When the first Microsoft stores came along I asked myself “What could be more useless?” Consumers know what Windows is like. Microsoft doesn’t sell a lot of hardware and most of it is stuff such as keyboards that you would throw out in the event of a failure.
Yet the Microsoft store in the Burlington Mall here in the Boston area proved to be useful for trying out a lot of different laptop keyboards. They have a range of laptops from ASUS, Acer, Dell, HP, et al. It turned out that there are some subtle differences among them. For my hands the worst machine by far was the HP Spectre x360. The trackpad is super wide and thus every time I tried to type my palms would brush the track pad and cause mayhem. Spacing was remarkably consistent across laptops though I had imagined the Dell XPS 13 to have a cramped keyboard. I ended up liking the Dell XPS 15 and the Surface Book the best. I opted for the Surface Book due to (1) a pimped out XPS 15 configuration (e.g., with 1 TB SSD) was over $2,500, (2) I want to experiment with traveling using the Surface Book as both tablet and laptop (i.e., leave the iPad at home), (3) the Surface Book is somewhat lighter and more compact. I will miss the Dell’s 4K-resolution big screen.
I wasn’t sure how much I would love the Surface Book so I opted for the lower-end 8 GB RAM/256 GB SSD version. I will have to be judicious about which Dropbox folders to sync. It is possible add a monster SD card for additional storage at a reasonable price, though of course then it has to be removed when it is time to plug in a camera SD card.
Full report on the Surface Book to follow.
Separately, it is always interesting when the Obamacorps (American workers who came of age during the past eight years) try to deal with something technological. One of the senior saleswomen there assured me that adding a GPU to the inside of a Surface Book would “make the colors more vibrant.” (The online tech specs suggest that it is the same physical screen on all models.)
Overall I would say that the atmosphere in the Microsoft store is a lot better than in the Apple store, where it looks like an African rift lake ferry full of restive passengers with cracked screens has just unloaded.
Related:
There are certain USB 3.0 memory sticks with SSD controllers on them, supposedly they are much faster and more SSD-like in performance than regular memory sticks. If the Surface has both USB3 and SD interfaces, then you wouldn’t need to unplug anything to use the SD card.
I was extremely skeptical about the Apple store at first. They had some customer service growing pains (“I need to make an appointment three days in advance to replace my broken phone?”), but they seem to have figured out how to make it work. Not only can you get your hands on all their great-looking hardware in person, but you can use an iphone app to buy small items without ever dealing with a human being. #nerdbonus
Buying an Apple product from Fry’s or Best Buy is something I would not even consider.
The Microsoft store will really get interesting when they have a consumer-ready holo-lens to demo.
One of the benefits of the Microsoft Store (I bought form online MS Store) – they sell the so called “Signature Edition” notebooks, i.e., just Windows, without any manufacturer-installed free/crap/nagware.
Any recommendations for a regular desktop? I’m in the market and surprised to find them few and far between. The market seems to be filled with razor thin laptops and unnecessary all-in-ones.
Consensus around our office was the Surface book was a bit rough around the edges, and had reliability issues. Beware not good things happening when the pieces are pulled apart/put back together.
I like the Surface 4, though the keyboard cover+kickstand doesn’t work well as a laptop when it’s actually in your lap.
@mark: I opted for a MacPro “trashcan”. It’s expensive, but runs Windows well via Bootcamp.
If you have a GPU, your HTML widgets *will* be more vibrant, if they’re implemented with this
http://docs.dreemproject.org/test/lifeviewtest
That’s an example of an HTML UI element running code using the WebGL ‘shader’ feature of the GPU via the browser. OK so they’re showing off by running a cellular automata, but it’s good for drop shadows and other stuff too.
There’s probably more CPU power available in your GPU-enabled web page now than there was in all of MIT two decades ago.
I loved the comment: “African rift lake ferry full of restive passengers with cracked screens.” I’m going to have it in my mind every time I visit an Apple store.
I have big hands too. So I disable the touch pad on my HP Spectre 13 inch and use a external mouse. I type hard so sometimes I bounce the keyboard but everything works great. No extra entries or anything due to accidently hitting the touchpad. I thought everyone knew about how to disable the touch pad. I am surprised the Microsoft store people did not show you how to do this. Select the mouse feature on the Hardware panel from the Control panel using the Windows key. Then disable the Touchpad.
Some older computers also had a dedicated key to turn the touchpad on and off.
The Apple store is sort of a fraud IMO. They don’t offer anything beyond standard retail sales of Apple products from what I see. The stores are so busy you never get the help you need. You get half answers. You schedule appointments then get only half attention of the “non Genius”. Schedule a class on a phone or Mac and they hold the class in the store and let other customers interrupt the class. So no one learns anything. Try to get help with moving non purchased music around or how ITunes works and you will meet the non Genius. They will not fix many of the issues in my experience. In fact we find You Tube more useful…….
bill: I know how to disable the touchpad on a Windows machine. I also know how to buy, carry, and use an external mouse. That doesn’t mean I want to buy a laptop in which the touchpad isn’t usable…. which is why I bought a laptop where the touchpad is usable.
J. Peterson: If you pick up the device from the right rear corner (the natural way to move a lightweight laptop, I think, if you’re right-handed) it will go sort of crazy thinking that you’re disconnecting and re-connecting the two pieces. And after some light touches it blue screens with a “internal power error”. And finally my glorious idea of using the tablet part as a tablet while traveling seems to be falling apart. The thing is huge and therefore it ends up being much harder to type on than a standard-sized iPad. There are actually a lot of situations with an iPad where one does have to type, e.g., URLs, passwords, etc. I’m going to use it on a couple of summer trips and report back.
I guess “you pays your money and you takes your choice.” Nothing is perfect. I am quite fond of my Macbook Air 13″ for personal use, but everyone’s needs are different. I would recommend considering running Mac hardware with Windows in a VM, over PC hardware. PC laptop hardware quality seems to have gone downhill in the last decade or so, as far as I can tell.
mark: we still use desktops in the office, I recently purchased a Dell Optiplex 7040, with latest i7 chip and installed a PCIe SSD in the M.2 slot. (such as Samsung 950 Pro – cheaper to buy one at Newegg rather than pay Dell’s price). I was blow away by the performance on it. I’ve built some expensive custom workstations for a few people, the Optiplex seemed to compare well to them.
It would have the i7 built-in graphics, if you need more than that it might be a problem putting a power sucking add-on Nvidia in. Mine was the tower version, which is maybe a third the size of the towers I used to buy. It would fit a medium length PCIe card, but I don’t think it has any extra GPU power connectors.
I was able to configure this with linux and not pay for a Windows license, about $720 for our academic pricing.
Thanks J. and John. I’ve made it this long without a mac, too afraid to start now. The Optiplex looks pretty good though.
I thought about building my own system. It’s been about 10 years since I’ve built one, but it seems like these days it’s only a money saver if you want a high end system – which I don’t need.
It would be a step no reseller or “partner” would immediately like, but I always thought the thing most lacking in the Microsoft world, is any source of SME relevant knowledge of application installations and server configs that a growing business could need. Equally, this could be done in a way to promote on / off premises Azure applications aimed at business.
Instead of “geniuses” put certified pros relevant to figuring out what a Microsoft – centred office need to be in terms of planning and effort. Point the way. Provide rooms of test equipment configurable to show off “solutions”.
They need to show more public face to why having a Lumia phone and Lync + Outlook is actually good to have, so that the entire point of the Windows 10 idea of theoretically consistent application experience (cloud/phone/desktop/tablet) is visible. It’s entirely possible in my mind to set up a small office network and systems into a bundle that can be tested in a store (provided facilities of space) and “taken home”, whilst there’s handholding / hand-over / hand-off to who will get the upgrade path / migration / database porting to work.
Obviously one could work with local reseller partners, but one of the problems I see with partner / VAR sales is that very few such channels have the presentation that you want to see with any retail environment.
My thought is that business & channel absolutely can be presented in retail style and slickness, and that given the poverty of balanced information that abounds about the decision to choose a Microsoft solution, direct access to product installations is a vital way to challenge opinions. Having the possibility to integrate nicely with what they do for business is not a attraction for many phone buyers, but if they have never seen it, they will never speak about it, and phone buyers do work for companies.
Writing that, I just remembered the Apple Mac advert with the execs in the windows watching employees “taking the computers home with them”, that ended “but they bring their computers in from home”. I forget the script, but this is a sales message that still has high value in it, and isn’t invalid simply because it hasn’t been used for a while, o r that that particular company used it first.