The Surface Laptop 7 is a wonderful little laptop, but ultimately ran into a number of hiccups in the first eight hours of use. Above photo shot with the new iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x camera.
The Surface Laptop 7 is a wonderful little laptop, but ultimately ran into a number of hiccups in the first eight hours of use. Above photo shot with the new iPhone 16 Pro’s 5x camera.

I came into this experiment with the most open-minded approach to Windows in my entire life. I went to bed the first night with a plan: I would be excited to move my work life into this beautiful Surface Laptop and perhaps pick up a fun MacBook Air for anything personal I still wanted to do at home. Likewise, I would use the iPad at the office for the minor personal stuff required while working. I would downgrade my computing life from a hefty 16-inch MacBook Pro to the svelte and less expensive Surface Laptop 7.

That dream was crushed within 3.5 hours the next morning.

The saying goes, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks", which puts the onus on the experienced individual's inability to build a new skill. Perhaps this is partially true. In reality, though, I'm willing to bet it's more about how much information is packed into that old dog's head. Cramming new information in there unnecessarily — when the payoff is but a tad bit more productivity — doesn't come off as a wise bet. And change is stressful, especially when the plate is full.

That's how I felt the next morning. Every minor change required a mental investment to determine a solution, determine whether that solution was palatable and had a long life, and determine whether that solution was better than the solutions I had already developed.

The serious mental gymnastics were wide-ranging. I considered whether I should create keyboard macro shortcuts for oft-used keystrokes. I researched methods to replace my most-used apps on the Mac (like Textsniper, Alfred, Notion, and more). Not only that, but I even found myself down a rabbit hole about how the Apple Studio Display interacts with the Surface Laptop.

The mental overhead this morning was significant. I had a headache by lunch and I had hardly completed a single task for my day.

I'm not sure this old dog was up for learning new tricks.

Miscellaneous Head Scratchers

There were other breakdowns, however. More technical breakdowns. Breakdowns I could possibly overcome, while others I most certainly could not. In no particular order:

  • I raved about the Surface's function key row, and specifically the inclusion of Home/End/Page Up/Page Down across the F9-F12 keys. I still love this idea for a small laptop like this. But the functionality of jumping in and out of media keys is head-scratching. In Excel, if you want to move between worksheets, you need to hold Ctrl and shift between sheets by pressing Page Up or Page Down. But to achieve this, you have to unlock the function row (making the media keys active). If you keep the function row locked, you'll inadvertently create macro sheets, open the Save As dialog box, and more, because you're effectively running a Ctrl + F12 keyboard shortcut. Then, if you want to lock a cell in a formula or jump into the cell to edit the cell by hitting F2, you once again have to re-lock the function row. The absolute focus you have to have to know whether your function key row is in the right mode is off the charts.
  • The dedicated Copilot key is in a really awful spot next to the left arrow key. I accidentally launched Copilot six different times while meeting with a client today. All I wanted to do was some simple cellular math in Excel, and I continually hit the Copilot key rather than the left arrow key when attempting to sum a series of cells. The correct answer is "Josh, you'll get used to it." But when under pressure, I'm not sure if I have the patience for it.
  • The Surface Laptop at one point today completely crashed, on the spot, with no warning of what was coming. I haven't had a complete and utter computer crash in probably 10 full years. I thought I might have caused the crash by installing Beeper (an x86 app), but I was able to get Beeper installed after the reboot. I'm not sure what caused the crash. But that's quite the experience to relive after all these years.
  • Speaking of x86 apps — Apple is better at emulating x86 apps in an emulated Windows 11 environment (via Parallels) than Windows 11 is at emulating x86 in its own native Windows 11 environment. Where I expected our archaic Intuit ProFile tax software to run better on the Surface Laptop, I found my 16-inch MacBook Pro could run circles running ProFile in an emulated Windows 11 environment. I was also hoping for a range of document generation and printing fixes, but alas, the Surface has the same (if not more) errors to work through in ProFile than my MacBook Pro does.
  • The lack of proper messaging apps in Windows 11 is terrible. I really, really hoped I'd be able to send iMessages via Windows Link to Phone, or via Texts.com, or via Beeper. Nope. Not one. Apple's locked-down ecosystem officially bit me in the butt today.
  • Lastly, I was blown away by the poor coverage of Windows for ARM apps out there. Notion Calendar — a newer app than Notion itself — is still x86 and runs like garbage on the Surface Laptop. Notion itself isn't all that much better. Google Drive for Windows? Nope, x86 only, and there's not even an option to emulate it. I thought I'd be able to work through these app shortcomings. But that was no small task.

I have a few thoughts on Copilot relative to the iOS 18.1 Apple Intelligence betas, which I'll explore another day.

Miscellaneous Delights

Of course, it wasn't all negative. Apple really needs to take a few things out of Microsoft's playbook, if you ask me.

  • The smaller trackpad on the Surface Laptop is great. It doesn't feel as responsive as a MacBook trackpad, though it's far better than any non-Apple trackpad I've tried. More importantly, the trackpad's size is ideal — it doesn't cause nearly as many inadvertent taps as the ginormous trackpad on my 16-inch MacBook Pro. The result is that my hand (my left hand in particular) can rest on the body of the laptop when typing, which causes much less strain than the wrist hovering I have to do on the 16-inch MacBook Pro.
  • How I adore having a built-in USB-A port. I know the Apple world loves to hate on old ports. But hopefully, there's a chance for a USB-A return inside Apple's latest fascination with old-fashioned buttons.
  • The Surface Laptop's keyboard is to die for. I want to keep using this computer simply because of the keyboard. I brought it home today to write this out, just so I could use this keyboard. It works so well with the old Surface Numeric Keypad I had kicking around.
  • The Surface's display is glorious. Again, not as good as any of Apple's XDR displays in the MacBook Pros, but I'd love to see this up against a MacBook Air display. I love the 120 Hz motion. I love the vibrant colours. I specifically love the way the Windows 11 rainbow blob wallpaper pops out. Everything about this laptop looks and feels great.
  • The svelte Surface Laptop chassis has quickly reminded me how much I don't care for the gigantic 16-inch MacBook Pro. I love the screen real estate, but I love the tiny, take-anywhere attitude of the Surface more. Assuming this experiment falls apart, I am for sure moving back to a 14-inch MacBook Pro, or something even smaller if possible.

Day One Wrap Up

I went to bed that first night thinking this was the beginning of a new era in my life — operating a Windows laptop for work, seamlessly separating work and personal space between two inexpensive notebooks, and happily skipping down the sidewalk along the way.

I went to bed the next night thinking about whether I should return the machine, or if I can find someone else in the office who would enjoy a new computer. (The second option seems much preferable to me). (Update: I found someone in the office who was more than happy to keep the Surface.)

I never could have imagined the experiment would fall so quickly onto its face like this. And really, I think I could probably trudge through the experiment and find workarounds and solutions for most of the hiccups I faced that first day.

The problem is that this old pupper dog isn't yearning to create new solutions to old problems (and certainly old problems already solved on another operating system). I never calculated the mental hula hoops to work through before the Surface Laptop 7 arrived. Now, after experiencing that first eight hours, I'm fairly certain I'm going to need a truckload of creative energy to ever go down this path again.