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Apple's MacBook Air vs. Microsoft's Surface Laptop 2
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There are elements of macOS I miss but there's no way I'd pay such a premium. Windows is absolutely fine and knowing I can easily upgrade to keep my workstation ultra fast is worth the trade-off.
Great to see Windows-laptops finally catching up.
Hardware-wise that is.
I still prefer MacOS to Windows (I use both).
Hardware-wise that is.
I still prefer MacOS to Windows (I use both).
Specs on ports on the Surface book 2:
Two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen1)
One USB Type-C w/ video, power in/out and USB 3.1 (Gen1) data
Full-size SDXC card reader (UHS-II)
Headphone jack (3.5mm)
Two Surface Connect ports (1 in tablet, 1 in keyboard base)
They still have a good resale value because they used to be great machines. Βut competition now gets stronger and stronger. In a few years from now, nobody will pay more than a cup of coffee for a such a weak processor.
Its because of the surface connector. IMO it made sense to skip USB-C/Thunderbolt in the SP3 and SP4 releases, but it makes no sense to skip it in 2018 and it would be laughable if they skipped in in 2019.
Connections on Surface Book 2
- 2 x USB type-A (version 3.1 Gen 1)
- 1 x USB type-C (version 3.1 Gen 1 with USB Power Delivery revision 3.0)
- 3.5mm headphone jack
- 2 x Surface Connect ports Full-size SDXC card reader
- Compatible with Surface Dial* on- and off-screen interaction
Connections on Surface Laptop 2
- 1 x full-size USB 3.0
- 3.5 mm headphone jack
- Mini DisplayPort
- 1 x Surface Connect port
- Compatible with Surface Dial off-screen interaction*
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And Intel should fix their marketing so customers pay more for the better CPUs. The names "i5" and "i7" are meaningless without all the other letters and numbers appended.[/QUOTE]
Exactly! Unfortunately Intel is doing exactly the same marketing tricks, similar to Apple's tricks. People are buying i7 processors as a bargain but have no idea that have bought a weak Y series CPU.
And Intel should fix their marketing so customers pay more for the better CPUs. The names "i5" and "i7" are meaningless without all the other letters and numbers appended.[/QUOTE]
Exactly! Unfortunately Intel is doing exactly the same marketing tricks, similar to Apple's tricks. People are buying i7 processors as a bargain but have no idea that have bought a weak Y series CPU.
...that plugs into the "proprietary charging port" where, like the regular charger, it is held in place by a magnet, making it very easy to attach and so if someone yanks the cable it detaches. You know, a bit like a much-loved Mac feature that Apple removed? Except, unlike Magsafe, it also does USB, Display and audio...
I had a Surface Book (not the 'Surface Laptop') for a while until it succumbed to "Sleep of Death" - which was a bit of a dealbreaker - but apart from that, Mrs Lincoln, how was the play?
Well, the "surface dock" was great (expensive, but that goes hand-in-hand with 'dock') and really hit the spot. Better still, because the laptop had USB-A and Mini-Displayport I could live with only needing an (expensive) dock on one desk - elsewhere it connected to all my existing peripherals without new dongles. Hopefully the "sleep of death" issue was connected to the docking/undocking feature of the SB, so the surface laptop might be safe.
The SL doesn't win any prizes for connectivity, but neither does it claim to be a "Pro" laptop so for MacBook-Air-y applications, the ability to plug in a data projector, a charger and a USB stick or mouse dongle without carrying a dock around might outweigh not being able to hook up twin 5k displays and a RAID array the size of a fridge.
As for the Mini DisplayPort - if you're moving from a pre-2018 MBA, that's perfect because all of your existing cables and display adapters will work.
Huh?
The 2018 MacBook Air sequential read speed is 2.1 GBytes/sec. Which is greater than 2.29 Gbits/sec.
A 20 year old mac website prefers the Microsoft laptop...
Welcome to Tim Cook's Apple
Welcome to Tim Cook's Apple
When I load Maschine (and am browsing library samples and loops), Logic, or FCPX and my project clips, or working with Lightroom and importing or browsing (old) image files where previews need to be (re)built, I always appreciate having an SSD that's 10X faster over one that's 1/10th the speed.
You might not care or have situations where speed is important. And that's ok. I do and will always pick an SSD that is 10X faster over one that is not.
I can't get over the texture of the surface keyboard. I feel like it belongs in an elementary school computer lab. Each model in the surface line seems to have one thing that is off to me. Big fan of the open source moves they've been making. Maybe the hardware will grow on me in time. For work I use a dell, for pleasure I have a macbook pro.
Which is a pity since the Mac comes with a very complete set of applications for day to day use completely free.
Yeah
2353 "megabyte/sec (MB/s)" = 2.353 "gigabyte/sec (GB/s)"
It's still more than 2.1 GBytes/sec.
I just made a similar upgrade. Had a 2010 13" MPB Intel Core 2 Duo with 4 GB ram and the original 250 GB hard drive. Needless to say it was a pain just to open Safari and browse on the MBP at this point. I got a 2018 MBA 256gb on sale for $1199 at Best Buy and love it so far. I don't have a problem with the keyboard, but I'm also not a heavy typer, so maybe at longer intervals it would get annoying. I'm not experiencing any sluggishness that others have mentioned either. Perhaps my expectations are lower coming from an almost 9 year old machine, but so far so good...
Apple stopped caring about the Mac a long time ago, so its little wonder every other vendor has raced off into the distance with innovations & design leaving the Macs in a sad laughable state.
Up above you said: "Also according to that Crystal Disk benchmark Razer Blade's peak sequential write speed is 2352mbps which equals to 2.29Gbps which is higher than the 2.1Gbps you claimed for the Macbook Air."
First: The MacBook Air is 2.1 GBytes/sec (not Gbits/sec as you said above).
Second: 2352 mbitsps (quoted above) is much slower than 2.1 GBytes/sec
Then thats a massive omission from the article. I ruled the Air out because of the lack of quad core chip. I am not paying $1200+ for a laptop with two cores at this point.
