Call me a hater, but the problem is Windows, not necessarily the hardware. I get it they want to stop the MacBook Pro, but: Windows is slow for no reason; it collects everything it can about the user; takes screenshots of whatever the user is doing; has ads - even though you pay for the OS; drivers are still a mess; hardware is made by different companies and no actual proper integration like Apple does. I could go on, but like someone here said: you have to pay me a hefty sum to use a Windows portable device ever again.

Every time I read something like "completely redefines professional computing" I think that somebody in the marketing department didn't do a good enough job to disguise a sponsored content, or at the very least didn't review what the independent author wrote.

Anyway, what I like of this machine is the 15" screen with a keyboard without a numberpad: the center of the body of the user can be aligned with the center of the screen. The screen seems to be particularly bright, which is good. There are claims of good self repairability, we will see when it starts to sell.

I'd wait a few years before buying one machine in this product line. I want to see how Windows on ARM will play out in terms of compatibility. My build targets are all Intel servers (Linux), so I don't want to have surprises. I would have to wait years anyway because I would run Linux and I think that it takes more effort to port Linux to new ARM hardware that to new Intel one (ACPI etc.) WSL is not an option because I still have Windows around it and it's even more unpleasant than having to deal a Mac GUI.

Let's say that if this were an Intel laptop I'd be tempted to buy it, if the hands on reviews will be good.

My experience with Surfaces and, particularly, the Surface Book and its accompanying dock were such that I'd have to be paid to use one again. For example, the dock would get its own updates silently and brick itself randomly and the proprietary magnetic connector between the dock and the computer was prone to a poor connection. I remember many occasions trying to work and my screens just randomly blinking in and out. To get service we'd have to go to a local Microsoft Store, a sad replica of the aging Apple "shiny glass minimalism" aesthetic, which have since all closed so we'd have to mail the thing today instead.

While I somehow like the fact that Microsoft is trying to compete, their problem stays the same: There are too many people involved.

  - Nvidia
  - Mediatek
  - Microsoft 
    - Windows team
    - Surface team
    - Marketing team
  - ...

That's the reason Framework has an advantage over all these Ad driven companies. They are working together with the Linux / Kernel developers to make their products fit - however it is still lacking the completely cohesive nature of the product, because they still loosely depend on Intel / AMD and other Hardware manufacturers.

An example: Every Apple device with a headphone jack since 2013 (probably long before) including iPods, iPhones and MacBooks has that little proprietary chip with ultrasonic chirp authentication integrated to control playback and volume by the EarPods headphone remote. Now there is a USB-C to 3.5mm Adapter as well as USB-C EarPods that still support this... No Windows Laptop has ever had this. The funny thing is, that Linux now supports these USB-C Apple thingies because they register as input and output devices and that the Apple 3.5mm Adapters now also support other brands headphones with Android.

The Neo success is heavily about Microsoft grabbing all the data and syncing everything to their servers and using dark patterns. The macbook neo is antiWindows not anti PC. The new Dell is nice, but it runs Windows so all that data grabbing dark pattern privacy ruining crap is under the hood.

Mac Neo is the anti KGB device in a svelte shell. It is a long term strategic play and nothing running Windows will compete against it because Windows is the cancer.

Windows PCs will continue their decline unless Microsoft gives up its privatized KGB aspirations. Active Directory will not carry them forever once enough of the younger generation use Mac for data possession and privacy, meaning all their bits including passwords are not dark pattern snarfed by the OS.

Windows is horrific. Mac Neo is to Windows what Keanu Neo was to the Matrix. It does't even matter how much better PC hardware could be at the same price point since the Windows is basically a conduit to storing all your data and private info on Microsoft's computer instead of yours. Microsoft is even driving that dark pattern crap into the professional space and automatically grabbing passwords etc. via Edge.

They are committing long slow seppuku and do not realize it because Office 365 is letting them bilk enterprise customers, but the IT world knows that dark pattern crap portends a change in vendor eventually.

You can't even stop edge from syncing enterprise admin credentials on the latest versions. It is like getting violated by Microsoft every day where they beat you and take your password book if you are enteprise admin.

Microsoft has gone to the dark side so far they are broom handling their enterprise admin customers with dark pattern credential grabs and no way to know where the data sits.

Bring on the Neos and an alternative to AD. Windows 11 and their new direction of hovering, copying and moving all data is such a betrayal of ethical system administration from when they were young. It will take a decade, but Neo is here now. It has begun.

The Surface line is, HW-wise, very good IMHO.

Too bad the software is awful. Thankfully the Linux Surface community is pretty strong. Proprietary Microsoft drivers don't make it easy, but we're getting there...

https://github.com/linux-surface/surface-pro-x

I'll buy another one if there's some commitment from Microsoft to be more open source friendly, but since this will never happen, they can keep their HW.

I'm on my third Surface Pro (an 11 this time) and basically love it. Tablet form factor, lightweight, multitouch, with a real desktop OS (I mean not ipad's iOS). Decent battery life. True, it's not perfect: slow to wake, the touchpad stops working once in a while & needs to be reset. Missing a GPS chip. But it runs Adobe, Resolve, Chrome of course, msys2, and Linux (WSL2) quite well. I love the absolutely gorgeous HiDPI screen. The software emulator system is a little weird (arm64/arm64EC/arm64X, with no true universal x64/arm64 binary) for software developers, but it basically works fine from a user perspective. I say all this as someone whose daily driver is an Arm M1 Macbook Pro, also nice but not a tablet and quite heavier. I don't use a dock, just a simple USBC hub with a magnetic USBC connector.

I get that they're pushing AI really hard, but the article bearing so many of the hallmarks of being AI-generated almost feels crass, like there are no humans at the company who feel strongly enough about this device to author 5-6 enthusiastic paragraphs about its features, they had to outsource to something that can somewhat convincingly mimic enthusiasm. Yet I'm supposed to care...

„Built on Windows”. That’s like anti-ad these days. Maybe, maybe worth looking at if you can run other OS than Windows on it, but that will probably take some time.

Isn’t this effectively a mediocre MediaTek SoC glued with an over priced GPU with an OS that’s barely usable and I guess the ask is $5k? What a deal!

A former employer of mine, owned by a retired NFL player, purchased Surface devices for the sales staff in addition to their laptops. This was presumably because Microsoft and the NFL had a deal where everyone on the sidelines were using Surfaces and they thought it was a good idea. I say that because no one was asking for them, and when we received them I was inundated with tickets about poor performance: "my surface is slow", "my surface is glitchy". I dreaded working on these things. Everyone just went back to their laptops. Tens of thousands of dollars wasted.

It's a shame, Microsoft could really do something if they created an ARM device that had the battery life of Apple Silicon, yet was a real computer that wasn't locked down, ensured/promoted ARM compatibility with their ecosystem. Heck, I'd even be OK with Windows 11, I know how to remove all the garbage now and could run WSL (though I'd prefer to just boot Linux on it).

Intel has already tried this (CPU+GPU+NPU) in partnership with Asus [1]. Big announcement at CES back in January. Not seeing much traction. Let's see how this one is received.

[1] https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ai-pc/overview.html

Wow, this is exciting to me as a Mac user. 2000 nits to Apple's 1600. 262 pixels per inch to Apple's 254. Mini LED vs Apple's XDR (I genuinely don't know enough about display tech to intelligently asses here, but I expect Mini LED to be superior; please correct me if I'm wrong). Unified memory up to 128GB (same).

I was excited about the ARM laptops that came out a couple of years ago because there were a lot of promises about them moving the industry forward. In the end, I think they were mostly nothing all that special. This, however, really appears to rock the boat. I want Apple to have to compete. I want the best Mac I can get and this laptop will challenge Apple to work harder. This is good for everyone.

For many, the appeal of a Mac is that it isn't running Windows. I'm not seeing how this won't be a repeat of the OG ARM Surface, just with a higher spec'd GPU.

Windows is such offensive trash now that it doesn't matter what you run it on. NO WAY.

Would love to see many more manufacturers read this as the slight taht it is from Microsoft and to follow Lenovos lead in making windows a paid add-on, going with a big Linux distro as the default.

Maybe instead of hardware they should just stick to the knitting and deal with their quality issues around both the OS and the Office suite right now.

This is obviously intended for running local AI, but the memory bandwidth of 300 GB/sec seems a limiting factor, since this is what limits single user LLM inference tokens/sec. For comparison the M2 Ultra does up to 800 GB/sec, thanks to having a 1024-bit bus vs the RTX Spark's 256-bit bus.

I've had surface devices for a long time, originally for work to test HTML Canvas with the touchscreen. Unlike a lot of the other comments, I've had a nice time with them. The screens are a great quality, the keyboard especially in later versions is quite good. Drawing on them is nice. Battery life is middling, though.

I've used one of the flagship Surface Books two jobs ago, really beefy, could run Cyberpunk(don't ask how I know). Insanely bad machine, the overall finish was terrible, hinges broke often, charging port broke often(like every 3rd-4th person in the office), it overheated with basic office work, fans went rocket level loud when compiling basic things, after a while it was stuttering even with casual use. Had a really good Dell XPS at home too that was dying when compiling big Typescript codebase. I bought an MBP M3Pro 1.5y ago and I could never go back. It's insane how far ahead Apple is when it comes to performance. Noone seems to grasp that until they actually try to work on M-series. Three of my ex colleagues also switched to Macbooks after I told them, they also are never coming back.

The biggest problem here is the operating system. If they could fix that, this might be enticing.

Thing is: I want macOS, not Windows.

If Microsoft was really ambitious about building a product truly competing to the Macbook Pro, they would need to ship it with a radically different version of Windows.

Microsoft cannot just throw upgraded hardware after the Surface, and expect it to compete with the Macbook Pro. The Macbook Pro is not primarily popular due to Apple Silicon, but the combination of a focused user experience (although, Liquid Glass was a significant step-down) and high-end hardware.

After Windows 11 I'm done with Microsoft.

I will never buy a Surface device ever again. I've been using an SL4 for the last four years with Linux on it, thanks to the surface-linux kernel.

It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux.

Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device.

I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that was how it went when it first happened about two years ago). An AI answered, did not understand what I was saying at all, hung up the call. I called again; it told me to check the website and hung up, not even giving me a chance to say anything.

Okay. Guess I'll never buy anything from you ever. Ordered them off of Aliexpress and moved on.

What's this nonsensical video on the product page that allegedly shows an "all new thermal system"? https://videos.ctfassets.net/jy9s7k22hbg4/44R1LH71xb8uO4c9dD...

> Rated for all day battery life

So vibes battery life. I'm going to assume it's like most Windows laptops and somehow only lasts 3 hours.

Surface has seen so many iterations, some terrible, some nice. Still rocking the discontinued surface laptop studio as Wacom on the go, smallish footprint (14”) creative development machine. I just love its quirkiness and the fact that I can jump on photoshop to touch up an image, use it as tablet for movies, or vs code for (not great nowadays) 6h on battery. It is an odd intersection.

They can put whatever hardware they want in it, Windows knows know bounds in undermining the overall package. I don't want a faster processor to run user-hostile adware that's constantly trying to upsell me, and uses dark patterns to trick me into switching off my chosen alternatives to their bad products every time there's a minor update. I don't want to run it at all.

As a Nvidia Spark owner I can confirm that Linux is much more performant then Windows on that chip. If the goal is "doing stuff with AI" Windows is the last OS you want to look at.

I found this video [0] recently by Casey Muratori that really helped me understand why Windows is the way that it is.

It's about Conway's law in software development and software architecture, but he explains it with anecdotes about Windows, like how vendor communication challenges lead to 4 different volume sliders.

I would pass on an expensive heavy-partnership Windows device.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY

I've had about 4 generations of surface devices. Never again. The frustration of that SP4 where every bodies screen would jitter and they would just stoiclly send me a replacement with the same problem. Until warranty expired.

Or every model after that just slowed down to a crawl after a year. Or the keyboard connection not working reliably.

No thank you very much.

Gimme an rtx spark in the new framework 13 pro.

> NVIDIA already commands a legendary reputation for graphics drivers

“Legendary”, not a “great”, or “good” one. Certainly not “excellent” or “spotless” but, definitely, legendary.

Who writes these pieces?

Looking into the Apple counterpart, an M5 Max with 128GB of RAM and 2TB of flash, it comes at around EUR 6K here in Ireland, probably in the $5K range in the US. I am assuming Microsoft will charge a similar premium for it, because this is not a machine that'll help with vendor lock-in for them - it helps mostly Nvidia, so Microsoft and other OEMs will likely get the chips with lower margins.

It's also a way for Nvidia to protect itself (a bit) from the impending doom at the AI datacenter sector.

Could LLM based AI lead to people moving away from Windows? I think UI will increasingly become less important as people switch to voice commands. Just tell your AI what you want to do instead of trying to navigate Windows.

Could LLM based AI prefer Linux since it's more customizable?

It feels hard to be excited by a DGX Spark stuffed into a laptop. It's still slow RAM (much slower than a Mac) and arbitrarily limited to 128GB. Can't they at least offer a higher end model with faster RAM and more of it? Sure it would cost a bundle, but there are still people who'd buy it for the local AI capability.

Who is the target market for this?

As an Apple user who can’t make iPad OS work I am always tempted by the surface but..

Every time I contemplate the surface (I like the hardware / concept) it seems the software I might want to use doesn’t support arm..

One of the key features of the MacBook is a rock-solid Unix operating system. Windows ain’t one, therefore this might, at best, be a nice, thin, fast, Windows ARM computer with a lot of RAM. If you want a Windows computer, this might be it. Otherwise, there are better options: x86, which will not be as fast or light, but can easily run Linux, or a Mac, which is light, fast, and runs Unix.

My first thought on seeing this was that it could be great for Linux. If the hardware is a little more standard than Apple's, it wouldn't need all the tricks Asahi has figure out. Finally you could have the best performance without compromising on fine details.

These machines are total garbage in my experience.

> And with all-day battery life[ii]

If they managed to get anywhere near Apple, they'd have confidently published some kind of actual hour figure without a scare citation.

As awesome as this laptop could be, it is going to be $5000+ right? The DGX Spark, which has no display, touchpad, webcam, etc, is $4700.

I'm pretty happy to see someone else making a serious play in the ultra-premium notebook market. For way too long Apple has basically only been in competition with the much heavier "desktop replacement"/gaming laptops, or the flimsy/plasticky likes of Dell and LG with questionable trackpads. Real competition in this space could be a great thing for consumers

I guess it makes sense this is for power users, only amateurs use Page Up/Home/etc. buttons.

The biggest downside of this product is Windows

Game on, I’d say.

"The world is full of makers. Only a few make the world."

What does this mean ? How can you make the world ?

Microsoft doesn't get it. People don't buy MacBooks because they're powerful. People buy MacBooks because they love macOS.

No price? I guess over 3k for 128GB ram and Nvidia spark.

The image on the Nvidia announcement tells the story: 6 identical laptops from various manufacturers running the same SoC. The Microsoft one is just one of many.

https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/products/rtx-spark/

I had the Surface 3 and it was a good product, really good for note taking in college, quite revolutionary I'd say, to use the same device for the notes and for MATLAB and the likes. It was terrible in terms of maintenance but I think they fixed it in later iterations. The surface 3 had a glued screen that would crack 99 out of 100 times and there was no other way to access components in it. It survived for about 10 years which I think is fair. Shame that such an interesting product is developed by a completely untrustworthy company.

IIUC this is using lower bandwidth RAM than macs, and will run windows, with uncertain linux support (it's spotty even on the dedicated linux boxes that this chip is based on). So less of a "rival" and more "metoobutworse"...

I'm surprised they released this thing. Brand perception is probably a lot more important to Nvidia than whatever sales they could get from this thing, and if it's basically just DGX Spark, it's likely to underwhelm.

I've heard there's still a large backlog of both software problems, and hardware problems with the platform. The software problems could be fixed with time, but they'll still give a shitty first impression. I'd have thought Nvidia would just bury this and try again with a successor run of silicon with a new design.

This thing seems practically destined to just be a repeat of the Snapdragon laptop debacle.

MS page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/surface/devices/surface-lapt...

Optimized for multi core.. like windows is out of the box for x86 and ARM already? What did they do manually set cores=20? Such optimal. Many Cores! This will be the third attempt at Windows on ARM.. hopefully this is the one

I know it feels snarky but I didn't ever expect to read that Microsoft was pairing with MediaTek to make an ARM cpu to run Windows. So many years of the WinTel hegemony I guess :-).

I've had several Surface devices over the years, the original SurfaceBook, and a Surface Pro 4 and Surface Pro 6. The Pro 4 was the most reliable and the Pro 6 was prone to overheat. But execution in the mechanical build was quite good.

That said the battery in my SurfaceBook went all Spicy Pillow on me, the Pro 4's power slot ended up dying, and the Pro 6 just stopped responding one day (it was a work laptop so I just gave it back but still). I'm still waiting to see how folks with Macbooks experience the end of life.

If MediaTek would partner with Framework to make a motherboard I'd totally try it out :-).

> It’s well known that the Surface trackpads are among the best in the industry, surpassing even MacBooks in several aspects

What aspects are these?

This sounds very exciting to me, however, the fact that it is a Windows laptop makes me sigh a bit. Why? Because they often seem to lack the fundamental experience that MacBooks have nailed.

I have tried many touchpads, but nothing comes close to MacBooks. The tracking feels incredibly precise and consistent. The same goes for the speakers. It is surprising that no other laptop manufacturer has matched the sound quality Apple delivers. That is frustrating, because I genuinely want that same experience on a different system. I do not want to feel locked into MacBooks. I know the Youtube channel Dave2D did a video on this experience as well [1][2].

Another issue is how Windows laptops degrade over time. No matter how many I have tried, they eventually end up in a state where the fans spin up for no clear reason, the battery drains quickly, and I start getting notifications about low disk space even though I have not installed much.

When I check the “Uninstall or remove apps” section, it does not clearly show what is actually taking up space. I often have to use tools like WinDirStat to discover leftover files from applications I already removed. These remnants build up and contribute to the system feeling bloated.

I also start noticing small but frustrating delays, like the lag between pressing the Windows key and the Start menu appearing.

BUT I do have an idea though, Nvidia will hopefully support Linux kernel, so if I have the opportunity to switch to one of these new machines, I might just swap out Windows with a Linux distro instead. Linux Mint perhaps. I am open for suggestions on good distros, specifically for daily use as home computer for both office use and browsing the web, maybe even play indie-games.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkYB931iUjc

2. https://youtu.be/h26FlWu7aDc?si=FN8FG9EY0eMJ67fU&t=313

Prominent dual fans?

Hell no. Who would think that’s a good idea?

One of the absolutely best things about the MacBook Pro is that it’s silent when you’re not really pushing it. It’s incredibly rare for me to hear them on my M4 Pro. Normal work, including compiling, using docker, my IDE, etc. almost never does it unless I do something big over and over and over.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a single sound out of my M3 Air. I think it has a fan. I know my M1 didn’t.

Make the coolest computer you want. If noise is a prominent feature I will never go within 10 feet of it.

If it's still based on the chip in the DGX Spark, idle power draw remains a problem to be solved. My Spark pulls down 40W when doing nothing under Ubuntu.

A Spark-like machine in a laptop form factor is certainly exciting and interesting competition for Apple. I wonder about Linux compatibility, given NVidia's history with proprietary drives. I am absolutely not willing to go back to Windows, though.

This is the story of being a tech giant where you can't stop running a creepy digital surveillance business model that depends on expensive but poor performing hardware vendors so you partner with an ungodly expensive hardware vendor that can perform well but doesn't solve the underlying problem of being a creepy digital surveillance business that snoops on your customers and sells ads to show them. Friends don't let friends or family they care about use Windows 11.

Everything's absolutely fine until you see it runs Windoze

Seriously?

Will it be as silent as a MacBook Pro? Will you be able to throw it into a backpack without shutting it down?

At a quick glance it sounds like they're competing on specs and obviously missing everything else.

That sounds great! Does it run Linux?

That copy reeks of AI generated text... for a premium, luxury laptop. What a shame.

The deal breaker is, can only run Windows.

I don't know about anyone else, but I don't use a Macbook because of some marginal gain in the hardware.

Oh thank god it has a co-pilot button

Wondering about Linux support. Would it take Asahi-level community commitment? For Windows, ~no one will switch from their macs for some (seemingly) single-year-generational gains. It would need some distinctive feature, not only performance. For me, the 2in1/tablet aspect was that, which they drop now.

i've only ever owned a 'Surface Laptop 2' and for the time it was excellent, the keyboard and trackpad were both superior to my macbook pro of the time, the screen was great in both brightness and the 3:2 ratio. it was great value.

from all the comments on here it seems like that model was an anomaly and the rest of the product lineup is often pretty lacking.

Unusable website. Can’t get past the full screen consent dialog (iPhone)

I used a surface book II for years all the while hoping it would die. It didn’t, which says something I guess. What sucked: the hinge, the split battery, mysterious problems with screen detach, the magnetic power connector, glossy screen. What didn’t: screen ratio.

Seen this a few dozen times before, they're just not capable.

Again?

The primary reason to buy Macs isn't the hardware, it's macOS.

Surface devices last 6 months in tropical climate like Singapore and then something breaks.

> the answer to Macbook Pro > runs Windows 11

I don't know if it's on purpose, but I've seen a few images and videos and I can't figure out what the laptop looks like.

Why are all the pictures so dark? You can't see it!

> Hardware of that caliber requires a highly optimized operating system to function properly.

But unfortunately, you get Windows

It is not too far fetched to see NVIDIA acquiring Microsoft for the vertically integrated advantages Apple enjoys.

[edit:typo]

I have had the 15" Surface Laptop 6 as my daily driver and love it. Very reliable. The new one has a lot more ports so I am happy to see that.

Whatever they all do, they can never, ever match the quality of Apple! I've bought many Macs so far, and many Windows machines (Dell, Sony, 1st and 2nd Gen of Surface) as well. All of those Windows machines died within less than 2 years, while the Macs, which were bought more than 10 years ago, are still working fine. So, I'm not going to buy a new Windows machine anytime soon.

Microsoft is the guarantee that it will fail.

Microsoft has one long building. In the north wing, they build to last, hardware, kernel, software (.NET) - the problem is, in the south-wing, they built to embrace, extend and enshittify. Can microsoft north build performance faster, then the south can enshittify. Place your bets ladies and mentalgen.

What is the CPU/GPU architecture of this and how could a collaboration between whoever made it and Nvidia possibly outperform Apple Silicon?

Very disappointed that MS didn't stick with the watchband hinge. My wife's 10 year old Surface Book has had toddlers stand on it and the thing still works like new.

> Made for a kind of work that does not fit in a standard laptop.

Yeah, sure... And that kind of work is...???

The only device I'm still happy to own from them is the Classic IntelliMouse.

For me, anything else, be hardware or software, I stay very far away from them.

at a time when they are speculating with 1TB of ram for the new macs, they release new hardware with max 128GB addressable ram.

crazy.

strix halo was released more than a year ago.

is this based on ARM? or x64

I'm starting to have a sour taste in my mouth whenever I read microsoft and nvidia

I guess that if I have to ask for the price, it’s not for me.

I don’t trust Microsoft after how they abandoned the Surface Book

What happens if you vibe code an entire hardware product?

Too late, even the MacBook Pros are mostly pointless now.

I switched from a M2 Pro with 24gb ram to the new 8gb Neo and I kid you not, they perform just the same 99.5% of the time.

It's a shame that, outside of garish "gaming" laptops, 17" screens are very rare.

Cool

…but never buy v1 hardware folks! Especially for limited runs like high end laptops.

Apple quality comes from scale. A narrow product line means they have literally hundreds or thousands times more testing than PC ultra books. (And still — don’t buy a first iteration of a new Apple chassis.)

I sometimes wonder if the "Corporate VP" (whatever that means) believes his own jerk-off marketing

Does the unified memory work in WSL2?

It's not a rival. It could be the greatest computer ever made and I'm still not using Windows.

Macbook Pro rival running ..... Windows?! I'd take a bottom of the line Macbook over anything running 'doze.

why are they showing off the fans? how hot does this thing run?

Windows…

This will be nowhere near MSRP to Macbook Pro,and you won't be able to buy it for less than 2x MSRP for a while, just because people will buy those to put into rack to do local LLM

Will this help strengthen the ARM Linux ecosystem?

They brag about the Nvidia superchip:

>The custom NVIDIA superchip challenges both Qualcomm and Apple

But it seems NVIDIA didn't have enough in house know how and they needed MediaTek to develop the chip.

>20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU (Arm architecture, co-developed with MediaTek)

This thing is going to cost north of $15k possibly even $30k.

This might actually be cool hardware! I'm just wondering why anyone would waste all the overhead for the Windows OS. There's probably only 48 Gigs of unified memory left when your log-on completes...

Too bad it runs Windows.

Perhaps this will end up being the mythical MacBook-like hardware that I can install Linux on (Asahi notwithstanding).

Here's a forum dedicated to the new Surface Laptop Ultra as well: https://www.surfaceforums.net/forums/microsoft-surface-lapto...

Does it run Linux well? That's the only reason not to get a MBP.

Personally, I got a HP Zbook G1A, which is HP's take on an MBP based on (x86, but unified memory!) Strix Halo.

Battery life could be better, but pretty happy otherwise. Local LLM perf is great and I get to run an OS that doesn't drive me crazy.

If it doesn’t have the repairability of a framework. I’m out.

What's conspicuously absent, is the CPU that's going to power this thing. Yes, it's got an Nvidia GPU, but does it have an Intel CPU, an AMD CPU, an Nvidia ARM CPU, or someone else's ARM CPU?

I wonder what kind of brightness that 2000 nit screen will actually deliver? Everyone rates their screens on peak, but then SDR is the same 250-350 nit range for most systems.

What's the actual connectivity? USB4? with or without PCIe tunneling? How many ports?

How much is it going to weigh? Battery life? Battery capacity?

DGX Spark desktops idle close to 20w on Linux: that's a lot for a laptop. I'm expecting Nvidia+Microsoft stepped up their driver game some for this release, but it's wild how few creature comforts or nicities DGX Spark came with. Launched with and still has almost no power monitoring or power management capabilities. If you turn on the highspeed NIC it turns into a 40W hotbox even at idle. Nvidia has such a weird mix of supporting what they want to support well, but doing absolutely nothing else. The way Shield TV is still occasionally getting some updates is impressive for example, but it's stayed on an ancient Android version & went a good fraction of a decade without update. Similarly, keeping folks locked on rickety old Linux4Tegra and now DGX Spark heavily modified Linux OSes has been brutal. It's hard to believe this system is going to be much better than a fantastically expensive bag of barely managed idiosyncratic quirks.

You would have to pay me to get one and I would still not use it.

There is something about Microsoft's reverse Midas touch.

I had the original surface and later a surface book from my employer. Both devices were horrible the digitizer for pen input was horrific. The software support was on a standstill for 6 months at a time with minimal updates later on. I won't touch first gen Microsoft hardware anymore except maybe their mice.

Surfaces are great devices. My Pro 3 still gets 7 hours of battery life.

We use newer Surface laptops at work, even the artists, developers, and executives (note we are not a tech company). The laptops aren't very fast but they can take a lot of physical abuse and the batteries last all day. We don't need the top of the line, and forcing our developers to use lower powered computers actually improves the quality of the apps because they get to experience how our apps work for most of our customers and take performance into account from the beginning.

> Built on Windows

aaaaand... scene!

No thank you, and goodbye

PCs still have USB-A ports? USB-A is old enough to drink.

"Copilot, write me a drivel article which could have been a 3-line press release, but instead use every unnecessary superlative you can conjure. Ignore any possible criticism and pretend this device is the second coming of Computer Christ"

doa

Too bad linux x86 on arm story is still terrible. Fex is great in a sense but getting it run is a herculean feat, with pagesize mismatched requiring a VM.

you actually can run 120B (see Nemotron-3-Super) model in NVFP4 on DGXSpark, so I'd imagine it'll run here as well

So... nvidia agreed to pull a qualcom... well, enjoy the failure. people that would be early adopters want a real operation system that would actually allow them to leverage the hw, not a pathetic web-ui-based vibe coded operation system that requires wsl to make anything useful.

If it runs Windows then it's dead on arrival.

Surface Laptop Ultra Ripoff: Made for World(-Class) Suckers.

> Microsoft explicitly tuned Windows 11 to extract the absolute best performance from the new silicon architecture.

My lie detector is going off.

> The containment features sandbox local agents like Hermes and OpenClaw so they cannot interfere with your core operating system.

Wait, isn't that kind of the point of using local agents like OpenClaw? I thought people wanted the agents accessing all kinds of applications, files, etc.?

> Legacy application compatibility is equally crucial. Microsoft optimized the Prism emulation layer specifically for the new microarchitecture. Prism utilizes the raw power of the silicon and recent AVX and AVX2 instruction set extensions to run older x86 applications smoothly under emulation.

Okay, this is pretty nice. I'll give Microsoft credit for this one. It might save my company a lot of heartache one day in the near future.

All in all, this rig is going to be quite expensive. In a lot of ways, it probably is better than a MacBook Pro. However, as a diehard Apple fanboy, it is not enough for me to consider the jump.

Imagine thinking the rivalry is about hardware and not software... Same for IOS vs Android.

TFA has a few more tidbits than I've seen elsewhere but it's mostly LLM-induced, hype-driven marketing bilge.

A slightly more sober announcement is available at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352627.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48352627

You know what, MS? Go to hell with the architecture and CPU vendor-lock.

We need and want an open, modular architecture, and currently it's not ARM, it's x86/64. Because I can't go buy CPU retail and replace it at home.

Edit: oh cool, CPU is MediaTek. No-no, I would stay as far as possible from it.

Thank you, but no, thanks.