Microsoft is raising prices on all its current Surface PC offerings, with the midrange devices now starting at above $1,000, and flagships starting at $1,500.
I have a surface pro 4. I love these machines. You can use it like a tablet, you can use it like a laptop. It’s great for drawing and taking notes by hand.
The only problem is Windows, but that’s not a big problem for the average person. The price of the new ones is a problem but I think the form factor is awesome.
It’s like a better iPad in a way, since you could run full-scale desktop programs on it, and use it like a desktop.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if things like surfaces were one of the reasons why Apple seems to be making a push to try and make the iPad functional as a computer on its own.
I love my Surface Snapdragon X. Battery life up the wazoo and I use it largely as a thin client to windows and linux systems so it lasts forever.
I did debloat it heavily though.
And someone will probably say why not install Linux on it, to which I say…for everything I use I’ve yet to find a Linux distro that works without hours of custom efforts. I work 7 days a week and don’t have time to dive down rabbit holes every day to fix shit like my mouse, or my bluetooth ear buds, or RDP, or parsec, or nomachine, or wifi.
I had this impression as well, until I had to troubleshoot some problems I was having with the screen. Did not give it root access, but it run a bunch of analysis on the system and within a few minutes it was spitting out configuration files that I just had to copy in the correct directories.
Doing the same myself would have taken me a day on the arch wiki.
I’ve been using Linux for years, when I was on X I was editing the Xorg.conf without looking up the documentation. If you know exactly what the problem is, you’ll fix it faster that way.
However, if you don’t troubleshoot many systems often it is unlikely that you have a structured approach to identifying the problem. LLMs can be quite organised in doing that.
ive been using Linux for 20 years. my assumption is that your barrier is tedious linux usability problems.
my suggestion specifically would be to give it research powers and regular non-root access, have it write configs and answer questions about your system, suggest alternative packages to install etc.
Alright, I’ll give this a go on a VM first. If it can solve my RDP-like issues I’ll be supremely happy - but to my knowledge, Linux just doesn’t support such a thing the way I want to use it.
I’ll test this on Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, and Debian to start but let me know if there is a distro you recommend.
i am an extreme fan of arch, even if for no other reason than the AUR
im not sure about rdp but i remember vnc being the cross platform standard years ago. i have a comet wifi kvm giving me access to a mac mini because i need it for certain tools
I would love to have one as a novelty item for installing Linux on it, I always thought using Linux on touchscreen is super cool. but it’s expensive as fuck
a friend of mine sold me his semi-new Surface Laptop Go (the original model), and for 400€ it’s a super cool touch screen laptop, using Gnome is super slick, and I am fine to be restricted at 250gb ssd/8gb ram.
but paying it more than double the price would be insane imho
I bought a thinkpad on eBay and it surprised me by being a touch screen version and it just kind of gets in the way you pick up the laptop to move it and you’re clicking the mouse all over the place. i disabled it after drawing about 4 cocks
My friends love them. It’s more like a laptop than a tablet and they love using the touchscreen as apart of their PC experience. Battery life needs work, at least the Intel ones that they were using.
I have yet to convert them to Linux. I’m working on it though.
i honestly don’t know who these things are for. I’ve never seen anyone using one in person. why the fuck would you put windows on a tablet
There was a very weird placement on Supernatural on some episodes with a “tech genius”. Very jarring how forced it was.
Everyone in the Netflix daredevil universe uses it.
Fisk must be a major shareholder in Microslop.
I have a surface pro 4. I love these machines. You can use it like a tablet, you can use it like a laptop. It’s great for drawing and taking notes by hand.
The only problem is Windows, but that’s not a big problem for the average person. The price of the new ones is a problem but I think the form factor is awesome.
It’s like a better iPad in a way, since you could run full-scale desktop programs on it, and use it like a desktop.
I wouldn’t be too surprised if things like surfaces were one of the reasons why Apple seems to be making a push to try and make the iPad functional as a computer on its own.
“Only problem” is quite a stretch. Those devices are borderline unrepairable.
I love my Surface Snapdragon X. Battery life up the wazoo and I use it largely as a thin client to windows and linux systems so it lasts forever.
I did debloat it heavily though.
And someone will probably say why not install Linux on it, to which I say…for everything I use I’ve yet to find a Linux distro that works without hours of custom efforts. I work 7 days a week and don’t have time to dive down rabbit holes every day to fix shit like my mouse, or my bluetooth ear buds, or RDP, or parsec, or nomachine, or wifi.
install the terminal version of claude code and ask it to configure your computer for you. you might think I’m joking until you do this
If ever going to try this, ask to make it a script fully explained, then read it and fully backup before you run.
Yeah…no. I leverage AI tooling daily, but I’m not about to go that far.
I had this impression as well, until I had to troubleshoot some problems I was having with the screen. Did not give it root access, but it run a bunch of analysis on the system and within a few minutes it was spitting out configuration files that I just had to copy in the correct directories.
Doing the same myself would have taken me a day on the arch wiki. I’ve been using Linux for years, when I was on X I was editing the Xorg.conf without looking up the documentation. If you know exactly what the problem is, you’ll fix it faster that way. However, if you don’t troubleshoot many systems often it is unlikely that you have a structured approach to identifying the problem. LLMs can be quite organised in doing that.
ive been using Linux for 20 years. my assumption is that your barrier is tedious linux usability problems.
my suggestion specifically would be to give it research powers and regular non-root access, have it write configs and answer questions about your system, suggest alternative packages to install etc.
Alright, I’ll give this a go on a VM first. If it can solve my RDP-like issues I’ll be supremely happy - but to my knowledge, Linux just doesn’t support such a thing the way I want to use it.
I’ll test this on Ubuntu, Mint, Pop, and Debian to start but let me know if there is a distro you recommend.
i am an extreme fan of arch, even if for no other reason than the AUR
im not sure about rdp but i remember vnc being the cross platform standard years ago. i have a comet wifi kvm giving me access to a mac mini because i need it for certain tools
Why would you put it on any computer?
I can think of two reasons, but I can’t think of any for putting it on a tablet
I would love to have one as a novelty item for installing Linux on it, I always thought using Linux on touchscreen is super cool. but it’s expensive as fuck
a friend of mine sold me his semi-new Surface Laptop Go (the original model), and for 400€ it’s a super cool touch screen laptop, using Gnome is super slick, and I am fine to be restricted at 250gb ssd/8gb ram.
but paying it more than double the price would be insane imho
I bought a thinkpad on eBay and it surprised me by being a touch screen version and it just kind of gets in the way you pick up the laptop to move it and you’re clicking the mouse all over the place. i disabled it after drawing about 4 cocks
My friends love them. It’s more like a laptop than a tablet and they love using the touchscreen as apart of their PC experience. Battery life needs work, at least the Intel ones that they were using.
I have yet to convert them to Linux. I’m working on it though.