The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?
-
I've just ordered a Surface Pro 4 with baseline config (core M3, 128Gb storage), intended to be my travel companion replacing my old MBP late 2011.
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.
I also have Dropbox for business (unlimited storage), so local storage is not an issue.What do you think about a setup like that?
Does anyone of you have already worked with similar configuration? -
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.
-
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.
-
@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.
-
Surfaces have been so bad, I'd never use that hardware for anything, no matter how trivial. Better than Lenovo stuff stealing your data, but Lenovo is the only thing I'd use less than a Surface at this point.
-
@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.
-
@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…
-
@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).
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
@scottalanmiller said in The Sysadmin / CTO machine - A Surface + Cloud to rule them all?:
around
The fourth series as well? Uhm…
-
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.
-
@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.
-
@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.
-
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.
-
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.
-
@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.
-
@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."
-
@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.
