What ever it is, they damn well better make one. :vb-agree:
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Kind of passive-aggressive don’t you think…opening salvo…
" Let’s talk about the Surface Pro 9.
Which Surface Pro 9? Not the version with 5G, which comes with a Qualcomm-made Microsoft SQ3 Arm processor and the typical shortcomings of an Arm Windows device (relatively low performance, continued app compatibility issues)—but the vanilla, plain-old Surface Pro 9, the Intel-based one that follows-up a decade’s worth of numbered Surface Pro models."
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ssd hatch would make sense considering to similarities in design between Pro and Go (also ditching the micro sd card for the ssd hatch). My guess is the ssd hatch is the easiest way for MS to make the tablet still serviceable for MS certified technicians since they do not want to use screws (unlike say the Surface Laptop).
RANT WARNING!
If I read one more reviewer whining about the added cost of the Type Cover and Slim Pen I’m going to burn down their publication (wait a minute - there are no publications anymore - its all pj’s and bedroom offices)…
ANYWAY - $279 for keyboard and pen for my SP8, and $428 for my iPad Pro 11 (or $478 if I had moved up to the comparably sized 12.9"). Yes, I know, SP8 has very little purpose without it while iPad Pro is the best pure tablet, but anymore I see as many Magic Keyboards in the wild as nakid iPad so the comparison is fair.
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So I encountered some DLL library issues with some niche applications on the SQ3 Surface Pro 9 that is having me halt any further investigation of this. It was a fun little one-day experiment but I am sticking with my SP8 until next-gen. It is way better than the mess that Windows on ARM was on Surface Pro X but I need to be able to have these libraries just work. I think when the demand rubber hits the support pavement when Qualcomm has their NUVIA moment, things will be up to snuff. For now, it doesn’t meet my power user needs.
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You’re right in a way @Nnthemperor - but really not cynical, just not seeing the value proposition of WOA, and a wasted investment except for 5g. With Satya whipping the cloud to the finish line (Windows 365, Azure, et al) the eventual end of the classic desktop is within the sight of even ancient old fogies like me. It won’t matter what platform you use (Windows, MacOS, iPadOS, Android, Linux) and what processor, you’ll meet Satya and Panos at the pearly gates of the cloud for your Windows/Office fix. The performance bottleneck will be your pipes, not your processor. Sad days ahead every time someone trenches across your fiber optic cable or too many people cling to that cell tower…
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Apparently the Surface Pro got more repairable : 7/10.
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I think I mentioned that we are re-working our tests for both Pro 9 to better factor in the mixed cores of both as well as changes to Windows 11 with 22h2.
So with that caveat as well as the caveat that what I’m saying is preliminary…
First off the Intel Pro 9 is a bit faster than the Pro 8, but it’s not a huge difference (10-15%). Unfortunately, that performance increase seems to accompany an equal drop in battery life over the Pro 8 as well.
Additionally we are seeing indications that the Pro 9 throttles earlier and more frequently than the Pro 8, again not a huge difference, but if you really push your system you will see it.
As to the Pro 9 5G, the better battery life is definitely real, we are pegging at real world for most users to be in the 25-35% range, with how much of your software is native versus emulation being a big factor.
Performance wise, I think we still need to tweak our tests some more, but my feeling is that it will land for the majority of users around 11th gen Core I5 levels in aggregate with some individual things being faster and some slower.
One thing that is becoming clear in our tests is that if you still have major apps that require x86 emulation, 16GB RAM is almost a hard requirement as we are seeing a 25-30% performance delta over an 8GB RAM system.
And emulation with most games is still a trainwreck and WOA native games are still unicorns.
And anecdotal evidence from users in my company including me, reinforce the belief that most users will see a 25-30% battery life jump over the Pro 8.
And as I’ve already talked about, the 5G is top notch across the board. TLDR, I’m happy with my Pro 9 5G and will be sticking with it as my work system
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This really shows how quickly impressions go negative when there are compatibility issues! It only takes one important niche app for a user to reach for their receipt.
In this case, do you think it’s fixable by improving emulation, or are there simply some custom DLLs that just won’t ever work in emulation? And if the latter, do you have a sense of how common issues like these are?
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Well, as long as you have a decent Internet connection, that is. Have a power outage that takes down the local cell towers and high-speed Internet? Bye bye, servers.
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I do! Apple was able to get things working very well with Rosetta. I think Microsoft will eventually too once they have a crowd-pleaser like NUVIA where they can say confidently to Apple: game, set, match. Money=motivation. I think the Pro 9 is them merely setting the stage of the Surface as a tablet-first, iPad Pro-killer experience ergonomically speaking with the volume rocker and power button in iPad-like positions in advance of the Pro 10’s NUVIA moment.
In the meantime, I think I could recompile the application and get it working. It would just take me a couple of hours of poking around in the source code (it is open source, but it is a bit complex though too, it being a 3D printing program) and build configuration. This is of course something I do not expect any normal end user to ever have to do. I am still a little on the fence and am wanting to keep it just because of how much better the battery life is than the Pro 8. It does not help that I have a jam-packed week and I want a device that is a help, not a hindrance.
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Here is the recap of the test I did: (1) unplug the Surface and (2) pull open two application windows (at Best Buy on the i5 Pro 9 and at home on the i7 Pro 8, where I used one instance of File Explorer and one of the Settings app). Prior to this, to ensure a clean user session, I made sure all processes including the Best Buy bloatware were forcibly closed in Task Manager. Then I dragged either of the two windows across the screen with my finger. This requires more compute and graphical performance than with the mouse since there are 3D-transparent ends on the sides of the finger-dragged window. The i5 Pro 9 showed frame rate hitching or stuttering where as my i7 Pro 8 was and is smooth as silk. I am not a fan of 12th Gen if this stuttery on-battery performance is what Microsoft has to do to get passable battery life on it.
I don’t see them as competitors. Sure, some fanboys got overexcited with the performance of Apple Silicon, started saying stupid things like that MacBooks would take on Windows laptops, but the reality after two years is a share barely into the double digits and I never felt like Apple even wanted Microsoft’s enterprise business (which is the only market Microsoft cares about).
Reminds me of when the iPad was introduced along with iBooks and there was one popular Apple blogger/fanboy enthusiastically predicting the end of Kindle dominance, that Apple’s share of the ebook market would reach 70% within the year, same as iTunes music. Delusional, of course. And so are the zealots saying MacBooks will dominate.
So sure, Microsoft might crow about NUVIA devices eventually, if they pan out, and the misguided Apple fanboys might gnash their teeth, but I honestly don’t think Apple itself cares about what Microsoft does with their corporate -focused PC devices. They aren’t targeting the same market segment. And their moneymaker devices aren’t Macs, they’re iPhones and to a lesser extent iPads, and Microsoft isn’t even in that game, except marginally with Surface’s tiny sales.
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:vb-wave:
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The hitching you are seeing is almost certainly due to the “display” software that they load on all their systems when they put them out on the floor. Both HP and Samsung engineers have complained about that to us and I’m assuming Best Buy.
And I can only imagine it’s gotten worse with 12th gen chipsets. I can’t say for that’s behind what you saw, but we and our customers haven’t seen it on our systems and is in-line with what I reported above.
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This is correct except I terminated all the background processes for the display software in Task Manager. Process usage was around 0% after terminating them.
Um, I wasn’t thinking of anyone on this forum. Sorry. A lot of that rant was in reaction to how bad it’s gotten on forums like MacRumors, which I deleted the bookmark of yesterday, where the fanboys and anti-fanboys have gotten out of hand. 
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I can’ explain it then, just reporting what we are seeing on ours and our customers systems.
I do wonder given it’s Best Buy we are talking about if any of the systems got the day one patches for either the Pro 9 or Pro 9 5g. The store near our offices is notorious for almost never keeping their display systems up to date with patches etc.
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That is SOP for Best Buy and has been for 20 years since our oldest last worked for them. Most of the blue shirts wouldn’t know how to do the updates if they did try…
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