Tech deal alert

It had 52% out of the box.

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Not too bad. Just about perfect for battery longevity! :+1:t2:

Just a little heads up that something might be brewing. Microsoft is offering a 30 000 yen rebate ($230) on the Surface Pro 9 in Japan. Seems a little early, so either they arenā€™t selling as well as expected, or maybe an upgraded SKU is in the pipeline?

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Interesting! For both Intel and ARM models?

Just the Intel model.

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Thatā€™s even more interesting. If anything Iā€™d have expected sales of the ARM model to be slower, so Iā€™d have expected a discount on those. Curious what the sales distribution is between the two architectures. @Desertlap any recent inside info on this? :slight_smile:

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No hard data, but MS told us that at the three month mark, the ARM Pro 9 had already outsold the entirety of the Pro X production.

In our customer base, the intel based Pro 9 is still being purchased the most, but the Pro 9 ARM models now comprise about 30% of new surface pro aquisitions

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Thatā€™s impressive. And I havenā€™t see any ā€œoutrage pressā€ about how badly the ARM version performs or how many apps donā€™t work on it, it seems to just quietly do its thing as a product with no huge complaints. Thatā€™s a win in my book.

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Hope so, but I think the tech press is just yawning at anything short of King Kong vs Godzilla (aka ChatGPT vs Bard)ā€¦

As you all know while being supportive of ARM generally Iā€™ve been fairly critical of the Pro X and it remains the only surface product Iā€™ve bought and returned.

I have a work supplied Pro 9 5g for my primary system now and other than a couple of very old and relatively obscure apps, I havenā€™t had any compatibility issues and emulation roughly hits core i3 to low core i5 levels when I do.

In our base, the results seem to be similar with the only real notable issue for a few being older printer compatibility, albeit specialized ones like plotters etc. that tend to be outside of the normal corporate replacement cycle for various reasons, usually due to specialized use/application.

And the 30% battery life improvment over my Pro 8 has held over time.

Not to mention that until the new M2 based iPad pros, it also had the very best 5G in a tablet/laptop type device.

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How much of this is putting the ARM processor in a larger/thicker shell (more battery/breathing room) than the pure efficiency of the chip itself? In other words, if this is what powers the rumored 11" SP10, will we see a drop in battery life?

The point is that the intel Pro 9 and the Pro 9 5g have for all intents and purposes the same size battery, ergo the Pro 9 5g is more efficient .

It will be interesting to see whatā€™s in store for the Pro 10 which should have 14th gen Core I and which Intel is already talking about how efficient the BIGlittle desing of that chip will be.

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But I thought the idea was for ARM devices to bring smaller and cooler running processors. So in effect, an 11" ARM Surface may approximately equal the battery life of its Intel big brother?

no because the ARM chips are more power efficient as with the example of the Pro 9ā€™s.

So assuming they make an 11 ARM surface go or whatever, that 30% battery life bump over a comparable intel chip should hold.

As to why they didnā€™t go with a thinner case with the Pro 9 5g versus the intel version, (because the whole chip and motherboard of the ARM pro 9 is signifcantly smaller than the intel version) is likely a hangover of the COVID supply chain constraints where it was just more practical to put them in in the same shell

While emulation is not perfect, it works well enough. At times, I will have a program hang up and have to be restarted. But, i havenā€™t lost any work and it keeps me on my toes with backup discipline. Yes, WOA is a win.

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Not only that, but MS will likely be stepping down the CPU to the 7cx, so that 30% power increase in comparable chips extends even further due to the lower power draw of the 7cx. Hopefully, it doesnā€™t take the Go back to its Atom days or even its Pentium days.

In all, if they would just put the front line equipment into the Go, I would be all-in on ARM.

I wonder how much of the popularity of the Pro 5G is related to the cellular access that you donā€™t have in the Pro?

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Iā€™m guessing a LOT.

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Given the pricing, I would say it is 98% for the purchase of the 5g. This is one area where Apple is lagging without a 5g option on a real laptop.

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Actually, I have pretty fond memories of the last-gen Atoms, before Intel shuttered them. They reached a very respectable power/performance ratioā€“and most of allā€“the right price point, with many devices falling under the $300 mark.

Adding the regular Surface tax, I could see a case for a $449 7cx entry model and successor to the base Surface 3/Go. WOA has been forever missing an affordable goto device to compete with the base iPad, something that I feel has massively constrained the development of the ecosystem.

You heard it here first: 7cx + Windows 11 = dismal performanceā€¦

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