Review of Surface Laptop 7

Since my Surface Laptop 7 landed on my porch at 5 a.m. this morning, I thought I'd report on a few things. This is the 13-inch X Plus version. I haven't done a battery test yet, so will come back to add that in, as well as longer-term usage observations. This is just about day 1 setup, because it was not a great day.

Keys

The big things to note out of the box are these: 1. Where the Insert key should be, next to Delete, they've put the power button. This will be fun when I put my computer to sleep whenever I try to check the time. Hold for three seconds for a "swipe to power off" screen, which I could only get to log me out, or hold down for 10 seconds to do a cold force shutdown. 2. There's no right control key. That's the Copilot key. I knew that was the case, but didn't know remapping it to control wasn't an option in settings. You can do this by downloading the not-fully-baked-yet Windows PowerToys suite or by using the Sharpkeys utility from RandyRants, which is what I did (I've used SharpKeys on all my computers for 20 years). More on this below. 3. As usual, the native function key functions are hardware things like display brightness, etc. But on this machine, the Fn key locks to one set of functions or the other--hardware or standard function keys--so one doesn't need to use a key combination. Since NVDA doesn't report the status of the F-lock key or the hardware keys, though, this is all confusing to use with NVDA. The only hardware functions of use to me are the volume keys and media controls. Narrator, meanwhile, reports everything just fine. The good news is that, even after a reboot, the F-lock stays as you've left it. So, just don't hit that key unless you want to change the volume, eh? 4. With F-lock enabled, the Copilot key is the applications key, which is to say it opens the context menu. With F-lock off, it's Copilot. So, in SharpKeys, I remapped the entry for the Applications key to the right control key. If I didn't want Copilot at all, I would remap F23 to the control key or maybe the applications key, because shift+control+F23 is what Microsoft is using for CoPilot. 5. There are no page up/down/home/end keys. These are F-lock arrow key combinations, similar to Mac. This is what I prefer, because the alternative is always some weird crammed-in placement.

A few optimizationS

So far, I've lowered the display brightness to 0% (which is dim but not off), lowered the monitor refresh rate from 120 to 60 Hz, both of which should help battery life; and easily disabled the touch pad in settings. All these things remain where I put them after reboot, which is great.

Hardware

It's a tiny bit thicker, half an inch deeper, and noticeably heavier than the Macbook Air. I have them both side by side. The doesn't taper as much in the front or have the contoured lid of the MBA. Because of these things, it feels bigger than it actually is. These are totally insignificant cosmetic differences. Plenty of ports! Two thunderbolts and a USB-A on the left, plus headphone jack. On the right, just the attachment slot for the proprietary magnetic charger, which is so similar to the old-school Mac magnetic charge cord that I'm surprised Apple didn't sue. The charger is a small brick, not particularly travel friendly. But I had it plugged in today into a random USB-c charger without issue. The best news is the speakers. I can't stand tinny sound for my screen readers. The Surface is better than any Windows laptop I've owned by a long shot, and seem on par with my MBA, though I haven't done a side by side yet. The keyboard is good, but not outstanding. Keys are flat, large, with good spacing and adequate travel. It's slightly better than the MBA keyboard, but a long way down from a ThinkPad (which have historically had the industry's worst speakers). One missed opportunity is that the up/down arrows are half-height, sandwiched between left/right. Unlike laptops that cram in full-height keys with no spacing, I have no problem whatsoever with these arrow keys. The Mac, of course, makes all the arrow keys half-height, which allows for a little spacing to differentiate them.

It takes my machine 30 seconds to restart, which is a really long time. This seems to be 15 sec to shut down and another to get to the login screen. I'm used to more like 5 seconds to start up.

My nightmarish setup experience

Windows imported my settings from a OneDrive backup of my desktop. I didn't want it to, but it did it without a clear way to decline. So, not only were there a bunch of ghost desktop icons and start menu entries for programs that weren't installed, the kicker was when I restarted Narrator and it ceased speaking. No idea if these two things are connected. I have no sight assistance available. I made a portable NVDA copy on my desktop and managed to launch that on the Surface, but attempting to install that to the computer failed, possibly because I tried to copy my user config, and maybe because it's moving from x86 to ARM. Several things were unstable while using the portable copy. I made another portable copy without my settings, and that one installed. Then I got into Narrator and added some Natural voices, which got it speaking again. That's where my afternoon went.

My sense so far is that NVDA is not quite as snappy on the Surface as on my 3-year-old mini desktop, which also has a laptop processor, but it's still good. Any occasional lags are barely noticeable. Narrator with the neural engine voices actually seems more fluid. The only real problem is that NVDA has been choking on the search window of the start menu, which has become more hideous with the latest Windows update, I think. NVDA goes into browse mode randomly, clams up and restarts or must be restarted, etc. I think I cured the worst of it by unchecking most of the items in the search setting options. I couldn't even tell you how I got there. Narrator handled the start menu much better, but even it at one point got to an unreadable screen with a close button, so who knows what's going on.

A few other things

If you're wondering, SAPI 5 still works. I'm currently using my stand-alone Eloquence engine. During setup, the Windows Phone Link only mentioned working with Android devices, so iPhone support may not have been implemented yet as it is on x86.

Setting up a new computer that isn't a Mac is always a pain, but this was worse than most. What I've said above should help the next person in line have a smoother experience, though. I'll check in again after I've actually used the thing for awhile.