Microsoft Surface Book (128 GB, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core i5)

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This is a shame for many reasons... first I have other surface products that I love, second, I bought this to replace my desktop (i7, 16gb ram, ssd etc...) for photo and video editing since I was moving overseas, third, I moved overseas and am stuck with this hunk of garbage! The computer looks and feels great (minus the odd hinge). My main problem is that it doesnt run like a computer with the specs that it has. On many occasions it locks up on start up or soon after because the cpu is maxed out at 100% most often by a system program like system interrupts or service host super fetch. Other times when it doesnt lock up and I have something like Adobe Lightroom running (taking 1,500 mb of ram) it says Lightroom using 25% of the ram. Im no math major but the last I checked 1.5gb is no where close to 25% of 16gb... I feel short changed by this Microsoft product and wouldnt encourage anyone to buy one of these. The sad thing is I used to be a big Surface fan, but this computer has certainly soured that enthusiasm. All antivirus, antimalware, anti root software have come up clean and all the forums Ive read havent produced any results. It looks like Im stuck with this one for a while...

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Microsoft Surface Book (256 GB, 8 GB RAM, Intel Core i5, NVIDIA GeForce graphics) To start off here is a little bit about my interest and why I decided to pull the trigger on buying a Surface Book. I travel a lot, I have been a long time PC gamer, programming hobbyist, and artist wannabe. Just a side note but I tend to stay away from major AAA game titles so I didnt really need a major graphics processor in a laptop. The Good: - Works fantastic in laptop mode (has a maximum tilt angle which keeps it from falling over) - Battery life is fantastic (You can browse the web and watch videos for quite a few hours on high brightness, and even a decent time during high performance use. I cant really give specific times because I hop from web browsing, to videos, to games, to applications too much) - Keyboard has great tactile feedback (I use a mechanical keyboard for my desktop, and I dont grumble when I switch to my Surface Book) - Back-lit keyboard (for all you cave dwellers) - Switch between Tablet/Canvas/Laptop is super easy and works well) - Very fast boot up/shut down times and windows 10 works well on it - Heat dissipation is rather amazing - Touchpad (feels high quality and works very well) - Screen Resolution (1920x1080 is hard to go back to) - Canvas mode with the tablet tilted makes browsing the web and reading documents much easier/enjoyable - Has more gaming capability than I expected (runs Dark Souls 2 flawlessly, Runs Black Desert Online around 30-40 FPS 3000x2000 res at low graphics) - Can choose to run certain applications with the dedicated graphics card or use the integrated one (to save battery and this is assuming you picked one with the dedicated GPU) - Surface Pen is just mind blowing and awesome - Has Windows 10, so virtual desktops are amazing for multitasking The Grey: - Random battery drain when it should be sleeping (Not putting this in the bad because it is possible software I have installed is preventing it from hibernating, but sometimes Ill let it hibernate while its around 50% battery, go to work, come back and it is at like 10% and other times I come back and its at nearly what I left it at) - Fn must be enabled to use the F1-F12 keys, but lets be honest who really uses those? - I personally dont like the location of the Headset jack, but its not exactly a negative thing - No disc drive (Not sure if I should put this under "the good" or "the bad"....) The Bad: - Up and down arrow keys (I use the arrow keys a lot for coding and after 2 Months I still havent gotten used to them) - Charging brick can overheat and stop charging your laptop during prolonged heavy usage (only happened once, and I had the power supply slightly covered) - Touchpad (Yes I know this is in my "good" as well, but the touchpad seems touchy with "left clicks" sometimes. My wife is a major Mac lover and user, who Im not sure how, but always seems to "right click" when she means to "left click" on my Surface Book) - Problems with virtual keyboard during Tablet and Canvas use, where sometimes the virtual keyboard wont pop up when you want to type into a text field. (The current work around is Settings >> Devices >> Typing >> "Show the touch keyboard or handwriting panel when not in tablet mode and theres no keyboard attached") - No HDMI/Mini HMDI port (has mini Display port though so you can buy an adapter) Closing Thoughts: Using this Surface Book has made life away from my desktop much more enjoyable. So if you are looking for Windows 10, portability, high quality, and power then I highly suggest taking a good hard look at buying a Surface Book.

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I read a lot of the reviews that said the item was refurbished, but I thought it wouldnt happen to me. I was wrong. The devices serial number had an expired warranty and did not match the serial number on the box. The device itself was in very good condition and everything worked on it, and the Surface Book in general is a very effective 2-in-1 tool. I just wish it had been fairly advertised as refurbished instead of "brand new, factory sealed".

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Not sure what happened but we bought two of these new in unopened boxes, one from Amazon and another 4 days later from another vendor. In January there were quantity limits in place. After 11 months the one purchased from Amazon began to have power button issues so we returned it to Microsoft as a warranty item. They sent it back unfixed marked as a suspicious item. When we contacted Microsoft they indicated it didnt have the appropriate serial numbers on the bottom of the tablet portion (need to remove keyboard). We contacted Amazon they offered to give us 80% on a return, hmmmm whats up with that. This is a great item worked great and we were very pleased with the unit. If you purchase make sure you remove the tablet portion look at the bottom near the docking connections and confirm its a legit unit, apparently Amazon or Microsoft has supply chain issues. We continue to work with MS to resolve this issue.

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Reviewing the i5 Version The DISPLAY is good. It can get bright and dark. Easy on the eyes and the resolution is pretty high. No problems here. BATERY LIFE is great as well, I watched a 6 hour stream and only lost 50% battery life on battery saver mode. And thats about all the positives I can think of, lets get onto the ISSUES. Problem #1: When I first started the laptop it was bugged, it kept turning on and off. Luckily I managed to update it and its all well now for that specific issue. Problem #2: The "O" key is now stuck. I have to constantly take it out of place. This has never even happened with a cheap $2 keyboard I bought why should it happen on a $800 laptop? Problem #3: When I close the lid to go into sleep mode, the laptop will sometimes not wake up. I have to hold the power button about 20 seconds for it to work. It has got to the point where I dont even know if it will work the next time I turn it on. Problem #4: Sometimes I turn on the laptop, it goes into the login screen, I type my password and then it shuts down, this keeps happening until I hold the power button for 20 seconds. Problem #5: When I turn on the laptop, the surface logo pops up, then the laptop shuts down. Problem #6: This computer is choppy and slow. I dont understand why they would make a model with these specs when it does not even work. I have older laptop win Celeron processors that do not lag like this one. Problem #7: Internet keeps dropping out every few hours. Problem #8 With the included charger it will take 3-4 hours to charge. Honestly I am disappointed in this computer, only reason I give it 2 stars is because its basically a computer with 10 hour battery life that allows me to use a pen to take notes. Even one note lags but I wont even get started on that.

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This laptop specs out really well. I was excited to receive it. It was everything I had hoped for and ran my CorelDraw app quickly and flawlessly. The surface is and awesome product. Then it crashed. After updating for hours - to be expected - no big deal - it booted to a bios interface. It then looped endlessly. I booted from a USB drive and all was well for a few hours. Then I logged of and later restarted. Same problem. After booting from a USB drive for two days, it finally refused to boot at all. My assumption is that there is a problem with the SSD. I sent it back in the original packaging with a return receipt and the RMA from Amazon. They received it on the 8th of June. Im still waiting for my refund. I replaced it with a Lenovo Flex 5. Same spec, lower price, using pen input, and it works. :-)

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First of all, what a great machine. * Magnesium shell does a great job cooling a beast of a laptop (Core i7, 16gb ram, half tb SSD). Its a strong sturdy laptop thats light as heck, very legitimately portable. * Its fast and comes with Windows 10 Pro so some of the weird gotchas of Home arent in the way (examples below). * The pen is cool as heck and it comes with some impressive apps to use it with, especially Sketchpad - even if accessing them is really weird (theyre not in the Start Menu at all, but instead in a badly designed pen-drawing icon called Windows Ink at bottom-right). * The screen brightness is perfectly ranged from incredibly dark to incredibly bright, the keys have not just backlighting but 4 levels, its great. OK now that Im done gushing lets complain about the quirks: * The charger is extremely proprietary and not detachable from the power brick, meaning if you have a backup battery (like I do) getting that to charge this is going to be a major challenge. Microsoft also keeps changing that charger Surface to Surface so theres a proliferation making them hard to find in general. * The Function keys have been crammed in a way that they overlap a bunch of other really important keys I use all the time, like Home, PgUp, etc. For example I frequently tap F2 to rename things, but that overlaps with Increase Keyboard Backlight. In addition, Microsoft made the poor choice of eschewing normal keyboard design and moved the Fn on/off light down away from that top row to the Fn key itself, so you are constantly covering that light with your left hand, then right before you press a key wondering... what am I about to do to my work? Going for Home and accidentally pressing F8, or vice versa, is extremely irritating and I do it constantly. Workaround: You can install AutoHotKey and at least eliminate the keys you never ever use. Heres my script - keys I never use on left, keys I always use on right (its the syntax for AutoHotKeys remapping): Insert::F12 F8::Home F9::End Media_Play_Pause::F3 Volume_Mute::F4 * The laptop could really stand to be 15", especially at such a high resolution. I see that the Surface Book 2 has a 15" option (at $3200, hell no), but, they still cram the poor keyboard into the same space as the 13", wasting that larger space to still burden the F5 Refresh with an Fn overlap to Increase Volume. * First setup is going to take a very long time. You basically need to set aside 4-6 hours of just checking on the PC while it gets itself ready. It will need to be plugged in this entire time. This includes a fairly awkward setup of "Windows Hello," but, once you shake out the awkward stumble to set that up, the face-to-sign-in is very cool and very impressive - it uses an LED at top of screen to see your face even in a completely dark room, and only when you ask it to sign in. Impressive. * But youre not done. The laptop has a major bug you have to fix manually for some reason. The first is "Sleep of Death," which means periodically if the machine sleeps it will "wake up," look OK a moment then implode to BSoD, losing all your work. The default setting is to sleep (of death) after 5 minutes idle, so death looms. The fix is simple but strange - you have to uninstall Surface Telemetry Device Driver in Devices, hunt down the latest Surface Drivers, download and install the package. That replaces the broken driver that was causing the Sleep of Death. * The top screen part gets kind of so-so battery life when detached, yet its a lot of why one buys the device. Thats made much worse by the fact that the Surface always discharges both the little battery in the top part and the large battery in the bottom at the same time, same rate. Thats really unwelcome - it would be nice if the bottom battery always discharged first, then top, so that when you do detach, that little battery is at full charge. I cant find a fix for this. One proposed hack is to never actually detach it, but instead detach it briefly, flip it 180, and fold it down so its Tablet-ish. This does also have the added advantage of providing the equivalent of a big kickstand. * The Tablet Mode is just kind of a fart. Microsoft just hasnt thought it through. The default turns off the Taskbar and Start Menu which makes you wonder what youre even supposed to do with this thing - how do you open any Apps or switch between them? You can turn that off so it never enters that Mode again. But using the top part detached, youll still sometimes need to type. The Virtual Keyboard is half-baked. Its WAY too big and there are 2 alternate sizes: Still-Too-Big and Way-Too-Small. Theres a config/options are for this and it doesnt have any sizing configs. It does have a lot about Predictive Text, which is simply broken. I have never seen a Text Suggestion appear. It also seems to be able to show you swyping, like that great way of typing on Android, but, ignores/is unable to handle that method of typing, responding to it by just doing nothing. * Maybe Im just being fussy but I personally find the default Gestures too glitchy. Scrolling with 2 fingers is awesome but too often its interpreted as 3 or 4, which do very different things - usually, it closes everything on me and shows the Desktop, a jarring, unwelcome experience and sometimes very long wait as the CPU churns. You can turn this off though - in my case I got rid of 4 finger gestures and made the 3 just change the volume, much lower side effects. With Win 10 Pro, it comes with BitLocker, which is a good way to create a Secure Folder/Virtual Drive inside the machine with a secondary password, to store things you would never want a thief to have access to in case they grab your laptop unlocked while youre using it. Overall this laptop is awesome. The quirks above are extremely irritating, but, mostly because this could be an AMAZING laptop instead of an awesome one with these constant pokes in the eye.

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The computer came with a chipped back, which I can deal with. And it started ok and I went through the initial setup. But when I logged in I literally could do NOTHING! The bottom right said it was an evaluation copy. But I have no clue what you could possibly evaluate. You cant right-click on anything. Clicking on the start button does nothing. Clicking on Cortana does nothing. Clicking on the wifi icon does nothing. You cant open the app store to get anything on the computer. There is no internet browser. You cant even go to the freaking task manager! I just hope they give me my money back. DO NOT BUY!

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EDIT: I JUST REALIZED I WAS SCAMMED! I was supposed to receive an NVIDEA and received an INTEL graphics 520!! It seemed cool at first, but after you realize its not a streamlined device it just becomes another laptop. Ive had the screen crack due to its poor design, and now the final blow. It will not turn on, feeling overheated to the touch. My laptop is dead and it has not even been a year. Considering I can probably pull out my 10+ year macbook and it will turn on, Im disappointed in this product to say the least.

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Ive owned the Surface Book (i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB storage) for a year, and use it for web surfing and amateur digital art. The good: - Snappy processing, and havent noticed any slowdown since purchase. - Powers on and off in seconds. - Looks like a Macbook, but with a Windows operating system: a personal win-win. - Perfect for casual storage (~100 pictures and documents, a couple Steam games, and half the disk still available). Plus a low-profile flash drive, which stays connected at all times, means I have more storage than I could ever need. - Hinge has held up against original worries that it might get loose over time. - Signing documents directly through MS Word prevents printing and scanning drudgery. - The screen being roughly the size of A4 paper makes reading documents in portrait mode feel very natural. The OK: - The Surface pen: -- Paint Tool Sai doesnt play nice with it. Pen pressure fades in and out, and single taps are treated as double-clicks (not good when hitting the undo button). -- Photoshop works better with a drawing tablet because detaching the screen means you lose keyboard shortcuts. -- No jitter, in my experience! -- Side note: the Apple pencil gives a better drawing experience IMO. Worse charging and storing, but better drawing. - Outward facing camera means I could record class lectures, but doing that clogged storage. - Laptop only opens to slightly more than a 90-degree angle. The bad: - Battery is weak. I keep it on battery-saver mode and 25% brightness, but it still seems to need charging about twice a day. Weirdly, at 100% charge it estimates 12 hours of use, but at 95% the estimate drops to 10 hours. - Keyboard and track pad go unresponsive sometimes. Happens rarely, but resolves after de- and reattaching the screen. - Cant find a case. Tried the UAG case, but it blocked the power and volume buttons. It also weighted the screen, so the laptop would flop shut if open less than 90 degrees. Ive been surviving with a keyboard cover and a sticker skin. Conclusion: Knowing then what I know today, would I still buy the Surface Book? I do all my drawing on the iPad now. I cant tell you the last time I picked up the Surface pen or used the touchscreen in general. That means I could have gotten the same (great!) specs on a different laptop for cheaper.

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