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Archive 2015 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream

  
 
snowboarder
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


I know it doesn't necessarily belong to this forum, but take a look at this amazing
new tablet/laptop from Microsoft:

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/devices/surface-book


Everything Apple should invent if they were still the real Apple
I already preordered mine, 16GB of RAM, discreet GPU, full SD card reader
and an amazing 3000x2000 pixel screen. Photoshop runs great on Surface tablets,
that should be just so much better. I love when a company is shaping up the future.



Oct 10, 2015 at 10:19 PM
galenapass
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


How much better is this than any of the many ultrabooks from various manufacturers? Not trying to argue.....curious why this is so great.


Oct 10, 2015 at 11:08 PM
Jman13
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


It's definitely a nice product. If I used a laptop for my primary machine, this would be a good option, but it's still a bit too spendy for a secondary machine for me.

I went with the Asus Zenbook, and got the one with a 1080p screen, as that's still a very high res screen at 13" (they make a QHD as well), core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD in a frame smaller Than a MacBook Air, for $750. That fit my budget well and it runs Lightroom and photoshop quite well. Not like my desktop, but certainly well enough for editing on the go.



Oct 10, 2015 at 11:15 PM
hiepphotog
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


galenapass wrote:
How much better is this than any of the many ultrabooks from various manufacturers? Not trying to argue.....curious why this is so great.


I believe all detachable tablet has a limit of 8gb ram and the screen is no where near this resolution. The hinge seems to be smartly designed as well. But at $2,700, I'll wait. I hope the screen is Wacom tech (it's better be Wacom for that price ).



Oct 11, 2015 at 12:01 AM
uhoh7
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


snowboarder wrote:
I love when a company is shaping up the future.


Well in the case of Microsoft, it's a first this decade. I was a windows man an built many PCs for myself and clients. But a string of such idiotic moves on every front really made me give up. I hope you like battling malware.

2600 for a decent one.

Apple is very strange also, but at least they keep the GUI sort of consistent. Except....er iTunes, iPhoto, etc

I can rant heavily against Apple, but Microsoft has been a dangerous greedy incompetent in my own experience. So now they recognized, in the fall of 2015, that nobody owns a windows laptop with the build quality of a macbook, so they will make one. Hurray!! :roll eyes (If only Sony cut to the chase and took the same tack with the build and layout of their camera bodies.)

The specs are just a normal fast laptop specs and the screen is in the range of a macbook pro, no?

You mean the product it was obvious to make a decade ago?

Microsoft is not shaping the future, they are compulsively repeating the past, but recasting themselves as brilliant I 'm sure they will be delighted someone is falling for the notion Microsoft does anything besides desperately cling to the past

This is like their 65 Mustang. Good but....



Oct 11, 2015 at 01:00 AM
umgrizz
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


By the way, you know that the battery is NOT user-replaceable! Microsoft says the replacement cost will be "only" $200 but replacement costs on some earlier Surface products has been as high as $450! Ouch! Too rich for my blood.

Curt



Oct 11, 2015 at 01:14 AM
Frederico
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


I am looking to replace my 2011 MBP with a Zenbook. But heard that it's color, especially yellow, is difficult to get. What's your experience in using it? The model that I'm looking at is UX303LB.

Jman13 wrote:
It's definitely a nice product. If I used a laptop for my primary machine, this would be a good option, but it's still a bit too spendy for a secondary machine for me.

I went with the Asus Zenbook, and got the one with a 1080p screen, as that's still a very high res screen at 13" (they make a QHD as well), core i5, 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD in a frame smaller Than a MacBook Air, for $750. That fit my budget well and it runs Lightroom and photoshop quite well. Not like my desktop, but
...Show more



Oct 11, 2015 at 02:11 AM
Frogfish
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


For the money and use on the road (photography) I'll take the new MacBook. Stunning Retina screen and enough power for most, including (from all reports) basic editing and viewing RAW. Around US$1,500. I'll save the rest of my pennies for my main desktop (iMac).


Oct 11, 2015 at 02:36 AM
sflxn
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


I checked it out at the Microsoft store. It's not amazing. Most of the battery is in the keyboard. 1-2 hours max when using as a tablet, according to the staff there. No ports on the tablet, again they are all in the keyboard. Can't really understand why the made it detachable. It seems like just another 3.5lbs ultra book, given the limitations in tablet mode. Bring up the web browser or any 3rd party app and tap an edit box. In tablet mode, the virtual keyboard doesn't pop up by default like we've been trained to expect from iOS and Android. Microsoft store employees couldn't figure out how to change this behavior. It was the same way on Windows 8. They were adamant it could be set as a default. They went and grabbed a Surface Pro 3 to show me and it behaved the same as the Surface book. If you ask me, it's not a well executed product. The Surface Pro 4 is something I could tolerate.

The virtual keyboard and lack of media apps were what drove me to return the Surface Pro 3 before. I'm afraid the Windows 10 hasn't solved those problems. I will eventually pick up a Surface Pro 4, but it is not the future. It's more a reminder that Microsoft can't ever get polish right.

Why is this virtual keyboard so important? Let's say you want to detach the tablet and carry that 1.7lbs device for travel, but then you get completely frustrated because it's very difficult to type anything. When I had the SP3, I was sometimes forced to go grab the keyboard cover just to type because typing in tablet mode on the Surface was 10x worse than iOS and Android. 3000x2000. Other laptops have had 3200x1800 screens for years. There's nothing new about this new screen. I went to check it out with the intentions to prorder, but I found out it was half baked. $2600 for a dual core i7? For $500 more, I can put a nice 5k iMac with 14mp resolution of screen on my desk.



Oct 11, 2015 at 03:30 AM
snowboarder
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


To me this is the nicest tablet I can run full Photoshop on. I like how the Surface version
of Photoshop can nicely scale up the icons too.
iPad is a joke, being based on the phone operating system, it's useless.
No file system, no full Photoshop, no nothing.

I was waiting for the SP4 announcement, but SB is so much better for me. It still gives
me a "normal" laptop I can put on my desk when I need it, but it also gives me a beautiful
tablet with 16GB of RAM and pretty decent power including an NVIDIA card
for my Photoshop work. Full SD card reader is also important to me.
USB3 is actually a better solution in 2015 than the new TB3 or USB-C
as I have tons of USB drives etc and they are plenty fast. Great screen
with a pen I'm used to working with a Wacom tablet every day.
I can even run After Effects on it.

I don't know, I like the concept a lot. I like all the ports being in the base
and the tablet part being that clean. I imagine I will work mostly in the reversed screen mode
on my desk and occasionally will detach the tablet. 3 hours is plenty enough for that.






Oct 11, 2015 at 04:12 AM
snowboarder
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


hiepphotog wrote:
I hope the screen is Wacom tech


Previous SP3 was, you could install the Wacom driver on it and use it.




Oct 11, 2015 at 04:14 AM
snowboarder
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


Frogfish wrote:
For the money and use on the road (photography) I'll take the new MacBook. Stunning Retina screen and enough power for most, including (from all reports) basic editing and viewing RAW. Around US$1,500. I'll save the rest of my pennies for my main desktop (iMac).


If you are OK with the speed of the new Macbook, you have a $1500 option of the Surface Book too,
which will be as fast or faster.
And it's so much more versatile. Have you tried full Photoshop on a tablet?
It's so much better, than a small laptop.



Oct 11, 2015 at 04:17 AM
Jman13
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


Mine is the UX305LA. The screen is pretty good. It's IPS, and had decent color. Contrast might be a little low, but otherwise haven't had issues. It is much nicer when hardware calibrated, though mine wasn't bad out of the box. It's not as good for critical color work as my monitors on my main machine, but I'm very pleased with the display considering the price point and size. Operationally, it's fast and smooth and the trackpad is good too. Gesture support and nice response. The click buttons if you use them instead of tapping are a bit firm, but I like it a lot. Battery life is excellent: a good 8-10 hours on a charge.

Frederico wrote:
I am looking to replace my 2011 MBP with a Zenbook. But heard that it's color, especially yellow, is difficult to get. What's your experience in using it? The model that I'm looking at is UX303LB.





Oct 11, 2015 at 04:20 AM
Frogfish
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


snowboarder wrote:
If you are OK with the speed of the new Macbook, you have a $1500 option of the Surface Book too,
which will be as fast or faster.
And it's so much more versatile. Have you tried full Photoshop on a tablet?
It's so much better, than a small laptop.


I don't use MS or PCs at all now. So fed up with malware / viruses / hardware-software issues (I own a small company and run 12 PCs in the office). I don't use PS but Affinity Photo (an excellent new PS 'clone' for iOS) and LR5.



Oct 11, 2015 at 04:25 AM
snowboarder
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


sflxn wrote:
Why is this virtual keyboard so important? ..



http://www.windowscentral.com/sites/wpcentral.com/files/styles/larger_wm_blb/public/field/image/2015/08/touch-keyboard-win10-settings.jpg



Oct 11, 2015 at 04:28 AM
snowboarder
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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


Frogfish wrote:
I don't use MS or PCs at all now.



Windows used to be a disaster and OS X used to be great.

But Windows 10 are changing that, it's a pretty great OS. In the same time OS X
gets dumbed down like everything else Apple has been doing recently.
I can't create a folder in my root on my Mac without being asked a password? Really?
Apple became such a sad company these days...

And Microsoft is innovative, who would have thought?





Oct 11, 2015 at 04:34 AM
Frogfish
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


snowboarder wrote:
I can't create a folder in my root on my Mac without being asked a password? Really?


I think that is optional (I'm using 10.9.4), you can decide if you want it password protected (good idea) or not. It's in System Preferences as far as I remember. Just switch it off (it'll ask you for the password first)



Oct 11, 2015 at 04:38 AM
Sam_W
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


snowboarder wrote:
Windows used to be a disaster and OS X used to be great.

But Windows 10 are changing that, it's a pretty great OS. In the same time OS X
gets dumbed down like everything else Apple has been doing recently.
I can't create a folder in my root on my Mac without being asked a password? Really?
Apple became such a sad company these days...

And Microsoft is innovative, who would have thought?


That's more a UNIX design paradigm. And a good one at that. Windows came along and let users crap their stuff all over the root of the drive, instead of keeping everything in $HOME.



Oct 11, 2015 at 04:41 AM
59degNorth
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


Frederico: I have also been looking at the zenbook for portability. Regarding the displays it seems that the lower resolution 1080 displays have better srgb coverage than the higher resolution ones. There are also different versions of the 1080 p displays. I find it a bit hard to follow which model abrevation has which display vendor.

The link below has display data for three different displays used by the zenbook.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/The-Best-Notebook-Displays-As-Reviewed-By-Notebookcheck.120541.0.html



Oct 11, 2015 at 07:15 AM
justruss
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Surface Book - true travel photographer's dream


Frogfish wrote:
For the money and use on the road (photography) I'll take the new MacBook. Stunning Retina screen and enough power for most, including (from all reports) basic editing and viewing RAW. Around US$1,500. I'll save the rest of my pennies for my main desktop (iMac).


+1

I'm thrilled with my retina Macbook (slowest model, 1.1 Ghz, $1299 at list, cheaper if you shop around-- frankly, if you have a second computer, and you probably should, you're best with the cheapest model since you won't actually notice any difference between the 1.1 and 1.3 ghz models)-- and once you can get refurbished models closer to $1K, it'll be a hell of a deal.

Calibrated the monitor; perhaps the nicest monitor Apple sells (I also use a 27 ACD LED; plan to go 32" 4K soon), right up there with the Apple 5K.

Works fine for Lightroom or Photoshop on the go (A7rII RAW files), and even light FCPX (GoPro Hero 4 Black). Perfect for doing backups and basic review and edits on the go. Great for general computing/office stuff.

Really thin and easy to work with. Solid battery life. Runs OS X-- which I still prefer (my hex-core, self-built desktop dual-boots Win and OS X... I rarely use Win).

None of these systems can rate compared to a really powerful desktop, no matter their discrete mobile GPU and Core i5/7 mobile processor.

Glad to see options on the Windows side though, because the more competition the better. And this system looks pretty damn innovative and spec rich!



Oct 11, 2015 at 07:31 AM
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