Fall 2019 Surface event thoughts

I’m a biased source, given my employer, but last week’s Surface event was pretty impressive. I really appreciated the effort that Panos and his team put into it and I really loved the way the event was paced. And, it’s cool that the public speaking experts are taking notice, like Carmine Gallo writing for Inc. magazine about the presentation skills on display.

Oh, and the way Panos did the “you got it all right, except for one thing” transition for the Surface Duo introduction was handled was beautiful.

Since I use Windows most every day (again, given my employer) in addition to my Macs, I was looking forward to a solid update to the Surface Laptop. The original version has been my go-to Windows machine since it was released. It’s well designed with great balance and a wonderful keyboard. It’s my favorite bit of laptop hardware from the last few years. All I really wanted to see was a solid CPU update, USB-C, and a built in LTE modem.

Two outta three ain’t bad.

If you’re a Windows user and need a laptop to get, but don’t need serious gamer level graphics, this is the laptop to get. It might not be the next Windows machine I get, however.

The ARM-based Surface Pro X caught my interest in a way that I wasn’t expecting. It does have an LTE modem. And, while the last go around from Windows on ARM in the form of the Surface RT had a lot of limitations. It seems that many of those limitations are addressed this time around and, important for this Unix geek, the 20H1 release of Windows 10 will support WSL 2 on ARM. Yes!

I’ll have to do some more research to be sure, but it might just be my next Windows device. At least, until the Surface Neo ships sometime next year. Then, all bets are off.