Desktop Tourism My 20-year-old son is an aspiring athlete who spends a lot of time in the gym and thinks nothing of lifting 100 kilograms in various directions. So I was a little surprised when I handed him Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio and he declared it uncomfortably heavy.
At 1.8kg it's certainly not among today's lighter laptops. That matters, because the device's big design selling point is a split along the rear of its screen that lets it sit at an angle that covers the keyboard and places its touch-sensitive surface in a comfortable position for prodding with a pen. The screen can also fold completely flat to allow the laptop to serve as a tablet.
Below is a .GIF to show that all in action.
The hinges that make the above possible swing wonderfully well and the laptop – which was announced in September – clicks into each position nicely … on the way down. It's less easy to put the screen back into clamshell configuration after using it in tablet mode.
Doing so exposes one of the machine's worst features: a multitude of sharp edges that make it hard to physically grasp.
Most laptops use a tapered, wedge-like shape with rounded edges where it matters: where one rests one's wrists. The Surface Laptop Studio instead cuts away almost immediately, leaving the base looking like a sharp-edged rectangular block with a keyboard sat on top. Microsoft has done this to accommodate a magnetic contact along the side that holds and charges the Surface Pen it offers for pen-based input, and maybe to accommodate the machine's vents. Microsoft didn't provide me with a pen so I couldn't test if that works well.
But I did use the machine for other duties and did not enjoy the experience because its two sets of edges have not been gently rounded. Instead they're crisp enough that I found the top one cut into my wrists when typing. Handling the machine is uncomfortable and a little fraught. Combined with its weight, it just isn't natural to consider using it as a tablet.
It's as if Microsoft has at some point forgotten that laptops – and this one in particular – are made to be handled. Between the weight and the sharp edges, it is hard to recommend this machine to anyone for its intended purpose of hands-on content creation. Especially if you do not want your wrists cut into.
Microsoft's beauty shot of the Surface Laptop Studio … Note the hard edges
Windows 11 doesn't help. It's nicely unobtrusive in desktop mode but has dropped Windows 10's meek tablet mode. The notion that desktop-sized icons designed for use with a mouse translate to touch-screens for prodding with fingers is bafflingly counterintuitive.
Battery life of a modest four and one quarter hours through my normal use was the final nail in the coffin.
The laptop offers other annoyances, which start as soon as you turn it on. The camera is not very good at facilitating Microsoft's preferred facial biometric for logins. I found I needed to be within 30cm of the camera to make it work reliably for authentication – an inconvenience when I set the machine to one side and connected it to an external monitor.
The absence of a USB-A slot is regrettable, because it means the machine ignores users' existing peripherals and for many will force the purchase of a USB-C dongle. My two such dongles – which have done years of loyal and uninterrupted duty – proved unreliable when using this device.
None of my previous Desktop Tourism adventures produced the same instability in the cheap and cheerful USB-C dongles I buy from Amazon.
Desktop tourism? PCs and alternative devices have increasingly diversified into myriad and marvelous forms, so I've decided that in 2022 I'll use a different one each month and share the experience. This article is the latest part in this series of mini-reviews.
Microsoft persists in offering its own fin-like power connector – an option I've found frustratingly easy to knock out accidentally on previous Surface devices. Thankfully both USB-C slots can accept power input, so you won't be tied to Microsoft power packs. I found myself appreciating that the Surface charger's magnetic coupling could one day save the laptop, but I also adore the ubiquity of USB-C charging. Microsoft's probably got the balance right by offering both – and perhaps showed up USB-C as more likely to lead to a laptop's untimely demise.
The machine is pleasingly swift, as you'd expect from a 10nm four-core 11th-gen Intel Core i7-11370H processor that can touch 3.3GHz, plus an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 GPU and 32GB of RAM.
I ran my usual semi-torturous test – downscaling a five-minute 4K video to 1080p using Handbrake – and the machine did the job in 4 minutes, 29 seconds. In an Ubuntu virtual machine under VMware Workstation Pro, again using Handbrake, the job took 12 minutes and eleven seconds.
Those times compare favorably to the Core i9-powered ASUS machine that kicked off the Desktop Tourism adventure and reflect the fact this laptop performs very nicely – if you don't want to carry or draw on it.
The 2400x1600, 14.4-inch screen renders colors with pleasing precision. The camera turns on quickly and handles low light well. I enjoyed the speakers and found the keyboard was not an impediment. The large haptic touchpad does everything such devices ought.
Overall the Surface Laptop Studio was a pleasure to use as an everyday machine. But it was designed to offer convenient and cunning access to pen computing, not pleasingly speedy productivity apps. Because it misses the brief, it's hard to recommend the machine. But if your budget stretches to $1,400 and you want a fine-looking laptop that will build muscle and is sharp in unusual ways, this machine will do a job. ®
Microsoft has dropped a preview of its next batch of Windows fixes, slipping a resolution for broken Wi-Fi hotspots in among the goodies.
The release – KB5014668 for Windows 11 – addresses the Wi-Fi hotpot functionality broken in June's patch Tuesday alongside some less necessary features like "search highlights," which "present notable and interesting moments of what's special about each day."
KB5014697, which was released on June 14 for Windows 11, had a selection of issues. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail and connecting to a Windows device acting as a hotspot wouldn't always work. The only fix was to roll back the patch or disable the Wi-Fi hotspot feature.
Microsoft has accidentally turned off its controversial hardware compatibility check, thus offering Windows 11 to computers not on the list.
Windows 11 does not install on computers that lack a recent TPM-equipped CPU, although there are exceptions (notably for some of Microsoft's own hardware, which failed to make the cut in the original list). It is possible to circumvent this limitation, although there is no guarantee that a future version of Windows 11 won't slam the door permanently.
However, users noted overnight that that PCs on the Windows Insider Release Preview ring without a qualifying CPU were offered the update without the usual terse rejection message.
Updated Microsoft's latest set of Windows patches are causing problems for users.
Windows 10 and 11 are affected, with both experiencing similar issues (although the latter seems to be suffering a little more).
KB5014697, released on June 14 for Windows 11, addresses a number of issues, but the known issues list has also been growing. Some .NET Framework 3.5 apps might fail to open (if using Windows Communication Foundation or Windows Workflow component) and the Wi-Fi hotspot features appears broken.
The second coming of Windows 11 is almost upon us. Is it worth chancing an upgrade? We took a look at the latest release preview of 2022's take on Microsoft's flagship operating system.
Windows 11 launched in October 2021 with some controversial changes. The first was a considerably reduced list of compatible hardware (compared to its predecessor, Windows 10). The second was a redesigned user interface that seemed pretty much guaranteed to enrage customers still smarting from the Start Menu fiasco of Windows 8 and 8.1.
But hey, the window corners were rounded (sometimes) and you didn't really care about the fact that a right-click on the taskbar no longer gave a task manager options, did you?
If Windows Autopatch arrives in July as planned, some of you will be able to say goodbye to Patch Tuesday.
Windows Autopatch formed part of Microsoft's April announcements on updates to the company's Windows-in-the-cloud product. The tech was in public preview since May.
Aimed at enterprise users running Windows 10 and 11, Autopatch can, in theory, be used to replace the traditional Patch Tuesday to which administrators have become accustomed over the years. A small set of devices will get the patches first before Autopatch moves on to gradually larger sets, gated by checks to ensure that nothing breaks.
Updated Two security vendors – Orca Security and Tenable – have accused Microsoft of unnecessarily putting customers' data and cloud environments at risk by taking far too long to fix critical vulnerabilities in Azure.
In a blog published today, Orca Security researcher Tzah Pahima claimed it took Microsoft several months to fully resolve a security flaw in Azure's Synapse Analytics that he discovered in January.
And in a separate blog published on Monday, Tenable CEO Amit Yoran called out Redmond for its lack of response to – and transparency around – two other vulnerabilities that could be exploited by anyone using Azure Synapse.
Microsoft has treated some of the courageous Dev Channel crew of Windows Insiders to the long-awaited tabbed File Explorer.
"We are beginning to roll this feature out, so it isn't available to all Insiders in the Dev Channel just yet," the software giant said.
The Register was one of the lucky ones and we have to commend Microsoft on the implementation (overdue as it is). The purpose of the functionality is to allow users to work on more than one location at a time in File Explorer via tabs in the title bar.
Microsoft has added a certification to augment the tired eyes and haunted expressions of Exchange support engineers.
The "Microsoft 365 Certified: Exchange Online Support Engineer Specialty certification" was unveiled yesterday and requires you to pass the "MS-220: Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Online" exam.
The next major version of Windows 11 is drawing near with the code hitting the Insider Release Preview Channel.
Build 22621, which has been floating around the Beta Channel since May 11, arrived last night.
Back in May, Microsoft noted that the disappearance of the watermark from the desktop "doesn't mean we're done." However, its arrival in the Release Preview Channel means that, fixes aside, it is pretty much feature-complete and ready to roll.
Microsoft is extending the Defender brand with a version aimed at families and individuals.
"Defender" has been the company's name of choice for its anti-malware platform for years. Microsoft Defender for individuals, available for Microsoft 365 Personal and Family subscribers, is a cross-platform application, encompassing macOS, iOS, and Android devices and extending "the protection already built into Windows Security beyond your PC."
The system comprises a dashboard showing the status of linked devices as well as alerts and suggestions.
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