Windows Surface Pro 128GB

Started by Melbosa, February 25, 2013, 03:44:10 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Lazybones

Well we all know it won't have any space after you run windows update for a year. ;)

Melbosa

Sometimes I Think Before I Type... Sometimes!

Mr. Analog

By Grabthar's Hammer

Tom

Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:02:29 AM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 10:16:08 AM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.

Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).

Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.

10 hours?  Doing what, though?  Can you play Minecraft for 10 hours straight on it before the battery runs out?  Or watch 10 hours of movies?  How about if you have a development environment and a database server running on it?
You have to be in power save mode (which is the default when on battery), which clocks it down to 1.6GHz, and using the integrated intel graphics, so while you can play minecraft it won't be as nice as with the nvidia ;)

I'd say it'd get 10 hours with regular browsing, and productivity type work. I think it's supposed to get 4-8 when watching movies. I haven't looked at the reviews in a while, so I can't remember all of the different times. It's still pretty darn impressive that a workstation laptop can get 10 hours at all.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Thorin

My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it.  If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours.  Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Tom

Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it.  If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours.  Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.
In the keyboard dock?

Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Thorin

Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 01:59:38 PM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it.  If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours.  Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.

In the keyboard dock?

Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.

Yes, the keyboard has a second battery in it that supposedly adds 5 hours to the 9 hour from the battery in the tablet itself.  That means they're claiming 14 hours.  It doesn't go that long when playing videos, but it can go 12 hours.

Don't all computers decode video using hardware?
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Tom

Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 08:52:13 PM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 01:59:38 PM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:48:20 AM
My workstation laptop can run 8 hours if I don't do any work on it.  If I'm doing my usual job, though, which involves coding, compiling, testing, and audio/video conferencing with colleagues, it drops to 3-4 hours.  Whereas the ASUS Transformer we have can actually play movies for 12 hours straight.

In the keyboard dock?

Thats cool though. I think with QuickSync I can get a lot of video time out of this laptop. does video decoding in hw. I haven't tested it though.

Yes, the keyboard has a second battery in it that supposedly adds 5 hours to the 9 hour from the battery in the tablet itself.  That means they're claiming 14 hours.  It doesn't go that long when playing videos, but it can go 12 hours.

Don't all computers decode video using hardware?
Nope :P h264 decoding in hardware is somewhat new. My 8800 GTS doesn't even have hw video decoding on linux, because nvidia sucks. Good thing I have a radeon instead, that also can't use its hw video decode engine on linux because almost nothing supports AMD's acceleration api.

Barrel full of fun. But yeah, more than a few years old, all you get is hw mpeg1/2 (and /maybe/ divx) video decoding (even in windows), and that's not really all that useful these days.

Till I upgraded the gpu in my media box, it didn't have hw video decoding. :( some really crazy 1080p scenes would peg an entire core, even when using multithreaded rendering. With the new gpu, cpu use sits at a few percent. Which is nice :D
<Zapata Prime> I smell Stanley... And he smells good!!!

Darren Dirt

skipped the forum the last 2 days.

The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.

Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable
_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Mr. Analog

Quote from: Darren Dirt on February 27, 2013, 08:29:22 AM
skipped the forum the last 2 days.

The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.

Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable

We did Minecraft last weekend, started from punching trees phase right up to building a mob grinder / nether portal.

It's amazing what you can do in the game with the right number of people focusing on the same task.
By Grabthar's Hammer

Thorin

Quote from: Darren Dirt on February 27, 2013, 08:29:22 AM
skipped the forum the last 2 days.

The last 35 posts were all in THIS thread.

Looking hard, but still can't find the references to Minecraft. #unexplainable

Obligatory Minecraft reference here:

Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 11:02:29 AM
Quote from: Tom on February 26, 2013, 10:16:08 AM
Quote from: Thorin on February 26, 2013, 10:13:06 AM
See, I like anything that anyone else will buy for me.

Although most people will see the Surface Pro as a tablet first, and therefore expect the 7 to 12 hour battery life of a tablet (12 hours if the keyboard has a built-in battery).

Thats the fun thing, my laptop can get upwards of 10 hours. So technically they could have made the surface pro last that long, since it has weaker hardware, they wouldn't need the same size battery this monster has.

10 hours?  Doing what, though?  Can you play Minecraft for 10 hours straight on it before the battery runs out?  Or watch 10 hours of movies?  How about if you have a development environment and a database server running on it?

Bolded for old men's eyes. :)  Just pokin' some fun at ya.

We've been trying to keep Minecraft talk in the Minecraft forums so you can ignore it at leisure, as has been your stated desire.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Darren Dirt

Quote from: Thorin on February 27, 2013, 11:32:15 AM
We've been trying to keep Minecraft talk in the Minecraft forums so you can ignore it at leisure, as has been your stated desire.

I thank you all immensely for that -- my post was just a bit of a joke, doing a blinking-stare comparison of the old days BEFORE I had myself removed from the Minecraft subforum, it was like a flashback, seeing in a short period of time 3 full pages (10 per page) of "new posts" all on the same subject, all in the same THREAD.
_____________________

Strive for progress. Not perfection.
_____________________

Thorin

Well you've missed out on postings of some really neat builds and even a fireworks party video.

And we do occasionally discuss other topics.  I think a lot of people here have switched to twitter/tumblr, though, for many of their postings that they would've put here back in the old days.
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful

Mr. Analog

Comparing stats from last year to this we're pretty much on track, though I doubt we will come close to March/April/May of 2012 :)
By Grabthar's Hammer

Thorin

Jan 2012: 62 new topics, 538 new posts, 87 new members
Jan 2013: 70 new topics, 730 new posts, 0 new members

Feb 2012: 63 new topics, 585 new posts, 200 new members
Feb 2013: 41 new topics, 472 new posts, 1 new member

March 2012: 108 new topics, 1408 new posts, 208 new members

I blame all the new members, those totally weren't spam accounts, right? ;)

Oh, and #2 most-viewed topic: Poker night at Dirtman's Thursday 15Nov2007 (reduced stakes).  10,000+ views!
Prayin' for a 20!

gcc thorin.c -pedantic -o Thorin
compile successful