[Hardware Review] It's been a Haswell Summer... Haswell/Harris Beach Intel SDS Ultrabook Review - Part 3

Are you all tired of it yet? Have you heard it often enough already? Well too bad!

Haswell is Battery Love! MUHAHAhahahahaha....

There! I said it again...

If you've been following these reviews, you'll know that Intel has given me the chance to review a reference model Intel Ultrabook, built around their new 4th gen chipset, aka Haswell. I'm sure you've seen the reviews from others who had this same opportunity, and they all seem to say the same thing.. battery, battery, battery, OMG the battery life... (Oh and the screen is pretty awesome, the number of devices are cool and it's pretty darn light for all of it's power too)

I've been using the Ultrabook as my primary travel device for most of the summer, and what it's done is convince me that when someone releases a consumer grade Haswell ultrabook, I'm buying. Dell recently announced their new XPS series, "Dell announces new tablets and XPS laptops", and the new XPS15 looks like a great box for me. Sure that box is not going to be as light as this Intel, but I'll give up a few pounds for all the extra capabilities... :)

"But Greg, don't you get to keep that Intel Ultrabook? (You lucky dog you!)"

Yeah, yeah I do. But remember, this is not a consumer grade notebook. It's a bleeding edge, engineering reference design. And so there's just some things about it that don't really work well for me. For example, in my last post I whined about the keyboard. Weeks later, well I still dislike it. There's also some other weird things going on with it. When I first got it, the power settings were wonky. There was only a "Balanced" choice and no "Intel" power setting items.

The I install VS 2013 and auto-magically, I've got exactly what I expect in my power settings. At first I wasn't sure what the heck was going on. I thought there was some driver thing or other weirdness. Then finally I had pwop moment (that's the sound of an open palm smacking your forehead). VS 2013 warned me it was installing Hyper-V... Could that be it? Hyper-V? I sure could be... Well ,yep, it sure was and it's repeatable. With Hyper-V installed I get the kind of power settings I expect, BUT I don't get the sleep states that make Haswell shine. With Hyper-V removed, we're back to the "weird" power state (but I get sleep back). So now I'm wondering if it's a BIOS (or whatever it's called) thing.

What does the power stuff look like? Here's a snap of it today, with hyper-v installed, in it's normal, all is well, what you'd expect, state. And can you dig that remaining estimate?

 

And that's pretty much real world usage. I unplug at home use it all day for blogging, feed reading and music streaming and by the end of the day I'm usually at about 10% left. Yep, all day usage. :). BTW, I had whined (yeah, I know I do that allot) that there was something weird going on with the XBox Music app? Where it would stream the first song and then stop after 1 second of the next? Well it's not doing that any more either... The Music app seems to now work as expected. Weird. Anyway, back to the battery story...

Speaking of power settings, here's a snap of those "Intel" settings I was talking about.

With Hyper-v removed (i.e. it's original delivery state)...

So you can see why that kind difference freaks me out a little...?

"GREG, we get it! Enough with the battery and power stuff already!"

Got it, but I'm not done whining yet. For a real box, one that's maybe not a desktop replacement, but one that's good enough for 90%, I need more than 128GB drive space and 4GB of RAM. That's just not going to cut it long term (Oh and I said how much the keyboard layout bugs me? ;)

Yet, with that whining, I'm still sold on this chipset. I'm still sold that even though I have a 3rd gen notebook, that upgrading in this upgrade cycle is well worth it. That I'm going to pony up my own funds to upgrade. That while there's allot that bugs me about this ultrabook, when I go back to my 3rd gen, I miss a good deal about the ultrabook.

Why? It's the combination of everything in this cycle. The sum is greater than... and all that.

• First, the Haswell chipset. Enough said about that already.
• The display. The 1920 x 1080, High DPI display and resolution is really nice.
• The weight. The weight difference between the ultrabook and my 3rd gen, well there's really no comparison.
• Touch laptops. I loving having a touchscreen on my laptop. It's a perfect additional/alternate input method. Some things are just SO much easier when you can just reach out and...
• Windows 8.1. Windows 8.1 brings it all together and binds it into a great package.

In the end, I'm very impressed in the potential and am looking forward to picking up a commercial grade Haswell notebook in the very near future...

 

Well that's about it. I'd like to thank Developer Media and Intel for giving me this opportunity to get an early glimpse into the future, to get some great hands on time with Haswell. Doh! That should have been one of my post titles, "Hands On with Haswell". Oh, oh maybe even better, "Haswell is swell!" Or maybe... [many more really lame attempts at post titles deleted... you get the idea]

Last, but not least, I'd like to thank you. With you, doing these posts, and blogging in general, would just be silly. It's you, the reader, your comments, support and feedback that make this all worth it.

 

Post table of contents:

• Part 0 - "Haswell is coming...", July 20
• Part 1 - "Hello Haswell" - Unboxing and initial impressions, July 28
• Part 2 - "Life with Haswell"  - A couple week with Haswell, September 15
• Part 3 - "It's been a Haswell Summer", October 13 [This Post]

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

[Hardware Review] Life with Haswell... Haswell/Harris Beach Intel SDS Ultrabook Review - Part 2

"So Greg, how's life with Haswell been?"

"Pretty Sweet! (Mostly)"

I've been given an opportunity to review the latest and greatest Intel chipset, Haswell, in the form of a engineering reference ultrabook from Intel. As I said in my previous post in this series, "Hello Haswell" , in order to try to provide a good review, I've been living with the notebook as a primary, as a machine I use through out the day, doing pretty much everything in my personal digital live.

I've now been using it for some weeks now, and besides a few whines and missteps, I'm still as wow'd as I was last time. In short, while still in my honeymoon period, the shiny has not come off the box...

Wow Factors:

Battery Life

You all are probably tired of hearing this, "Batt, batt, batt, omg Haswell is batt nirvana!" Well, it kind of is. At least for now, it's the high water mark. You can get all day usage from a pretty fully powering box. Sure, if you're playing a uber game, or watching videos non-stop, you won't get all day usage, but if you're a "normal" user you really can get all day usage.

Windows 8.1

Windows 8.1 really shines. It shines on about any box for that matter. If you're not concerned about any driver issues and your running Windows 8 now, you should upgrade as soon as you can...

High DPI Displays

In a word, the display is pretty awesome. Like almost as good as the batter life awesome...

Touch

Having touch as an additional input method is hard to live without. You don't use all the time, but when you do, it's nice. There's just some things that are easier and more intuitive with touch. As I think Intel said recently, touch is going to be everywhere really soon. In a few years we're going to look back on pre-touch computer devices and wonder how we lived with just two human to computer interfaces.

BIOS (or UEFI or whatever it's called these days...) Settings

Every box I've owned in the past has been a consumer or business device. I've never had or built an unlocked, open BIOS/hardware settings device before. Since many of you might not of either, I've grabbed pictures of most of the settings screens. The number of ways I can screw up these settings and my device is mind boggling... :P

Whine Points:

Keyboard Layout.

I really dislike the arrow/Home/End/Page key combinations. Having to hit the FN key to access Home/End/Page keys kind of bytes.

App's that don't handle High DPI's

Seems a few Desktop app's don't scale well when running on higher DPI settings. For example, Skype's Contact list looks a little funny, not scaling the items bigger.

Keyboard Backlighting

The Keyboard backlighting seems to freak out a little when the machine goes to sleep. It flashes, flickers and finally turns off. I thought I was going crazy for a while as I'd only catch this on the corner of my eye... Took a while to actually catch it in the act (which I recorded of course)

Non-production hardware

This hardware is pretty bleeding edge. It's not production hardware, it's a engineering sample/reference and so there's some pain involved in using it. Examples? I'm writing this on my third device. The first one got into some kind of weird state where the F2/F7 keys on the keyboard stopped working when in BIOS mode. They worked okay when Windows actually booted, but not before. Weird. The second device, powered on once, I activated it, it said it couldn't find the battery. So, being me, I unplugged it and sure enough, it turned off. And that was the last time that one ever powered on. This third device seems to be working okay. There's a few things I noticed that concern me a little (there's no "Intel" power setting in the Power config settings, where there were on the first device, before it went wonky. Also the fan, which is a documented known issue, cycles up and down seemingly randomly, and can be a little loud when doing so. Finally, something that's also weird, in the XBox Music app, I can never get any second song to play. The first plays fine, sounds great, but the second stops after one seconds. And I've seen this on both devices... Weird.

What am I not using?

• Mobile SIM
• NFC
• Accelerometer
• GPS

 

Summary

Windows 8.1 and Haswell are a great match. The combination of the battery life and hardware performance, along with the features of Windows 8.1 is could make this holiday season interesting. Enough to stave off the "death of the PC?" Can't say that, but [insert some kind of kicking the life support machines into a higher gear, getting CPR from a super model, witty comment here]

If you are thinking about getting a high'ish end system soon, wait for a Haswell based one.

Since I'm a dev (or at least like to play one during the day) in the next post I'll cover some of the code samples that came in the box, that exercise some of the features of this Ultrabook.

 

Here's the planned post schedule:

• Part 0 - "Haswell is coming...", July 20
• Part 1 - "Hello Haswell" - Unboxing and initial impressions, July 28
• Part 2 - "Life with Haswell"  - A couple week with Haswell, September 15  [This Post]
• Part 3 - "It's been a Haswell Summer", October 13

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.

[Hardware Review] Hello Haswell... Haswell/Harris Beach Intel SDS Ultrabook Review - Part 1

As I mentioned in the first post, "Haswell is coming...", I've been given an opportunity to review the latest and greatest Intel chipset, Haswell, in the form of a engineering reference ultrabook from Intel. Today I'm going to share the unboxing and my initial impressions (hint, 95% positive, 5% whines). Next post I'll share the spec's and more real world using impressions...

This is the first time I've done this kind of thing, so please bear with me if I'm over doing it a bit. :)

The Unboxing

For people like us, you and me, is there anything better than that first unboxing of your latest geek treasure? (okay maybe puppies, ice cream and rainbows, but you get the idea) It's like Christmas, birthdays and finding a lost treasure all rolled into one brown box.

Yeah, I know a box! Like, wow! Oh what's inside the box? I bet you can't guess!

A box! Ahhh, but it's a shiny cool Ultrabook box.

Opening the box made me laugh. You know those cards that play a sound when you open them?

Yep, you guessed it. On opening this box I was greeted with the Intel jingle. At first I thought the ultrabook had turned on and it was a jingle on boot. Nope, just a jingling box... lol

(The audio is there, it's just really low... Sorry about that...)

Here's the rest of the stuff in the box,

Those little cable adapters? Mini HDMI to Full and to VGA and a USB to Ethernet.

"Wait, Greg, that isn't the power brick is it? That's like the size of a deck of cards!"

Yep, that's it. Maybe it's just me, but this is the smallest power brick I've ever seen for a notebook.

So how big is this thing? Let's compare it to a Surface Pro

Surface Pro, without cover on the left, Ultrabook on the right. Yeah, you're seeing it right, they are about the same thickness. Length/width, as you would expect the ultrabook is bigger.

Weight? The Ultrabook is almost the same.

Finally, first boot!

Initial Impressions

To set a basic baseline, my impressions and comparisons will be between this ultrabook against my current primary personal notebook, an Alienware M11xR3 (which I've upgraded to 16GB RAM & 512GB SSD). While the M11 is pretty portable, it's not ultraportable nor touch enabled, so for portability/touch I'll also be comparing against the Surface Pro too.

To make this a fair review, I'll be using this Ultrabook as my new primary personal device for the next month. And of course, my comments will be personal and subjective...

Okay, we good? Got it? We on the same sheet of music now? Good!

Initial impressions... In a word, wow.

The screen is awesome. The performance is pretty much blinding. The battery life is OMG...

Yesterday, I unplugged as I left from work, used the notebook throughout the day, keeping it awake for most of the time and when I got home 12 hours later the power as at 24%. I want to repeat this, but I've not seen a device this size with that kind of battery life.

I think this will give you a feel for the battery life I am seeing.

After using the Ultrabook for hours today, installing stuff like the Windows Phone 8 SDK, writing a number of blog posts, etc, at 48% power, I have an estimate 5 hours left of battery (my M11 get's maybe 3-4 hours total)

Oh it's not perfect (here comes the whines). 4GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, which I don't know if they are upgradable (but doubt it) and fan that's irritating in a quiet room. It's erratic in that it speeds up/down, on/off seemingly randomly (but again, you only really hear it in a quiet room).

Summary

In short, it seems the promise of Haswell, with it's ground changing battery life, is going to be fulfilled. Thinking about a Surface Pro with Haswell makes me drool... :)

 

Here's the planned post schedule:

• Part 0 - "Haswell is coming...", July 20
• Part 1 - "Hello Haswell" - Unboxing and initial impressions, July 28 [This Post]
• Part 2 - "Life with Haswell"  - A couple week with Haswell, September 15
• Part 3 - "It's been a Haswell Summer", October 13

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received one or more of the products or services mentioned above for free in the hope that I would mention it on my blog. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe my readers will enjoy. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.