Skip to main content

Surface Book 2 Developer Impressions and the Magic of USB-C

Surface Book 2 15"I recently got a updated laptop for work, a 15" Surface Book 2. It's quickly become my go-to machine, and I'm often finding myself using it more than my main desktop machine.

I considered myself reasonably familiar with the Surface product line as I bought a Surface Pro 3 a few years back for myself (not a work machine), but I am genuinely impressed with this Surface Book 2 - and that surprised me.

Here's a random list of a tips, tricks, things I didn't realize, and general feelings about the 15" Surface Book 2.

15" is a NICE size

After years of "Ultrabooks" I missed an actual high-powered desktop replacement laptop. It's just 4.2 lbs and it doesn't feel unwieldy at all.

There are TWO Surface Connect ports

Legit had no idea. You can charge and dock the tablet part alone.

There's a full sized SD card reader and a 3.5mm headphone jack

Which sadly is more than I can say for my iPhone 8+.

Having a 15" screen again makes me wonder how you 11" MacBook Air people can even concentrate.

3240 x 2160, (260 PPI) is a weird resolution to be sure, but it's a hell of a lot of pixels. It's a 15" retina display. 

The high resolution issues in Windows are 90% handled IMHO

I wrote about how running any DPI greater than 96dpi on Windows has historically sucked back in 2014, but literally every little Windows Update and Office update improves it. Only the oldest apps I run have any real issues. Even WinForms has been updated to support HighDPI so I have zero HighDPI issues in my daily life in 2018.

More RAM is always nice, but 16 gigs is today's sweet spot.

I have had zero RAM issues, and I'm running Kubernetes and lots of Docker containers along size VS, VS Code, Outlook, Office, Edge, Chrome, etc. Not one memory issue.

3.84 GHz or more

Battery Life and Management is WAY better

Power Mode SliderBattery Life on my Surface Pro 3 was "fine." You know? Fine. It wasn't amazing. Maybe 4-6 hours depending. However, the new Battery Slider on Windows 10 Creators Edition really makes simple and measurable difference. You can see the CPU GHz and brightness ratchet up and down. I set it to Best battery life and it'll go 8+ hours easy. CPU will hang out around 0.85 GHz and I can type all day at 40% brightness. Then I want to compile, I pull it up to bursts of 3.95 Ghz and take care of business.

HD Camera FTW

Having a 1080p front facing camera makes Skype/Zoom/etc calls excellent. I even used the default Camera app today during an on-stage presentation and someone later commented on how clear the camera was.

USB-C - I didn't believe it, but it's really a useful thing

Honestly, I wasn't feeling the hype around USB-C "one connector to rule them all," but today I was going to pull out some HDMI and Ethernet dongles here at the Webstock Conferences in New Zealand and they mentioned that all day they'd been using a Dell USB-C dock. I plugged in one cable - I didn't even use my Surface Power Brick - and got HDMI, a USB hub, Ethernet *and* power going back into the SurfaceBook. I think a solution like this will/should become standard for conferences. It was absolutely brilliant.

I have read some about concerns about charging the Surface Book 2 (and other laptops with USB-C) and there's a reddit thread with some detail. The follow says the Apple USB-C charger he bought charges the SurfaceBook at 72% of the speed of the primary charger. My takeaway is, ok, the included charger will always charge fastest, but this work not only work in a pinch, but it's a perfectly reasonable desk-bound or presenter solution. Just as my iPhone will charge - slowly - with aftermarket USB chargers. If you're interested in the gritty details, you can read about a conversation  that the Surface has with an Apple Charger over USB as they negotiate how much power to give and take. Nutshell, USB-C chargers that can do 60W will work but 90+W are ideal - and the Dell Dock handles this well which makes it a great flexible solution for conferences.

Also worth pointing out that there wasn't any perceptible "driver install" step. I got all the Dell Dock's benefits just by plugging it in at the conference. Note that I use a Surface Dock (the original/only one?) at home. In fact, the same Surface Dock I got for my personal Surface Pro 3 is in use by my new Surface Book 2. Presumably it doesn't output the full 95W that the Surface Book 2 can use, but in daily 10+ hour use it's been a non issue. There's articles about how you can theoretically drain a Surface Book 2's batteries if you're using more power than it's getting from a power supply, but I haven't had that level of sustained power usage. Haven't needed to give it a thought.

The i7 has a NVidia 1060 with 6 gigs of RAM, so you can install GeForce and run apps on the Discrete GPU

You can go in and control which apps run on which GPU (for power savings, or graphical power) or you can right click an app and Run on NVidia.

You can control which GPU on a program by program basis

or right click any app:

Right Click | Run with Graphics Processor

It has an Xbox Wireless Adapter built in

I got this for work, so it's not a gaming machine...BUT it's got that NVidia 1060 GPU and I just discovered there's an Xbox Wireless Adapter built-in. I thought this was just Bluetooth, but it's some magical low-latency thing. You can buy the $25 USB Xbox Wireless Adapter for your PC and use all your Xbox controllers with it - BUT it's built-in, so handled. What this means for me as a road warrior is that I can throw an Xbox Controller into my bag and play Xbox Play Anywhere games in my hotel.

Conclusion

All in all, I've had no issues with the Surface Book 2, given I stay on the released software (no Windows 10 Insiders Fast on this machine). It runs 2 external monitors (3 if you count its 15" display) and both compiles fast and plays games well.

Sponsor: Get the latest JetBrains Rider for debugging third-party .NET code, Smart Step Into, more debugger improvements, C# Interactive, new project wizard, and formatting code in columns.


© 2017 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.
     


from Scott Hanselman's Blog http://feeds.hanselman.com/~/526460632/0/scotthanselman~Surface-Book-Developer-Impressions-and-the-Magic-of-USBC.aspx
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

dotnet sdk list and dotnet sdk latest

Can someone make .NET Core better with a simple global command? Fanie Reynders did and he did it in a simple and elegant way. I'm envious, in fact, because I spec'ed this exact thing out in a meeting a few months ago but I could have just done it like he did and I would have used fewer keystrokes! Last year when .NET Core was just getting started, there was a "DNVM" helper command that you could use to simplify dealing with multiple versions of the .NET SDK on one machine. Later, rather than 'switching global SDK versions,' switching was simplified to be handled on a folder by folder basis. That meant that if you had a project in a folder with no global.json that pinned the SDK version, your project would use the latest installed version. If you liked, you could create a global.json file and pin your project's folder to a specific version. Great, but I would constantly have to google to remember the format for the global.json file, and I'd constan...
Post a Comment
Read more

15 Web Design Trends to Watch in 2018

The modern world is full of extraordinary things that influence our imagination and mood. Our soul needs a perfect atmosphere and impressive spots. To apply such things in practice, we have submitted the list of the web trends that deserve your attention. Robert frost design analysis will meet all your wishes and expectations. Image Source Web Design Trends to Watch in 2018 1. More Organic Shapes Until this year, web design, as well as mobile design, were based on the right-angled and sharp-edged shapes. However, it seems that this year will bring some significant changes in the field of web design. The recent trends will offer the absolute rounded corners. In addition, the web design of 2018 will make the real things look like the cartoonish ones. 2.   Bold Minimalism Although some of you may think that this web design trend will not attract the Internet users. Indeed, the notion of minimalism is often associated with boredom and dullness. However, in this case, bold ...
Post a Comment
Read more

R vs Python for Machine Learning

There are so many things to learn before to choose which language is good for Machine Learning. We will discuss each and everything about R as well as Python and the situation or problem in which situation we have to use which language. Let’s start Python and R are the two most Commonly used Programming Languages for Machine Learning and because of the popularity of both the languages Novice or you can say fresher are getting confused, whether they should choose R or Python language to commence their career in the Machine learning domain. Don’t worry guys through this article we will discuss R vs Python for Machine Learning. So, without exaggerating this article let’s get started. We will start it from the very Basics things or definitions. R vs Python for Machine Learning Introduction R is a programming language made by statisticians and data miners for statistical analysis and graphics supported by R foundation for statistical computing. R also provides high-quality graphics and...
1 comment
Read more