this post was submitted on 13 Apr 2026
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[–] vrighter@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 1 day ago (3 children)

i have only ever seen one of these family of devices, a literal decade ago

[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

It seemed popular at the time MS was pushing "Windows is a touch screen OS" phase, before remembering that there are pretty much no Windows apps that are useful with touchscreen, and the only reason they are relevant is 30 years of vital old software that businesses can't throw away.

I think the niche it tried to open was as a drawing tablet, basically being a built in Wacom, but an iPad and Procreate do that job so much better.

[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

The surface actually looked pretty cool when it first came out. To me, at least. Times have changed tho, and windows has leapt in the shitter.

[–] Railcar8095@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I saw one around ten years ago. My boss bought it, used it for a week and bought a new mac.

OS was the main issue for him.

[–] spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago

I might get hate for this,but Windows 8 was the perfect operating system for this device. As soon as I upgraded to 10, none of the fun touch screen stuff was there anymore and I stopped using it.

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I used one in school a couple years ago, and I can't deny it was pretty great for it. I like to handwrite my notes, and any math-heavy assignments are way easier to just handwrite, so I used it so all my notes and homework and textbooks could be saved digitally and automatically get backed up to cloud storage. I still use it occasionally as a super light and portable laptop occasionally, but I use a desktop far more often these days.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I had a Surface Pro 4 when I went to university. I always said if it wasn't for the note taking there was no way I would recommend it. It had all kinds of software issues and eventually it just straight died while I was studying one day. I don't think I've ever had a computer die like that, eventually they just get replaced by being obsolete.

[–] AHemlocksLie@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

I never really had any issues with mine. I did have it die after about two years when it just stopped charging and/or turning on, never was quite sure where the issue was. But I bought it refurbished and on a steep discount, so I felt I got my money's worth out of it at least and that that was just an inherent risk of cheap refurbished tech. My only real complaint was that it managed the battery really poorly when I tried to put Linux on it, but it ended up being useful to keep one Windows machine around for the occasional one off use, so even that worked out for me in the long run. As someone who'd prefer to run Linux on everything I can, I have to admit I had like zero problems with it until it died.

But if I had to use one with Windows 11 on it, I'd rather learn to live on my smartphone.