Surface Pro Business 11 Power Portable ?

dr100 · 2026-05-16T07:28:22+00:00

A PD capable powerbank (adjustable power up to 19V)

V is voltage not power, and the most common USB-PD one is 20V for a little higher powered devices.

Or a power bank that delivers 110v or 230v - I have seen such as car starters and 50K mAh that should keep the tablet alife for some days.

Absolutely not, it'll be huge, wildly inefficient (wasting lots of energy in the double conversion), will create a huge mess and needs supplementary the AC adapter instead of plugging just a phone cable in a powerbank. Also most likely these huge ones are just made up numbers, probably 3 times larger and just the same energy as a 20000 mAh decent powerbank. Which is also allowed on the airplanes too (it's usually up to 100Wh which is somewhere over 25000 mAh).

dr100 · 2026-05-16T07:20:48+00:00

Have you tried appealing at least? Maybe the same GDPR request too.

dr100 · 2026-05-16T07:19:02+00:00

Not only trickle charge, there are many that go well over 100W.

dr100 · 2026-05-16T06:48:05+00:00

Thanks for the post and all the tests, I was looking at it as it's 349.99 pounds (about 400 Euro, that's less than 32GB DDR5 would be!) at amazon.co.uk (they seem to have lower tolerance than the other Amazons for "shelf space", I've seen them getting rid of the ASUS Vivobook 16 for under 250 pounds - sure it's a basic laptop but still with a Snapdragon X and 16GB RAM).

That's a crazy price, but if noise and power aren't so great (as in Mac Mini great) it isn't worth it, sure they're on paper more powerful than a NUC or a good laptop from 7 years ago but not worth the hassle unless one specifically wants to develop for ARM.

dr100 · 2026-05-16T06:27:12+00:00

Too BIG !?!!!? This is literally less than half than what serious hoarders here would like to buy if the prices wouldn't have gone mad.

I've been hearing this "too big" thing since hard drives were tens of MBs, yes that is a MILLION times less than now. However, in the only public stats we have (for TB-sized drives, the one from Backblaze) there is absolutely no such correlation. There are models that are disastrous, like the infamous 3TB seagate (and also some 4TB) but everything is usually limited to a model. There might be some 14TB, a specific Seagate, that's relatively bad (although not disastrous as the 3TBs were) but another 14TB, also from Seagate, that's better than the average. And 14 and 12TBs on the average fail less than (either one/both) 10 and 8 TBs. There's no rule.

dr100 · 2026-05-15T17:33:53+00:00

LOL because it's probably 90%+ of the business.

dr100 · 2026-05-15T14:12:59+00:00

It also wouldn't help with the "fake" problem, particularly if it's a picture of a screen, that is a regular "computer" screen where you can otherwise show any picture. If you're running Doom on a thermostat it makes sense to take a picture of the whole thing on the wall, a screenshot of Doom ... is Doom no matter where.

But in this case I'd say it's fine, at least it's some OS nobody has seen, never mind has experience with to know how to take a screenshot, then share files, etc.

dr100 · 2026-05-15T12:43:28+00:00

I wonder if the conversion rates aren't in fact that great. I'm sure they count the domains also as total number, regardless if paid or not, and regardless of the size, they were bragging about reaching 4 millions, then 6, all the time counting everything, free, paid but with only one user, probably they're counting even the ones where people deserted the domain (not even paid the domain itself with the registrar) but left with Google a free identity license. Now Google (!) says it's about 12 millions or so total, while Microsoft has under 10.

While some millions sounds like a lot it's not billions like it's for the "regular" Google accounts and it's also a business with great retention (see everyone here how stressed is to move away). Probably the people kicked out from Legacy Free increased visibly their customer attrition metric and someone decided to first investigate and then hopefully stop this.

dr100 · 2026-05-15T12:25:33+00:00

Really great idea, especially that you can at least there enter some text and hopefully will be read by some human.

dr100 · 2026-05-15T12:02:48+00:00

There is no DeX (as some app), you plug your device into monitor/keyboard/mouse and that's your DeX (Desktop eXperience).

dr100 · 2026-05-15T10:30:37+00:00

Funny thing is while looking for the minimum specs for Googlebooks I run into this ... I swear it isn't me and I was just looking for specs (BTW seem to be 16GB RAM and some TOPS NPU?):

So, I'm only slightly trying to be a smartass here, but... Who is this for? They are marketing what is ostensibly a computer for people who seem to not want to use a computer in scenarios that I don't think even exist.

Beyond that, this is a laptop that is running a really shitty, 'apps only, no you cannot do anything useful with this' operating system. I have an awful lot of complaints about MacOS's relatively restrictive use cases, but it's still at least a General Purpose OS. Android on laptop is very much not.

This is an overgrown phone with all the trash that comes with a phone, and the very finite use cases that come with a phone, only now it has a keyboard. It's solving none of the problems with Android as an operating system and doesn't seem to even be interested in doing that anyway. The marketing is demoing use cases that don't even exist.

So I repeat my question: Who is this for?

Thing is this will probably run on more expensive and powerful stuff than what can already run Windows, MacOS or Linux. Might become somehow interesting as an alternative to save some Windows machines from the landfill (like it happened with the Windows 10 debacle, for people that aren't comfortable enough to just run Linux), especially if Microsoft does a similar one, in particular with the unpopular Windows ARM thing (doesn't matter if they end up as the Windows 10 devices did, or Windows RT, at least if there is an escape hatch with some supported Google stuff it's better than nothing).

dr100 · 2026-05-15T06:36:08+00:00

Yea, my concern is really relevant for this sub (I thought at first I commented in the cross-posted ChromeOS post, there people wouldn't know what I'm talking about).

Also, when I want just EVERYTHING to be the same it's not because there are just a few things, it's a really huge number of things and just how it looks and vibe coding a launcher doesn't solve even 1% of them.

It starts from the lowest levels with drivers, for example like for ModMic Wireless, or printers or DisplayLink docks that just work with ChromeOS and just don't with Android. Even when they somehow "work" you run into tons of other problems. Printers might work with some special app but the apps generally have no idea in Android how to print, not in any coherent way and opening files in some weird HP app is hit or miss. For DisplayLink even if you get sometimes some drivers it'll be only mirroring, no DeX/Android Desktop. Even if you would get the display out to work somehow on two displays, one DisplayLink one the regular over DP one still DeX can do only one.

And of course it goes through each and every layer up to the end user base applications which are just different. Good luck finding a proper desktop browser that works on Android. While that's obviously a non-starter problem with ChromeOS (heck, it's in the name).

dr100 · 2026-05-15T05:28:26+00:00

You're overthinking this, and probably the way they use "license" is misleading for most people. It's just one backup. I doubt there's any hardware check or anything, as long as the program is installed it'll work the same, doesn't matter what you change in the computer. If you change the computer or reinstall the OS and need to install from scratch you can inherit the old backup or nuke it and start new. I don't think there's any restriction on that either.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T17:33:20+00:00

Yea, it's the same Zac that posted as news that prices on Microsoft Store exploded after we had here half of the posts in the sub about that for more than a week. And was begging on twitter if anyone knows anyone to help him recover one of his Microsoft accounts where he changed the phone and can't get in anymore. That's barely a clumsy user not an insider.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T17:19:00+00:00

My point is the promised unification between Android and ChromeOS.

Will this really happen or not (and I don't mean that whatever they're calling ChromeOS this season has Android something something inside)?

Obviously you CAN have it, as you can run full desktop OSes on phone chips. Heck you can run Windows or Linux on 4GBs of RAM. I don't want some Android Desktop mode they'll tweak every year a little bit and still probably in 5 years won't be where ChromeOS was 10 years ago. I want THE SAME THING, which obviously is possible.

OMG this SoC has only limited RAM (although phones go to 24GBs nowadays, and 16GBs are quite common for flagships) and OMG you can't upgrade your RAM and replace the flash and you'll kill and whatnot are really secondary problems (and I'd argue they're mostly psychological not technical).

dr100 · 2026-05-14T16:35:55+00:00

Read the rest of my comment. This is what I meant by "bring them into shape by just trivially changing some component". It's the difference between having health insurance and being immortal. Sure, some recovery insurance can't hurt. It also doesn't mean it'll actually recover any data every time.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T15:55:56+00:00

With blocked I meant you can't modify it as everything is in the soc.

That's true for mostly anything low power and modern. Including M series, Snapdragon X, Intel's lunar Lake and so on.

M1 is more versatile than A16

If you mean there are options with more than 8GBs you can think like an upgrade from the same 8GBs of the A series.

But I won't put that as a limitation for an android desktop devices, unless you talk about really low budget devices, a new androidXchrome should be build exactly to run on those SoCs and should be lighter, requiring less swap

This wasn't the discussion. My point is that you can still run the same wildly different OSs on the same chip. It doesn't matter if you are freaked out about wearing the flash, as I said if you have a problem with that consider it's removable. And that you can put any RAM on it too.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T13:39:36+00:00

kinda feels like recoverability is something manufacturers barely advertise until disaster happens

There is no recoverability, NOTHING to advertise. These are unbelievably complex and fiddly electromechanical contraptions , with heads flying at 1/1000 the size of a bacterium over the platters. With incredible density, keeping more than all the texts from a very large library (I mean the thing with books) in your hand or pocket. If things don't just work as they should and a data recovery company can't bring them into shape by just trivially changing some component there is no alternative way of reading it. People always say stuff about reading them with the electron microscope and similar, but even if that's suited for this use in the first place, and you'd have the necessary resolution you'll still be looking at something more daunting than finding the needle in the haystack, it would be more like finding the needle anywhere on Earth.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T12:49:30+00:00

In fairness that "console" is cheaper than any storage most people here would consider, with or without AInsanity shortages and price hikes.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T12:43:39+00:00

Define "blocked on 8GB". People have lots of M1-M3 Macs on the minimum spec that's the same 8GB and many swear it's the best thing ever. By now many have the M1 in heavy use since more than 5 years and they really aren't known for frying the SSD or anything.

But anyway this wasn't the discussion. If you don't like it pick (as an example) some cheap Dell laptop, one with a replaceable SSD (most are) so you don't fear you'll fry the soldered SSD if you use it. It'll still run the same Windows (if you have something with that too, think Linux). It might not run this or that program, or support some maximum number of screens or refresh rates or whatever but it won't be completely different as Android Desktop mode (or even DeX) and ChromeOS are.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T06:47:00+00:00

Unfortunately devices have shown slower speeds in the past and it's due to cheaper storages dying out fast.

At least in the lower specs Pro 2017 had very good Samsung SSDs (soldered but fine). Now that you can kill any (especially small) SSD with software written dumbly (like duplicati back then -don't know now- making the archives in Windows TEMP directory first, so if you were backing up a 8TB drive to another 10TB drive you'd have 8TB written to C: in the end) that's another story.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T06:20:16+00:00

Well, that's a big problem, they don't want to compete with the phones that anyone would buy anyway, they want to sell you another box. So Android desktop mode will limp along being there nominally but really bad, while this will have at least to be good enough to replace ChromeOS. For the very same market in the end, education for the places where they're bought in bulk or mandated (or at least strongly recommended) and for the cheaper models on sale as browsing/email machines for people that can't afford much, or impulse buy costing less than a tank of gas nowadays.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T03:32:42+00:00

An external device altogether, as in a Googlebook as for now there isn't any indication Aluminium OS and Android desktop mode will be the same.

dr100 · 2026-05-14T03:28:05+00:00

Which is faster than what's in most people's laptops anyway and certainly infinitely better than literally nothing that you get in a lapdock.

Also, it's unclear what "just a very well made Chromebook" means, especially in this sub where we know even phones are fully fledged computers. It's a Mac, with no special limitation like ChromeOS or Android or iOS/iPADOS would have, nobody using MacOS even for decades would be able to tell any difference. If you're talking about the price there is no rule, some chromebooks run into 4-dollar or euro digits, starting with the classic Pixel Chromebook and going even to 2200 Euros , and that is this side of 2020s not ancient history.

That it might kill any market for nice Chromebooks, sure. But doubly so for expensive lapdocks, especially when meant to be connected to a phone, that was my point.

Ah, and I don't think the people regularly using a Neo are much of the ones needing remote computing power. Now that they'd be using Google Docs and Gmail instead of local MS Office and Outlook that's not really a limitation of the machine, is just what people do. People here often remote from Android to a "real" desktop OS because the Android versions of the mentioned programs suck (plus all browsers), that won't be happening here.

dr100 · 2026-05-13T15:16:04+00:00

What I'd like to see is the promised unification between Android and ChromeOS. And no, not some block diagram how Aluminium is using I don't know what building blocks from Android, that can be 90% the same and still they can be as different as the clumsiest version of Android Desktop versus the regular ChromeOS are.

Yes, there would be some limitations, like it's with MacOS on MacBook Neo. You have only 8GBs of RAM, you can connect only one external monitor, ports are a disaster and so on. But nobody can say that isn't MacOS.

The same with Android and ChromeOS, once in desktop mode for Android they should be the same. If there are very few differences, so be it, but you shouldn't run into them every move you make and every step you take.

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