Experiment: Surface Pro vs old Macbook

Torontonian22

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Hey everyone,

I just did a little experiment and I'm quite disappointed with the surface pro's performance. Here's a brief history and of course, the reasons behind this experiment.

I used to be an Apple hater and was only using a PC. That was before 2006. My PC started to give me some issues and decided to save some money to buy a late 2006 Macbook for university. 8 years later, I sold my Macbook to a friend and it's still working perfectly as long as you are not trying to run very heavy software. Photoshop CS5 was running perfectly fine though. I used my macbook for school (using MS Office), edit my pictures (using Adobe Lightroom) and then at work. I spent 4 years in a start-up doing project management and used my mac daily between 10-15 hours a day non-stop. Never had a single issue, random freezes or random reboots.

I bought another old macbook after selling mine. I don't need a new one, just need a Mac that can run the last version of Mac OS X. I bought a late 2008 Macbook. Core 2 duo 2ghz, 2gb of ram, nvidia 9400M 256mo. Not a beast but it's running perfectly.

Last year, I bought a Surface pro 1, the 128gb version and was happy with it. Mainly used it as a tablet or to run Lightroom and a few old emulators.

Recently, I had a laptop related accident. I spill coffee all over my macbook keyboard.... the machine is fine but the keyboard acts crazy. Therefore, I can't really use it and will need to buy a keyboard. I thought to myself, let's use the surface pro as a replacement until I decide to buy a new keyboard. biggest mistake ever.

I connect my Surface pro to an external monitor and start to work on a new website I'm building using wordpress. I have IE, Chrome, the Music App and Notepad ++ open. That's it. in 2 hours, I had to restart twice, the music app crashed 3 times, the computer screen froze at least 7-8 times... this is where I stopped. And this is why I used my old antique mac to do productive things over the surface pro or Windows in general.

I love the Surface but now, I feel like it's not made for work. If you use 2 apps at a time and do casual things, it's okay. But for the price you would expect more from it.

I then decided to plug the keyboard broken Mac and started to work. Safari, Chrome, textedit, dreamweaver and itunes open at the same time. Not a single slow down, freeze or issue.

Call it the way you want it, but when a 6 year old macbook beats the crap out of 1 year old surface pro, it's just bull****. Before that little test, I was actually considering a surface pro 3 as my future device. but nope, I'll keep the surface pro and will use it to play solitaire and watch youtube, but not at the same time of course, it may not handle it. (yeah, I'm frustrated by the time I wasted because of multiple crashes the surface pro endured while using very basic apps.)

PS: If I see that blue spinning circle one more time today, I'll go on a rampage.

PS2: This post has been written on the surface pro but I'm only using my web browser...
 

Microsoftjunkie

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Sounds like you screwed up your sp or haven't updated firmware/os. I've never read such things from this device. You hear ppl running multiple monitors, multiple programs, etc., with no issues.

Hopefully it is a bad update or like I said above. Good luck, but NO old MacBook will outperform a sp.
 

Torontonian22

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It's funny how people react when a feedback is not 300% positive about your own device.

Besides, simply amazing, i was replying and the surface restarted on its own before i could submit...

If PEBKAC is your only clue, i won't even address your comment. Don't feed the troll as they say.

Now here's the thing.SP users are not that numerous. fanboys don't like to hear bad things about their beloved devices, i get that. But contrary to most fanboys I don't care about the name on my device. If it worsk, i'm happy, if it doesn't i'll say it. I won't pretend it's the best thing in the world if it's not.

Facts are facts. At this time, my sp does not live up to the expectations. If it's a faulty device, it's the 3rd faulty device i got from the microsoft store... yep, already returned 2 previous SPs because of manufacturing defects. That should have been my first clue though...

It's a good device but it doesn't mean it won't work badly at times. Unfortunately, the experience is more often bad than not. But maybe i'm asking too much from it and in that case, it's not actually PEBKAC, it's more of a wrong choice.
 

xandros9

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It's funny how people react when a feedback is not 300% positive about your own device.

Besides, simply amazing, i was replying and the surface restarted on its own before i could submit...

If PEBKAC is your only clue, i won't even address your comment. Don't feed the troll as they say.

Now here's the thing.SP users are not that numerous. fanboys don't like to hear bad things about their beloved devices, i get that. But contrary to most fanboys I don't care about the name on my device. If it worsk, i'm happy, if it doesn't i'll say it. I won't pretend it's the best thing in the world if it's not.

Facts are facts. At this time, my sp does not live up to the expectations. If it's a faulty device, it's the 3rd faulty device i got from the microsoft store... yep, already returned 2 previous SPs because of manufacturing defects. That should have been my first clue though...

It's a good device but it doesn't mean it won't work badly at times. Unfortunately, the experience is more often bad than not. But maybe i'm asking too much from it and in that case, it's not actually PEBKAC, it's more of a wrong choice.

your experience is ridiculously bad and the Surface obviously has some screws loose.

but the problem is that you assumed it was the same experience on all other Surfaces and used that single data point to make a blanket statement.
Its not the lack of 300% positivity, its the jumping to conclusions with little data that grinds my personal gears. Although multiple devices adds a bit more merit.

Multiple defective devices aren't unheard of, I've sadly seen stories of a few Lumia 928 returns, several Palm Pre's etc.
I suspect a batch problem.
 

astondg

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I understand that you had a bad experience & that sucks, but I can offer many great experiences to counter that from my own SP1 & SP3.

I'm a software dev so I've run some quite heavy applications, like Visual Studio, a Virtual Machine, Word, and the music app, mail app and a number of other things all at once on my SP1 with no issues at all.

I also owned two MacBooks before the SP1 and I was very happy with both. Both are also still in use by family members.
 

Eren68

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Sorry to hear of your problems. It's very frustrating when these things happen, but you do seem to in the minority. I traded my Surface 2 for a SP1 so I could run Dreamweaver, Photoshop, email, music, web, Office.......ALL at the same time and I have to say it does exactly that. I've not had one crash in this first week. Even running on battery it does all those things so I'm thinking maybe you should get yours checked out or wiped fresh.
 

ohgood

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Hey everyone,

I just did a little experiment and I'm quite disappointed with the surface pro's performance. Here's a brief history and of course, the reasons behind this experiment.

I used to be an Apple hater and was only using a PC. That was before 2006. My PC started to give me some issues and decided to save some money to buy a late 2006 Macbook for university. 8 years later, I sold my Macbook to a friend and it's still working perfectly as long as you are not trying to run very heavy software. Photoshop CS5 was running perfectly fine though. I used my macbook for school (using MS Office), edit my pictures (using Adobe Lightroom) and then at work. I spent 4 years in a start-up doing project management and used my mac daily between 10-15 hours a day non-stop. Never had a single issue, random freezes or random reboots.

I bought another old macbook after selling mine. I don't need a new one, just need a Mac that can run the last version of Mac OS X. I bought a late 2008 Macbook. Core 2 duo 2ghz, 2gb of ram, nvidia 9400M 256mo. Not a beast but it's running perfectly.

Last year, I bought a Surface pro 1, the 128gb version and was happy with it. Mainly used it as a tablet or to run Lightroom and a few old emulators.

Recently, I had a laptop related accident. I spill coffee all over my macbook keyboard.... the machine is fine but the keyboard acts crazy. Therefore, I can't really use it and will need to buy a keyboard. I thought to myself, let's use the surface pro as a replacement until I decide to buy a new keyboard. biggest mistake ever.

I connect my Surface pro to an external monitor and start to work on a new website I'm building using wordpress. I have IE, Chrome, the Music App and Notepad ++ open. That's it. in 2 hours, I had to restart twice, the music app crashed 3 times, the computer screen froze at least 7-8 times... this is where I stopped. And this is why I used my old antique mac to do productive things over the surface pro or Windows in general.

I love the Surface but now, I feel like it's not made for work. If you use 2 apps at a time and do casual things, it's okay. But for the price you would expect more from it.

I then decided to plug the keyboard broken Mac and started to work. Safari, Chrome, textedit, dreamweaver and itunes open at the same time. Not a single slow down, freeze or issue.

Call it the way you want it, but when a 6 year old macbook beats the crap out of 1 year old surface pro, it's just bull****. Before that little test, I was actually considering a surface pro 3 as my future device. but nope, I'll keep the surface pro and will use it to play solitaire and watch youtube, but not at the same time of course, it may not handle it. (yeah, I'm frustrated by the time I wasted because of multiple crashes the surface pro endured while using very basic apps.)

PS: If I see that blue spinning circle one more time today, I'll go on a rampage.

PS2: This post has been written on the surface pro but I'm only using my web browser...

I had a surface pro 2 for a weekend. the ui was a real annoyance but I put that aside and tried to just use it like the very old power book would be used next to it. in 6 hours of use it needed two restarts and had a few hangs that resolved without a reboot.

after turning it off and going back to the single core power book , I checked the power books uptime. it was close to three months.

just a weekend of use, with a fully updaTed sp2, vs a really tired power book (not even a Mac book its so old! ) that hasn't had an update applied in two years.

the keyboard was nice, but the trackpad sucked. disclaimer: I don't like touchscreens unless it's on a phone
 

astondg

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Interesting experience with the old PowerBook. I completely agree that Apple makes some dependable hardware and software. I had very few issues with the PowerBook & 2 MacBooks that I've had in the past. In saying that 2 restarts & multiple hangs in 6 hours from the Surface Pro sounds unusual to me, I certainly never had that in the year I owned mine. That's not to say it was perfect, I did have issues over the course of the year but nothing with that frequency.

I had a surface pro 2 for a weekend. the ui was a real annoyance but I put that aside and tried to just use it like the very old power book would be used next to it.

I think the Surface range makes the most sense if you use it by playing to its strengths, which means changing how you interact with it, learning how to get the most of Modern UI, using the touch screen, using the gestures, using the pen, using it as a tablet where it makes sense, etc. I think that there are definitely better laptops out there than the Surface (although the SP3 does do a much better job than the SP1) but I don't think there is any better device that does the whole combination of things that the Surface.

That's not a criticism of any person or degrading the value of a particular use case, if what you like using is a laptop or you have a use case that just works best with a laptop then I think a laptop is the way to go. But if not then I think people need to throw away some of their learned habits & ideas when working with the Surface and try interacting with it different/new ways and then I think it can make a lot of sense.
 

Tsang Fai

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You may simply say "I love mac. I hate Windows & Surface. Period"

No one will doubt your preference.... But you wrote a true story, in an attempt to explain surface pro is much weaker than a MacBook. All points you mentioned are either without evidence, or not scientific comparison.
 

Tsang Fai

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Interesting experience with the old PowerBook. I completely agree that Apple makes some dependable hardware and software. I had very few issues with the PowerBook & 2 MacBooks that I've had in the past. In saying that 2 restarts & multiple hangs in 6 hours from the Surface Pro sounds unusual to me, I certainly never had that in the year I owned mine. That's not to say it was perfect, I did have issues over the course of the year but nothing with that frequency.



I think the Surface range makes the most sense if you use it by playing to its strengths, which means changing how you interact with it, learning how to get the most of Modern UI, using the touch screen, using the gestures, using the pen, using it as a tablet where it makes sense, etc. I think that there are definitely better laptops out there than the Surface (although the SP3 does do a much better job than the SP1) but I don't think there is any better device that does the whole combination of things that the Surface.

That's not a criticism of any person or degrading the value of a particular use case, if what you like using is a laptop or you have a use case that just works best with a laptop then I think a laptop is the way to go. But if not then I think people need to throw away some of their learned habits & ideas when working with the Surface and try interacting with it different/new ways and then I think it can make a lot of sense.

Agree. Surface Pro is not suitable for those people unwilling to spend time on trying out something new (be it good or not). I did try MacOS before (bought in iMac in 2010 and MacBook Air in 2011). To be honest, Mac OS is nice and it looks nice. But as I could not afford time on learning the new OS, I later installed Windows on my Macs.

If you don't want to try how great the pen helps you with note-taking, annotating pdf, DON'T buy a Surface Pro.

If you don't want to try how wonderful it is when occasionally you want to unplug the keyboard and focus on reading, DON'T buy a Surface Pro.

If you don't want to experience why 12" is a perfect balance between portability and readability, DON'T buy a Surface Pro.

If you feel a laptop with touchscreen is unnecessary/strange, DON'T buy a Surface Pro.

If you assume that the Windows Store does not provide the apps you really NEED, DON'T buy a Surface Pro.
(I would like to add a fair comment with respect to Windows Store: if you cannot look for a kind of app in Windows Store, there is a 99% chance that there are already hundreds of desktop applications made many years ago!)
 

ohgood

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You may simply say "I love mac. I hate Windows & Surface. Period"

No one will doubt your preference.... But you wrote a true story, in an attempt to explain surface pro is much weaker than a MacBook. All points you mentioned are either without evidence, or not scientific comparison.
but, I don't love Mac. nor can I prove my love or infatuation with it, or disprove it scientifically.

I can tell you about the very short experience I had though.

i bet it would be neat to take brain scans of people using different operating systems and Compare the pressure/pain center activations.
 

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