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Microsoft Surface Pro 2 Firmware Update Improves Battery Life

70 pointsby harryzhangover 11 years ago

9 comments

rayinerover 11 years ago
Very significant battery life update, which is nice to see. Though, this seems to be another in a string of poor execution choices by Microsoft. Last cycle, they shipped Windows RT with a preview version of Office that was slow and buggy. That&#x27;s what went into all the reviews of the device. Nobody covered the final version update. This cycle, they shipped Surface Pro 2 as the successor to a device that was widely panned for its battery life, while leaving 25% of its battery life on the table. All the reviews of the Surface Pro 2 are already out, and they all say &quot;battery life isn&#x27;t as good as we expected from Haswell + 42 watt-hour battery.&quot; How many are going to go back and update their reviews?<p>Sure, Apple this cycle shipped with keyboard&#x2F;trackpad issues they&#x27;re working out, but: 1) apparently it didn&#x27;t affect the review machines; and 2) they didn&#x27;t affect a part of the machine that was scrutinized for its failures the last go around.<p>I had a thought the other day re: Surface Pro. It&#x27;s not the device for someone who wants to replace their laptop and their tablet. It&#x27;s a device for someone who wants to replace their desktop and their tablet.<p>I have noticed that many people who express positive sentiments about the Surface Pro also consider the screen size, battery life and keyboard issues to be less significant because you can plug in a desktop keyboard, mouse, and monitor. My guess is that most of these people ordinarily work from a desktop and see using their Surface Pro for short jaunts away from their desk. That seems to be an excellent use-case for the device. Journalists, on the other hand, seem very cold on the device. My guess is that journalists have fully embraced the trend of using laptops as their primary machine. If you spend most of your time working from a Starbucks, that 10.6&quot; screen and type cover are all you&#x27;re going to get, and aren&#x27;t an adequate replacement for a good laptop. Certainly, I can&#x27;t see myself ever buying one for personal use. My laptop is my only machine, and I don&#x27;t even have a desk at home, and $1,000+ for what&#x27;s essentially a netbook-sized display and keyboard isn&#x27;t going to work.<p>I&#x27;m not sure how big that &quot;desktop + tablet&quot; target market is, especially since Microsoft doesn&#x27;t seem to have aggressively aimed Surface Pro at businesses. I could see it being very handy at work with a dock, but only if it were my actual desktop machine provided by IT. Also, it&#x27;s probably too expensive for businesses. The 8GB RAM model is $1,299 + $129 for type cover + $200 for dock.
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InTheSwissover 11 years ago
That is actually a pretty big improvement. Kudos to Microsoft. The Surface Pro 2 is a really nice machine if you are looking for a tablet&#x2F;laptop hybrid however I still can&#x27;t get myself away from a nice physical keyboard so settled with the Vaio Pro 13 which is almost a dream machine for me. Although after seeing the new PCIe SSD benchmarks in the new Mac Book Pro&#x27;s I am a little envious. My wallet is happy I went with the Sony though ;)
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npalliover 11 years ago
The Surface Pro 2 update is interesting and impressive. However, it seems the performance went from bad to OK. Far more impressive, to me, was the performance of the Sony Vaio Pro (from the article). It is seriously stunning[1]. I mean, it normalizes to the macbook air 2013 performance. To top it, it is 1080p touch compared to 1440x900 without touch for macbook air! How did they manage that?<p>Recently, lot of flak was given to Microsoft for not being able to optimize battery life[2]. Lot of the criticism seems unwarranted. As usual, the PC manufacturers need to get their act together and work with Microsoft to deliver. For far too long, they have been cruising along. Now with Dell going private and building kick-ass laptops (XPS 15, m3800 - jury still out) as well, looks like it is going to be an interesting next few years for the windows ecosystem.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.anandtech.com/show/7417/sony-vaio-pro-13-exceptionally-portable/4" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.anandtech.com&#x2F;show&#x2F;7417&#x2F;sony-vaio-pro-13-exceptio...</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/10/why-does-windows-have-terrible-battery-life.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.codinghorror.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2013&#x2F;10&#x2F;why-does-windows-ha...</a>
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VeejayRampayover 11 years ago
Does anyone know why it is that the Nexus 7 has so much more battery life than the iPad 4? Is it a matter of offering less and having it easier to not waste CPU cycles or just that it&#x27;s well engineered? Genuine question, I don&#x27;t own either of the two devices, just wondering.
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amaksover 11 years ago
No way. Surface (Pro) has too small screen to be used as a laptop, too overpriced and almost unusable without that attachable keyboard which makes its footprint almost twice that of the laptop, with abysmal battery life. Also, everyone keeps forgetting that Windows takes half of the advertised flash space.
wahaha123over 11 years ago
cool,i wanna buy one.
1010011010over 11 years ago
No thanks. Microsoft is a giant, anti-competitive patent troll and will not be getting my dollars.
epoover 11 years ago
I quite like the cynical suggestion that they overclocked the devices to get decent benchmarks on release and are now dropping it back to get better battery life. Fits in with what I&#x27;d expect from Microsoft.
n4n4kiover 11 years ago
What&#x27;s with all these Microsoft shills lately?
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