Surface Book - The Worst PC Experience of My Life

Motor_Mouth

Banned
Jan 3, 2013
222
0
0
Visit site
I picked up my Core i7 Surface Book with 8Gb of RAM and 256Gb of PCI-e storage the day they opened the new shop in Sydney. It was an awful experience, queuing up for hours in the hot sun, even in the VIP line, but I was completely sure it would be worth it. And initially it was pretty good, until I actually started using it as my daily driver. Once I started using it to browse the internet, huge holes opened up to swallow my user experience whole. The display driver crashed and recovered three or four times an hour and if I was stupid enough to try and watch a few videos back-to-back, then I was guaranteed of a crash in Edge or a BSOD if I was using IE.

OK, teething trouble, I thought, all will be fixed in a few weeks. So I dutifully installed all the updates and, for a time, it did improve slightly. Once I realised that Microsoft's own browsers were causing most of the problems, installing Firefox made the most significant difference yet.

Sadly, that just meant I could use it enough for all the other problems to become more obvious. It loses the keyboard/trackpad several times a day now, requiring me to detach and re-attach the Clipboard. Unfortunately, all that extra attaching and detaching has taken it's toll and I can now no longer detach the Clipboard at all, as the left clamp is stuck. So now I have to take it back to be fixed and be without a laptop for who knows how long. I've never had to take a computer back to be fixed in the 21 years I have owned PCs. Worse, though, is that I know when I get it back, only one of the several problems I have will be fixed and I'll still have to put up with the others until Microsoft gets around to fixing them properly.

In the past, I'd have cut Microsoft some slack because their OS has to work with millions of different configurations but this is their OS running on their hardware. If they can't make this work, what hope does anyone else have of a half-decent experience. I am now seriously considering selling the Surface Book when it gets fixed and buying a new laptop that I can run with Windows 8 and no problems. I'll probably lose a grand or more on my folly but I suppose that's a lesson learned.
 

Lethal_NFS

New member
Dec 8, 2015
75
0
0
Visit site
Ya that sucks man. The Surface Book has giving me more issues than any PC I have ever bought as well. So many people try to bail out Microsoft by saying "its new hardware" or, "its so light" yadda, yadda, yadda. But that does not change the overall experience of the issues.

Wobbly screen
OS errors
Detaching screen even causes issues at times

This laptop is too damn expensive to be having all these issues. I do not give a flying rats *** if the laptop is light as a damn feather. Sometimes it works as well as feather unfortunately.
 

Motor_Mouth

Banned
Jan 3, 2013
222
0
0
Visit site
I have not experienced the "wobbly screen" at all. Quite the opposite, mine is actually perfect in that regard, better than any other laptop I've used. I can tap it with my finger or with the pen and it sits there really well.
 

Lethal_NFS

New member
Dec 8, 2015
75
0
0
Visit site
I have not experienced the "wobbly screen" at all. Quite the opposite, mine is actually perfect in that regard, better than any other laptop I've used. I can tap it with my finger or with the pen and it sits there really well.

That is impossible. Every screen wobbles the same. It is not sturdy and in all the reviews ever made. That is something that is pointed out. Many people have their laptops in the vehicle and you can see the screen bouncing as the car is moving.

The screen wobble does not bother me because I do not touch my screen and the laptop stays on a table, but the wobble is there whether I see it or not.
 

jlzimmerman

Member
Jan 3, 2013
815
7
18
Visit site
Return the product, demand your money back, explain why, and contact MS through other means to also explain why. Making them feel the pain is the only way to get companies like MS to get it right the next go-around. It's ridiculous when premium money is spent on a "premium" product and it fails, regardless of which company made the thing.
 

Krystianpants

New member
Sep 2, 2014
1,828
0
0
Visit site
Get a refund and go for the new Lenovo that is being released with the gold buttons and awesome hinges. Lenovo hinges are great as they will stay in place no matter what angle. I noticed in the store that the surface book screen will drop a bit at some angles. Which is odd because when I detach the damn tablet portion is so light, you would think it would be able to handle it easily. It's first gen so likely surface book 2 will be much better. But Lenovo will likely cost you less too. The biggest advantage to the surface is the GPU that's in the base. It's quite a great engineering design feat and the base can be updated in the future without paying for the whole thing again. At least that's what MS said.

MS doesn't have 100% focus on these units like lenovo would on theirs. MS has way too much going on right now trying to fix all these variants of hardware. If you do get it exchanged at least I hope you get a newer firmware/bios on it from the get go. Intel already released a new bios fix for skylake issues so that has to go out to units as well.

Look how beautiful the new lenovo 2-in-1 is.

Lenovo announces Yoga 900S and Yoga 900 BE - NotebookCheck.net News
 

ctk4949

New member
Nov 12, 2012
52
0
0
Visit site
That is impossible. Every screen wobbles the same. It is not sturdy and in all the reviews ever made. That is something that is pointed out. Many people have their laptops in the vehicle and you can see the screen bouncing as the car is moving.

The screen wobble does not bother me because I do not touch my screen and the laptop stays on a table, but the wobble is there whether I see it or not.

Why are many ppl using their laptops in their cars?!?! That is probably worst than using ur cell phone in the car!!
 

Lethal_NFS

New member
Dec 8, 2015
75
0
0
Visit site
Why are many ppl using their laptops in their cars?!?! That is probably worst than using ur cell phone in the car!!

Because some people work from their cars. Traveling a lot. Even cops have a laptop in their car when working.

The laptops are often used for GPS as well as tracking their miles and the ability to quickly access websites related to their job.
 

tdf2001

New member
Nov 14, 2015
24
0
0
Visit site
I agree. It has been a terrible experience and it continues to be far from perfect. I still cannot get two screen reliably to turn on every time I connect to the dock. However, things have improved over the last 60 days. This leads me to believe that most issues will be addressed sooner or later. Still hardly acceptable given that this is supposed to be the prime Win10 device and bring serious competition to Apple.
 

Because Racecar

New member
Aug 8, 2014
67
0
0
Visit site
I agree. It has been a terrible experience and it continues to be far from perfect. I still cannot get two screen reliably to turn on every time I connect to the dock. However, things have improved over the last 60 days. This leads me to believe that most issues will be addressed sooner or later. Still hardly acceptable given that this is supposed to be the prime Win10 device and bring serious competition to Apple.

You should have experienced the abysmal MacBook Air V1. Oi!
 

Lethal_NFS

New member
Dec 8, 2015
75
0
0
Visit site
As problematic as this laptop has been. I am eagerly waiting for the Surface Book 2 now. I assume Microsoft will learn from this one. I also hope they offer some sort of nice buy back or something.
 

zerospace-net

New member
Jul 29, 2013
387
0
0
Visit site
As problematic as this laptop has been. I am eagerly waiting for the Surface Book 2 now. I assume Microsoft will learn from this one. I also hope they offer some sort of nice buy back or something.

Well, they have done some decent trade-in/up deals in the past on other Surface models, so it's not an unreasonable thing to hope for (though some of the guys at my local MS store were hoping for something like that for the Pro 3 to Pro 4 or Surface Book jump, too, and so far I haven't seen anything). I agree, though, I think the 2nd generation Surface Book will be even better, so I'm prepared to trade-up when the time comes. Of course, this unit might actually be pretty stable by then, too (the Pro 3 got to the point where it was ridiculously stable & solid for me). I'm hoping for an even beefier dGPU in the next version (which might very well be a pipedream).
 

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
322,902
Messages
2,242,867
Members
428,004
Latest member
hetb