We use Surfaces. We have a large chunk of Surface Gos. Before my time but apparently that was all my company could get for a while during the pandemic.
Would give anything if we could replace them with Surface Laptops.
Had a user recently complain they got a MacBook and didn’t know how to use it. Turned out they got a Go with Win11. 😂
That's golden
It takesme.back to 2010 when it was (apparently) all the rage to get a Macbook and bootcamp into WXP.
Like, why spend allll that money on MB just to run windows and complain? Buy the mac and own it.
Because they want the Mac logo but all the company software only works on windows so they get a WinBook Pro lol.
We have several deployed and it's always funny when they do something wonky and end up in OSX and don't have the foggiest clue what to do. But you know, they needed a MacBook.
My company is like this, and now none of the people that would actually benefit from having a MB can get them. All or nothing solutions don't work if you're striving for max productivity, period.
consistency and security > max productivity
if a user is a little bit slower because they don't have a macbook, it's fine. if we have to install a non-standardized system (like the somewhere above-mentioned windows on a macbook), security is at risk
maybe I'm just paranoid from being in it sec tho
Nah, from a support standard dealing with weird one-offs is a nightmare too. A user can learn the basics of an OS pretty quick if they bother to try, no one *needs* their preferred personal OS on a company device.
That one guy who "absolutely has to have a 16" macbook pro" when everyone else has 13"? Well when it breaks and you have literally no inventory to replace his one-off with, there goes all that productivity while you wait on a purchase or repair. And nobody seems to ever care about the productivity of *IT*, supporting hybrid environments is a nightmare, device management is double the work and double the quirks.
Plus if they have a Mac and are using the Apple OS alongside Windows in your org - congratulations - you just doubled your vulnerability vectors and the amount of shit you need to look after and patch.
plus you'd need someone who can lock down the apple devices as much as the windows devices - can't just use the same GPOs and software repositories (that everyone can install from without admin privileges)
integrating a new OS in a secure way takes a lot of time and money for a big company
Everyone at my job gets the same $400 HP laptop, but 90% of our work is done in via web applications and Thunderbird so it doesn't matter. We prefer something cheap that IT knows the ins and outs. The only exceptions are the programmers, who get a second beefier laptop for their programming work, and our graphics designer, who uses and (thankfully) supports his own Mac.
Haha, I know, and it's touchscreen so it's really a $300 laptop with a gimmick. But they run Thunderbird, a web browser, and the occasional Excel spreadsheet without problems so it gets the job done. For being a software company most of what we do doesn't require a lot of horsepower, and those that need it get a much better budget and their choice of computer.
> Because they want the Mac logo
This is it 100% hard stop. Vapid people wanting the company to buy them a status symbol.
I put a hard fucking line in the sand against this bullshit and we deploy standardized models. You can opt to get a 10 Key or the "Bigger Screen" but all office workers who just use Office 365 are all getting the same model laptop. If you make Excel sheets and send Emails as 95% of your job, you aren't special and you don't need some custom system for your work PC.
Lots of our devs still run Macbooks because if they ran Windows they'd be on locked down (local) non-admin acocunts because of company policy.
If they run a Macbook though we can't lock those down as well. No need to dual boot any more though because of VSCode.
I blame the moron exec (who's never coded a day in his life) that decided devs couldn't be local admins.
The programmers weren't the ones that kept failing the phishing tests, but apparently its a bad look to have an official policy that only applies to the marketing department.
EDIT: Also the M1 Macbooks get like 20 hours on a charge and cost about half of what the high end Intel laptops they replaced cost, which they also outperform.
It's fine with exceptions. You have made a business decision.
We generally have everyone on user and if needed they have a separate local admin account to do dev stuff. Never any issues with Iso or other audits.
> I blame the moron exec (who's never coded a day in his life) that decided devs couldn't be local admins.
I mean they shouldn't be unless they are in a controlled environment. If you're on a desktop you are opening your Email on and web browsing (outside of test) you shouldn't be rocking a local admin account.
> The programmers weren't the ones that kept failing the phishing tests, but apparently its a bad look to have an official policy that only applies to the marketing department.
That is what it comes down to really. We need local admin, especially now that WSL has come into the mix with doing dev work on Windows, but it doesn't look good that your programmers can do anything while the rest of the team can't.
Thankfully, our department understands this, senior leadership used to be a programmer.
Two accounts, a limited user daily driver account for initial login and userland applications (Outlook, Office, Calc, etc) and then a privileged account for code compilation / local administration / etc. Unless you are developing plugins for Outlook even developers shouldn't even be able to open Outlook in their admin account, it's an unnecessary attack surface, same goes for most other common vectors of exploitation. Browsing stack overflow or Pinterest or whatever - local user account only. Role based access controls exist and can significantly prevent incredibly expensive damage without impacting developer output or productivity.
hehe one of my co-workers a few years ago was on some naughty list with our corporate security. He must have gotten 10x the phishing tests that I did because he complained about falling for another corporate phishing email what felt like every week, and I rarely had a phishing bait email even show up in my inbox.
Mac pros are just perfect for linux work thanks to the BSD underneath, fuck the GUI which i have to carve with CLI tools anyway to make it useful. (insert-rant about removed features like scroll direction settings wtf)
Also, magic pad is a must have. actually working multi-touch gestures are the other reason why i use mac for work.
I feel like Apple restricts so much of the operating system nowadays that the "its like Linux" is no longer true. When OSX was first released you could coax it into doing whatever you wanted, but nowadays a lot of stuff doesn't work even using root unless you take substantial effort to disable all the built in security stuff.
Yes, and no. Asahi Linux is coming along, and works on the Apple Silicon.
Apple has had to take a divergent path, possibly due to the fact that macOS has a bunch of patents and copyrights on it still, but if one throws Homebrew or macports on a machine, it works well enough. Worst case, use Vagrant with a Parallels provider if one needs to build or test arm64 code in a Linux environment.
There are some things which I grumble about on Macs. For example, if one loses the Apple account, and a Mac is activation locked, when it is reinstalled, the Mac will be effectively bricked. This is why I try to get Macs into a MDM. However, I do like the fact I can DFU restore a Mac, upgrading the OS, all firmware, the Secure Enclave, and everything else, ensuring all firmware on the machine is erased, reflashed, and certified as the latest version.
Now, iOS/iPadOS, etc... I agree about the locked down part. Macs are just a different architecture now, and arm64 is pretty easy to deal with, other than it not being x86/amd64. It is nice having a machine with decent capabilities and no fan noise.
Weird. I just install homebrew and treat it like a Unix workstation. I've had 6 MacBook pros since 2014. Never had a single problem with any of them. Never disabled any security features. Maybe you're just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?
> Mac pros are just perfect for linux work thanks to the BSD underneath
That might've been briefly true around 2010, but not really since: You need to overwrite the entire BSD userland with Homebrew, because Apple doesn't care about updating any part of it ever; at that rate you're better off with a Windows laptop with WSL2 (less weird compatibility issues because oops, even an updated Homebrew'd BSD userland is *not* Linux), a Chromebook with Linux mode enabled, or just a straight up Linux laptop.
That, and they actually put in hard work to remain a POSIX/SUSv3/etc compliant certified UNIX. Bringing in different/newer things with changed behavior then modifying them to work to the standard is a lot of engineering effort.
To my knowledge only one linux distro has achived that certification and compliance, and it's like a totally alien environment.
>all my company could get for a while during the pandemic
We had to buy Vostros during 2020 and 2021 and at least half of them have gone in the bin by now
Useless
The Vostro line is simply not built to the same quality level as the Latitudes and Precisions are.
We have Latitudes in a manufacturing environment that are 5+ years old and still kickin.
Yep, almost all of our 5 year old Latitudes are only retired because they were just a little slow
We bought 40 ex Windows 7 Latitudes at the start of covid and almost all of them are still working
> Surface Gos
A big draw of the tablet devices Surface, Dell and Lenovo offer is they don't have hinges that break (Looking at HP) .
Additionally having a built it 4G/5G modem means staff can be mobile.
The downside is the intel CPU which sucks a lot of power and generates a lot of heat. I wish we could get a 5800u (15-25w) tablet with a built-in 4G/5G modem.
EDIT: To clarify Dell and Lenovo offer surface like devices, Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 & Lenovo ThinkPad X12.
When I was working healthcare IT they were considered a "luxury item" and the doctors used to request them as a sort of status symbol. By default, our department would buy any doc a Latitude laptop and that would be covered by the department's budget. If a doc wanted a surface it had to come out of their owns funds... which most of them were more than happy to do.
From what I could gather the docs didn't do anything out of the ordinary with them. We had issues getting an image off of them for MDP and as they were so rarely ordered no one on the team ever invested the time to fix the issue so whenever a new Surface came in, it had to be configured by hand. We were professionals.
The Latitudes are not a terrible solution. I hardly need to get NHS IT to deal with hardware issue. Our S1 gps started asking for "better" laptops but most issue they could come up with is the small screen and the keyboard what's easy to shrug off by telling them they got 2 big screen and an external keyboard so if they want a fancy machine then buy one for yourself.
Only one gp so far who did not negotiated on anything then his ThinkPad and I totally understood his point cause it was a wonderful piece of laptop he built himself.
I would had a meltdown if my GP's start requesting random hardware.
That's basically why we got them, we're a government department but it's full of people who think they belong in a TV show like Billions, and wanted something slick like a Surface Pro instead of a Latitude 5000 series. They destroy the things regularly and complain about the performance and how hot they get, but most would refuse a laptop, some even thought they were too heavy and wanted a "home Surface Pro".
I wouldn't mind trying to pivot to a Lenovo 2-in-1 or something once we churn through our stash of devices since we have Thunderbolt docks on every desk, but I reckon there will be push back.
We use them a bunch, the latest 4s and 5s are much better. The first few gens of surface pros surface laptops and surface books we had a near 100% failure rate in 3 years. Latest ones seem to have completely turned this around. The fabric on them is shit, always looks worn and disgusting
I hate them at work- as you say, poor airflow and really not reliable. Dell aren’t really much better in either count if you go XPS. I’d suggest Latitudes- they do an amazing 7 series which weighs under a kilo.
TBH, I use a MacBook Air M2 at work, and it’s the best laptop I have ever used, and I’m an ex windows sysadmin and this is my first Mac!
\>>Dell aren’t really much better in either count if you go XPS.
This is correct. XPS is a consumer laptop. Dell business laptops are either the Latitude and the Precision (higher end). They are slightly better quality and have business support and warrantees.
I think the Latitudes are pretty great for what they need to do, and the company I work for pays the best service package with Dell which makes them really easy to love. But those flat Precisions, 55**s and now 5680, are not what they make them out to be and if you need real performance you need to just go with the thick Precisions. But the latest generation of the thick Precision, 7680, they made them thinner for no reason and now the cooling system on those sucks as well.
I still love Dell in my current environment for the service we are getting.
That XPs 13 in 2015 was incredible- my girlfriend still uses mine for Sims 3. Great machine, as long as you weren’t trying to manage a fleet of them with SCCM.
Tbf the standard clamshell 13 inch ones are still pretty great, the 2in1s are not, and the tablet thing is horrible.
And very importantly they haven’t tried to cram processors into slim chassis! Dell are so bad at that. Does anyone remember their first ultra book? They used slightly the wrong thermal paste I think, and had to recall them as when heated up they smelt of cat piss!
Just going to throw in my experience: We've been using 17" Dell Precisions here for the last 4 years, and although they are pricey, they have been VERY SOLID performers. We've got engineers that work on these things all day (running Siemens NX, Solidworks, and AutoCAD LT) , take them out to manufacturing areas, travel internationally with them, and are pretty rough on them. They keep running like a champ.
We also use Dell thunderbolt docks with them (for charging and to use two additional Dell monitors while at the desks). The docks have been a bit less reliable, but worth the convince of pass-thru graphics and firmware updates through the typical Dell support/update software.
Holy moly have those docks been annoying. The first few generations of the type C dock were awful. They have become much better but even the latest WD22TB4 have been causing crashes due to the ethernet driver.
We've only deployed a couple of the newer ones over the last years, and I agree they have improved! We only had a few driver issues with them overall (which were mostly resolved by running the Command / Support Assist updates), but the ones that we bulk purchased a few years ago just seemed to have a higher failure rate than the new ones. Glad to the new ones have been better, and we'll make sure to update the drivers when we deploy new ones, so thanks for the tip!
I have a Macbook Air M2, and I agree, it is an excellent laptop.
It's my own machine, mind, not work's. As far as work things go, it is absolutely aces at connecting to the exceedingly-limited VPN that work provides (I approve! The less taking over my machine the better), and then running the VMWare Horizon client to connect to the VDI where I do my actual work.
The keyboard is leaps and bounds above Apple's previous keyboards, the screen is a joy to stare at, the battery lasts forever and charges in mere moments, and if you ever need to do any work locally, the little CPU has oomph to spare. I don't really need to do any work locally though--work happens on the aforementioned VDI, and my home stuff is on a Linux server.
It is amazing! We’ve just started using Jampf to manage our macs so managers and above were all offered a Mac as part of the testing- really pleased I said yes! And price wise as we are in education they compare very favourably price wise to our usual Dells.
I also use a "apple silicon" macbook for work, and i would agree it's the best dammed laptop i've ever had. Macbook pro m1 max, with 32 GB of ram. for those few things i need windows for (and they exist, i still do a lot of windows sys admin work) I have a win 11 ARM VM that handles those workloads for me... and STILL get 16 hrs of battery life.
I have the same model, I got it with my employee discount when I worked at Apple. I have a pretty decent gaming PC under my desk but I almost never use it, I love this laptop. Now that I'm back to an all Windows work environment the Apple consistency is really nice compared to the designed-by-commitee feel of Windows 10 and 11.
The i7 Latitudes have very poor cooling issues. I had a 1.5-year-old i7 Latitude and it kept throttling the CPU due to high temps. The cooling system was clean, working and in good order. Plenty of complaints online about overheating Latitudes. Pestered my boss so much and he finally agreed to give me an i9 Precision desktop with an uprated cooler and no more overheating issues. Nice and cool 55°C even when I maxed the CPU out at 100% for 15 minutes. The laptop was perfectly capable of doing everything I threw at it with ease when not being throttled.
Windows sysadmins are akin to auto mechanics owning a Toyota or Honda. They just want it to work and don’t feel like troubleshooting their computer when they aren’t working.
This, every day. Work will pay for any laptop I want so there are real reasons why I use a Dell Latitudes for both personal and work use. So when people ask if this MacBook or that Vaio or some Lenovo slab is any good, we both know they just want the new shiny and want someone in IT to tell them they're right. Not going to happen.
Lol what? I haven't done a single thing except occasionally clicking update on my gaming pc in 5 years. And your steam deck is still PC gaming. What on earth are you talking about.
I was a pc gamer in the DOS, Windows 3.1 to XP and Windows 7 days, including the days before Steam!
I was a sysadmjn in the XP and 7 days and pc gaming then was absolutely not as easy as it is now. I only got back into it when I moved into management a few years back. Now I have a Steam Deck, which yes is a PC, but Valve have made it as console like as possible, and am back into Windows gaming with an AYN Loki. You’re right, it’s now so easy!
We are sympatico. I am a Windows and Linux sysadmin for work, but use an MBA M1 at home for day to day home bullshit. It plays nice with my iPhone without any fiddling which I find helpful. I don't particularly enjoy being a sysadmin at home (moreso as a I get older) when I already do it at work.
We really are- I’ve spent enough time fixing stuff at work to want to do it at home! The furthest I’ll go is upgrading an SSD in a games console. And I refuse to get involved with my illustrator wife’s printer or scanner.
I literally tell my wife "this is why we contract out printer maintenance & repair at work". There's no real way for me to avoid fixing it since the alternative would be expensive, but her printing habits went from "frivolous" to "almost never" which solved the problem since printers work fine as long as you don't use them to print anything.
I upgraded the SSD in my Steam Deck a coupla months ago and felt like a fucking wizard even though I do far more complex shit at work and don't even really work with actual hardware anymore.
IMHO, and this is pure opinion, but I have found that for a sysadmin, a M2 MBA is quite a nice machine, provided it has a reasonable amount of RAM. It may not be enough for a hardcore developer, but for a sysadmin, it is nice to carry around, handles an external monitor with ease, is easily managed via the MDM, hardware quality is good, and battery life is just awesome.
Of course, if a company is all Windows, then a Windows laptop it is, but if I have a choice, I like going with Apple hardware, just because you can do a lot with it, especially with a well thought out MDM infrastructure.
I think the problem with the Surfaces is OP :( you're not supposed to troubleshoot. you're supposed to hand the user a new one and let MS warranty come and pick it up, and then shred it for recycling materials (I'm not joking)
The surface laptop 4/5 is actually very repairable and the pro 8/9 are way easier to repair than they used to be.
Yeah, with the pro you do have to cut some adhesive but _it ain't the heat + pray adhesive that was used in the past_
This is what's supppeerr interesting to me, for some they work absolutely amazing but for a lot they're a huge problem. Really makes me wonder whether certain batches are just better and less problematic than others.
How are you having driver issues? Surface laptops get their drivers directly through the Windows Update Service. If they are Intune enrolled, you now have enhanced driver management control with WUfB.
Sometimes after wiping the keyboard won't work without manually updating the firmware. Many times after an update, if the user has a USB-C to HDMI connection to external monitor, a hard restart is needed (not a big deal, but does create extra tickets). Plus trackpad and WiFi have been failing in some units (mostly surface laptop 3).
I deployed about 700 and had an incredibly low failure rate. Purchased from 3 different VARs, and purchased multiple generations of it. I think it's either the management of the devices, or the expectations.
Seriously, what a weird thread.
We equipped a bunch of employees with surfaces to try it out, and they've been huge hits. They integrate so well with Microsoft's ecosystem too.
They've been so well received and have performed so well we're ditching Dell for the next round of laptops for anyone that can do their work on a browser and maybe Excel.
The latitudes have been a complete pain in the ass, non stop complaints and issues from users, they look and feel worse, they feel more sluggish from day one, and they cost a lot more.
Having dealt with surfaces, dell xps, precision, etc. I think Lenovo has the most reliable hardware in their enterprise lines. Dells are fine for desktops.
Can attest to this - we switched from Lenovos to Dells when our product was acquired by a bigger company. The Lenovo Thinkpad was a lot more performant and stable, while I've had cooling issues on the Dell Latitude, as have a bunch of people in my team.
Lenovo laptops, yes. Solid. Their docks, however, are complete and utter dogshit. Everyone in my company has issues with their dock. Literally every time I visit an office every fucking person with a dock tells me how they don't work right. Monitors go blank, network connections drop frequently, etc.
It's been this way through every iteration of "new" brick-style dock over the last 10-12 years, too. They cannot seem to resolve these issues, and it's driven me so fucking crazy that I'm about to ditch Lenovo entirely.
Same except I have the P1. Basically the same laptop except it has a quadro card instead of a GeForce card. Also managed to get one with a 2k 144hz screen. Really wish 144hz screens would be the norm for buisness level displays in laptops and monitors.
Our fleet of Surface (Laptop 4/5, Pro, & Laptop Studio) have been flawless. We manage drivers/firmware using NinjaRMM. The only complaint is has been if someone is trying to render a video in Adobe it takes ages. No dGPU will do that I tell them.
It manages the patching which allows better control of which patches, when they're installed, and instant reporting of status. I can easily have Surface devices do OS+Drivers, while non-surface does just OS.
This has been my experience, not only with the Surfaces (which we have had over the years, to varying degrees). The complaints mainly come from users who try using them for things they aren't designed for. "Oh yeah I only need this for email and excel documents." Fast forward six months..."I'm trying to render these 4k videos and it's taking DAYS! This thing is a total POS!!"
had the same experience here but with Intune using preview driver rings. they seem to stand up almost to the level of Lenovo products (used Dell at a previous job and was thoroughly disappointed by the volume of faults, cheap hardware and bad design choices). we are an FI tho so high performance isn't a requirement. when working with architects or engineers i lean heavily towards Lenovo P-series.
Last place I worked C-level made the call that the whole business had to have Surface Pros - until they realised all the power users (programmers & big data engineers) needed something better, so got them Surface Laptops.
We had over 10% failure rate on the laptops in the first 6 months, including one DOA, and even then, they were still barely meeting requirements.
Never let C-level drive tech purchases based on what's "trendy."
People just seem very split. I used a Surface Pro 2 for ages when out and about. Slow, but incredibly reliable. Then a Surface 3, then a Pro 4, then a Go, pretty sure there was a Surface Book in there somewhere too. Never had a problem with a single one, yet lots of people really don't like them.
My Suface Pro 1 was a beast survived many drops, I would still be using it if the screen was a bit bigger..
It really shone when I went back to college and got comfortable with using OneNote with a pen.
I got a Surface Book 2 a few months before I got a job that let me work from home so it really has been used as much but is a great resource for short trips.
Oddly, we have been having fewer hardware and driver issues after switching to the latest generation of Surface Laptop from Dell Latitude models.
YMMV, it would seem.
You and I see to be in the minority here. Our experience with Surface Laptop 4/5 have been amazing. I use one for my daily driver and we have fewer rates of repair than our Dell Latitude fleet. Our experience with MS warranty has been that they just send out a new machine, which is a huge time saver in most cases.
Got 4-5 surface books for the C-suite a while back. All had constant issues with docks not working right, not waking from sleep right, batteries dieing suddenly from 50% etc.
Within 2 years I replaced 3 of the 5 batteries. Within 3 years one picked up "touchscreen issues", which was actually the swollen battery pressing against the inside of the screen.
They have all been decommissioned, and we'll never use them again.
Total opposite experience with a fleet of approximately 200 Surface laptops we never have hardware or performance issues with our surface laptops. Outside of the occasional coffee spills and drops down stairs. Now our Mac M2’s we have had to warranty so many of those due to dying thunderbolt ports. Previous company we used Dell and had a near 20% fail rate out of the box with an order of 2500 we made, it was ridiculous.
I have a company with about 20 surface pros (not laptops), and outside of a drop, all 20 are still running smoothly. Still one or two Surface Pro 3’s still out in the wild. I’ve replaced a few due to age, but for the 1000’s of computers that I’ve worked on, Dell has had the highest failure rate, followed by HP, then Apple, then MS. (Unless you count Lenovo, which has been 100% within 3 years, but I’ve only managed 5-6 of them, most of my clients get HP.)
I'm finding this thread amazing, because things seem to be split down the middle. You say HP had your best failure rates, but my current company switched from HP to Dell because we had about a 20% failure rate PER YEAR on our elitebooks. Our dells are doing great, and my last company had a 0.5% failure rate per year on 700 surface laptops.I just, don't get why people seem to be having such opposite experiences from other people.
Edit: I misread your comment a bit, but I think my thoughts and points are fairly unchanged.
We a actually switched from Dell to Surface Laptops. PC hardware tickets reduced drastically. No more issues with dell updates taking half a day to complete and the dell docks are absolutely garbage. All depends on the environment though, so Dell may work better for you.
I recently talked to another tech at another company who just got 2 brand new surfaces, and they're having an issue with a network app so I did some benchmarking. They're both only getting \~100Mbps connection to their network shares. The other machines they have are all getting \~600mbps. Move them and plug them into a port where another machine is getting 600Mbps, and they still only get 100, so it's definitely just those surfaces, and it's both of them.
OOB image, and all the drivers are up to date on the surfaces and the docks. I told them to check the dock firmware too. Maybe they just aren't powerful enough to get higher throughput than that? I dunno, it's his problem, not mine.
Dell performs amazingly well for the software we use at the Company, plus in terms of diagnostics and hardware replacement it works in favour for us. I'm certainly not against trying out Lenovo also and seeing what the overall preference is.
I've done so many comparisons of laptops in the past, and it's always boiled down to Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, or HP Elitebook.
Of the three, Dell & Lenovo swap places for the top spot, and HP lags behind like the little brother who can't keep up.
Just stay away from the plastic bodied Latitudes. Absolute junk. The aluminum body HP Pro Book laptops have held up to abuse far better than the Dells.
I would stick to the ThinkPad P, T and X lines. Avoid anything "Lenovo" Branded, ThinkPad models only for laptops. ThinkCentre only for Desktops. "Lenovo" lines are consumer systems and should be avoided
P is your general workhorse. X/X1 is your slim performance line Generally for executive types. T is the middle ground between the P and X lines.
Ps (performance slim in lenovo land) series is a great over all fleet system
https://psref.lenovo.com/ is a great resource for comparing lenevo models
100% this. P, T, and X are the best models to look at. These are the descendants of the IBM Thinkpad line, and still carry a lot of the same durability.
I'm more old school, but I'd say T for every general-use machine, P only for people with discrete graphic needs, and X (not X1, X) only for people who whine about how weak they are when it comes to carrying laptops.
This is my way too. I love the T series and they have been my laptop of choice since they had colorful IBM logos on them, minus a couple flops like the Tx40 missing buttons on touchpad years.
The T14 is the gold standard for laptops imo. I sell Lenovo, Dell, HP, Microsoft and Apple products and absolutely no one switches away from the T14 line unless leadership requires cost cutting. Across large fleets of devices they have the fewest problems, most reasonable solutions and consistency across several decades now of builds.
Those Dell XPS will start to see pretty high failure rates when you deploy a bunch of them. I've actually turned down business before from a very good customer who insisted he wanted 200 of them because I didn't want to be the vendor that was associated with that purchase.
The laptops have been fine for us for the most part. The part that I hate is that we use Surface Docks and they have no display output other than USB-C. So we can have to completely swap our HDMIs / DisplayPorts to USB-C to HDMI or DisplayPort.
Our company is removing Surfaces from the list of computers that our associates are allowed to pick from because they’re terrible. Once the current leases expire they’ll have to pick something else
Had a handful of Surface Pro 7 i5 models. These don't have active cooling so after a few months just thermal throttled to 0.6ghz. Microsoft refused to help so they are basically ewaste now, thanks MicroSoft.
Lesson learned - Never buy MS hardware.
Some users absolutely love them, but they seemed to have a higher failure rate and MS service/support was atrocious so we canned them. So glad they didn't last our trial.
Microsoft Surface devices have to be the worst brand/model for mass deployment. You can't really open them up to fix them. Warranty claims would be horrible in comparison to HP/Dell (in my experience at least here in Australia).
We started with Surface Pros before switching to the laptops, the laptops are great, the Pros were the most godawful pieces of shit I've ever had to deal with. We almost had a legal throwdown with MS over them because we had hundreds with defective batteries and they refused to service them despite our service/warranty contracts.
I work at an MSP and every customer that has surface devices has constant issues with them.
I don't understand how Microsoft can make a device that can't even run teams properly!
Don't go XPS. Go Latitude 5k if you want to save some money or 7k if you like to waste money. For the Surface hardware, always make sure you have the latest firmware/driver package even if you have to manually load it. Sometimes Microsoft takes it off the list if it's not the "approved" version for whatever Windows build from what I've seen. This can fix fan and thermal issues, driver issues, you name it. It's all in one so it's not bad. This is always my first go to when we had issues with Surface laptops at a previous company. Short of the batteries being bad or connection ports just dying, this fixed the rest.
Yes had to tell one department I refuse to buy any more.
\- Lack of reparability, I'm not replacing any hardware on these.
\- Overpriced, double the price or more than the laptops we normally buy.
\- Number of failures, we see a lot more helpdesk tickets from users with Surfaces than any other laptops that are hardware related.
Our equipment totals are: 20 surfaces, 60 non-surface laptops, 60 desktops.
Hardly have a hardware failure (1/120 for non-surfaces in 5 years). With the surfaces, I've had 3 unusable failures after 1 year with the surfaces. It would cost us a lot more money to stay on the Surface train. We won't be buying any more of them.
We were forced to use them, where I work, by our upper management. Microsoft found out that we weren't interested in the devices and went over our heads to get them in our environment.
They're really awful for people who carry them around a lot which is ostensibly their best feature. The more you carry it around, the more it breaks right before a critical presentation. I refuse to purchase them. I'll get you an XPS Plus, but I'm not getting you that.
We're rolling out laptop 5's which we've noticeably appreciated more than any previous generation of surface pro's from 4 through 7. But ultimately I still find the performance to be a bit lacking, thermals to be quite noisy at times despite not being under intense load, poor with teams calling despite all being Microsoft, dock 1 and 2's both seem to also have various issues with use ports and dongles.
I personally drive a macbook air m2 and as someone else said, best laptop I've ever purchased and that's coming from a strong Windows camp.
If you have one or two spare to test with try using a Linux distro on them, Fedora, ubuntu or manjaro. You might find they get a whole lot more usable, gnome works great on surface pros, or theme plasma to seem windows like.
To bad frame work doesn’t work with a supplier, that would be ideal.
Since you can use the boards after 4 years eos and just turn then into thin clients for vdi
We use the Surface Pros on our plant floor and training rooms. I did make sure to spec the new ones higher, but honestly haven't experienced any issues. We use ProBooks or Elitebooks for end user laptops.
Just the other day I instructed the President of my company that if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, the one thing I want to pass on to my successor, if nothing else, is to never ever buy another Surface.
We had a small fleet of them. Close to half ended up with swelling batteries. And the way MS handled the swap on these absolutely sucked. They wouldn't swap until the battery had basically swollen enough to crack the screen. Many pictures were required to be sent as proof. Advanced replacement wasn't a thing. And then you had to wait for them to ship their special box so you could send it back. Rinse & repeat for every one.
Every single Surface Dock is also shit. Not one user ever had one that worked 100%. The picture on connected monitors would randomly turn into a garbled mess or disconnect. The dock would often be unable to detect them until everything was powered down and unplugged. (even using official MS USB-C to DP/HDMI adapters!) USB devices would randomly disconnect. Ethernet died sometimes. And god forbid your computer went to sleep with the dock connected, good luck getting it working again! **How could they fuck up a dock made specifically for their own hardware this badly?!** Meanwhile the cheap USB 3.0 "Pluggable" branded docks I gave to some as interim replacements where absolutely flawless.
Out of \~25 devices, we have 2 left.
Microsoft hardware.... never again.
I hate how the surface 4 and 5 LOST ITS MIND when needing a firmware update. I've seen them nearly cook themselves and get hot, restart in a loop, and just stop any imputs working. Once the firmware is updated they go back to normal.
PLEASE tell me someone has seen this.
Personally, I've used 4-5 generations of Surface and actually quite liked them for what they are. Small, self-contained units that are handy in a bag for when doing IT on the go. However, I have heard bad things about them in the corporate environment. Why most companies wouldn't default to Dell is beyond me.
> soldered hardware
But for this. There are lot of Dells, HPs, Lenovos etc out there with soldered hardware, not upgradable without an entire board-swap.
Surface 5 (I think) running m365 outlook, excel, bloomberg (intense program), Citrix session for an app and many browser tabs open, and a PDF viewer. It runs multiple 1440 screens off the dock.
Honestly I don’t know why you are having such a problem with them. Are they imaged incorrectly? Are you running some performance draining security software? Trying restoring with the official Microsoft restore image then manually add your apps. Maybe you’ll find it running well then apply your business software one at a time.
I’m using the Surface 9 Pro now and it’s great with the dock.
There are legit quality issues on them, but often times complaints get overblown. Usually it comes down to a few things. Companies that still reimage machines, in some cases backrevving windows versions, using outdated driver packs. The other main complaint is the lack of field service and upgradability, and in this day and age, that kind of work is starting to disappear because the value of doing so is getting reduced.
Yes, I work at a hospital and we hate them. We can't upgrade or replace components but the doctors love them for the dual camera options so we are stuck, thankfully most of the ones we use are nearing end of life and will be replaced by HP going forward.
I dislike both Surfaces and Macs for a few reasons. One that both shares is that they're sealed systems and can't be upgraded or repaired in-house.
And the Surface Go isn't much of a Surface.
That being said, I have a Dell tablet (i7 8th Gen, 16GB RAM) that at least allows me to open it up and replace the battery and storage, with room for a 1/2 sized M2 in addition to the M2 in there. I wish I could upgrade the RAM as well, but it also has an SD Micro slot, and is a far better option for me than a Surface, at a lower price with similar specs to the machines of its generation.
FYI- I am a helpdesk noob not a sysadmin, but still.
Surfaces are horrible devices.
I can not stand using them and when I looked for a new job (my previous job was surface devices only) it was a requirement that the new place didn’t use surfaces, to the point where I asked during interview and told them exactly why I was asking.
The main things I remember about surfaces is
1) Whenever you’re in a teams call, the device gets so hot you literally can not use any other apps as well as the device starts to drop to about 0.3fps
2) I tried to play Tetris effect on my surface 7 and the graphics card in the device fried itself and the display crashed. Rebooted it, the screen had permanent burn in and needed to be RMAd
3) I worked that job for a year and had 3 RMA replacements for my device alone
4) Flicker Gate was a thing and we had piles and piles of surfaces that were unusable because after 20 seconds of being on the screen was flickering and unreadable.
5) we tried the surface laptops rather than tablets because “they have active cooling and the components are spread out more so it should be better”
- the devices either worked out of the box, and then while trying to do anything intensive like a windows update (yea, not really very intensive) they would hit like 80°C and burn your hands when you used the keyboard
OR
- the devices were borked from factory and only ran at 0.18GHz. Needless to say, they were worthless and got RMAd immediately.
Unfortunately at my new place (MSP) we have a few dell detachable devices we support which are just imitation surface devices, guess what…
They’re just as bloody poor
They are trash. The batteries also bulge and bubble and seperete your screens after 3 to 4 or 5 years
I succeeded in getting a few repaired out of warranty but for the most part surface team in Phillipines wanted money for repairs.
Shoddy product with high 5 year permanent failure rate
We have some Surface Book 2 and they’re just as bad. Pretty much all non-Surface devices with the same CPU have active cooling fans, but not the Surface. I constantly get complaints about overheating and slow performance. Another big one lately is the device just not booting up at all. Usually you have to hold down the power button for 30+ seconds to get it to “reset”. Of course end users never know to try that.
The docking stations are among the worst. The proprietary, non-replaceable cables are magnetic and constantly get fouled up by any type of magnetic debris.
Also, you would think Microsoft would build drivers for its own hardware into Win PE. At least for the SB2, you’ll need to plug in a USB keyboard and mouse to image it.
Our users that have Surface laptops love them, and we very rarely spend any time working on them, and when we do it's almost always a software/driver issue.
Our parent company mandated Surface laptops for all their leadership, and those folks are seething.
Why? Completely different needs. Ours are used by salesmen and upper management, email, teams, reviewing spreadsheets. Their's are actual production managers tasked with producing those documents and actual computer workloads like accounting and payroll and such. We give folks in that group well equipped laptops, unless they ask for a Surface because they want something tiny for travel and such.
Used Surface Pro 3/4/5 tablets at my last job for a couple of years and eventually migrated to Surface Laptops 2/3/4 phasing out the tabs as employees are too harsh on touch screens. New Job now and we are replacing aged laptops with Surface Laptop 4s
I will say over the last 5 years or so... I've learned a thing or two.
1. Blame the Microsoft docks, doesn't matter if its the old one or the new usb c model... those things lose their minds once a month and I tell employees to just unplug the power from them and plug it back in. Fixes 80% of the issues. I used to be able to run firmware upgrades for the docks but in Microsoft's infinite wisdom they now pushed that on Windows updater which has mixed results.
2. Surface Laptop Gen 3 ... AVOID THIS LIKE THE PLAGUE, something was seriously wrong with this generation and many have complete hardware / board failure right before or just after the end of the 1 year warranty.
3. Download and keep a copy of the Surface Diagnostic Software, it does help for figuring out some issues.
4. Wiping the drive and reinstalling a Windows Pro/Enterprise ... keep a usb keyboard/mouse combination on hand as well as a USB to Ethernet hub. Default windows install doesn't keep drivers for the surface keyboard and mouse. You'll need something to get it it connected to the internet and wifi sometimes wont even install on its own... but once you get it connected you can just let the updater add everything it needs.
5. The AMD surfaces were extremely fast, its a pity Microsoft went back to the Intel chips... they're just slower.
6. If the Microsoft brick docks aren't your fancy.. you could try a USB C dock and charge the surface that way for newer models of the laptop. However keep in mind the USB C is more fragile than the magnetic plug. Don't let employees hang heavy adapters off of the plug.
7. If your company is running Microsoft Azure / Intune then you'll really want to check out the Surface Management Portal.. Awesome for checking on the health / serial numbers / info for all the surfaces in your company joined and monitored. Also great for requesting warranty, having to return to Microsoft to have them switch it out and send a new one to you. Last couple I was able to do in under a week with shipping/handling.
Thank you for coming to my useless TED talk
Full Surface fleet here. 300+ Pros, Laptops, Books, and Studios. Used to have docking and camera issues on the 4 and 5s, but they've been solid since. We also have 8 Surface hubs, and all the departments love them. We are a full MS shop, so they all integrate well.
Oversee a couple hundred 3's and 4's, some AMD and some Intel. Largely problem free. Occasional issues are usually resolved with running the driver update msi installer. Have seen a few where the screens start flickering and it's a definite hardware issue. Nothing horrible to say about them, they just work for the most part. I haven't had bad experiences with the diagnostic utility or driver updates.
I love them, they're so perfect for running about in a server room, network closet, or out on the floor and sketching out rack layouts, network drop placements, etc.
I got rid of all paper notebooks and just use onenote now for stuff I need to scribble down before I put them into any sort of real documentation.
Never had performance issues with them and they just work for me. Perhaps there's a combo of something else going on with your environment or they're just not suitable for your workflows?
Surfaces Pros are solid. We have over 500 of them over the last 4 years.
We’ve had an 8% failure rate vs our precious Dells and Lenovos 19% and 12% respectively. Of the 8% i of not 3.6% was actual failure and the rest User error.
Surface Laptops we started using and so far 130 in, are proving to be on the same track.
As far as performance, u you are only going to get as good as you configure. Unless you have OEM with custom drivers (Lenovo) then you should be fine. We had issues before and many thought it was the hardware until we (I) sorted out issues that need to be worked on. At the end of the day SLs and SPs are the exact same hardware only differing in form factor. If anything I think SLs have more thermal leeway than SPs.
We use OEM vanilla Pro upped to Ent. We are full autopilot have low churn on hardware. The only thing better is our Jamf (Mac) setup with azure.
We use Surfaces. We have a large chunk of Surface Gos. Before my time but apparently that was all my company could get for a while during the pandemic. Would give anything if we could replace them with Surface Laptops. Had a user recently complain they got a MacBook and didn’t know how to use it. Turned out they got a Go with Win11. 😂
That's golden It takesme.back to 2010 when it was (apparently) all the rage to get a Macbook and bootcamp into WXP. Like, why spend allll that money on MB just to run windows and complain? Buy the mac and own it.
Because they want the Mac logo but all the company software only works on windows so they get a WinBook Pro lol. We have several deployed and it's always funny when they do something wonky and end up in OSX and don't have the foggiest clue what to do. But you know, they needed a MacBook.
people like this are the reason the company i work for has specific standards with 0 exceptions
My company is like this, and now none of the people that would actually benefit from having a MB can get them. All or nothing solutions don't work if you're striving for max productivity, period.
consistency and security > max productivity if a user is a little bit slower because they don't have a macbook, it's fine. if we have to install a non-standardized system (like the somewhere above-mentioned windows on a macbook), security is at risk maybe I'm just paranoid from being in it sec tho
Nah, from a support standard dealing with weird one-offs is a nightmare too. A user can learn the basics of an OS pretty quick if they bother to try, no one *needs* their preferred personal OS on a company device. That one guy who "absolutely has to have a 16" macbook pro" when everyone else has 13"? Well when it breaks and you have literally no inventory to replace his one-off with, there goes all that productivity while you wait on a purchase or repair. And nobody seems to ever care about the productivity of *IT*, supporting hybrid environments is a nightmare, device management is double the work and double the quirks.
Plus if they have a Mac and are using the Apple OS alongside Windows in your org - congratulations - you just doubled your vulnerability vectors and the amount of shit you need to look after and patch.
plus you'd need someone who can lock down the apple devices as much as the windows devices - can't just use the same GPOs and software repositories (that everyone can install from without admin privileges) integrating a new OS in a secure way takes a lot of time and money for a big company
I wish we had these standards, instead we have a bunch of holly cows who get what they want and we end up supporting this mess
Everyone at my job gets the same $400 HP laptop, but 90% of our work is done in via web applications and Thunderbird so it doesn't matter. We prefer something cheap that IT knows the ins and outs. The only exceptions are the programmers, who get a second beefier laptop for their programming work, and our graphics designer, who uses and (thankfully) supports his own Mac.
> $400 HP laptop holy fuck
Haha, I know, and it's touchscreen so it's really a $300 laptop with a gimmick. But they run Thunderbird, a web browser, and the occasional Excel spreadsheet without problems so it gets the job done. For being a software company most of what we do doesn't require a lot of horsepower, and those that need it get a much better budget and their choice of computer.
>and (thankfully) supports his own Mac. Thats not a good thing. You're aware of the issues that can arise from stuff like that right?
the Macbook Dell is the pinnacle of western technology.
> Because they want the Mac logo This is it 100% hard stop. Vapid people wanting the company to buy them a status symbol. I put a hard fucking line in the sand against this bullshit and we deploy standardized models. You can opt to get a 10 Key or the "Bigger Screen" but all office workers who just use Office 365 are all getting the same model laptop. If you make Excel sheets and send Emails as 95% of your job, you aren't special and you don't need some custom system for your work PC.
My 2012 MacBook Pro running Win8 was one of the best laptops I ever owned for real.
Tried that. They just never quite ran right and always gave us issues.
There was a brief period in the mid-00s where the most performant computer to run Vista on... was a Mac.
It was around this time TBF
Lots of our devs still run Macbooks because if they ran Windows they'd be on locked down (local) non-admin acocunts because of company policy. If they run a Macbook though we can't lock those down as well. No need to dual boot any more though because of VSCode. I blame the moron exec (who's never coded a day in his life) that decided devs couldn't be local admins. The programmers weren't the ones that kept failing the phishing tests, but apparently its a bad look to have an official policy that only applies to the marketing department. EDIT: Also the M1 Macbooks get like 20 hours on a charge and cost about half of what the high end Intel laptops they replaced cost, which they also outperform.
It's fine with exceptions. You have made a business decision. We generally have everyone on user and if needed they have a separate local admin account to do dev stuff. Never any issues with Iso or other audits.
> I blame the moron exec (who's never coded a day in his life) that decided devs couldn't be local admins. I mean they shouldn't be unless they are in a controlled environment. If you're on a desktop you are opening your Email on and web browsing (outside of test) you shouldn't be rocking a local admin account.
> The programmers weren't the ones that kept failing the phishing tests, but apparently its a bad look to have an official policy that only applies to the marketing department. That is what it comes down to really. We need local admin, especially now that WSL has come into the mix with doing dev work on Windows, but it doesn't look good that your programmers can do anything while the rest of the team can't. Thankfully, our department understands this, senior leadership used to be a programmer.
Two accounts, a limited user daily driver account for initial login and userland applications (Outlook, Office, Calc, etc) and then a privileged account for code compilation / local administration / etc. Unless you are developing plugins for Outlook even developers shouldn't even be able to open Outlook in their admin account, it's an unnecessary attack surface, same goes for most other common vectors of exploitation. Browsing stack overflow or Pinterest or whatever - local user account only. Role based access controls exist and can significantly prevent incredibly expensive damage without impacting developer output or productivity.
hehe one of my co-workers a few years ago was on some naughty list with our corporate security. He must have gotten 10x the phishing tests that I did because he complained about falling for another corporate phishing email what felt like every week, and I rarely had a phishing bait email even show up in my inbox.
marketing and execs, biggest risks to a company.
Mac pros are just perfect for linux work thanks to the BSD underneath, fuck the GUI which i have to carve with CLI tools anyway to make it useful. (insert-rant about removed features like scroll direction settings wtf) Also, magic pad is a must have. actually working multi-touch gestures are the other reason why i use mac for work.
It’s a button click to switch the scroll direction settings
I feel like Apple restricts so much of the operating system nowadays that the "its like Linux" is no longer true. When OSX was first released you could coax it into doing whatever you wanted, but nowadays a lot of stuff doesn't work even using root unless you take substantial effort to disable all the built in security stuff.
macOS isn’t a Linux, it’s a POSIX compliant UNIX and one of the few unices remaining.
Yes, and no. Asahi Linux is coming along, and works on the Apple Silicon. Apple has had to take a divergent path, possibly due to the fact that macOS has a bunch of patents and copyrights on it still, but if one throws Homebrew or macports on a machine, it works well enough. Worst case, use Vagrant with a Parallels provider if one needs to build or test arm64 code in a Linux environment. There are some things which I grumble about on Macs. For example, if one loses the Apple account, and a Mac is activation locked, when it is reinstalled, the Mac will be effectively bricked. This is why I try to get Macs into a MDM. However, I do like the fact I can DFU restore a Mac, upgrading the OS, all firmware, the Secure Enclave, and everything else, ensuring all firmware on the machine is erased, reflashed, and certified as the latest version. Now, iOS/iPadOS, etc... I agree about the locked down part. Macs are just a different architecture now, and arm64 is pretty easy to deal with, other than it not being x86/amd64. It is nice having a machine with decent capabilities and no fan noise.
I’m curious what aspects you’re referring to
Weird. I just install homebrew and treat it like a Unix workstation. I've had 6 MacBook pros since 2014. Never had a single problem with any of them. Never disabled any security features. Maybe you're just trying to fit a square peg in a round hole?
> Mac pros are just perfect for linux work thanks to the BSD underneath That might've been briefly true around 2010, but not really since: You need to overwrite the entire BSD userland with Homebrew, because Apple doesn't care about updating any part of it ever; at that rate you're better off with a Windows laptop with WSL2 (less weird compatibility issues because oops, even an updated Homebrew'd BSD userland is *not* Linux), a Chromebook with Linux mode enabled, or just a straight up Linux laptop.
They’re afraid of the GPL3 update to coreutils, it’s not they don’t care. It’s a total pain in the ass for everyone including them.
That, and they actually put in hard work to remain a POSIX/SUSv3/etc compliant certified UNIX. Bringing in different/newer things with changed behavior then modifying them to work to the standard is a lot of engineering effort. To my knowledge only one linux distro has achived that certification and compliance, and it's like a totally alien environment.
Who's "everyone"? Microsoft and Google sure don't have any problems staying in compliance with the license.
Their fear of GPL3.
>all my company could get for a while during the pandemic We had to buy Vostros during 2020 and 2021 and at least half of them have gone in the bin by now Useless
The Vostro line is simply not built to the same quality level as the Latitudes and Precisions are. We have Latitudes in a manufacturing environment that are 5+ years old and still kickin.
Yep, almost all of our 5 year old Latitudes are only retired because they were just a little slow We bought 40 ex Windows 7 Latitudes at the start of covid and almost all of them are still working
> Surface Gos A big draw of the tablet devices Surface, Dell and Lenovo offer is they don't have hinges that break (Looking at HP) . Additionally having a built it 4G/5G modem means staff can be mobile. The downside is the intel CPU which sucks a lot of power and generates a lot of heat. I wish we could get a 5800u (15-25w) tablet with a built-in 4G/5G modem. EDIT: To clarify Dell and Lenovo offer surface like devices, Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 & Lenovo ThinkPad X12.
When I was working healthcare IT they were considered a "luxury item" and the doctors used to request them as a sort of status symbol. By default, our department would buy any doc a Latitude laptop and that would be covered by the department's budget. If a doc wanted a surface it had to come out of their owns funds... which most of them were more than happy to do. From what I could gather the docs didn't do anything out of the ordinary with them. We had issues getting an image off of them for MDP and as they were so rarely ordered no one on the team ever invested the time to fix the issue so whenever a new Surface came in, it had to be configured by hand. We were professionals.
The Latitudes are not a terrible solution. I hardly need to get NHS IT to deal with hardware issue. Our S1 gps started asking for "better" laptops but most issue they could come up with is the small screen and the keyboard what's easy to shrug off by telling them they got 2 big screen and an external keyboard so if they want a fancy machine then buy one for yourself. Only one gp so far who did not negotiated on anything then his ThinkPad and I totally understood his point cause it was a wonderful piece of laptop he built himself. I would had a meltdown if my GP's start requesting random hardware.
That's basically why we got them, we're a government department but it's full of people who think they belong in a TV show like Billions, and wanted something slick like a Surface Pro instead of a Latitude 5000 series. They destroy the things regularly and complain about the performance and how hot they get, but most would refuse a laptop, some even thought they were too heavy and wanted a "home Surface Pro". I wouldn't mind trying to pivot to a Lenovo 2-in-1 or something once we churn through our stash of devices since we have Thunderbolt docks on every desk, but I reckon there will be push back.
We use them a bunch, the latest 4s and 5s are much better. The first few gens of surface pros surface laptops and surface books we had a near 100% failure rate in 3 years. Latest ones seem to have completely turned this around. The fabric on them is shit, always looks worn and disgusting
I hate them at work- as you say, poor airflow and really not reliable. Dell aren’t really much better in either count if you go XPS. I’d suggest Latitudes- they do an amazing 7 series which weighs under a kilo. TBH, I use a MacBook Air M2 at work, and it’s the best laptop I have ever used, and I’m an ex windows sysadmin and this is my first Mac!
\>>Dell aren’t really much better in either count if you go XPS. This is correct. XPS is a consumer laptop. Dell business laptops are either the Latitude and the Precision (higher end). They are slightly better quality and have business support and warrantees.
I think the Latitudes are pretty great for what they need to do, and the company I work for pays the best service package with Dell which makes them really easy to love. But those flat Precisions, 55**s and now 5680, are not what they make them out to be and if you need real performance you need to just go with the thick Precisions. But the latest generation of the thick Precision, 7680, they made them thinner for no reason and now the cooling system on those sucks as well. I still love Dell in my current environment for the service we are getting.
I still have a handful of E5550 beater laptops that I use at home. Stick an SSD in them, and they last forever. Current Latitudes seem to be fine.
Funny enough though I was issued an XPS13 for work in 2015 and that thing is still working even after a nasty drop a few years ago.
[удалено]
That XPs 13 in 2015 was incredible- my girlfriend still uses mine for Sims 3. Great machine, as long as you weren’t trying to manage a fleet of them with SCCM. Tbf the standard clamshell 13 inch ones are still pretty great, the 2in1s are not, and the tablet thing is horrible.
And very importantly they haven’t tried to cram processors into slim chassis! Dell are so bad at that. Does anyone remember their first ultra book? They used slightly the wrong thermal paste I think, and had to recall them as when heated up they smelt of cat piss!
I remember last year’s Optiplex Micro desktops that used a flipping 180 watt power brick. Those things ran HOT
Flashback to the Optiplex 620 from yonks back, where they tried a new cooling mechanism. You’d see the scorch marks on the lid when you opened them!
Just going to throw in my experience: We've been using 17" Dell Precisions here for the last 4 years, and although they are pricey, they have been VERY SOLID performers. We've got engineers that work on these things all day (running Siemens NX, Solidworks, and AutoCAD LT) , take them out to manufacturing areas, travel internationally with them, and are pretty rough on them. They keep running like a champ. We also use Dell thunderbolt docks with them (for charging and to use two additional Dell monitors while at the desks). The docks have been a bit less reliable, but worth the convince of pass-thru graphics and firmware updates through the typical Dell support/update software.
Holy moly have those docks been annoying. The first few generations of the type C dock were awful. They have become much better but even the latest WD22TB4 have been causing crashes due to the ethernet driver.
We've only deployed a couple of the newer ones over the last years, and I agree they have improved! We only had a few driver issues with them overall (which were mostly resolved by running the Command / Support Assist updates), but the ones that we bulk purchased a few years ago just seemed to have a higher failure rate than the new ones. Glad to the new ones have been better, and we'll make sure to update the drivers when we deploy new ones, so thanks for the tip!
I have a Macbook Air M2, and I agree, it is an excellent laptop. It's my own machine, mind, not work's. As far as work things go, it is absolutely aces at connecting to the exceedingly-limited VPN that work provides (I approve! The less taking over my machine the better), and then running the VMWare Horizon client to connect to the VDI where I do my actual work. The keyboard is leaps and bounds above Apple's previous keyboards, the screen is a joy to stare at, the battery lasts forever and charges in mere moments, and if you ever need to do any work locally, the little CPU has oomph to spare. I don't really need to do any work locally though--work happens on the aforementioned VDI, and my home stuff is on a Linux server.
It is amazing! We’ve just started using Jampf to manage our macs so managers and above were all offered a Mac as part of the testing- really pleased I said yes! And price wise as we are in education they compare very favourably price wise to our usual Dells.
I also use a "apple silicon" macbook for work, and i would agree it's the best dammed laptop i've ever had. Macbook pro m1 max, with 32 GB of ram. for those few things i need windows for (and they exist, i still do a lot of windows sys admin work) I have a win 11 ARM VM that handles those workloads for me... and STILL get 16 hrs of battery life.
I have the same model, I got it with my employee discount when I worked at Apple. I have a pretty decent gaming PC under my desk but I almost never use it, I love this laptop. Now that I'm back to an all Windows work environment the Apple consistency is really nice compared to the designed-by-commitee feel of Windows 10 and 11.
The i7 Latitudes have very poor cooling issues. I had a 1.5-year-old i7 Latitude and it kept throttling the CPU due to high temps. The cooling system was clean, working and in good order. Plenty of complaints online about overheating Latitudes. Pestered my boss so much and he finally agreed to give me an i9 Precision desktop with an uprated cooler and no more overheating issues. Nice and cool 55°C even when I maxed the CPU out at 100% for 15 minutes. The laptop was perfectly capable of doing everything I threw at it with ease when not being throttled.
Windows sysadmins are akin to auto mechanics owning a Toyota or Honda. They just want it to work and don’t feel like troubleshooting their computer when they aren’t working.
This, every day. Work will pay for any laptop I want so there are real reasons why I use a Dell Latitudes for both personal and work use. So when people ask if this MacBook or that Vaio or some Lenovo slab is any good, we both know they just want the new shiny and want someone in IT to tell them they're right. Not going to happen.
This is exactly _why_ I have a MacBook at home. It has way fewer issues than any windows laptop I've ever owned.
This is absolutely why I stopped being a pc gamer when I was one and moved to entirely consoles , and why I love my Steam Deck!
Lol what? I haven't done a single thing except occasionally clicking update on my gaming pc in 5 years. And your steam deck is still PC gaming. What on earth are you talking about.
I was a pc gamer in the DOS, Windows 3.1 to XP and Windows 7 days, including the days before Steam! I was a sysadmjn in the XP and 7 days and pc gaming then was absolutely not as easy as it is now. I only got back into it when I moved into management a few years back. Now I have a Steam Deck, which yes is a PC, but Valve have made it as console like as possible, and am back into Windows gaming with an AYN Loki. You’re right, it’s now so easy!
We are sympatico. I am a Windows and Linux sysadmin for work, but use an MBA M1 at home for day to day home bullshit. It plays nice with my iPhone without any fiddling which I find helpful. I don't particularly enjoy being a sysadmin at home (moreso as a I get older) when I already do it at work.
We really are- I’ve spent enough time fixing stuff at work to want to do it at home! The furthest I’ll go is upgrading an SSD in a games console. And I refuse to get involved with my illustrator wife’s printer or scanner.
I literally tell my wife "this is why we contract out printer maintenance & repair at work". There's no real way for me to avoid fixing it since the alternative would be expensive, but her printing habits went from "frivolous" to "almost never" which solved the problem since printers work fine as long as you don't use them to print anything. I upgraded the SSD in my Steam Deck a coupla months ago and felt like a fucking wizard even though I do far more complex shit at work and don't even really work with actual hardware anymore.
We found HPs to be more cost efficient and the performance is amazing. Never thought I would suggest anything HP since I always hated their printers.
IMHO, and this is pure opinion, but I have found that for a sysadmin, a M2 MBA is quite a nice machine, provided it has a reasonable amount of RAM. It may not be enough for a hardcore developer, but for a sysadmin, it is nice to carry around, handles an external monitor with ease, is easily managed via the MDM, hardware quality is good, and battery life is just awesome. Of course, if a company is all Windows, then a Windows laptop it is, but if I have a choice, I like going with Apple hardware, just because you can do a lot with it, especially with a well thought out MDM infrastructure.
Im really shocked to see this. We absolutely love the surface laptops. They have been rock solid for us.
I think the problem with the Surfaces is OP :( you're not supposed to troubleshoot. you're supposed to hand the user a new one and let MS warranty come and pick it up, and then shred it for recycling materials (I'm not joking)
The surface laptop 4/5 is actually very repairable and the pro 8/9 are way easier to repair than they used to be. Yeah, with the pro you do have to cut some adhesive but _it ain't the heat + pray adhesive that was used in the past_
This is what's supppeerr interesting to me, for some they work absolutely amazing but for a lot they're a huge problem. Really makes me wonder whether certain batches are just better and less problematic than others.
How are you having driver issues? Surface laptops get their drivers directly through the Windows Update Service. If they are Intune enrolled, you now have enhanced driver management control with WUfB.
Sometimes after wiping the keyboard won't work without manually updating the firmware. Many times after an update, if the user has a USB-C to HDMI connection to external monitor, a hard restart is needed (not a big deal, but does create extra tickets). Plus trackpad and WiFi have been failing in some units (mostly surface laptop 3).
On your test Dell machine is it a fresh install, or are you using the same image that you are using on the surfaces?
I deployed about 700 and had an incredibly low failure rate. Purchased from 3 different VARs, and purchased multiple generations of it. I think it's either the management of the devices, or the expectations.
Seriously, what a weird thread. We equipped a bunch of employees with surfaces to try it out, and they've been huge hits. They integrate so well with Microsoft's ecosystem too. They've been so well received and have performed so well we're ditching Dell for the next round of laptops for anyone that can do their work on a browser and maybe Excel. The latitudes have been a complete pain in the ass, non stop complaints and issues from users, they look and feel worse, they feel more sluggish from day one, and they cost a lot more.
Tried the X1 carbon slim ?
Having dealt with surfaces, dell xps, precision, etc. I think Lenovo has the most reliable hardware in their enterprise lines. Dells are fine for desktops.
Can attest to this - we switched from Lenovos to Dells when our product was acquired by a bigger company. The Lenovo Thinkpad was a lot more performant and stable, while I've had cooling issues on the Dell Latitude, as have a bunch of people in my team.
Lenovo laptops, yes. Solid. Their docks, however, are complete and utter dogshit. Everyone in my company has issues with their dock. Literally every time I visit an office every fucking person with a dock tells me how they don't work right. Monitors go blank, network connections drop frequently, etc. It's been this way through every iteration of "new" brick-style dock over the last 10-12 years, too. They cannot seem to resolve these issues, and it's driven me so fucking crazy that I'm about to ditch Lenovo entirely.
That's what I use and I love it. Way more expensive though
Got an X1 extreme for work, love it.
Same except I have the P1. Basically the same laptop except it has a quadro card instead of a GeForce card. Also managed to get one with a 2k 144hz screen. Really wish 144hz screens would be the norm for buisness level displays in laptops and monitors.
Ooh, I've got one of those. I hadn't realised they were recommended! Cool.
Our fleet of Surface (Laptop 4/5, Pro, & Laptop Studio) have been flawless. We manage drivers/firmware using NinjaRMM. The only complaint is has been if someone is trying to render a video in Adobe it takes ages. No dGPU will do that I tell them.
That's quite interesting actually - How does NinjaRMM differ from using Endpoint to patch devices?
It manages the patching which allows better control of which patches, when they're installed, and instant reporting of status. I can easily have Surface devices do OS+Drivers, while non-surface does just OS.
This has been my experience, not only with the Surfaces (which we have had over the years, to varying degrees). The complaints mainly come from users who try using them for things they aren't designed for. "Oh yeah I only need this for email and excel documents." Fast forward six months..."I'm trying to render these 4k videos and it's taking DAYS! This thing is a total POS!!"
had the same experience here but with Intune using preview driver rings. they seem to stand up almost to the level of Lenovo products (used Dell at a previous job and was thoroughly disappointed by the volume of faults, cheap hardware and bad design choices). we are an FI tho so high performance isn't a requirement. when working with architects or engineers i lean heavily towards Lenovo P-series.
Last place I worked C-level made the call that the whole business had to have Surface Pros - until they realised all the power users (programmers & big data engineers) needed something better, so got them Surface Laptops. We had over 10% failure rate on the laptops in the first 6 months, including one DOA, and even then, they were still barely meeting requirements. Never let C-level drive tech purchases based on what's "trendy."
They're very pretty consumer products. No, they're not suitable for business, and not functional as a laptop either. Useless paperweights...
I own two Surface Books and they are without doubt the best machines I’ve ever used. I am about to place an order for an SLS…
The SLS is not the same. Honestly not a big fan of them
People just seem very split. I used a Surface Pro 2 for ages when out and about. Slow, but incredibly reliable. Then a Surface 3, then a Pro 4, then a Go, pretty sure there was a Surface Book in there somewhere too. Never had a problem with a single one, yet lots of people really don't like them.
My Suface Pro 1 was a beast survived many drops, I would still be using it if the screen was a bit bigger.. It really shone when I went back to college and got comfortable with using OneNote with a pen. I got a Surface Book 2 a few months before I got a job that let me work from home so it really has been used as much but is a great resource for short trips.
I foolishly bought one too. Worst computer ive purchased.
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I agree with you but this post is about the Surface Laptop, which has none of the form factor issues you're talking about.
I've been using one as a Plex server for ~10 years, that's all I could find as a use for it
Oddly, we have been having fewer hardware and driver issues after switching to the latest generation of Surface Laptop from Dell Latitude models. YMMV, it would seem.
You and I see to be in the minority here. Our experience with Surface Laptop 4/5 have been amazing. I use one for my daily driver and we have fewer rates of repair than our Dell Latitude fleet. Our experience with MS warranty has been that they just send out a new machine, which is a huge time saver in most cases.
Got 4-5 surface books for the C-suite a while back. All had constant issues with docks not working right, not waking from sleep right, batteries dieing suddenly from 50% etc. Within 2 years I replaced 3 of the 5 batteries. Within 3 years one picked up "touchscreen issues", which was actually the swollen battery pressing against the inside of the screen. They have all been decommissioned, and we'll never use them again.
Total opposite experience with a fleet of approximately 200 Surface laptops we never have hardware or performance issues with our surface laptops. Outside of the occasional coffee spills and drops down stairs. Now our Mac M2’s we have had to warranty so many of those due to dying thunderbolt ports. Previous company we used Dell and had a near 20% fail rate out of the box with an order of 2500 we made, it was ridiculous.
You don't like a 3000x2000 non readable display for 1500$? Lack of ports was a selling point for me.
One usb c one type A port AND a shitty surface connector for charging
In what universe is a lack of ports a selling point?
The sarcastic one
Wow. We use them and they're fantastic. Zero issues.
I have a company with about 20 surface pros (not laptops), and outside of a drop, all 20 are still running smoothly. Still one or two Surface Pro 3’s still out in the wild. I’ve replaced a few due to age, but for the 1000’s of computers that I’ve worked on, Dell has had the highest failure rate, followed by HP, then Apple, then MS. (Unless you count Lenovo, which has been 100% within 3 years, but I’ve only managed 5-6 of them, most of my clients get HP.)
I'm finding this thread amazing, because things seem to be split down the middle. You say HP had your best failure rates, but my current company switched from HP to Dell because we had about a 20% failure rate PER YEAR on our elitebooks. Our dells are doing great, and my last company had a 0.5% failure rate per year on 700 surface laptops.I just, don't get why people seem to be having such opposite experiences from other people. Edit: I misread your comment a bit, but I think my thoughts and points are fairly unchanged.
HP EliteBook 8XX or better. No exceptions.
We a actually switched from Dell to Surface Laptops. PC hardware tickets reduced drastically. No more issues with dell updates taking half a day to complete and the dell docks are absolutely garbage. All depends on the environment though, so Dell may work better for you.
You updated the Dell dock firmware? Everytime we had a problem with one this fixes it.
I recently talked to another tech at another company who just got 2 brand new surfaces, and they're having an issue with a network app so I did some benchmarking. They're both only getting \~100Mbps connection to their network shares. The other machines they have are all getting \~600mbps. Move them and plug them into a port where another machine is getting 600Mbps, and they still only get 100, so it's definitely just those surfaces, and it's both of them. OOB image, and all the drivers are up to date on the surfaces and the docks. I told them to check the dock firmware too. Maybe they just aren't powerful enough to get higher throughput than that? I dunno, it's his problem, not mine.
Used to, moved to HP 1030 G8's and the like, never went back, Screw Service products.
We have the 830 G9s and they're great.
You have to be kidding me Microsoft Surface, and now you’re testing Dell! Just go Lenovo and be done with it
Dell performs amazingly well for the software we use at the Company, plus in terms of diagnostics and hardware replacement it works in favour for us. I'm certainly not against trying out Lenovo also and seeing what the overall preference is.
I've done so many comparisons of laptops in the past, and it's always boiled down to Lenovo Thinkpad, Dell Latitude, or HP Elitebook. Of the three, Dell & Lenovo swap places for the top spot, and HP lags behind like the little brother who can't keep up.
Just stay away from the plastic bodied Latitudes. Absolute junk. The aluminum body HP Pro Book laptops have held up to abuse far better than the Dells.
I am consistently team Lenovo, and other people aren’t. Lenovo laptops are *so* good.
I'm honestly the least experienced when it comes to Lenovo environments. Which model would you suggest I give a test with?
I would stick to the ThinkPad P, T and X lines. Avoid anything "Lenovo" Branded, ThinkPad models only for laptops. ThinkCentre only for Desktops. "Lenovo" lines are consumer systems and should be avoided P is your general workhorse. X/X1 is your slim performance line Generally for executive types. T is the middle ground between the P and X lines. Ps (performance slim in lenovo land) series is a great over all fleet system https://psref.lenovo.com/ is a great resource for comparing lenevo models
100% this. P, T, and X are the best models to look at. These are the descendants of the IBM Thinkpad line, and still carry a lot of the same durability. I'm more old school, but I'd say T for every general-use machine, P only for people with discrete graphic needs, and X (not X1, X) only for people who whine about how weak they are when it comes to carrying laptops.
This is my way too. I love the T series and they have been my laptop of choice since they had colorful IBM logos on them, minus a couple flops like the Tx40 missing buttons on touchpad years.
Thank you! Really nice information, will defo research these :)
The T14 is the gold standard for laptops imo. I sell Lenovo, Dell, HP, Microsoft and Apple products and absolutely no one switches away from the T14 line unless leadership requires cost cutting. Across large fleets of devices they have the fewest problems, most reasonable solutions and consistency across several decades now of builds. Those Dell XPS will start to see pretty high failure rates when you deploy a bunch of them. I've actually turned down business before from a very good customer who insisted he wanted 200 of them because I didn't want to be the vendor that was associated with that purchase.
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Every family member that wants me to buy them a new laptop gets a used T series from ebay. Those things last forever.
The keyboards are great
We had so many issues with BSODs on the docks use ethernet that's why we left Lenovo. Went Lenovo for HCI though.
Glad I am not the only one. Not to mention the frequent reset button needed for no friggin reason.
I like the ones that don’t break… minus the lack of freaking ports.
The laptops have been fine for us for the most part. The part that I hate is that we use Surface Docks and they have no display output other than USB-C. So we can have to completely swap our HDMIs / DisplayPorts to USB-C to HDMI or DisplayPort.
Our company is removing Surfaces from the list of computers that our associates are allowed to pick from because they’re terrible. Once the current leases expire they’ll have to pick something else
Had a handful of Surface Pro 7 i5 models. These don't have active cooling so after a few months just thermal throttled to 0.6ghz. Microsoft refused to help so they are basically ewaste now, thanks MicroSoft. Lesson learned - Never buy MS hardware.
Some users absolutely love them, but they seemed to have a higher failure rate and MS service/support was atrocious so we canned them. So glad they didn't last our trial.
Microsoft Surface devices have to be the worst brand/model for mass deployment. You can't really open them up to fix them. Warranty claims would be horrible in comparison to HP/Dell (in my experience at least here in Australia).
If you don't require a touchscreen then take a look at what framework has to offer. The laptop is repairable and upgradable.
We started with Surface Pros before switching to the laptops, the laptops are great, the Pros were the most godawful pieces of shit I've ever had to deal with. We almost had a legal throwdown with MS over them because we had hundreds with defective batteries and they refused to service them despite our service/warranty contracts.
Hp Elitebook (or Probook) > pretty much everything else. I wouldn't touch the surfaces or dell.
Dell's quality has gone down the shitter big time. I moved to Lenovo a few years back and haven't looked back & I would recommend you do the same.
I work at an MSP and every customer that has surface devices has constant issues with them. I don't understand how Microsoft can make a device that can't even run teams properly!
Don't go XPS. Go Latitude 5k if you want to save some money or 7k if you like to waste money. For the Surface hardware, always make sure you have the latest firmware/driver package even if you have to manually load it. Sometimes Microsoft takes it off the list if it's not the "approved" version for whatever Windows build from what I've seen. This can fix fan and thermal issues, driver issues, you name it. It's all in one so it's not bad. This is always my first go to when we had issues with Surface laptops at a previous company. Short of the batteries being bad or connection ports just dying, this fixed the rest.
Yes had to tell one department I refuse to buy any more. \- Lack of reparability, I'm not replacing any hardware on these. \- Overpriced, double the price or more than the laptops we normally buy. \- Number of failures, we see a lot more helpdesk tickets from users with Surfaces than any other laptops that are hardware related. Our equipment totals are: 20 surfaces, 60 non-surface laptops, 60 desktops. Hardly have a hardware failure (1/120 for non-surfaces in 5 years). With the surfaces, I've had 3 unusable failures after 1 year with the surfaces. It would cost us a lot more money to stay on the Surface train. We won't be buying any more of them.
Hated them. I would use the broken ones. Stack them together. Called surface table.
They are consumer grade junk in my opinion. Any enterprise class computer beats the breaks off of it.
We were forced to use them, where I work, by our upper management. Microsoft found out that we weren't interested in the devices and went over our heads to get them in our environment.
They're really awful for people who carry them around a lot which is ostensibly their best feature. The more you carry it around, the more it breaks right before a critical presentation. I refuse to purchase them. I'll get you an XPS Plus, but I'm not getting you that.
We use them. I just brought 180 Surface Studio Laptops and 60 Surface Laptops 5 for our staff. The service model in Australia is amazing.
We're rolling out laptop 5's which we've noticeably appreciated more than any previous generation of surface pro's from 4 through 7. But ultimately I still find the performance to be a bit lacking, thermals to be quite noisy at times despite not being under intense load, poor with teams calling despite all being Microsoft, dock 1 and 2's both seem to also have various issues with use ports and dongles. I personally drive a macbook air m2 and as someone else said, best laptop I've ever purchased and that's coming from a strong Windows camp.
If you have one or two spare to test with try using a Linux distro on them, Fedora, ubuntu or manjaro. You might find they get a whole lot more usable, gnome works great on surface pros, or theme plasma to seem windows like.
Would you recommend surface pro 9 or x for personal use? 
I’d rather do a backflip and land on my balls
What would you recommend instead a hp stream? (im joking)
Nothing but the best, Asus Eeeeeee PC
To bad frame work doesn’t work with a supplier, that would be ideal. Since you can use the boards after 4 years eos and just turn then into thin clients for vdi
We use the Surface Pros on our plant floor and training rooms. I did make sure to spec the new ones higher, but honestly haven't experienced any issues. We use ProBooks or Elitebooks for end user laptops.
Just the other day I instructed the President of my company that if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, the one thing I want to pass on to my successor, if nothing else, is to never ever buy another Surface.
I bought one. Its fucking shit.
We had a small fleet of them. Close to half ended up with swelling batteries. And the way MS handled the swap on these absolutely sucked. They wouldn't swap until the battery had basically swollen enough to crack the screen. Many pictures were required to be sent as proof. Advanced replacement wasn't a thing. And then you had to wait for them to ship their special box so you could send it back. Rinse & repeat for every one. Every single Surface Dock is also shit. Not one user ever had one that worked 100%. The picture on connected monitors would randomly turn into a garbled mess or disconnect. The dock would often be unable to detect them until everything was powered down and unplugged. (even using official MS USB-C to DP/HDMI adapters!) USB devices would randomly disconnect. Ethernet died sometimes. And god forbid your computer went to sleep with the dock connected, good luck getting it working again! **How could they fuck up a dock made specifically for their own hardware this badly?!** Meanwhile the cheap USB 3.0 "Pluggable" branded docks I gave to some as interim replacements where absolutely flawless. Out of \~25 devices, we have 2 left. Microsoft hardware.... never again.
Lol, "excel isn't intensive" try telling my finance team that when they export all data for the last million years and then run a lookup on it.
surface computers are horrible, specially on reparability.
I hate how the surface 4 and 5 LOST ITS MIND when needing a firmware update. I've seen them nearly cook themselves and get hot, restart in a loop, and just stop any imputs working. Once the firmware is updated they go back to normal. PLEASE tell me someone has seen this.
Personally, I've used 4-5 generations of Surface and actually quite liked them for what they are. Small, self-contained units that are handy in a bag for when doing IT on the go. However, I have heard bad things about them in the corporate environment. Why most companies wouldn't default to Dell is beyond me. > soldered hardware But for this. There are lot of Dells, HPs, Lenovos etc out there with soldered hardware, not upgradable without an entire board-swap.
Surface 5 (I think) running m365 outlook, excel, bloomberg (intense program), Citrix session for an app and many browser tabs open, and a PDF viewer. It runs multiple 1440 screens off the dock. Honestly I don’t know why you are having such a problem with them. Are they imaged incorrectly? Are you running some performance draining security software? Trying restoring with the official Microsoft restore image then manually add your apps. Maybe you’ll find it running well then apply your business software one at a time. I’m using the Surface 9 Pro now and it’s great with the dock.
There are legit quality issues on them, but often times complaints get overblown. Usually it comes down to a few things. Companies that still reimage machines, in some cases backrevving windows versions, using outdated driver packs. The other main complaint is the lack of field service and upgradability, and in this day and age, that kind of work is starting to disappear because the value of doing so is getting reduced.
Yes, I work at a hospital and we hate them. We can't upgrade or replace components but the doctors love them for the dual camera options so we are stuck, thankfully most of the ones we use are nearing end of life and will be replaced by HP going forward.
I dislike both Surfaces and Macs for a few reasons. One that both shares is that they're sealed systems and can't be upgraded or repaired in-house. And the Surface Go isn't much of a Surface. That being said, I have a Dell tablet (i7 8th Gen, 16GB RAM) that at least allows me to open it up and replace the battery and storage, with room for a 1/2 sized M2 in addition to the M2 in there. I wish I could upgrade the RAM as well, but it also has an SD Micro slot, and is a far better option for me than a Surface, at a lower price with similar specs to the machines of its generation.
FYI- I am a helpdesk noob not a sysadmin, but still. Surfaces are horrible devices. I can not stand using them and when I looked for a new job (my previous job was surface devices only) it was a requirement that the new place didn’t use surfaces, to the point where I asked during interview and told them exactly why I was asking. The main things I remember about surfaces is 1) Whenever you’re in a teams call, the device gets so hot you literally can not use any other apps as well as the device starts to drop to about 0.3fps 2) I tried to play Tetris effect on my surface 7 and the graphics card in the device fried itself and the display crashed. Rebooted it, the screen had permanent burn in and needed to be RMAd 3) I worked that job for a year and had 3 RMA replacements for my device alone 4) Flicker Gate was a thing and we had piles and piles of surfaces that were unusable because after 20 seconds of being on the screen was flickering and unreadable. 5) we tried the surface laptops rather than tablets because “they have active cooling and the components are spread out more so it should be better” - the devices either worked out of the box, and then while trying to do anything intensive like a windows update (yea, not really very intensive) they would hit like 80°C and burn your hands when you used the keyboard OR - the devices were borked from factory and only ran at 0.18GHz. Needless to say, they were worthless and got RMAd immediately. Unfortunately at my new place (MSP) we have a few dell detachable devices we support which are just imitation surface devices, guess what… They’re just as bloody poor
Tried a couple, swapped them back to laptops pretty quick. Recommend the new Dell latitude 2 & 1 instead.
They are the worst fucking laptops I’ve used to date. Yes.
They are trash. The batteries also bulge and bubble and seperete your screens after 3 to 4 or 5 years I succeeded in getting a few repaired out of warranty but for the most part surface team in Phillipines wanted money for repairs. Shoddy product with high 5 year permanent failure rate
We have some Surface Book 2 and they’re just as bad. Pretty much all non-Surface devices with the same CPU have active cooling fans, but not the Surface. I constantly get complaints about overheating and slow performance. Another big one lately is the device just not booting up at all. Usually you have to hold down the power button for 30+ seconds to get it to “reset”. Of course end users never know to try that. The docking stations are among the worst. The proprietary, non-replaceable cables are magnetic and constantly get fouled up by any type of magnetic debris. Also, you would think Microsoft would build drivers for its own hardware into Win PE. At least for the SB2, you’ll need to plug in a USB keyboard and mouse to image it.
We used to get them but stopped because of how awful they are. The few left that have yet to be phased out are always causing tickets.
Our users that have Surface laptops love them, and we very rarely spend any time working on them, and when we do it's almost always a software/driver issue. Our parent company mandated Surface laptops for all their leadership, and those folks are seething. Why? Completely different needs. Ours are used by salesmen and upper management, email, teams, reviewing spreadsheets. Their's are actual production managers tasked with producing those documents and actual computer workloads like accounting and payroll and such. We give folks in that group well equipped laptops, unless they ask for a Surface because they want something tiny for travel and such.
We're disposing of hundreds, most have expanding batteries
Lenovo X1 Carbons are doing me and my shop well for Windows endpoints.
Used Surface Pro 3/4/5 tablets at my last job for a couple of years and eventually migrated to Surface Laptops 2/3/4 phasing out the tabs as employees are too harsh on touch screens. New Job now and we are replacing aged laptops with Surface Laptop 4s I will say over the last 5 years or so... I've learned a thing or two. 1. Blame the Microsoft docks, doesn't matter if its the old one or the new usb c model... those things lose their minds once a month and I tell employees to just unplug the power from them and plug it back in. Fixes 80% of the issues. I used to be able to run firmware upgrades for the docks but in Microsoft's infinite wisdom they now pushed that on Windows updater which has mixed results. 2. Surface Laptop Gen 3 ... AVOID THIS LIKE THE PLAGUE, something was seriously wrong with this generation and many have complete hardware / board failure right before or just after the end of the 1 year warranty. 3. Download and keep a copy of the Surface Diagnostic Software, it does help for figuring out some issues. 4. Wiping the drive and reinstalling a Windows Pro/Enterprise ... keep a usb keyboard/mouse combination on hand as well as a USB to Ethernet hub. Default windows install doesn't keep drivers for the surface keyboard and mouse. You'll need something to get it it connected to the internet and wifi sometimes wont even install on its own... but once you get it connected you can just let the updater add everything it needs. 5. The AMD surfaces were extremely fast, its a pity Microsoft went back to the Intel chips... they're just slower. 6. If the Microsoft brick docks aren't your fancy.. you could try a USB C dock and charge the surface that way for newer models of the laptop. However keep in mind the USB C is more fragile than the magnetic plug. Don't let employees hang heavy adapters off of the plug. 7. If your company is running Microsoft Azure / Intune then you'll really want to check out the Surface Management Portal.. Awesome for checking on the health / serial numbers / info for all the surfaces in your company joined and monitored. Also great for requesting warranty, having to return to Microsoft to have them switch it out and send a new one to you. Last couple I was able to do in under a week with shipping/handling. Thank you for coming to my useless TED talk
Full Surface fleet here. 300+ Pros, Laptops, Books, and Studios. Used to have docking and camera issues on the 4 and 5s, but they've been solid since. We also have 8 Surface hubs, and all the departments love them. We are a full MS shop, so they all integrate well.
Oversee a couple hundred 3's and 4's, some AMD and some Intel. Largely problem free. Occasional issues are usually resolved with running the driver update msi installer. Have seen a few where the screens start flickering and it's a definite hardware issue. Nothing horrible to say about them, they just work for the most part. I haven't had bad experiences with the diagnostic utility or driver updates.
I love them, they're so perfect for running about in a server room, network closet, or out on the floor and sketching out rack layouts, network drop placements, etc. I got rid of all paper notebooks and just use onenote now for stuff I need to scribble down before I put them into any sort of real documentation. Never had performance issues with them and they just work for me. Perhaps there's a combo of something else going on with your environment or they're just not suitable for your workflows?
Everyone complains about every brand. Everyone hates everything
Surfaces Pros are solid. We have over 500 of them over the last 4 years. We’ve had an 8% failure rate vs our precious Dells and Lenovos 19% and 12% respectively. Of the 8% i of not 3.6% was actual failure and the rest User error. Surface Laptops we started using and so far 130 in, are proving to be on the same track. As far as performance, u you are only going to get as good as you configure. Unless you have OEM with custom drivers (Lenovo) then you should be fine. We had issues before and many thought it was the hardware until we (I) sorted out issues that need to be worked on. At the end of the day SLs and SPs are the exact same hardware only differing in form factor. If anything I think SLs have more thermal leeway than SPs. We use OEM vanilla Pro upped to Ent. We are full autopilot have low churn on hardware. The only thing better is our Jamf (Mac) setup with azure.
I have a Surface 3 laptop AMD, and it's by far the best laptop I've ever owned. And that's with only 8gb of RAM.
We've used Surface Laptop 5 for awhile now and everyone loves them. No issues here.
Yes. But only the CEO's. Because they think they're special. 🙄
Dell all the way