8GB memory, 256GB storage

Microsoft announced the new Surface Pro 10. I know people who really love the Surface lineup and I have to admit most devices look pretty good.

If I could somehow use Windows without being constantly annoyed I might actually have considered one for travel. Not having a laptop and iPad with me is a compelling enough reason and I do not trust Apple to ever make this happen. I even got a Surface Go 3 in my drawer as I sometimes needed it to test something on Windows on actual hardware.

The base model comes with 8GB memory and 256GB storage. Do these numbers sound familiar? Apple got a lot of flak for "still" offering the MacBook Air base model with these specs. And I mean a lot. Guess what the base model of the Surface Pro 10 offers. 8GB memory and 256GB storage.

The big difference? The Surface is $100 more expensive. If you want a keyboard the price goes up an additional $140. And this is the cheapest one, not the one that feels good or the one with a pen. While the Intel chip on paper seems capable, the M3 still seems to have an edge when it comes to performance per watt and battery runtime. Especially because the M3 will not be busy rendering Candy Crush ads in background.

There are users who are likely happy with 8GB memory and 256GB memory - at least unified memory seems to make the system perfectly usable for casual and office use. The "Pro" label does not mean anything anymore in 2024. Guess what the base specs for an Lenovo ThinkPad E14 Gen 4 are. (Not linking this one as Lenovos online store is a mystery box of constantly changing deals)

Maybe, just maybe, when judging companies and their product line-ups we should not assume everyone runs 500 Chrome tabs and 15 Docker containers while on a plane for 20 hours. I still would love to see a slight increased base spec. It would help with a longer lifetime for a device. But this would mean either less upgrade pricing or a higher base price when appearing in "starts from" pricing tables, both not favourable for companies.