So how's everyone feel about their Surface Book now?

[orlbuckeye]

I love my Surface Book. The only problem i had was store, mail and camera app not working I figured it was a corrupt profile and created a new profile with admin right and it works fine.

 

[DCW1000]

I bought an SB (i7/16/512) a couple of weeks ago for reasons that probably weren't as strong as they should have been, but I'm not disappointed in its weaknesses and I am quite happy with its strengths. Benchmarks show that it is a way faster machine that the i7/512 SP3 I have been using with dock, wireless KB/mouse and 24" screen as my main computer for over a year. In actual use, the SB does not feel any faster than the SP3, but that's undoubtedly a reflection on my finger speed and wireless connection rather than on anything inside the case.

I took advantage of special offers to set the SB up with a dock as well; I already had another KB/mouse and an older big monitor that I could use.

There are a few things that don't work as seamlessly as expected: detaching the screen sometimes leaves me with visual effects (the upper half of the toolbar, for example) that won't go away except with a restart, and reattaching it won't always start the second screen automatically. I expect firmware and driver updates will eventually catch up with these issues.

The pen is a pleasure to use on the detached clipboard, whether filling in the NY Times crossword, sketching, adding items to a OneNote page or annotating PDFs.

Even with its slight flakiness, the SB is easily the best and easiest to use computer I have ever had. A few new habits are necessary in light of the fairly fast drawdown of power in the screen battery. I just force myself to reattach it when I am going to be away from it for a while. Thinking of it as a tablet and treating it as one led to irritation with the speedy power consumption.

I'm sorry to hear that others have had problems that don't seem to be reflected in my own experience. That inconsistency seems to be an inherent characteristic of the new Microsoft devices in the last couple of years.

 

[anthonyng]

I got a friend to buy a surface book a couple days ago. Got a call yesterday, says his book is completely dead, no response.

Apparently it was super hot feeling on the back and he shut it down. Fan stayed on for like 3/4 mins.

But then it didn't book back up.

I got him to hold the power button for 30sec and everything started up again, however, he's asking why did he have to do that?

Feel bad he had to experience that.

 

[garak0410]

Like at least one other person here, I've begun to resign myself to the idea that the Surface Book will always be a buggy machine -- the buggiest machine I've owned since the Windows 98 PC-era.

I am a fairly new owner. When I first turned mine on, the brightness level was so low it was nearly impossible to do the initial setup. Finally got to the desktop and was able to get it up. I immediately loaded ALL updates. I did NOT load GeForce experience and want to just rely on what Microsoft certifies.

On a whole, this machine is AWESOME. I do have the occasional Windows Hello not working but it is rare. Otherwise, this has been an amazing experience.

 

[zerospace-net]

I am a fairly new owner. When I first turned mine on, the brightness level was so low it was nearly impossible to do the initial setup. Finally got to the desktop and was able to get it up. I immediately loaded ALL updates. I did NOT load GeForce experience and want to just rely on what Microsoft certifies.

On a whole, this machine is AWESOME. I do have the occasional Windows Hello not working but it is rare. Otherwise, this has been an amazing experience.

I've had mine since the day it was released back in October of last year. Believe it or not, my day one experience was far better than what I have today. Again, I really wish I felt about my book the way some of you do about yours, quirks and all. In this day and age, though, I have high expectations for my hardware -- quirks that involve random shutdowns (which could potentially result in the loss of data), forced shutdowns (such as when the screen goes black and the machine won't wake until forced to shut down and then reboot), and key pieces of hardware simply not functioning correctly are all things I cannot forgive or overlook. I'm sorry that so many are willing to do so, even on a machine that they say is their primary PC and that they paid at least $1,500 for when a decent, comparably spec'd laptop costs half what the Surface Book does. To me, that's playing with fire -- my time and data are far more important than to entrust them to a device that day in and day out just doesn't work right.

 

[SlowPokeInTexas]

It's still not stable enough to be viable for doing real work. I have lost count of the number of times my wife says she's been in the middle of a design or other work and it's crashed, causing her to lose her work. Honestly, it's $3600 that I wish I'd spent on something else. At this point I am considering buying her something else :-(.

 

[TLRtheory]

First off; the turnout for this thread has been incredible. I gotta thank everyone who's given either critical or praising comments.

To be completely honest, I came into this with much reservation. The Surface Book is far more than I need. I play some simple Windows Store games, engage in social media, study and code... but IDEs (to the capacity I use them, anyway) nor anything I do have ever really called for me to have a powerhouse... and I learned that to an even greater degree when I ditched my Surface Pro 3 for a Surface 3 and found that all the software I needed ran without a hiccup.

But I knew that from the get go... I'm a father of two, homeowner, full time student and overtime worker who gives no damns about media editing and has no time to be a core gamer anymore. I know I'm more fitted for the class of buyers who sink like $229 into an ASUS X551 with a craptastic little Pentium; this would be purely a "I'm stressed out, I need some retail therapy, I want it, so I'm goddamned buying it" purchase - and thanks to you guys - I've decided to buy a Surface Book!

Disposable funds finally got to where I wanted them, and just in time to snatch it when a deal for a $1300 no tax, free shipping Core i5 256GB dGPU Surface Book went live... which, if my tax calculation is right, means I just saved about $700.

Soon enough, I'll be here with you all in team Surface Book! I'm so excited, and hope to add my testimonial so hopefully someone else on the fence will be helped with their decision.

 

[hasasimo]

First off; the turnout for this thread has been incredible. I gotta thank everyone who's given either critical or praising comments.

To be completely honest, I came into this with much reservation. The Surface Book is far more than I need. I play some simple Windows Store games, engage in social media, study and code... but IDEs (to the capacity I use them, anyway) nor anything I do have ever really called for me to have a powerhouse... and I learned that to an even greater degree when I ditched my Surface Pro 3 for a Surface 3 and found that all the software I needed ran without a hiccup.

But I knew that from the get go... I'm a father of two, homeowner, full time student and overtime worker who gives no damns about media editing and has no time to be a core gamer anymore. I know I'm more fitted for the class of buyers who sink like $229 into an ASUS X551 with a craptastic little Pentium; this would be purely a "I'm stressed out, I need some retail therapy, I want it, so I'm goddamned buying it" purchase - and thanks to you guys - I've decided to buy a Surface Book!

Disposable funds finally got to where I wanted them, and just in time to snatch it when a deal for a $1300 no tax, free shipping Core i5 256GB dGPU Surface Book went live... which, if my tax calculation is right, means I just saved about $700.

Soon enough, I'll be here with you all in team Surface Book! I'm so excited, and hope to add my testimonial so hopefully someone else on the fence will be helped with their decision.

Congrats. May I ask where you got that deal from? That was the SB configuration I was looking at as well. Been leaning towards waiting for the gen 2 version, but at that price I may reconsider.

 

[TLRtheory]

Congrats. May I ask where you got that deal from? That was the SB configuration I was looking at as well. Been leaning towards waiting for the gen 2 version, but at that price I may reconsider.

Best price I could find for the config on eBay. I got extremely lucky on that, and don't think I could pull off that kinda timing again... the lowest I see now for that config is $1500... which is still very nice considering that MSRP even with a student discount would be higher (and taxed).

 

[Dush Ku]

Surface book is awesome. Windows 10 is still kind of janky

 

[zerospace-net]

Surface book is awesome. Windows 10 is still kind of janky

Umm... no. Windows 10 actually seems to be fine. It runs perfectly on my skylake-based desktop PC and my little HP Stream 7. It's the Surface Book that is "janky", IMHO. I thought the same thing as you until I installed Win10 on my desktop, but seeing it run so well there made me realize that its the SB firmware and drivers that are the root of the SB's issues.

Welcome to the club, TLRtheory! I have the same configuration (i5/256/dGPU), only I wish I had paid that price for it. I hope you're coming in on the tail end of the worst of the problems, but I suspect we have at least a few more months of crap until Intel & MS sort out the sleep and update corruption problems.

 

[hasasimo]

Best price I could find for the config on eBay. I got extremely lucky on that, and don't think I could pull off that kinda timing again... the lowest I see now for that config is $1500... which is still very nice considering that MSRP even with a student discount would be higher (and taxed).

Ah ok. I saw a decent price several weeks ago on EBay as well but the seller's rating and some feedback from this forum (posted a link to the deal) scared me off a bit. Didn't bother searching EBay since but it's great you found a deal. Enjoy your SB!

 

[garak0410]

I'm a father of two, homeowner, full time student and overtime worker who gives no damns about media editing and has no time to be a core gamer anymore.

I am in the same boat. I want to game...I want to media edit. Just no time with life but I like having a machine that CAN do it when I have time.

 

[michal64]

in general , my experience is very negative. i love the hardware, and the look of the laptop, screen size, touch pad works well, BUT,
on the software side, this has been the worst pc experience in my life(and i usually switch laptops every 3-6 months for, past 12 years). i have i7, nvidia gpu, model hooked up to the new surface dock with 2 monitors at work. Dock looses usb connection randomly, pc doesnt wake up external monitors from sleep, (last firmware update didnt fix it..) i had so many blue screen errors its comical at this point.on top of that battery life is just average. I can go on and on about issues with this laptop..

if u have to buy this with your $$, just stay away. we purchased 3 of those as a test, all are experiencing similar issues.

 

[zerospace-net]

i had so many blue screen errors its comical at this point.on top of that battery life is just average. I can go on and on about issues with this laptop..

Agree -- it is downright shameful how many BSODs I have seen with this machine, and I hadn't seen one on any of my windows machines in many years. Actually, I think I last saw a BSOD on Windows XP when I was overclocking a crappy CPU & RAM just to see how much extra I could squeeze out of some old, leftover hardware. Since then, I've had 2 other home-built desktop PCs (WinXP and then Win7 -> Win8 on the 2nd one), a Toshiba laptop (Vista), and several Surfaces. No BSODs on any of them.

 

[Dush Ku]

Umm... no. Windows 10 actually seems to be fine. It runs perfectly on my skylake-based desktop PC and my little HP Stream 7. It's the Surface Book that is "janky", IMHO. I thought the same thing as you until I installed Win10 on my desktop, but seeing it run so well there made me realize that its the SB firmware and drivers that are the root of the SB's issues.

Welcome to the club, TLRtheory! I have the same configuration (i5/256/dGPU), only I wish I had paid that price for it. I hope you're coming in on the tail end of the worst of the problems, but I suspect we have at least a few more months of crap until Intel & MS sort out the sleep and update corruption problems.

Ok I guess what I mean by Surface book was everything physical about it. Screen, keyboard, trackpad, form factor, how it works, pen, etc.
Driver issues I feel are separate from that stuff. But fortunately those issues have been minimal in my experience.

 

[savagelizards]

Ok I guess what I mean by Surface book was everything physical about it. Screen, keyboard, trackpad, form factor, how it works, pen, etc.
Driver issues I feel are separate from that stuff. But fortunately those issues have been minimal in my experience.

I think the folks with the base Surface Book configurations - with the i5 and without the dedicated GPU - fare a lot better. I have the i7/256/8 with the dGPU and I am less than thrilled with the way that experience has gone. At this point, I think it's highly unlikely that the remaining problems are going to be resolved with driver updates.

 

[garak0410]

I see a lot of reports of BSOD's and such. I have the Core i7, 512 with ALL updates and it is nearly flawless. Now and then, the trackpad mouse will stop responding for a few seconds but then resume. Other than that, it works flawlessly and even had zero problems with the Surface Dock.

 

[jmerrey]

I'm very happy with mine, but I will say that the tablet/pen functionality is wasted on me. I was sure I would use the clipboard and pen to take notes all the time. However, the battery life of the clipboard, combined with the mediocre ink to text, has made it a no go for me. If i had to do it over again, I'd definitely consider the x360 (which I had and returned for the SB) and xps13. That said, the updates have made the SB a very solid machine, with great battery life.

 

[Christopher Lindsay]

When I first bought the surface book last November I was ready to throw it at a wall because the bugs were so bad. Now that it's a lot more stable it's easily the best laptop I've owned. Once Microsoft iron out the rest of the kinks I expect it to be the best creative experience one can offer in hybrid laptop form.