I find the MBA vs Surface Pro 2 comparison to be more than slightly misleading:
>The screen is somewhat lower resolution
No, 1920x1080 isn't only somewhat higher than 1366x768, it's 1.97 times the number of pixels and the panel is PLS unlike the TN in the MBA. The display is the component that eats up the battery the most when doing things like Wi-Fi browsing, even the battery life of the MBA scales heavily with the level of brightness.
>not touch capable
It also has an another, separate layer for the Wacom digitizer, it has to be constantly emitting an electromagnetic field, which does take its toll on power consumption.
>i5-4200u CPU
It's i5-4250U, with a considerably lower base clock (1.3GHz vs 1.6GHz).
Another fact that all the recent articles about the Surface Pro 2 fail to mention, but isn't really relevant to the what the article is about, is that, with the Power Cover that was announced at the Surface keynote, it should be able to get 11.45 hours of Wi-Fi browsing if you extrapolate the results from the Anandtech benchmark, or about 12.9 hours if you do it with the 7:33 hours it got on The Verge review. This does bring the weight and thickness of the device above the MBA though.
Indeed: it is a known fact that Apple gets custom exclusive low-clocked CPUs from Intel. Apple's chips are closer to "Y" class Intel Chips, which are designed for exceptionally long battery life at cost to performance.
Overall, I think the better screen, Wacom Digitizer, and faster CPU will all add up to the difference between the Surface2 and MBA.
GMA 3600 sounds like a weird choice for a laptop running GNU/Linux, the drivers for it are abysmal. The CPU is a weird choice altogether, considering it has a 10W TDP. I think a Celeron 807UE would be a better choice, the TDP is the same and the performance should be close to double, with a significantly better GPU that also has a much better GNU/Linux drivers. The built-in 4G LTE and GPS are nice features though.
>We also believe the race for ever higher resolution has become a distraction. Beyond 300ppi you’re adding overhead rather than improving display clarity.
This isn't completely true, higher PPI improves readability (and looks) of the text that's written using more complex characters like Chinese Hanzi or Japanese Kanji even beyond that line at smaller distances. Here's an image that illustrates this:
I don't read Chinese on my phone, but I do care about gaming and battery life. In both those cases, an equivalent 720p phone will outperform a 1080p phone. Shuttleworth is making the right trade-off in this case.
More than 10 years after the IBM T220/T221 came out, but the IBM monitor still has a significantly bigger resolution (3840x2400) and PPI (203.98 vs 139.56).
Yes but the problem is its low refresh rate. If you're looking at static images, I'm sure it will do great, but if you are trying to watch a movie, play a game, or do anything that has fast motion, you won't have a good time.
60 fps, but the current drivers for both AMD and Nvidia (still in development) make you connect 2 cables and essentially treat it like 2 1920x2160 displays from what I read.
8ms is the panel switch rate, not the same as the slow refresh rate of the Lenovo due to the bottleneck in the interconnect with the GPU (4 DVI-channels and 41 Hz refresh, when the panel surly did 60 Hz). It is a massive datarate, especially for a 12 year old system.
