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by redacted 3599 days ago
Take a look at the Surface Book.

It's the most impressive laptop I've ever used. Great 3:2 screen, excellent build quality, a real touchscreen (i.e., multitouch, pen support with pressure, etc), MacBook-tier trackpad. Convertible tablet mode is far more useful than I anticipated and is nice for showing off. The new Linux subsystem is still a bit buggy but is very impressive (I was able to compile and run emacs with a GUI as if I was running Ubuntu natively, for example).
3 comments
temac 3599 days ago
Although the Surface Book is still plagued by Windows and firmware/drivers issues, despite being insanely expensive, and it is also quite small, so its nice 3:2 screen is only as tall as a 15.6 16:9 screen, and obviously narrower -- I prefer Apple 15.4" 16:10 approach; it would probably be perfect if Apple made a slightly smaller version or MS a slightly bigger. The SB CPU is limited to dual core, too. Also the antireflet, quite essential on a glossy screen, seems inferior to what Apple uses.
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darkseas 3599 days ago
I used a top-end Surface Pro as a dev machine for 6 months running Ubuntu, and it was great. Three screens, fast, powerful, portable, plus multiple vms. Only really hit the limits when compiling big c libraries or using the Android toolchain. If I couldn't use my current MBPr, I would happily use another.
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masklinn 3599 days ago
Which model/options did you select? And the machine is coming on on a year old, are there rumors of an update/2nd generation?

Also it's still limited to 16GB RAM on the upper end right?

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redacted 3599 days ago
I have the i5 256GB/8GB model with discrete Nvidia GPU in the base (very handy for photography / light gaming). Haven't had issues with RAM although I rarely need to run VMs, and I have a SD adapter in the base to expand the storage for TV and films and so on.

The top model has an i7 and 512GB/16GB (same dGPU). It was about EUR1000 more if I recall correctly, not worth it to me.

Not sure about hardware refresh. I've seen rumours around that they might hold off for Intel's Kaby Lake parts which would mean 2017, but who knows.

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