4 years with a Surface Book. 4 months with its successor, the MacBook.

Finally, 4 months ago, the new MacBook was on my desk. To conclude my experience with the Surface Book, a small comparison of the two systems. It should be said in advance that there is no such thing as the perfect laptop. Perhaps the last 3 posts gave the impression that a MacBook is the measure of all things and has an almost sacrosanct status with me. Far from it, but it is clearly the better compromise compared to its Microsoft predecessor. Let’s jump in.

One of the last Intel-MacBook-Mohicans

I deliberately ordered another of probably the last MacBooks with Intel processors, because I obviously didn’t want to miss the benefits of the Windows world. Locked up in Parallels, Windows 10 – disconnected from the rest of the MacBook – is allowed to lead a merry existence on the computer. This crutch became necessary because my declared favorite program, Dragon NaturallySpeaking, doesn’t run on the Mac.

I also didn’t feel like porting all my Access databases to an OS X solution. The virtual machine worked great, but was a big resource hog. Until the week before last, in 2 consecutive lecture blocks (3 hours, mostly PowerPoint presentations), a 100% charged battery was completely drained.

After some analysis, I had identified the culprit and since then I have had enough battery life for a full day of lectures. Another solution that is good for even better battery life: I present my lectures outside the virtual machine using Keynote. Now I have almost the excellent battery runtime of the Surface.

Summary MacBook vs. Surface Book

The quality of the MacBook is undeniably excellent, and the dimensions and weight are much more portable compared to the clunky Surface Book.

So far there have been no unpleasant surprises, I’ll hold off updating to Monterey for a few more months. We’ll see how the device performs in the next few years. Probably my last work notebook. All in all the better compromise.