Design, Portability, and Battery Life > RAM and USB-C?

SpaciousZebra

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My biggest question about the Surface Laptop is this: can I justify spending $1000 on a laptop that only packs 4GB of RAM and passes up USB-C out-of-the-box in the name of outstanding looks, portability, and insanely good battery life?

Man, this is a tough one for me. When I bought my HP Pavilion on sale and with student discounts for $350, it came with 6GB of RAM and a whopping 4 USB ports. Its battery, though, gets me 2 and a half hours, barely. For all of the extra cash I'd have to invest in a new Surface Laptop, I don't know if it would be worth it. I just don't know what I place greater importance on. That's so much grocery money, you know?

What do you all think?
 

TheFlyingDutchBros

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Well, if money is your main concern the Surface brand is not ideal. However, USB-C is not that big of a deal as the standard has yet to saturate the market appreciably in comparison to USB-A. The 4GB RAM is unfortunate and I was honestly surprised to see it on the spec list, but potentially, if you keep it running Windows 10 S, you might not need more than 4GB for a good user experience.
 

overboard08

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^^THIS. I'd be curious to see the impact Windows 10 S has with regard to having just 4GB of RAM. I have the i5/4GB RAM Surface Pro 4 and I started my masters online about 6 weeks ago. Before I started my masters, those specs worked just fine for my casual uses. But now that I'm running Edge with 10-12 tabs or so open, outlook, word and powerpoint 2016 open, drawboard PDF and one or two adobe programs for pubs -- it's really starting to take its toll on my machine. If Windows 10 S is truly as streamlined as its been pitched, and you're getting everything through the store, 4GB RAM MAY not be as negative if you were running 10 Pro and doing some of the same tasks. That being said, going 8GB as a student may be the best bet.

As far as USB-C, based on the feedback that I've inquired, may not be a show-stopper. Unless you're keen on multiple monitors, hooking up external GPUs...then at that point you're probably going to have to lean towards a Surface Book (maybe with Performance Base) for those purposes.
 

kaktus1389

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It depends on what you're planning to use your laptop for and also as already mentioned, Surface is priced as high so they would not compete directly with Microsoft's OEMs like Dell, Lenovo, HP and others.

I agree it's shame that it doesn't have a USB-C port, but hey, population that this was made for likely won't need the USB-C port and it's true that battery life and design is mostly the most important thing that students are looking for. Now I am not saying that they're not looking for performance, but from my experience the performance usually doesn't interest them as much as battery life and design, though I still think that Surface Laptop is going to do a great job handling the tasks it was designed for to handle.

Perhaps we will see USB-C on another Surface device, if not before then on the second generation Surface Laptop (I am pretty sure USB-C is going to be mainstream by then).
 

ajcletus500

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there are days when even 8GB of RAM would be insufficient for me with many tabs open at the same time on Edge. but then again the set tabs aside feature in edge helps to declutter things and cut down the load. that being said 4GB of RAM is bad value for money at $1000
 

Mihai N

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If you're interested in W10S, you can try OEM laptops as well. Depending on the design they can have more ports than the Surface laptop. As for USB-C, my phone cable still has one end with USB-C, so it's not really a must have yet in the market. But OEM partners could have a model with type C and more hardware options for each price

there are days when even 8GB of RAM would be insufficient for me with many tabs open at the same time on Edge. but then again the set tabs aside feature in edge helps to declutter things and cut down the load. that being said 4GB of RAM is bad value for money at $1000

I would say that Edge is the problem that 8 GB are not enough for plenty to of tabs. An older PC I use is more than 10 years old with only 2 GB of RAM and a 2800mhz Celeron, but it can take 5 times more tabs in Opera or Chrome, than I get in Edge and doesn't become unresponsive like with Edge
 

SpaciousZebra

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That's a grear point, and yeah, maybe that 4GB of RAM on 10 S gets the job done. Microsoft would really have something special if 10 S could improve your experience that much.
 

SpaciousZebra

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I'm guessing USB-C will be mainstream by the 2nd generation as well. With that said, do you think Microsoft is expecting incoming freshmen to purchase this laptop now, and after graduation pick up the 2nd gen one?

That would be extremely expensive for graduates at that point, especially because plenty of them will have loans to take care of. I wouldn't be able to afford it. Then again, as a few people here have pointed out, this isn't exactly a device for the student looking to save cash.
 

k1s23

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hey there. i plan on getting the burgundy version which has 8 gb of ram instead of 4, and for my needs that is fine. i swapped out 4 gb of ram for 8 gb in my laptop from 5 years ago and it has been enough. so the only problem in my case is usb-c, which only my lumia 950 xl uses out of all my devices. i dont see any usb-c keyboards, mice, printers, etc. now and who knows if those things will come out by the time i upgrade from the surface laptop to another computer, but no usb-c is not a deal breaker for me. at the moment i could care less.
 

SpaciousZebra

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I can understand that... I'm just stuck on the price tag for a non USB-C. Maybe they thought they'd purposely leave the door open for their pals in other computer manufacturers to do that?

I'm on the fence about justifying an "upgrade" where I'd actually have less ports on a device built in 2017 than in 2012. Everything isn't wireless or bluetooth capable just yet.
 

Drael646464

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You only really need usb-c for an egpu. If you want high end AAA graphics this probably isn't your machine. USB type A, 3.0 is perfectly capable for anything else really.

usb 3 isn't even standard yet. Still plenty of 2.0 devices roaming around. And type-A is compatible with those. Type-c isn't. I don't think type-c will be entirely standard uniformly for quite awhile.
It's a lot more likely you'll have c, and need an adapter, than have A and wish you had c.
 

ajcletus500

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I'm guessing USB-C will be mainstream by the 2nd generation as well. With that said, do you think Microsoft is expecting incoming freshmen to purchase this laptop now, and after graduation pick up the 2nd gen one?

That would be extremely expensive for graduates at that point, especially because plenty of them will have loans to take care of. I wouldn't be able to afford it. Then again, as a few people here have pointed out, this isn't exactly a device for the student looking to save cash.

This is exactly my point that MS is really expecting its buys to upgrade to a new laptop in a couple of years when USB-C gets main stream
 

Half-Decent Gaming

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Originally posted by ajcletus500
Originally Posted by SpaciousZebra
I'm guessing USB-C will be mainstream by the 2nd generation as well. With that said, do you think Microsoft is expecting incoming freshmen to purchase this laptop now, and after graduation pick up the 2nd gen one?

That would be extremely expensive for graduates at that point, especially because plenty of them will have loans to take care of. I wouldn't be able to afford it. Then again, as a few people here have pointed out, this isn't exactly a device for the student looking to save cash.


This is exactly my point that MS is really expecting its buys to upgrade to a new laptop in a couple of years when USB-C gets main stream

I think the lack of USB-C is a ploy to get more people to buy the Surface Dock instead of third-party usc-c docks- even if they don't have external monitors the Dock would be enticing for people who want to plug in a bunch of peripherals at once, external HDDs, etc.
 

kashgohel

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Not sure for your applications, but developing countries like ours barely use USB-C ports, so I think the Surface laptop is a good deal for that price.
 

Tommy Truong2

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Yeah I feel you I was seriously contemplating getting an hp spectre x360 which has all of that but for an extra hundred or so but I'll wait a bit and try to mess around with a surface laptop a bit before I decide.
 

k1s23

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I think the lack of USB-C is a ploy to get more people to buy the Surface Dock instead of third-party usc-c docks- even if they don't have external monitors the Dock would be enticing for people who want to plug in a bunch of peripherals at once, external HDDs, etc.

hey there. no, it definitely is not like that because the surface dock doesnt include usb-c. microsoft will sell a dongle later this year that can push power and data via usb-c that connects to the surface connect. if i get the surface laptop ill probably get that usb-c dongle to give the surface laptop some battery life from my battery pack (which has a usb-c port).
 

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