Surface Book - The Worst PC Experience of My Life

[Lethal_NFS]

Ya I may end up giving this one to my wife and I will grab a Surface Book 2 this fall. I am assuming it will roll out in Fall.

 

[Because Racecar]

Ya I may end up giving this one to my wife and I will grab a Surface Book 2 this fall. I am assuming it will roll out in Fall.

Or you could give it to me. I'd be very grateful. Heh!

I was looking to the book as a laptop replacement, but the one with the dedicated graphics is just ouch...

 

[zerospace-net]

Ya I may end up giving this one to my wife and I will grab a Surface Book 2 this fall. I am assuming it will roll out in Fall.

Something tells me that my husband (who already installed his beloved Mechwarrior Online game on my SB) will gladly take mine when I trade up to the 2nd gen, provided it has a better dGPU. I imagine that fall would make the most sense for launching an updated Surface Book, since that's been the track record for Surface units (SP3 was a late summer launch, but close enough). I love the design of the SB, and the ability to do some mid-range/casual gaming along with work, and all in a nice, slim, lightweight, sexy package. I just wish the bugs would get squashed sooner rather than later. I appreciate that the skylake CPU does seem to run cooler than its predecessors (I get fan noise a LOT less on the SB than I did with the SP3), but the driver leaves a lot to be desired still (in my use case).

 

[Because Racecar]

Do you have a sense that the driver issues are due to MS using "non-standard" hardware in the SB, something that wasn't built and tested by an OEM? Just seems off that they didn't get that right, even worse than for the surface IMO.

 

[savagelizards]

I suspect a lot of this is because the Skylake was delayed, and they rushed to get it to market in time for the holiday season before all of the firmware and drivers were updated. They has a choice between two bad options, but I think they underestimated how long it would take them to develop software fixes for the book.

Instead of these issues being corrected when only a handful of early adapters were affected (who might be more willing to live with a few crashes to be the first with bleeding edge tech), they fell behind the curve and now everyone who purchased or received a book during the holiday season is busy swapping theirs out, consuming lots of extra stock, and leaving everyone unhappy.

I think it was telling that Daniel Rubino revealed on another thread that he is on his 3rd surface book.



If there's any light at the end of the tunnel, we should hear about it this week when Rubino's review is published.

 

[lewinr]

I'm worried that some of our problems are in HW and need HW revs. to be fixed.

 

[savagelizards]

I'm worried that some of our problems are in HW and need HW revs. to be fixed.

If it was simply hardware, I think Microsoft would be "out of stock" on the book while it implemented a redesign. Sadly, I returned my Book and surface dock last weekend for replacements, and the new hardware has all the same issues. If anything, the new book is even less dependable than the old one, although some of the newest issues occurred after the Windows 10 1511 cumulative update my book took on Tuesday.

I am pretty solid when it comes to troubleshooting Windows, but it's hard to know if the problems are hardware related, drivers/firmware related, Windows 10 related or app related.

For example, I find it almost impossible to post to these forums from my Surface Book. After a minute or so of typing, my book grinds to a halt and I am only about to type one letter every few seconds. I do most of my posts to this forum from an old HP running an insider build of Windows 10, which generally seems more stable. However, I just took a fast ring upgrade to build 11099 this week, and Flash has crashed several times on me while typing this post. One time, Edge actually told me to stop trying to load the page and do something else for a while.

That's probably a compatibility problem with the new build of Windows 10, since it's the only thing that changed. But if I was trying to find the cause with my Surface Book, I wouldn't know what to look at first.

 

[Lethal_NFS]

Funny. I make a thread about the good and bad about the Surface Book, and people started calling me a ****** lol.

People who are defending the Surface Book and making excuses for it's issues, those are the fanboys.

 

[savagelizards]

Funny. I make a thread about the good and bad about the Surface Book, and people started calling me a ****** lol.

People who are defending the Surface Book and making excuses for it's issues, those are the fanboys.

I've gotten the ****** tag myself, and I am generally okay with it. I like where Microsoft is headed. But my Surface Book experience so far has been a nightmare. If I wasn't a ******, I would have returned it a long time ago and gotten a XPS 15 with double the ram and storage for hundreds less. Loyal to a fault, I guess, but not past January 31st. Unless something changes I am giving up and starting over with a more dependable rig.

 

[worwig]

It is a long complicated reason why, but I know I can be labeled a MS ******.
I wanted the Surface Book because the hardware was closer to what I wanted than anything else on the market. After having it for a week, I was ready to return it. The price it a bit too high and it had non-stop issues. And I felt like a fool owning something that was supposed to be so productive, yet all it did was constantly have issues. Constant screen driver crashes, BSOD every time I disconnected the clipboard. I even confessed to an Apple ****** friend how bad it was.
I hung on, and MS started sending updates that worked. Now I only see the display driver hang about once every two weeks or so. Haven't seen a BSOD this year yet. The only 'big' issue that I have is that the display resolution is so high that a couple of programs don't scale too well.
In the end I'm glad I kept it, but still, they screwed up on the release.

 

[jasongw]

I'd return it and go with a Surface Pro 4 instead.

 

[AbsoluteZerow]

Funny. I make a thread about the good and bad about the Surface Book, and people started calling me a ****** lol.

People who are defending the Surface Book and making excuses for it's issues, those are the fanboys.

You should venture over to THIS thread and read the large amount of denial people were displaying when I was making a case that we were basically beta testers for the Surface Book. The amount of salt was immeasurable.

 

[eugene russo]

I purchased the surface after numerous problems and countless hours with Microsoft support I returned the first surface. Microsoft announce that they had a firmware update that resolved most problems so foolishly I purchased a second surface and it worked for a week then the problems began. On with support they instructed me to reset and reinstall all software but problems continued. Blue screen of death. Surface would say with a blue screen and sideways smiley face "your pc ran into a problem and needs to restart. We are collecting error info......" I was told by the Microsoft store to return it and I got a third one. Again on with support same errors. Video not playing correctly, system crashes, corrupt files. Bring up the command prompt as administrator and run sfc /scannow
And most likely you will have corrupt files which cannot be repaired. Microsoft ran the test on my second and third surface book with same results. They told me to reinstall Windows. On the third surface just to be certain the corruption issues were not from any software I installed, I ran the test when I first set up the computer without any software. No corruption of files. I then did the Microsoft updates including the firmware. No programs or apps installed. Ran the sfc /scannow and had corrupt files. Microsoft could not fix but told me this is normal. Set up my surface added programs (office 2016) used the surface and it started again blue screen and restarting. Brought it back and purchased the iPad pro. And may buy the MacBook Air. I really wanted one device for all but Microsoft failed me.
Why did Microsoft put in the marketplace a device riddled with known problems? I waisted a lot of time.

 

[Snoke]

It works for me that's why.

 

[savagelizards]

I have had every problem that folks have described in this forum.

I strongly considered returning my second surface book and picking up and XPS 15, but didn't. My window of opportunity to return closes 1/31, and since I was leaving on a business trip the other day I had to choose to return the book beforehand. I decided to keep it, and on this trip it has been everything I hoped it would be. I used it repeatedly in clipboard mode with no issues, and on the airplane the book fit the tray table perfectly and I could work comfortably. In that environment the screen was absolutely beautiful.

I just picked up a firmware update last night that I hope will make the book more stable. No blue screens since Monday (and, oddly, my last blue screen was actually a light green in color), and when it works the book is the best device I have even owned.

Despite some reservations (and partly because of a thread I read of Dell XPS owners complaining about Skylake issues), I am feeling better about sticking it out with Surface Book. I don't think the hardware has any defects, and when they solve Skylake-related driver issues this product will be rock-solid.

 

[mcf517]

HAHA... I was about to say that my SB has been working pretty well for the past few weeks. No blue screens, and lately, the multi display has been... functional. Still little annoyances here and there, but nothing that grinds my work flow to a halt. Sleep is still something I don't bother with, and I'm always careful with the order which I unplug the surface dock and hibernate, since that's where the multi screen and extra usb devices are connected. Issues sometimes arise if I do a screen detach while connected to the dock. Anyway...

When I was about to type this response, my SB screen was flipped with no keyboard access, so I confidently (silly SB owner) detached and reattached the screen quickly, and boom, lost touch input support and a few seconds later, the screen just went gray. Had to hold the power button down for a good 15-20 seconds for a reset, and 10 more seconds before it would respond to turning on. Sigh...

 

[zerospace-net]

Things had been going great for me since this most recent firmware & windows update... until this morning. The moment I plugged in my external peripherals and proceeded to sign out (and hopefully back in), I got the dreaded black screen with the IR camera light on. Hard reset. Sign in. All going well... til BOOM. BSOD -- critical process died (that's a new one for me). Dump files can't seem to be analyzed by the diagnostic utility, so I have no idea what caused it. I had Firefox and Skype open at the time of the crash, and that's it.

The one thing I can say is that MOST of my issues seem to happen when I'm docked to an external monitor and peripherals. I have 2 USB hubs -- one 2.0 and one 3.0 with gigabit ethernet. The 2.0 hub is powered. I plug nothing into the 3.0 hub except the ethernet. At this point, I cannot even begin to guess what the root cause of all the issues is except drivers and perhaps their interaction with the OS. Luckily for me, I'd say 95% of the time, things work smoothly with the Surface Book, but its that 5% of the time that it screws up that is absolutely maddening. I'm accustomed to the stability I had with the Surface Pro 3 and pretty much all of my previous machines before it, and I really do miss that. It sucks when you're in the middle of something and the system blue screens ... (which is, sadly, something I don't expect to have happen with a $2,000 computer).

 

[lewinr]

I also have more problems when I have the dock connected, especially with a Lync phone.

 

[zerospace-net]

I also have more problems when I have the dock connected, especially with a Lync phone.

I'm not using the official dock, just a couple of USB hubs and a mini-DP to DVI adapter. But all of my major blue screen madness has come when connected to peripherals ... the rest of the time, its just little annoying bugs and glitches (stuff I'd rather not deal with, for sure, but not nearly as bad as one day every 1.5-2 months that my system blue screens randomly 2-3 times in 2-3 hours).

 

[Jeff Hollon]

just to share my experience. I got my SB 18th of Dec. after about a month, the right bottom screen started to seperate from the bezel. I sent in my unit and they replaced it. before that i had had issues with two external monitors dropping every so often while plugged into the dock. When i got my replacement SB, the external monitors were totally unusable. I contacted support and they overnighted me a brand new dock. since i got it yesterday, my monitors haven't dropped once.

I think what has happened here is MS was rushed to get this to market before xmas and make some numbers. because of this, build quality and quality control were rushed and several pieces of hardware got out. I think now they have started to stabilize things and have some things figured out and are addressing others.

Honestly, you would be kidding yourself if you thought buying a 1st gen product would not have issues. I think in the coming months, you will see the SB start to solidify and become a real gem. I mean this is the same thing that happens when you buy a first year vehicle. there is always something not quite right.

At this point i am happy i purchased my SB despite having to have parts replaced. overall, i think it has the potential to become a great product.

as a side note, one both my units, i have never had a BSOD.....