The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?
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@Minion-Queen said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
The surface "should" work well for that. As long as you are aware they have lots of wifi adapter issues as well. Any update can completely kill it. The Surfaces on average do not last much longer than around 18 months either with heavy use. So as long as you are only using it here and there and not asking it to do much you "should" be fine.
Really? That's scary! I found it at just 750€ (christmas offer), I didn't think it was that bad…
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@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
My setup is an iPad Pro + NextCloud server. I have never owned a surface but I have heard a lot of negative comments made about them. I hope that is not your experience though.
Oh, really? Why? I'm in time to return it… I've discarded iPad Pro because of many limitations of iOS vs Linux/Windows, but surely is good hardware and hard to beat for web browsing and other light stuff.
What do you qualify as limitations of the iOS system?
I have worked on several MS Surface units of late and am not impressed with them OR their cost. You can get a Dell 2 n 1 (Mine is in the FedEx shipping pipe) for half the price and it be reloaded with Linux and a Win10 VM - maybe.
NTG shipped me one while I was with my son in the hospital for two weeks and I found that it was laggy, slow, and overall useless to me. It worked,.. but the lags and such just make it frustrating to use. And honestly, the 2(ish) hour battery life is well below the Acer 2 n 1 I had (6-8 hours run time on battery).
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@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
My setup is an iPad Pro + NextCloud server. I have never owned a surface but I have heard a lot of negative comments made about them. I hope that is not your experience though.
Oh, really? Why? I'm in time to return it… I've discarded iPad Pro because of many limitations of iOS vs Linux/Windows, but surely is good hardware and hard to beat for web browsing and other light stuff.
Scott and Minion Queen have basically highlighted some of the issues that a lot of ML users have had. I know Minion Queen herself owns a surface she got for free (i think?) and doesn't use it at all. That's kind of telling.
We have clients with them an the issues are a longer list than I really want to type out. For basic internet surfing it might be ok. But the hardware is weird. The touch screen is useless. The brightness of the screen, is well not. The consistent wifi issues drive me nuts. Using the awesome dock they made for it is nice in how it connects but good luck getting a monitor to actually work with it. The USB port goes out and you have to hardware trouble shoot.
That is just a small list.
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@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Minion-Queen said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
The surface "should" work well for that. As long as you are aware they have lots of wifi adapter issues as well. Any update can completely kill it. The Surfaces on average do not last much longer than around 18 months either with heavy use. So as long as you are only using it here and there and not asking it to do much you "should" be fine.
Really? That's scary! I found it at just 750€ (christmas offer), I didn't think it was that bad…
It's nearly a daily thing hearing someone around the office complain of another bricked Surface.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
around
The fourth series as well? Uhm…
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I forgot about the WiFi issues,.. There is also the weird driver issues that will 'brick' it until you can dock it,.. IF you have a dock so you can reload it. And the process of doing a hard reset is like playing twister where the colors change AND move.
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@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
around
The fourth series as well? Uhm…
If by the third they didn't care, that's not likely to change. MS has established that they don't make reliable devices, their sales don't depend on that. So putting all that money into making them reliable wouldn't make sense at this point.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
around
The fourth series as well? Uhm…
If by the third they didn't care, that's not likely to change. MS has established that they don't make reliable devices, their sales don't depend on that. So putting all that money into making them reliable wouldn't make sense at this point.
It's like the roman aqueducts. It sounds like such a good idea but it's actually poisoning you.
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Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative? -
@Francesco-Provino iPad pro is a really good product. I'm not even an apple fan. I usually find them to be overpriced, but I'm willing to pay the premium on something of quality.
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For me that does 99% of my work online. I use an Ipad Pro 9.7" till recently, today I get a 12.9" (yeah for awesome presents).
It has done everything I have needed it to. It also has a Screen Connect app so I am able to do tech work etc. from it without any issues. The only complaint I had with the 9.7" is the battery life wasn't great since the keyboard used the tablet's battery and it went down pretty quick(4 hours of heavy use). But that was the only complaint I have had.
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@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
Agreed but I think it suits what he posted initially: "I want to follow the philosophy of having a thin endpoint just to surf the web and doing basic stuff with text and cli, leveraging cloud or on permise servers for everything requiring big ram, CPU or GPU."
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@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
Agreed but I think it suits what he posted initially: "I want to follow the philosophy of having a thin endpoint just to surf the web and doing basic stuff with text and cli, leveraging cloud or on permise servers for everything requiring big ram, CPU or GPU."
That's exactly where I find them not very useful.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
Agreed but I think it suits what he posted initially: "I want to follow the philosophy of having a thin endpoint just to surf the web and doing basic stuff with text and cli, leveraging cloud or on permise servers for everything requiring big ram, CPU or GPU."
That's exactly where I find them not very useful.
Why out of curiousity? Text and CLI require virtually nothing
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@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
Agreed but I think it suits what he posted initially: "I want to follow the philosophy of having a thin endpoint just to surf the web and doing basic stuff with text and cli, leveraging cloud or on permise servers for everything requiring big ram, CPU or GPU."
That's exactly where I find them not very useful.
Why out of curiousity? Text and CLI require virtually nothing
Doing lots of CLI work on an iPad or Android tablet... or phone? ...without a real, physical keyboard... Not fun.
My Ultratablet is great for doing Remote Desktop and SSH stuff (because it has its own keyboard), but I've never had to spend more than an hour or two using it.
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@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@wirestyle22 said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
Ok, seems like a lot of problems with that device… I hope I'll be lucky with mine!
What do you use as an alternative?I skip the category, I've not found tablets to be that useful for system admin work. I use an iPad on the rare occasion that I need a tablet, otherwise I use a laptop since I need a stable, fast machine with a keyboard to do any real work.
Agreed but I think it suits what he posted initially: "I want to follow the philosophy of having a thin endpoint just to surf the web and doing basic stuff with text and cli, leveraging cloud or on permise servers for everything requiring big ram, CPU or GPU."
That's exactly where I find them not very useful.
Why out of curiousity? Text and CLI require virtually nothing
They require a stable device the same as anything else, and a good keyboard. Specifically the two things the Surface don't have. Nowhere in our concerns was performance one of them, so regardless of how much something "doesn't require" it wouldn't be applicable to our reasons for the Surface not being useful.
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@gjacobse iOS unfortunately lacks the ability to run any Windows or Linux specific software, or to virtualize them, of course. The list could be very long… I had an iPad Air 1st gen, great device (but it was stolen). I'm not anti-apple or anti-iOS at all, other than the iPad I've an iPhone and a MBP :D.
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It really does depend on how you are using a tablet. You are looking for something to really just access cloud based everything. The Ipad Pro might be great for that. It is for me. But 99% of what I do is not tech based, it is MS office, and online everything for me.
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@Francesco-Provino said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
@gjacobse iOS unfortunately lacks the ability to run any Windows or Linux specific software, or to virtualize them, of course.
Right, so if you are doing the thin client thing that @wirestyle22 is talking about the iPad does it as well or better than the Surface. None of us run software on our end points for Windows or Linux, even though that's what our platforms are, so that doesn't affect us. What software do you need to run locally?
