by Contributed | Apr 13, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
Today we are excited to announce the latest Surface Laptop, now in its fourth generation. Surface Laptop 4 welcomes the challenges of hybrid work by providing the performance needed for multitasking, meetings, and more. From video calls at home to virtual collaboration in the office, Surface Laptop 4 keeps up with your business tasks while offering the cameras, mics, and speakers to help you look and sound your best.
To learn more, get a tour from the latest episode of Microsoft Mechanics:
A defining history
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Surface began almost 20 years ago as an exploration of the power of touchscreens and tablets. In 2012, we introduced the product line to the world with Surface Pro, creating the 2-in-1 category.
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In 2015, Surface Book brought a detachable display to laptops. Breakthroughs like Surface Studio’s unique hinge and Surface Hub added further to Surface’s growing reputation for design and innovation.
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In 2017, Surface Laptop was a bold new statement on the classic clamshell. Ultra-slim, beautiful devices that balance power, speed, performance, and style, Surface laptops have been validated by the highest customer satisfaction in the Surface product line.1
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In 2020, we launched our lightest clamshell ever with Surface Laptop Go, delivering the design and innovation Surface is known for at an exceptional value.
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Now, Surface Laptop 4 gives you more multitasking power than before and better graphics, fueled by your choice of latest gen Intel® or AMD Ryzen™ processors. 2
Immersive sound, and longer battery life3 keep you in the flow—all within our signature ultra-slim design.
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This history of innovation inspires us to keep improving—to continue to anticipate needs and listen to our customers. Surface Laptop 4 represents a new level of power and choice in an ultra-slim laptop.
More power, more choice
Your choice between two great processors4, providing exceptional laptop performance. Learn more about the Surface Laptop 4 processors.
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Quad Core 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processor – Exceptional performance, connectivity, and entertainment
New Quad Core 11th Gen Intel® Core™ processors and Intel® Iris® Xe graphics work together to help you edit photos and videos up to 90% faster7 than Surface Laptop 3. Intelligent performance that adapts to you for faster responsiveness across apps.
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Custom AMD Ryzen™ Microsoft Surface® Edition processor – A perfect balance of portability, speed, and performance
Up to 8 CPU cores, delivering uniquely powerful performance in an ultra-thin and light design. Outstanding speed with high-endurance, all-day battery life3
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Surface for Business unlocks more value
Save time and money with streamlined deployment, modern device management, and built-in, cloud-powered security.
Make the most of your investment in Microsoft 365*, with Windows 10 Pro, the protection of Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security, and the Office 365* productivity apps you rely on. AMD models now benefit from the same enterprise deployment and management tools as Intel models. Both can be personalized with required apps and policies using zero touch deployment with Windows Autopilot. This allows you to direct ship Surface devices from the factory to users. Equally, Microsoft Endpoint Manager with the Device Firmware Configuration Interface5 (DFCI) policies also extend to Surface Laptop 4 AMD models, allowing you to deploy and manage policies down to the firmware layer, all through the power of the cloud.
As described in a recent Surface IT Pro Blog around firmware security, endpoint security is core to the design of every Surface device. We achieve this through our own unique UEFI5 Firmware protection, implemented through a Microsoft developed open-source UEFI. Surface adds to this core level security through a defense in-depth approach that utilizes virtualization-based security (VBS) protection out of the box, which guards against escalation of privilege attacks targeting sensitive information stored in memory. These layered protections mitigate security risks and simplify the end-user experience in configuring the device.
In addition, we’re excited to announce that AMD models are the first to ship as certified Windows 10 Secured-core PCs. These devices offer comprehensive security out-of-the-box with tightly integrated hardware, software, firmware, and identity protection layers. Learn more about our Secured-core PCs to include Surface Pro X.
Serviceability and Support
Surface Laptop 4 hardware is designed to be serviceable. The SDD is removable and replaceable by skilled on-site technicians. Additionally, the display cover, and the keyboard cover can be replaced by authorized service centers.
Surface Laptop 4 for Business includes Advanced Exchange, an expedited replacement service, at no additional cost.6
Find the perfect balance
Need a little more help deciding? Compare Surface Laptop 4 to Surface Laptop Go to help decide which laptop device best meets the needs of your organization. See Surface Laptop 4 for Business
*Sold separately.
1 98% of Surface Laptop users are satisfied with their device. Customer Usage & Satisfaction program, study of device users weighted across 5 countries (US/UK/DE/CH/JP), conducted by independent research company IPSOS, recruited through online panel vendors, commissioned by Microsoft, around 30.7K demographically representative device users, collected March/April 2020, measuring top-2 box on a 4-pt scale from very dissatisfied to very satisfied, significant at a 90% confidence level.
2 Colors available on selected models only. Available colors, sizes, finishes, and processors may vary by store, market, and configuration.
3 Surface Laptop 4 battery life: Up to 19 hours on Surface Laptop 4 13.5” AMD Ryzen™ r5; up to 17.5 hours on Surface Laptop 4 15” AMD Ryzen™ r7; up to 17 hours on Surface Laptop 4 13.5” Intel® Core™ i5; up to 16.5 hours on Surface Laptop 4 15” Intel® Core™ i7. Battery life based on typical Surface device usage. Testing conducted by Microsoft in February 2021 using preproduction software and preproduction devices. Testing consisted of full battery discharge with a mixture of active use and modern standby. The active use portion consists of (1) a web browsing test accessing 8 popular websites over multiple open tabs, (2) a productivity test utilizing Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook, and (3) a portion of time with the device in use with idle applications. All settings were default except screen brightness was set to 150nits with Auto-Brightness disabled. Wi-Fi was connected to a network. Battery life varies significantly with settings, usage and other factors.
4 Colors available on selected models only. Available colors, sizes, finishes, and processors may vary by store, market, and configuration.
5 Surface Go and Surface Go 2 use a third-party UEFI and do not support DFCI. DFCI is currently available for Surface Laptop 4, Surface Camano, Laptop Go, Surface Book 3, Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7, and Surface Pro X. Find out more about managing Surface UEFI settings.
6 Advanced Exchange Service is available at no additional charge with the following Surface for Business products: Surface Laptop 4, Surface Pro 7+, Surface Laptop Go, Surface Book 3, Surface Go 2, Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7, Surface Pro X, Surface Pro 6, and Surface Laptop 2. Advanced Exchange is only available in supported markets. Restrictions apply. See Surface for Business warranty page for AES terms and conditions and list of supported markets.
7 Surface Laptop 4 13.5” with 11th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 is up to 90% faster than Laptop 3 with 10th Gen Intel ® Core™ i7.
by Contributed | Apr 13, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In this series on DevOps for Data Science, I’ve explained the concept of a DevOps “Maturity Model” – a list of things you can do, in order, which will set you on the path for implementing DevOps in Data Science. The first thing you can do in your projects is to implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) , and the second thing to focus on is Continuous Integration (CI). However, to set up CI, you need to have as much automated testing as you can – and in the case of Data Science programs, that’s difficult to do. You can, however, mitigate this problem a great deal, and get your part of the solution as automated as possible.
The next step in the DevOps Maturity Model is Continuous Delivery (CD). There’s some discussion we need to cover here, since the definitions of DevOps and Continuous Delivery are quite similar, and to some, CD doesn’t belong “under” DevOps. Both DevOps and CD involve an agile mindset of releasing smaller, faster, and automated bits of code into the process rather than waiting for several changes to integrate at once. But DevOps is more a philosophy of teams working together to that end, and CD is a guided process involving all of the steps of design, coding, tracking, testing and release. CD is often more tool-aligned than DevOps is (or at least DevOps shouldn’t be tool oriented). If you look at a standard workflow in Visual Studio Team Services, you’re effectively looking at CD, but not necessarily DevOps.
Just to confuse things a bit further, some DevOps references define the “CD” acronym as Continuous Deployment – which is another implementation function. Continuous Deployment means automating the build so that changes happen automatically, all the way out to the deployment process of the end user’s software. Imagine a smartphone app that can take a picture of a plant and identity it. The Data Science function within this application is a trained model using custom vision API’s, and perhaps you make a change that improves the recognition score. Once tested, your change would not only be placed into the build, but pushed all the way out to the user automatically – perhaps within minutes of the test completing. That’s Continuous Deployment – then mechanisms that make that push possible.
So I’ve included Continuous Delivery as the third maturity of DevOps, which I’m certain will annoy the purists on both sides. However, I think it belongs there because until your teams have a DevOps mindset, it will be harder to effectively implement a true Continuous Delivery system. And I think that starting with IaC and CI is essential to start the CD journey.
With those explanations in mind, how does the Data Science team fit in to CD? It’s here that we face another change in your day-to-day routine. You’ll need to learn, understand and use whatever CD system your company uses. Here at Microsoft we use Azure Devops, which includes CD and the ability to implement a DevOps foundation. And yes, some of the Data Scientists have had to go back to school on it. Learning these systems – the “plumbing” – isn’t often desirable to a bona-fide Data Scientist, but it’s essential to being part of a team, and having a DevOps mindset. Underneath VSTS we use git and github, which has other implications. Most Data Scientists I’ve worked with do understand git commands, so there’s less pushback there.
See you in the next installment on the DevOps for Data Science series, where I’ll cover the next level in your DevOps Maturity Model for Data Science teams.
For Data Science, I find this progression works best – taking these one step at a time, and building on the previous step – the entire series is here:
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
- Continuous Integration (CI) and Automated Testing
- Continuous Delivery (CD) (This article)
- Release Management (RM)
- Application Performance Monitoring
- Load Testing and Auto-Scale
In the articles in this series that follows, I’ll help you implement each of these in turn.
If you’d like to implement DevOps, Microsoft has a site to assist. You can even get a free offering for Open-Source and other projects: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/devops/azure-devops-services/
by Contributed | Apr 13, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In this installment of the weekly discussion revolving around the latest news and topics on Microsoft 365, hosts – Vesa Juvonen (Microsoft) | @vesajuvonen, Waldek Mastykarz (Microsoft) | @waldekm are joined by a Partner at the US-based consultancy PAIT Group and Microsoft 365 MVP Mark Rackley | @mrackley.
Topics discussed in this session include: Hillbilly tabs, North American Collaboration Summit, how the transition from on-Prem to Cloud along with a talented PnP community has impacted the need to customize applications. Hiring based on who’s available, managing the pace of change and customer expectations, deployment planning, and the business unit customer’s interest in Microsoft Viva experience.
Covering also 20 articles from Microsoft and the Community.
This episode was recorded on Monday, April 12, 2021.
These videos and podcasts are published each week and are intended to be roughly 45 – 60 minutes in length. Please do give us feedback on this video and podcast series and also do let us know if you have done something cool/useful so that we can cover that in the next weekly summary! The easiest way to let us know is to share your work on Twitter and add the hashtag #PnPWeekly. We are always on the lookout for refreshingly new content. “Sharing is caring!”
Here are all the links and people mentioned in this recording. Thanks, everyone for your contributions to the community!
Events:
Microsoft articles:
Community articles:
Additional resources:
If you’d like to hear from a specific community member in an upcoming recording and/or have specific questions for Microsoft 365 engineering or visitors – please let us know. We will do our best to address your requests or questions.
“Sharing is caring!”
by Contributed | Apr 13, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
All Around Azure is the amazing show you may already know to learn everything about Azure services and how they can be utilized with different technologies, operating systems, and devices. Now, the show is expanding! We’re excited to bring you All Around Azure: DevOps with GitHub.
When Developers and IT operations teams work together, organizations win. Learn the patterns, practices, and tooling that bring out the DevOps capabilities in your organization
Agenda
World Wide Event
07:30 – 10:00 IST
12:00 – 14:30 AEST
03:00 – 05:30 GMT
19:00 – 21:30 PDT
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11:00 – 13:30 GMT
15:30 – 18:00 IST
20:00 – 22:30 AEST
03:00 – 05:30 PDT
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12:00 – 14:30 PDT
20:00 – 22:30 GMT
12:30 – 03:00 IST
05:00 – 07:30 AEST
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Register Now
https://aaa-devopsgitub.splashthat.com/
The DevOps Learning Path is designed for those who develop and operate software and need to increase collaboration, performance, and reliability. The content is comprised of 5 modules that approach topics ranging from getting started with DevOps, to delivering change, to operating software in the cloud.
Each session includes a curated selection of associated modules from Microsoft Learn that can provide an interactive learning experience for the topics covered and may also contribute toward preparedness for the official AZ-400 Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions Certification.
by Contributed | Apr 13, 2021 | Technology
This article is contributed. See the original author and article here.
In this latest episode of Azure Unblogged, I am chatting to Vijay Nagarajan from the Azure Update Management team.
I’ve long been a fan and user of Azure Update Management both in my own environments and encouraging customers to adopt it, chatting to Vijay I ask about where Azure Update Management fits in on a customer’s cloud adoption journey and how it can be leveraged.
Patching servers and applications is a bit part of an IT department’s “business as usual (BAU)” activities and there are well established method’s for patching Windows and Linux servers but I raise the question about third party product patching and where Microsoft’s WSUS or Azure Update Management solutions can help in this area.
Vijay and I delve into the cost of implementing Azure Update Management (spoiler alert, Azure Update Management is a free solution) and explain how to look at that in a wider context when pricing up your Azure environment.
And lastly Vijay shares some information about the roadmap features he and the team are working on and the current private preview.
So grab a comfy seat and your favourite drink and join Vijay & I here or on Channel 9.
Resources:
– Azure Update Management Overview
– MS Learn: Manage Azure Updates
– WSUS Package Publisher
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