Surface Book
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Grant Fritchey (1/4/2016)
It's so weird that your Toshiba is dead and mine is chugging along (knock wood).Maybe you're just hard on machines. Ha!
(For those who don't know, I dropped a laptop a little over a year ago and had to replace it)
That said, I'd really like to hear the reports on that new Surface. It looks good. I got to type on one, once. It feels good. No word on if they last well or not.
It's crazy. Usually you break the hardware and I'm careful. Here, this hasn't held up. The mouse buttons not working is extremely frustrating.
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Walter Levy (1/4/2016)
Kind of sad to hear that Toshiba isn't the sterling laptop vendor they once were.Don't view this as a Toshiba issue in general.
I have the same model as Grant, bought about 2-3 months apart. His is older, but works great. When I last saw him, his looks almost new, while mine looks 3 years old and has multiple issues.
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Got it. I guess I was harkening back to the days when Toshiba was the name in laptops. My first laptop was a Toshiba (early 1990s) and it had a cool feature, a little trackball built into the cover, on the (rather wide) inside bezel where you could move it with your thumb, with a pair of buttons on the outside. It also had the power brick built in rather than external. Of course that was in the days before long-life batteries.
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Last year I purchased the I5 8GB Ram 256GB hard drive Surface Pro 3 and I love it. I purchased it with a docking station and was using it as my main computer, and then when I do travel (which I admit is not that often) I just take the Surface, the type cover, and the Bluetooth Arc mouse. It's very nice.
But, I do development work need to use VMs on Hyper-V, so the 8GB of RAM was a little small. This year I've purchased the Surface Pro 4 I7 16GB 256GB HD. I've only had it for a couple of weeks, but so far so good. VM's run fine now.
It's not uncommon for me to have VS2015, VS2013, SSMS, Outlook 2016 and a few browser tabs open while a VM is running and everything seems to work fine.
The Surface Book looks nice too and I did consider it, but I went with the Surface Pro 4 for a couple of reasons:
1. It's an improvement on an existing model, not a new model
2. It costs less than the Book
3. The I7 graphics card was good enough
One other thing to add is Microsoft's Customer Service. I did have a few problems with my SP3 in the beginning. A Windows Insider build killed one, they replaced it with no questions. I do have a store near me, so I didn't even have to wait for shipping.
Good luck picking out a new machine. There's a lot to choose from.
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Small reminder - now that USB3 provides enough bandwidth to seriously support large external video (via DisplayLink) in addition to networking, I found it nice to take my pick of many generic inexpensive options vs being forced into high priced limited lifespan proprietary laptop docking stations... it's been over a year and i recommend fresh shopping but i went with a noname like this
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Thoughts?
If you don't need the power while on the road, get a Surface. Leave the big hardware at home and in the office, remote in as necessary.
If you need VMs, CPU, IO, etc on the road... get a Surface and a powerful gaming laptop. Use the Surface for light work and the monster for demos as a luggable workstation.
(I've a buddy that simulates an entire VM network with servers, switches, etc on an insane laptop for demos and testing. It's solved some tricky issues and made quite a few sales.)
As for Macs, I used to use them back in the day before they did a Lucas and went all consumery. I stick to Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
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Like KL7 I also went MacBook Pro in 2009 and have never looked back. Right now I've got the 15" Retina version with 1 TB solid state drive and 16 GB of RAM. At all times I run two VMWare images--one with Windows 2008 Server R2 and the other with Windows 10--each one connects to a different VPN. I love how quiet the solid state drive is and how beautiful the product is. It's a little annoying that it doesn't have a DVD drive anymore, but that's become the norm.
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Cannot help it when seeing the ads for the Surface to think of "scratch the ..."
😎
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I absolutely love my Lenovo Ideapad Yoga 13 Ultrabook that I got 3 years ago. It very much reminded me of the air with the slim profile with the tablet/laptop feel. Being they were at the time, the only ultrabooks with i7's, I gave it a try and was pretty impressed with the machine. I've had no problems and really enjoyed the speed, reliability and slim profile so much that I would actually recommend the Yoga 900 (13 inch) that is a little bit cheaper than the Surface. 😎
Yoga 900 (8.5 Rating via CNET)
2.5GHz Intel Core i7-6500U
16GB DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz
512GB SSD
2.8 lbs (Thinner than Surface Book)
vs
Surface Book (8.2 Rating via CNET)
2.4GHz Intel Core i5-6300U
8GB
512GB SSD (retail version is 256GB)
3.48 lbs
If you want to try something completely brand new that has decent reviews and looks extremely sexy, then check out the Razer Blade Stealth. It comes with an optional desktop plug and play Thunderbolt™ 3 (USB-C) external graphics enclosure case that transform your notebook into a desktop. But, it's optional if you don't want the GPU boost. The core machine still has a great i7 option, 8 GB of ram, SSD and so forth just like the Yoga.
Crafted from aircraft-grade aluminium, The Blade Stealth measures 0.52-inches thin and weighs just 1.2kg. That means the chassis is thinner than both the Dell XPS 13 and the 13-inch MacBook Air.
Starts at $999 to $1599
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I'm worried about completely new. I have just had bad luck a few times.
The Yoga is interesting. I need 16GB and newer models support that. I'm watching how Tim Mitchell does with his over the next month, and hoping mine doesn't die before I can replace it. Hate having to be pushed into something new.
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I'm having trust issues with Lenovo. Both because of the horror show of the W530 and the security issues they've been having recently.
Still, that's a nice looking piece of hardware. I'm hoping for another nine months out of my current laptop, minimum, but after that... Steve'll let me know how it goes.
"The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood"
- Theodore RooseveltAuthor of:
SQL Server Execution Plans
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning -
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (1/11/2016)
I'm worried about completely new. I have just had bad luck a few times.That was the primary reason I moved from the SP3 to the SP4 and not the Book.
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Grant Fritchey (1/4/2016)
My problem with the Mac is that I truly hate the OS. I guess if I were shopping (and I'm not, and hope not to be for at least one more year, travelling with laptops does beat them up), I could look at one, but then I'd want to make it boot to Windows. Even just running VMs from within the Mac OS crawls up my spine.It's not just me? Good. I guess now I know that Grant and I are not allowed in the same room at the same time.
More seriously, my family are all Apple aficionados and forgive everything. I guess it is because I have to support them (willingly) as opposed to them dealing with the failings themselves.
I don't hate Apple products nor do I love Microsoft ones but I have a realistic understanding that all products are flawed. I find it a little tiresome when the following conversation happens as it has done for years - with different routers):
[Them] "My iPhone/iPad/MBP can't access the Internet. Can you look at the router and reboot it, please?"
[Me] "I can. Can any of your other devices?"
[Them] "Yes. All of them."
[Me] "Have you tried restarting your iPhone/iPad/MBP?"
[Them] "No."
[Me] "Please can you restart your iPhone/iPad/MBP and see if it connects."
[Them] "Hmmph. OK then."
[Me] "Is it working now?"
[Them] "Yes. Why isn't our WiFi stable?"
[Me] :crazy:
Gaz
-- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!
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