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More Surface Book

This is my first “normal” work day using the Surface Book. For first impressions go back and check out my first post, Surface Book It’s the little things now, and a few big things

VIM

So ConEmu doesn’t show my visual highlights properly. Maybe that’s a yak I can shave but it’s an annoying one.

General Windows UI

Windows is really confused by having a monitor (my external monitor) that I want to run at 100% DPI scaling and the tablet screen at 175%. Some apps start really huge and others really tiny.

The snap / autotiling stuff that Win10 does is pretty good the first time, but then when I unplug my laptop things lose all sense of where they were and I have to set it all back up again. It’s a nice feature but still pretty immature.

Seriously why can’t I drag a window between desktops in expose mode? (Win-Tab)

Presenting from google slides on a second monitor in screen-mirroring mode (totally the default for most people) gives me this weird black border on the other monitor. The other monitor has the proper aspect ratio for the slides so it should be 100% full. It works fine when I’m extending my desktop onto the other screen.. WTF?

Apparently if I’ve gotten the window arrangement wrong while docked when I undock sometimes windows can get into strange places where I can’t find them. I have to detatch my tablet, rotate everything around so that it gets repositioned, then reattach!

Notifications on Win10 are fine. Windows gives them a little more functionality by default but not enough to be game-changing.

Maybe I’m just used to it but I really prefer being able to switch desktops indivudually by monitor on the Mac vs switching entire worlds on Windows.

Everything really does drive you to maximise your windows. I had forgotten how much that was the norm in Windowsland too. I had thought it was just some accident of design but it’s really baked into the UI expectations.

Hardware

External mice work tons better, I really much prefer the tracking velocity and speed on Windows. On the Mac I had given up trying to use an external mouse and went full trackpad. I didn’t mind because the trackpad was more capable, but wow this mouse is being handled well here.

Having a touchscreen is nice after all. I do occassionally touch it to scroll things while I’m in a meeting. At my desk it’s not at hand and my external monitor insn’t a touchscreen so it doesn’t help there. Very small nice to have I guess.

I did spend a session “whiteboarding” on the sketchpad app that comes in the Windows Ink Workspace. It worked well but I could’ve just as easily used an actual whiteboard.

It is pretty annoying to have to press three keys to close a window from the keyboard - F4 is hidden behind a Fn key toggle.. (for Alt-F4)

Battery

Battery life - I worked for 5 hours on battery and my remaining battery was at 32%. Not great to say the least. Most of that time was in excel and google sheets and presenting a google slides deck. That really shouldn’t drain the battery that much. Another potential dealkiller right there.

To be fair I haven’t yet ‘trained’ the battery monitor by running it all the way down so let me do that before you take this battery “test” as gospel.

More at my next post, A Surface Roadblock

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