No more support from Microsoft.
Also kind of hard for me to imagine spending over $2K for what equates to a mid-to-high tier of gaming laptop hardware from over five years ago…
The 8th gen Intel chip is definitely more geared to mobile than a desktop, in addition to its age - We have literally been looking at the new Intel Core Ultra chips that came out this last month, which would be the equivalent of a “15th gen” in the sense of how the CPU architectures have developed. Not new, but was decent in laptops six years back. And the RAM is decent; Not bad for the class and age.
While the big 28” display is absolutely stunning in person, the graphics are also quite dated. Nvidia’s GTX 1060 was a great mid-range graphics card for gaming in 2018-2019. And while I will be one of the first to readily admit that this is NOT a gaming machine, it is a graphics machine, intended for creative use, with various software titles that will leverage all of the graphics horsepower available. Since that point, we have the GTX 1660/RTX 2060 which started a huge paradigm shift, a big performance jump in the RTX 3060, and then we have a somewhat “meh” move to the RTX 4060… But as little excitement as I feel about the current equivalent, it is still a massive jump in performance, optimizations for software, and efficiency, compared to the extremely dated hardware on offer.
I can’t dunk too hard on the idea that Microsoft presented here, because I have used one of these once, and it was genuinely amazing. But for this price, and this many years later, I simply don’t know to whom I could recommend this without a laundry list of caveats. If you truly feel like you could benefit, buy ANYTHING more modern, including a Minisforum or Beelink micro unit, and pair it with an overpriced (but also unmatched) Wacom Cintiq high resolution display, and you’ll still come off better, in most cases. Don’t be too tempted by the stunning design, or the absolutely glorious display, which has some of the best feeling that I’ve ever encountered for a large format digital art surface - It simply doesn’t fly for me this many years down the road.