo on Digital Ocean, and that lasted for just a few days. The service was crap. Now it's on AWS in the Oregon facility and running like a top.

The thought of using Azure never once entered my mind. It wasn't at all a consideration. I wanted the cadillac of services. Nothing but the best.

 

[andalusian]

Only 20% of instances on Azure are Linux.

They're effectively catering to Microsoft shops that are too deeply invested in the tech over the years to get out and into something better.

AWS is successful because they offer the best quality of service and the richest feature set.

Consider I tried hosting SportsTwo on Digital Ocean, and that lasted for just a few days. The service was crap. Now it's on AWS in the Oregon facility and running like a top.

The thought of using Azure never once entered my mind. It wasn't at all a consideration. I wanted the cadillac of services. Nothing but the best.

I am not fighting with anything about AWS being better than Azure for general use - we use it as well, I just do not think that AWS is chosen because of Linux support. We had Linux machines running on Azure - and it was easy to set up and the machines ran fine - there is really nothing in the "compute" side of the cloud that make AWS better than Azure because of Linux support. Nothing.

There are more instance types on AWS and there are pre-defined AMIs that you can use as a starting point - which is nice, but again, this is really not the reason you choose AWS over other stuff.

AWS is the best all-around public cloud platform because they have more services to just ease your pain points. Microsoft is not there (although they are better than Google/IBM etc...) - but they do have some things going for them - moving legacy Windows is definitely one, I believe that as far as raw power for super-huge apps with needs for tons of resources is another place where they are better (probably because of their experience running these huge games for XBox One and running the deep-learning and prediction engines for Bing). Finally anyone that wants a hybrid cloud solution - so mission critical and secure data remains in house is likely to choose Azure over AWS - they simply have a lot more to sell in this area.

If I remember correctly, as quick as AWS is growing - Azure actually grew faster last year, at least from a revenue point.

BTW - let's avoid the Cadillac of ... references, I do not think that AWS want to be associated with a company that can make some great products but has real problems selling them.

 

[Denny Crane]

The HOST OS on all those AWS physical machines is Redhat LINUX. And Xen hypervisor.

Millions of servers.

I'm pretty sure Azure runs in some variety of Windoze.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-ec2-cloud-is-made-up-of-almost-half-a-million-linux-servers/

Edit:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Azure

Microsoft Azure has been described as a "cloud layer" on top of a number of Windows Server systems, which use Windows Server 2008 and a customized version of Hyper-V, known as the Microsoft Azure Hypervisor to provide virtualization of services

 

[Denny Crane]

An article by forbes says AWS is 10x bigger than Azure. And they estimate Azure revenues at $125M a quarter.

And...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2015/04/15/sizing-microsoft-azure-and-amazon-aws-revenue/

Deutsche Bank predicts that AWS will maintain its overwhelming lead in cloud infrastructure services over Microsoft Azure, Google, IBM and others. This is based on scale of operations and AWS’s success in moving “up the stack” to premium services. The researchers found Microsoft too tethered to the Microsoft stack to challenge the scale of AWS today, and a more open approach to third party technologies including Red Hat Linux have the potential to become growth catalysts.