Introducing Surface Book 2 | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Surface Book 2

blogs.windows.com

374 pointsAlexeyBrin502 comments

This is a good example of how Microsoft often does marketing poorly. The text reads like a script for an in-person product launch. On the page it doesn't even make sense "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What?

And then after all of that, you click through to the store and there's no pricing information whatsoever and no pre-order date on the store page (there is a date buried in all the text in the announcement), just an unfriendly "Not available" broken button... no price, no date, and I don't even remember what was supposed to be interesting about the thing. Something about having more pixels than a Mac. Whatever interest I had in the product evaporated a long time ago, but the lack of concrete info on price makes me forget about it entirely.

Edited to add: Oh cool, I just went back to the page and noticed the "Microsoft Band", a product that was officially discontinued over a year ago, is prominently featured in the navigation bar across the top of the page. Good work, team!

As a former advertising executive, I can tell you what the problem is here. The writer and his boss who approved the copy aren't addressing the customer, they're addressing the boss's boss. In a dysfunctional organization like Microsoft, communicating up rather than out is how you get promoted. It's a rare Microsoft employee who moves up the ladder by thinking about the customer.

Well in fairness, the link points to the Windows blog. The actual marketing page should probably be the link: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

This might be one of the best explanations I have seen for MS ad copy and marketing in general. Thanks for the insight.

I never actually considered it from an "internal customer" (i.e. the boss) perspective. I just always saw them as painfully out of touch, but it isn't an "out of touch" issue; it is a focus issue.

"they're addressing the boss's boss"

I wonder about that with truck commercials.

I feel like every truck commercial is a sort of "See this is how we want our customers to act!"

Describing communication in terms of flow and direction is intriguing; it does sound like you have the experience to know what the problem is.

I really appreciated this analysis, thank you.

I just clicked the blgopost and was surprised by its quality even after having read these comments. I expect large companies to display good grammar.

Relatedly, it seems like Microsoft has a million blogs on different domains, it's hard to keep track of what's what.

I don't think that's what is going on here. The guy who wrote this (Panos Panay) is the VP in charge of the entire Surface brand. He is the boss.

Incredibly accurate.

I've suspected this is the case at a LOT of companies. So many marketing and advertising decisions are made this way. As long as they sell enough units it looks like a success, no matter how much potential was thrown away.

This is what made Jobs so great. Most of the criticisms about him are surely correct, but he was a boss who tried to understand the customer, and succeeded at it frequently.

[gone]

Yeah it's really frustrating.

* this page is an ad copy with very little of interest

* the store page (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/store/d/surface-book-2/8MCPZ...) has no date, no price and only hints at specs (you can pick a model but have no idea that e.g. the 13.5" i5 is iGP and the i7 is dGPU)

* https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book... has the actual stuff you want, with a detailed specs breakdown and the price of every configuration although even there are incoherences (Tech Specs states the 15" has 16GB RAM, but "Configure" lists an 8GB 15" configuration)

I feel like the surface book marketing has been horrible like this for a while. I recently had someone ask me if they could get a Surface Book, so I tried researching it. There was no way to tell that there were multiple models, just one labelled "Surface Book with Performance Base." What the fuck is a performance base? Is this the second revision of the Surface Book? They never mentioned that the first revision was discontinued either. I had to call the Microsoft store to figure all this crap out.

Why would I be surprised though, their entire website is a giant clusterfuck and always has been.

"Experience 4 times more power than before and up to 17 hours of battery life. Blazing graphics now come in two sizes: "

Who wrote that line, a Rackspace support bot?

Neither of those product pages has a photo of the keyboard. I know they are trying to sell it as a surface device with other great input methods, but come one, people still want to type on their notebooks.

Now I wish I hadn't found the prices...

Thanks! Was going wtf at the lack of technical specs in the release. No 32GB model is a bit of a shame, however it's great to see Coffee Lake now giving quad core power to ultrabooks.

I'm hanging for the X1 Carbon with this line of CPU myself; currently on the 1st gen X1C with i7 cpu, and the main issue I have is probably the battery life aside from the 8gb memory. That was the top spec back in 2011, glad I didn't penny pinch. The ultrabook still looks new; love the Lenovo keyboard and trackpoint.

Oh, cool, thanks for pointing me to the actual prices.

Interesting that spec says "Windows 10 Pro Creators Update 64-bit" considering Fall Creators Update was released today.

I really can't get over the opening sentence.

"When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission, it’s powerful."

Yeah, that guy who does the Surface keynotes is too good for them. His jokes are hilarious and but the audience never gets it, and his more ad-lib salesman-type pitches are very strong. But when he has to read the scripts and work in Microsoft's phrases it feels awkward. I hope he finds more fulfilling work.

You should probably shoot the messenger (OP) - for linking a blog post instead of the official launch page.

This is the actual launch page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

Yeah, the whole text feels bizarre. It seems like they're trying to drum up excitement before the release, but a wall of text is definitely un-inviting from a purely marketing standpoint. IMHO, they could have done well with a simple teaser product shot with a few sentences highlighting something other than "intel made a new CPU". But then again, what do I know, I've never sold anything :)

...and trying to visit the page on an Iphone 5 is almost impossible. Half the page is blocked by a cookie banner of which the "I agree" button does not function.

> "When you think about Microsoft and you hear our mission – to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more – it’s powerful." What?

They're 'starting with why' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp0HIF3SfI4

TL;DW: a marketing consultant suggested replacing "We make computers to empower people" with "We empower people; we just happen to make computers"

Just the quality of the writing is poor overall. It's not exactly grammatically incorrect, just seems like it was done because someone asked them to do it and not because they were really excited about the product.

At one point, the blog entry says: "In product making, we believe every detail matters. ". Those of the type of things Steve Jobs would never let Apple push out as PR.

It's a "blog" entry from a corporate VP. What did you expect? That is not the marketing site for the SB2.

Right from the title! What sort of a tagline is this "Surface Book 2, the most powerful Surface Book ever."?

No-one needs to be told that the Surface Book 2 is going to be faster than the Surface Book 1.

This HN post is linked to a blog post, that's also why you see topics like the Band. Perhaps try the actual Surface marketing site which includes pricing and pre-ordering (which starts on nov/9): https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

All valid points, but I think the embedded video does a good job of marketing the product.

So many negative comments just because it's Microsoft. If you don't like the OS, obviously this machine is not for you.

Personally I think it looks nice, but I have a Surface Pro 2 that works just perfectly fine and I love it. The hardware on it is still good and I don't see any reason to upgrade.

I think that in itself speaks to the quality of the Surface device line... I myself have the first Surface Book, and I will likely upgrade to the 2 at some point, but not because my current device doesn't serve me well... I'm glad this thing is still working like new and I don't have huge urges to upgrade because I suddenly feel inferior, like some other tech companies try to pull...

EDIT: Don't work for MS, just a happy Surface owner.

In the same boat, I love my Surface book. The primary reason I would upgrade is for i7 and 16 gb at this point. At this point the price to replace a system that is working great I can't justify.

As a result I will probably upgrade to the SB2 in a few years and still be very happy.

Yes, the machines they produce is very high quality and lasts a very long time. Longer than any other laptop I have used. Even if I have used it for quite some time it still feel fresh and performant.

The Surface Book was good enough on paper that I ordered one without ever having seen one in person, and being willing to switch from Linux (Arch with i3wm) to Windows for it.

It has not disappointed me.

> I'm glad this thing is still working like new and I don't have huge urges to upgrade because I suddenly feel inferior, like some other tech companies try to pull...

I don't get this. Your feelings of inferiority are your own feelings, not the fault of a tech company's marketing agency or some other external agent.

I don’t think most of the comments are about the computer, they are more about the poor marketing.

Even that’s not entirely fair. The submitted link was to the blog post, not the marketing page that someone else posted.

If you don't like the OS, can you not slap Linux on it? I found this thread on that subject [1] not sure how feasible it is.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/SurfaceLinux/comments/3qcqha/ubuntu...

Yep. I run latest Ubuntu on my Surface Pro 4 and it's great. The touchscreen doesn't work, although there are plenty of custom kernels out there that would fix that.

That's because Microsoft is trash. Typing this from an SP3, which I overall like very much. I was given this, so I have no misgivings. But the overall sloppiness of Windows and the years of varying quirky behavior I've had with this thing has been very annoying. Windows has an excuse when the hardware is arbitrary, but with the surface line there is no excuse.

If I had paid more than a few hundred dollars for an SP3, I would be quite upset with the numerous annoyances. As of now, it generally works ok. Of course Windows is still trash (which app do I use for settings again)?

But yeah, once you start taking people's money in Apple ballpark (and these are not cheap), make things work at least as good as Apple (which, yes, isn't perfect), or expect negative comments.

You can expect negative comments for every OS in existence.

You seem to dislike Windows quite a bit. To the point where it seems personal or you have a vendetta against it.

Yes things like settings are silly in modern Windows. But they aren't make or break stuff.

There's major positives to be seen from Windows too. They are the only major player trying to get touch working on desktop. That's not easy to do.

You don't specify what sloppiness or "years of varying quirky behavior" so I can't say much about that. If I wanted to really criticize the other OSes I have experience with - MacOS and Ubuntu. I'm sure I could come up with sloppiness issues and varying quirky behavior too. It wouldn't be hard at all, but it wouldn't be right either. They are both solid OSes overall (at least for now).

Nice to see Microsoft bringing new consumer hardware to market. In the meantime, all Surface Pro 4 i7 devices become unusable due to graphic issues.

The brilliant concepts by Microsoft are so amateuristically executed. I learned my lesson and am staying away.

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro4-s...

Certainly not all of them... I have used my SP4 as my only PC for several months at a time, doing everything from coding and CAD at work to gaming and Netflix at home and I've experienced no issues.

Recently?

Woah 71 pages...

Whenever I fly on business with my macbook/lenovo I am super jealous of surface users, because they can use their machine during take off, as it's classified as a tablet when folded over.

Seems minor but it's annoying when you're stuck looking at some crappy tv show or movie for an hour on each flight.

Being able to fold your laptop into a tablet does not classify it as a "small Personal Electronic Device" according to the FAA. It is determined by weight/size. Anything under 2 lbs is considered a PED and is allowed for use during all phases of flight. The Surface Book is too heavy and would not qualify.

Although, flight attendants aren't walking around with scales checking and it certainly looks less conspicuous in folded mode. But, I've successfully used my 4 lb 15" Retina MBP during take off/landing many times without issue. YMMV

http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/07/travel/faa-airplane-electronic...

https://www.faa.gov/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_op...

> Larger PEDs are those the operator has determined weigh more than 2 pounds or are of a size that would impede egress

Maybe treat yourself to the Thinkpad X1 Yoga gen 2?

But can you do any real work in a folded mode, unless you are a graphic designer or something.

Can watch movies/tv, browse the web (especially on the new planes with gate to gate wifi).

Having recently used a XPS 13, original Surface Book, Surface laptop, Surface Pro, and Lenovo T560, the Surface laptop is the clear winner for me. Definitely worth a look if you're looking for good Windows hardware, and don't need the discrete graphics capability of the Surface Book.

Is this for software development (assuming yes since we're on HN)?

I'm currently in the process of making this choice. Looking at Lenovo T470p/Dell XPS 13/15. If I'm doing linux development is it worth even thinking about the surface laptop?

I run an XPS 13 with Ubuntu 16.04 and do software development for a living (so I use the laptop for 10+ hours a day).

Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll be happy to answer... but long story-short, this is the best laptop I've ever touched or owned.

If you're doing work on Linux, get a laptop that is supported with Linux on it. The first sign of problems on your Surface, you'll have to nuke it, put Windows on it, see if it's still broken, reproduce the issue on Windows, then take it into a store.

Dell sells Linux certified models, the XPSs even. Maybe it's called the "Developer Edition" or something. You can always go with System 76 or Librem or something along those lines too.

Yes, using Visual Studio 2017. I haven't tried a Surface device with Linux yet.

I’ve had an XPS 15 for about a year and I love it.

Not least because it supports 2 4K monitors (60fps over USB-C, 30FPS over HDMI), but is also a solid laptop in its own right.

Also, the model I have has 32GB of RAM.

The only downside is the battery life, I get about 2 hours.

I have a sp2017 i7 16GB and it's great as a developer machine. I'm mainly using languages that are cross-platform like Go and the JVM. But I often end up using Windows Subsystem for Linux which works amazing.

I wouldn't buy any of the surface devices if you're planning to put linux on it (it's a little bit pointless), but maybe WSL + Docker on Windows are enough for you. (For me they are at least)

Tried the XPS15, keyboard was terrible.

Went with T470P i7-7700HQ with 2560x1440 screen, literally haven't switch home desktop on since I got it.

Works great with fedora as well (except touchpad driver issue that's in the works) everything works great out the box.

Google's PixelBook could be a good option if you don't have any need for Windows. It will run Linux easily via crouton.

How do you feel about the textured cloth they put around the keyboard? I was really tempted to pull the trigger on one of these but my hands get really sweaty when I eat too much sugar (took me years to figure out what triggered it) and I'm guessing it'd become a mess really quickly.

I've only had it a couple months, but it's not as bad as I feared.

Curious. Why? I have a Surface Book and will be upgrading in a few months.

If you don't need tablet capability and power of Surface Book GPU, Surface Laptop is a very nice machine. It's similar to regular ultralights (something like MacBook maybe) rather than higher end Surface Books and MacBook Pros.

I prefer the smaller form factor and lighter weight of the laptop. I realized I never undocked the screen on the Surface Book, which might be different for other users. I don't need a GPU for what I do. I never used the pen, which doesn't come with the laptop.

One downside to the laptop is it only comes with a single USB-C port, so you'll probably need a hub.

Looks like a proper MacBook Pro replacement HW wise, but the OS is not one I would use for work.. =/ So attached to OSX for the past 6 years and cannot see me using a windows OS for work , but at home only for gaming. The new MacBook Pro has many flaws. Not sure how this compares in real use for it?

I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.

Armed with Putty and a browser, I only missed the touchpad of my macbook. I do most of my work in Jupyter and in vim. It's rather liberating to realize you are not tied to one ecosystem. My point is I thought I would never be productive without my mac but that simply wasn't true.

I suppose I am an edge case though as most of my work is performed on my headless linux workstation.

For those wondering, TSA held on to my macbook which I retrieved over the weekend.

I’m honestly pretty amazed they didn’t relieve you of your laptop. Lots of stories of thieves in blue shirts.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/top-20-airports-tsa-theft/stor...

Good on the TSA!

Juypter? Can I ask what do you do for a living? Data-science related?

> I recently left my macbook with the TSA after a frantic sprint through security. I was stuck with a windows 7 PC for the week.

Care to elaborate more on what really happened?

I tried to switch to Windows for work (for gaming it's the obvious choice) but I just couldn't.

Windows 10 is IMO the best Windows ever, but I was surprised that the ecosystem was really poor compared to macOS. Most of the software you find online are outdated win32 apps with scaling problems. Even modern software from major companies still has scaling problems such as Adobe CC or even the mighty Photoshop.

I also didn't find worthy replacements for my most used apps such as Alfred. Even something like iStatMenus doesn't have a replacement in Windows, all the alternatives are really poor in comparison.

Just to give a counter point - every single device we use at work (biotech R&D) requires windows. All of our equipment (plate readers, flocytometry, purification systems, PCR, fermentors, congutators,etc etc) runs on windows-only software. And these are all several hundred million dollar verticals. Personally, I haven't run into a single piece of equipment that works with MacOS. Except maybe one of our bioreactors, which used a web interface, but that too required a windows tool for other things. Windows is used in a TON of proper manufacturing setups, traditionally only for SCADA/HMI, but more so now on the control side, with PC based automation becoming more prominent.

Which ecosystem is "poor" depends on your own current situation.

Oddly enough I think mac and windows switched professional users somehow. I don't know a single developer on a windows machine, however most people I know working in 3d, digital illustration or video work all use windows machines now.

For me it feels like you want to tweak Windows to be a clone of your OSX setup. Hint: it will never happen, same way you cant ever make OSX really like Windows. For example I could never find a good replacement for Paint.NET on OSX.

I dunno why people say that one or the other is superior for work (except if you work with some special software that exists only for one OS). Both of them are equally good, since everything is moving to the cloud, for most non-specialized tasks you need one app - a browser. If you look at other fields like programming, graphics work, 3D,.. they are the same again (except for special cases like C# or Swift development).

And things like iStatMenus is not something that is used for work, its a widget that you like. Perhaps you simply like the look and feel of OSX more?

Funny, I tried to go the other way but just couldnt.

The ecosystem on windows 10 is poor but then again I just download from one of the million win32 applications. I just don't use "apps" from store.

agreed. I have a gaming PC at home, as well as a separate gaming laptop that I use for events. I've tried coding on it, and it's just not as good. Little things like the apps you mentioned I miss. Soulver, text expander, proper twitter clients, spotlight, brew.

I was a Linux diehard for years but I'm very happy with my Surface Book. With "Ubuntu on Windows" you can run the usual unix command line tools; if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.

I am also most comfortable with my OpenSUSE but Windows 10 is great and I have OpenSUSE Bash for Windows installed. It really is nice and it is case sensitive! Why is Mac OS OPTIONAL case sensitivity?

> if anything it's more comfortable than OSX since you get up-to-date GNU versions rather than older GNU tools.

1. By and large, OSX ships the BSD userland not GNU

2. You can trivially add up-to-date GNU tools to OSX: install homebrew, install whichever GNU stuff you want

That seems to depend on the task. The highest end CPU available, even the 15", is the i7-8650U which is a 1.9Ghz @ 15W part. This is also how they pull off 17hr battery life, they are putting an ultrabook processor in a 15" laptop. Current 15" MBP can be had with a i7-7920HQ, 3.1Ghz @ 45W which I would expect to be quite a bit faster for multi-core workloads.

Which they run at 20W

I've been trying Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and it's a great idea, I can see my self moving to windows (from Linux) in the next months when they fix the slow IO. The combination would work great for me, a terminal with Linux tools + a nice windows 10 experience (nice fonts, devices support) .

It certainly feels like Mac OS is stuck in in-between land with iOS and OS X and it just feels a mess if your on a desktop with no track pad. The scroll bars are not mouse friendly. Windows 10 seems so much more stable and modern to Mac OS for the last two years. One job I use a Macbook and the OS just drives me nuts. The lack of decent short cuts drives is mind boggling.

You can use the Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad. Not sure what you mean by "last of decent short cuts," OS X is pretty keyboard friendly. Maybe just unfamiliarity?

I'm the same. I'm not at all interested in the new Macbook Pros with the touch bar and crappy keyboard, and the Surface Book 2 looks amazing. I don't even actually like macOS that much any more. And Windows has the Linux subsystem!

But. I need to do iOS development from time to time. At the very least, I need to be able to test web pages in Mac browsers. I can run a Windows VM on a Mac very easily, but I can't run a Mac VM inside Windows very easily. Sigh.

I imagine that it can run Linux, right — if not now, soon. I personally much prefer Linux to both macOS & Windows, although obviously tastes differ. I get a tiling WM with no cruft, I can completely control my UI, I can get work done quickly and easily.

I've been (also) working on Surface machines for a couple of years now, on Ubuntu.

They work OK on stock kernels since around 4.10 (but one must "backport" the linux-firmware package from Ubuntu Artful for having a working Wifi).

For a "non fancy" work usage (no stylus etc.; mostly keyboard and touchpad), the "only" nags are:

  - no sleep functionality
  - you can't permanently enable the Fn button, and worse, it seems that it disables itself regularly, and even worse, independenly of it being active or not, the light is off (it's not a defect; the light just turns itself off shortly after activation).

With those points in mind (point 2 is much more annoying than it reads), I think Surface machines are poor solutions for Linux users, unless the user needs to have tablet and laptop in a single machine. In fact, I'll buy the next-gen XPS 13 once it's available and mature.

On the other hand, Surface Books are the state of the art of large/work tablets. There's nothing remotely comparable: a 700gr 13.5" tablet is amazing (although the batteries don't last very long), and the fact that there is a 15" model is even more impressive.

The stylus and the touch might not work perfectly with Linux.

Same here. I can live without touch or stylus, just want a performance laptop with good screen (3:2 ratio) and keyboard.

You can absolutely use this for work.

My windows workflow involves a Virtualbox VM, with ~/ in the guest mounted as Z: on the windows host.

Use gvim installed direct on windows (so long as you don't need super complex plugins which shell out to utilities) to edit files in Z: which exist on the host, with PuTTy and tmux as your terminal. Done.

The thing holding windows back right now is a terminal emulator to sit ontop of WSL, and WSL's ability to run background processes properly without closing them all when i close a terminal (and to have things autostart on boot).

There are workarounds right now to solve this, though.

Gaming, the world has changed and this generation of Apple users has way more Gamers then what they had before.

Why do they continue to ignore Gamers on the Mac Platform.

- Microsoft: Gaming has been a first class citizen at Microsoft for a while and I'm not sure if we can say the same about Apple. They just put tons of money into it because they have this competitive advantage. It's not only the games they bought/publish (Minecraft, Age of Empires, Flight Simulator, etc), but the platform itself (Xbox, DirectX, etc). Windows 10 also has a "Gaming Mode" as part of the OS for performance improvement which some games might have it turned on automatically.

- Hardware: PC Gamers usually customize hardware to have pretty decent power (GPU, CPU, Memory, etc) for relatively cheap when compared to Mac. In PC market, there's hardware competition for literally every single part of the hardware. For games that require extra power, you would need a powerful machine and, while they do exist in newer generations of iMacs, it's just damn expensive. Which brings me to my next point: market.

- Market: Although Mac users grew significantly, I'd say it's still pretty small when compared to PC. If you are a game developer, especially an indie game dev, you may find how depressing it can be to publish a cross platform game. It's not super hard given the popularity of game engines such as Unity and UE4. But the issue, in my opinion, is if your game has multiplayer, for example, you're probably going to have a bad time dealing with platform differences. Aside from that, you're going to have to deal with other platform differences in a lot of different levels. At some point, you're going to ask the question: is it really worth the extra investment? You are going to delay publishing your game for probably little gain. Developing for the larger market first might make more sense. Not only for indie devs but for AAA games too.

I hope that in about two years the whole eGPU situation is sorted out so that I can have a MacBook Pro with a good CPU as my only computer.

Until then, maintaining a desktop gaming PC and buying the base MacBook Pro model every now and then seems to be more cost effective.

I reckon it has something to do with the graphics stack. Have you tried running anything graphic intensive on the Mac? Every same program no matter how well-written runs faster on Windows. To be fair I haven't tried any Metal games (if they even exist?), but I guess it is somehow harder to write games that are performant on the Mac?

One saving grace here is that switching to OSX helped me quit my gaming addiction.

They are working on it, but in typical apple fashion they will not capitulate to existing standards.

One HUGE Issue Hardware. While the build quality is awesome the muscle power of most Macs graphically is just abysmal. Also the lack of a native Right Click!

There are plenty of Mac OS games and people don't play them.

I used Microsoft OS from MS-Dos v3.3 right up until they launched Vista. I have to go back every now and again for work, and it is still horrible for me. The current work machine I have requires a reboot sometimes 3 times a day for updates. Surely this can not be the norm?

Anyway, I agree with you. I have a pro at work, but recently got a plain macbook, and it is awesome. Great for even iPhone dev work.

https://github.com/chx/chx.github.io/wiki/How-I-set-up-my-Wi... does this help?

Hmm.. Not really..

I've been saying this about every model of XPS then I'd buy one and suffer through constant driver issues. The build quality is definitely there which was lacking before but the quality of drivers make me run for hills.

My, how times have changed. I'm freaking old.

A bit of headline fail there:

"Introducing Surface Book 2, the most powerful Surface Book ever"

Out of the two of them so far?

Thank you Apple for introducing this meaningless phrase to humanity's discourse.

They talk the Apple talk, but can they walk the Apple walk? ;)

It's not meaningless. There's two reasons.

Improvements along a particular dimension aren't always a given. If they said "Introducing the Apple iPhone 8 Plus, the lightest iPhone ever" they'd be lying. You can't assume that a newer model of something is always going to be more powerful.

Language isn't purely literal. Especially when there's a limited number of words to market to people. You can't write a 10 000 essay. So mentioning a detail isn't just to communicate the literal facts, it's to highlight details, point out significant details. So when someone says "it's the most X ever" they are saying that the improvements are significant enough to make them notable.

No it is a prophecy: The rest of them will be less powerful.

Technically, 3 of them because they had a mini-refresh of the "Surface Book with Performance Base" around 1 year after the initial release.

If they said "Most powerful LAPTOP ever" that could bring some legal issues on them.

In EU there's a law that forbids using such an unsubstantiated/unverifiable/subjective claim in the advertisements.

EDIT: Recalled one more detail: If you use a claim like that in the commercial then EU regulatory institutions can demand an actual peer reviewed research paper backing it up :)

Who wants to wager that the Surface Book 3 won't be even more powerful than the Surface Book 2?

I'll wait for Surface Book 3.11 for Workgroups.

That's how Apple does it.

I think they had enough sense to wait more than 2 generations to say it though.

I noticed that too... "Hasn't there been only one other, and wasn't it over a year ago? I would hope so."

Talking about the hardware this is a pretty interesting offering. The got the new 8th gen i7 into the display half (which they failed to do for the new Surface Pro which seems like an odd omission).

Seems like a solid follow up to the original Surface Book (which I have). In my experience my Surface book is most usable in 'studio mode' (their name for folded back over the keyboard with the display up) and an external keyboard. That gives the maximum graphics power and its possibly to use the stylus to draw on it easily.

As a laptop the weight balance is off enough that there are a lot of orientations that just don't work (the system falls back on the display.

As a development machine with the dock to add extra displays I've found it both responsive and powerful enough. On the road my 12" Surface Book is a bit too little screen area and so I use my 15" macbook pro 2015 for that. The 15" version of the surface book 2 would be a win there but at 4.2lbs my shoulder will complain. (I briefly had the 4+ pound Sony VAIO and it was painful enough that I just never took it on trips as powerful as it was.)

At the end of the day I think Microsoft is doing a good job of exploring the mobile development workstation space in a way that is currently out pacing Apple. Microsoft is still behind (as far as I am concerned) in software but with things like WSL they are plugging the gaps which made them unusable for my purposes.

Out of curiosity, what does your SB have the dedicated GPU in the keyboard?

I haven't had any issues with my SB falling back on the display, (the keyboard is nice and heavy on mine) so I'm wondering if it's the graphics card or something else.

> They got the new 8th gen i7 into the display half (which they failed to do for the new Surface Pro which seems like an odd omission).

8th gen intel processors were not out when the new Surface Pro released. And they had to release it because it was long overdue since SP4.

> On the road my 12" Surface Book is a bit too little screen area and so I use my 15" macbook pro 2015 for that. The 15" version of the surface book 2 would be a win there but at 4.2lbs my shoulder will complain. (I briefly had the 4+ pound Sony VAIO and it was painful enough that I just never took it on trips as powerful as it was.)

15"MBP: 4.49lb(2015), 4.02lb(2016&2017)

Thank you!

First, I did not think the MBP was that heavy. But you are absolutely correct. I put it on my scale and it comes in a bit over 4.5 lbs. (I'm attributing the extra weight to the stickers.) So that does make the SB2 faster, better screen, and longer battery life. Could be an expensive realization :-).

I was recalling the article in ars where they were talking about the LTE version [1], which is missing the i7. I suspect I'm the only one who wants a laptop with a decent LTE radio that can take advantage of the increased area to offer something which can pull in even weak LTE signals and work at something resembling full speed. I guess we have to wait for Intel to do some sort of Centrino type deal with an LTE modem manufacturer before we see something like that.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-seems-to-h...

Nvidia 1060 and 1050? Nice. I assume it is 4GB and 6GB respectively?

This really makes it incredibly powerful. I run with dual 4k monitors off of a Dell XPS with an Nvidia 1050 with 4GB. Feels like a desktop.

(Does this also support 32GB of RAM? That is required for development these days with multiple containers running locally. My Dell XPS 15" supports 32GB of RAM.)

> Nvidia 1060 and 1050? Nice. I assume it is 4GB and 6GB respectively?

6 and 2. The 1050/2GB is for the 13", the 1060/6GB for the 15".

> Does this also support 32GB of RAM?

No, since Intel still only supports LPDDR3.

What I want to know is the TDP limits of each of these. I saw that the 13" had a (39?) small power supply, and the 15" had a 95 (?) W power supply. My Alienware 13R3 has a 180W power supply, of which if I am not mistaken fully half goes to that 1060, and 45W goes to the i7-6xxx quad-core CPU.

My guess is that this laptop will have heavy thermal restrictions on the 1060's performance, not to mention a lack of power to actually run it at it's max TDP.

I wonder if they're using nVidia's new technology which underclocks/underpowers the GPUs at (their claim of) only modest cost in performance.

FWIW the SB2 runs a 15W CPU (possibly upTDP'd to 20W?), I can't imagine they run the GPUs much higher than 30W.

The 13" gets 95W brick in dGPU config (same as 15") and houses a 1050 (~45W) and a 8650U (~20W).

It appears to max out at 16GB for the same reason as the rMBP (current Intel processors are limited to 16GB of LPDDR3).

Many Lenovo Thinkpads and HP ZBooks, the mobile workstation lines, support 64GB of ECC memory when paired with a Xeon. And 64GB of non-ECC when using a Core processor.

Hell even the "ultrabook" workstation from HP, the ZBook Studio supports 32GB of ram [0].

One has to trade capacity for speed. 16GB is such a wall now, it makes me think Intel crippled their latest chips because they are too good.

[0] http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/getpdf.aspx/c04832209.pdf?ver=1...

> You won’t believe how much the colors and 3D images will pop in PowerPoint on these machines.

That sounds like a horrible way to convince me I want this.

What? Thinking about default theme PowerPoint presentations doesn't get you salivating at the screen?

Looking at the specs, (linked in another comment), it appears that the USB-C port doesn't support Thunderbolt 3. Seriously, Microsoft, you can't charge this much for a laptop without TB3. I know that TB started as an Apple standard, but you're not killing this port like you did with Firewire. Your case of NIMBY has cost you my sale. I'll wait and get the next premium Lenovo/HP/ASUS/etc Ultrabook with 8th gen i7 AND TB3.

Not enough PCIe lanes in Surface Connect. Since the CPU is in the clipboard, but the USB-C port is in the keyboard, there would have to be available PCIe lanes on the Surface Connect port, but it's taken up by the GPU lanes.

I guess we may see an upgrade in Surface Connect by next generation. Any chance, TB3 could be included in clipboard itself?

I have a MacBook Pro and have never used thunderbolt. Why is it a big deal / what do you use it for?

I use it for external GPU and an external TB2 SSD raid array. The thing is, these laptops are starting at $2500, ignoring the base model integrated GPU that is just there for making the starting price attractive (although that one could benefit the most from an eGPU...)

It sounds like a technical reason for it being excluded (lacking extra PCI-E lanes) but it is just disappointing on a laptop in the $2.5k-$3k range in late 2017.

I use a single TB3 port to connect two 4K displays, 100W power and all USB devices all through a single cable

Honestly, TB3 kind of makes one of the main features of the Surface Book irrelevant in my opinion. If you can just connect a dGPU at your desk, do you really need one in the base of the laptop? Is that worth the related driver issues and the extra cost of a Surface Book?

Thunderbolt is and has always been an Intel standard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbolt_(interface)

I bought a SB last year and returned it after a couple of days since it was full of problems with the GPU and pen[1].

The machine was beautiful and both the keyboard and trackpad felt amazing, but even if my unit was defective the pen and tablet experience were poor compared to something like an iPad Pro.

Also the display was really sharp in terms of resolution but suffered from an insane amount of ghosting while scrolling[2].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XLVgpD-Dtc

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcOwjj2UWtw

When I got my Surface Pro way back when, I had some similar issues. I had to update the drivers for the screen and pen to the official Wacom release instead of the Microsoft release and afterwards it ran amazingly well. It was so nice that I've been eyeing one of those absurdly expensive drafting table style Wacom setups for my desktop ever since even thought I could never justify the price. I've considered upgrading the Surface Pro as well for a larger screen and lighter body, but the Pro 2 does all my normal tasks (mostly matlab and putty) really well and the fact that the pen is now sold separate deeply offends me.

>I've been eyeing one of those absurdly expensive drafting table style Wacom setups for my desktop ever since even thought I could never justify the price.

Have you looked at the Surface Studio? I realize it's not super powerful for a desktop, but the price is simply too good compared to the Wacom tables.

Yeah the pro 2... just tends to work. (with the usual variance due to windows and its gremlins).

Although, my keyboard has seen better days. The case I got was too tight, and that forced the edges to fray very quickly.

If I'm not mistaken the Surface Book is not using Wacom tech anymore so you are stuck with Microsoft.

> the pen and tablet experience were poor compared to something like an iPad Pro

Of course it would be. How would it be different if it is a Windows Machine and not a mobile device?

Because half of it is actually a tablet with touch functionality.

Windows prompts a touch keyboard and has other features, but the experience is really poor generally speaking.

The pricing is brutal.[1] About $100-$300 more than the 15" Macbook Pro with the same amount of storage. The base model is particularly shameful, with only 8GB of RAM. The base MBP is 16GB for $100 less. You can't configure the RAM amount, so $2,900 is the cheapest 15" model with 16GB.

[1] Or perhaps it's more that the configuration options are really inflexible, with every configuration having the highest-end CPU and GPU.

With that price you get "twice as powerful as the latest MacBook Pro. ...up to 17 hours of video playback. That’s 70% more than the latest MacBook Pro."

The “twice as powerful” is almost certainly just about the GPU. The CPU is a U series part versus the HQ series part in the MBP.

I'll believe those figure on battery life when someone independent confirms it.

The MBP doesn't have a touchscreen with pro-grade digitizer.

But if that is all your care about you can by a generic PC with similar specs for 1/3 of the price of the MBP.

see, that argument goes both ways.

I've been considering a PC laptop for gaming specifically because of the integrated nvidia chips – the new "max q" design is really thin and has moved these things down from 10 pounds to under 5. It's totally worth the extra $300 for a dedicated 1060 with 6gb of ram – this is a legit gaming machine. Yes, I could get a desktop for cheaper, but I don't have room.

Basically you are paying for a better CPU, you get the option of Intel's 8th Gen CPU..... and Nvidia GPU, arguably better then one offered by Apple.

I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac. At least then I know the GPU will be best at something Apple designed to do.

> I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac.

https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/23/apple-power-vr-imaginati...

"The A11 Bionic chip inside Apple's new iPhone 8 series and upcoming iPhone X is the company's first-ever self-designed GPU."

I should imagine it's only a matter of time.

"I just wish Apple will make their own Metal GPU for Mac"

This hurts my brain for some reason. Metal is a API to access the GPU and you want them to make a new GPU for that....API. Huh ?!?

> Basically you are paying for a better CPU

And detachable tablet, and digitiser?

I can't stand when companies say the latest version of a product is "the most powerful one ever". Why would that ever not be the case?

Even worse, they have both "most powerful ever" and "most powerful yet" in the copy. That reads really sloppy to to me.

Mac Minis

Power is something you want to use less of when constrained by battery life, surely!:)

Efficient would be a better word to use then.

Now I want a 3:2 MacBook Pro 15'', the display ratio that Mac notebook used to have(PowerBook G4). 3:2 is much more comfortable working with, enough vertical space for reading code and no sacrifice for horizontal space.

I’d love this. 16:9(10) is probably the worst aspect ratio ever to be made standard on laptops. How the hell did people think it was a good idea?

> 16:9(10)

16:9 can't be equated to and is significantly worse than 16:10, which is worse than 3:2, which is worse than 4:3 (which is coming back on tablets). There were even 5:4 displays at one point (early days of desktop LCD, I still have my 1280x1024 19" ViewSonic VP191b).

Assuming 15" diagonals on all of them:

* a 16:9 display is 96 sq in and 7.4" high

* a 16:10 display is 101 sq in and 7.9" high

* a 3:2 display is 104 sq in and 8.3" high

* a 4:3 display is 108 sq in and 9" high

* a 5:4 display is 110 sq in and 9.4" high

As you can see, 16:10 -> 16:9 is actually the largest loss in surface area and second-largest loss of height (largest being 4:3 -> 3:2).

However if you're watching a movie, the 16:9 has 100% coverage for 16:9 and 75% coverage for Cinemascope, every other format gets lower in both relative and absolute coverage, down to 70% (77 sq in) and 53% (58 sq in) for a 5:4.

> How the hell did people think it was a good idea?

Black bars on movies, better view angles in FPS, and cheaper.

Thinkpad in 3:2 for me

I've owned and used a SB1 for nearly 2 years. Quick summary:

Pros:

- Longest battery life I've ever had in a laptop - bottom of the device is entirely battery (or maybe a GPU if you picked that one) and that's comparing it to a Haswell MBA.

- Excellent (huge) trackpad

- Studio mode is great for life drawing classes

- Face unlock just works on desktop mode

- Windows 10 is a nice modern OS (visually) and WSL /Powershell (if you want to learn it) are excellent.

- Surface Dock cable is awesome - a single magnetic charger / display / docking cable.

Cons:

- As a tablet it's too heavy.

- As a tablet face unlock doesn't work on tablet-type angles

- Silly Windows 10 apps. Like Instagram, which has a notification entitled 'Instagram', the contents of which are 'Instagram'.

- No international support - take the device overseas and need help and you're dealing with 'Old Bad Ballmer' Microsoft, who will send you back and forth between eg US and UK for years without fixing your hardware.

I'd buy an SB again, but I'd also look at the Surface Laptop (and maybe Surface Pro if someone I trust says you can type on that keyboard).

This is the most beautiful laptop/computer I've seen in a long time, it hits all the right buttons for me:

it has great battery life, it comes in 15" and you can detach for tablet mode it has a pen (so I don't have to have ipad pro + laptop) touchscreen is just better, I've seen people use it, and it is better then my macbook air it has nvidia 1060 so I can play games

I need to figure out how to work on this, as it has Windows and I am game. I need some really good terminal and graphical vim and I will be golden.

Tips for terminal on Windows 10: https://goreliu.github.io/wsl-terminal/

Any experiences with dual booting in to Linux on the Surface Book? I can imagine some things, like detaching not working optimally, but does it work at all?

I've used Linux on a Surface 3 so I imagine it'll be a similar story for the Book: many things won't play as nice as they would under Windows (sleeping when closing it, WiFi), things like the touch screen might not play ball, and the graphics drivers might not work.

Linux 4.9 aimed to make the Surface usable, but I haven't found a distro that played with the Wifi drivers nicely (would work for a few minutes, then would shut off, become unresponsive, and required a hard reboot to get working again). There is a Fedora Surface image that many suggest works really well on Surfaces, but I couldn't get it to boot.

Now I just prefer using a Virtualbox image to do all my Linux stuff. It's easier to set up and requires far less rebooting.

I am not sure how well it would work to even get Linux on it. I thought they had a fairly locked down boot loader. And no way there is a good driver for the screen release.

On the other hand, I have never even contemplated dual booting it because WSL does everything I need Linux for. It is actually pretty good.

Not a duel boot, but I regularly use the Windows Subsystem for Linux on my Surface Book for work and personal development, I've had no problems whatsoever. Works like a dream, and if you stick an X server on your computer, X applications pretty much just _work._ If you haven't yet, it's worth looking into.

Try to use Windows Subsystem for Linux and Docker for Windows. They are both beautifully integrated and work like a charm.

Check comment on the page by masklinn

The i5 variant comes with just 8 GB RAM. Would have considered if they had given an option for 16 GB RAM.

Being a developer, 8 GB seems tight these days! 15-inch 16 GB variant comes with i7 but the price is a little too steep (starts from 2500 USD)

Where do you see that the i5 doesn't support 16GB? The specs list on microsoft.com seem to just say "i5 or i7, 8GB or 16GB RAM"

Check the bottom section of this page: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

To be fair, if you're developer, you'll probably also want an i7 (since a lot of compilation tasks are highly parallel and the extra cores will help a lot)

I never compile on my own machine, but I can tell you that if I can't have 30 chrome tabs open at once we are going to have a problem.

That's right. But the i7 15-inch line starts from 2500 USD. I think lots of developers won't be able to afford at that price point.

A 15" non Apple laptop without numberpad, plus a 3:2 display: joy! I don't need a new laptop now but I hope other manufacturers will follow.

No number pad means that the touchpad in centered with the screen and the keyboard so I wouldn't have to slide the laptop to the right to have the important keys and the touchpad in front of me.

3:2 * 5.33 = 16:10.66, so extra vertical space.

This is just an insane device to me. Aspects of it are performance oriented, but the same or better performance can be had for 1/3-1/2 the cost in other laptops. Personally I'd rather just have an iPad that's good at being a tablet and a laptop that's good at being a mobile workstation. And that costs about the same amount of money.

Why do no pics show the USB-A side of the system clearly? It's like they only want to talk about USB-C.

Also I can't tell if it does USB-C Power Delivery or not? Or would I still need a separate charger for this? Would be really nice to only carry one charger for phone and laptop...

What phone charges with USB-C?

From here: https://www.windowscentral.com/surface-book-2-tech-specs "Microsoft is still using its proprietary Surface Connect for power and the optional Surface Dock."

aaah.. at the end: "Users can also recharge the Surface Book 2 with a USB Type-C charger as long as it is powerful enough. Devices can be charged from the Surface Book 2, such as a phone using USB Type-C."

USB-C is pretty standard on Android now. Most newer Android phones have moved to USB-C, including Samsung's S8 and Note 8. All of Google's own branded phones have used USB-C for a coupe of years now.

> What phone charges with USB-C?

Almost every new phone.

I have a Nexus 5X, my wife has a Nexus 6P, and my computer is a Dell XPS 13. We charge all three with a USB-C charger, which means less cords and adapters around the house and in the car.

Where have you been for the last... like 2-3 years?

It's good to see that Type-C is becoming the standard laptop charger on new laptops!

currently different 210 handsets according to the GSM Arena database.

https://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?chkUSBC=selected

My Nexus 6P charges with USB-C.

Mac user since 2002 and using windows was always a less-than-satisfying experience. Now if the Surface had 32Gb of RAM then I'd be all in but it seems like Microsoft are being restricted by Intel's incompetence as much as Apple are on this front.

Looks not too bad, but I'm kinda interested in a Ryzen based laptop. And for that .. there's basically nothing yet (a Lenovo that is based on ~outdated~ tech just came out, a HP is announced and seems limited in its RAM options/potentially limited to single-channel and crippling the APU and a monster of a gaming laptop with desktop CPUs that is basically not usable if you ever want to carry it or use it without a power supply).

I like the design, but the price is far too high - for me - and I'm neither a fan of Intel nor NVidia.

Ryzen chips for laptops don't exist yet, though they're working on it. https://liliputing.com/2017/10/amd-ryzen-chips-laptops-comin...

Looks like HP will have a ryzen-based laptop, though there's no telling how the chip will compare to the desktop variant

See the other thread - I already linked to the HP one (that's the one that might have the single-channel flaw/fault).

Lenovo seems to have an offer available today - for about a month now. With .. other issues.

I don't think there are laptop Ryzen variants out yet, thus the only "laptops" that exist use desktop Ryzen variants and are squarely aimed at gamers.

Lenovo A475[1] is using a mobile version afaict. Unfortunately .. it's based on Bristol.

HP Envy x360 [2] seems to come out ~soon~ based on Raven, but the outlets/the community seems concerned that they'll limit those to single-channel. Which according to reviews in the past severely cripples the whole setup. That said, details aren't out so maybe HP does the right thing..

So potentially two options I'm aware of, one flawed and one potentially flawed.

The only other one I found was a (gaming) monster from ASUS that is not a laptop in my world..

1: HK link, sorry for that: https://www3.lenovo.com/hk/en/laptops/thinkpad/thinkpad-a-se...

2: German link, sorry for that: https://www.computerbase.de/2017-10/raven-ridge-hp-notebook-...

How many times have you read "...the power of a desktop, the versatility of a tablet, and the freedom of a light and thin laptop..." and found the reality is that it isn't as good as the best of breed of any of these, and more expensive. It may be a really nice laptop. Isn't that enough? And that's even before getting into how difficult it is to wash all the too-small touch targets and other gotchas out of a mouse-first UI.

Is this really how they're introducing this product? Through a blog post?

Don't think so, that's just what OP chose to link. Their store page has more detail: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

Finally, USB-C in a Surface product!

I'm actually really glad they have up until now left USB-C out. We're at a point in USB-C's life I'd consider it an anti-feature, and the Surface Book 2's no exception: This particular USB-C port is really only useful for adding a second display. It's more or less fine as an extra port, but anywhere it takes away a Type A port, or even the Mini-DP it replaced is a little sad.

Marco Arment posted this a couple days ago, and it sums up... some of... the issues with USB-C: https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c

We had a discussion stemming from that article at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15473777

My take (it's not positive): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474131

It certainly has its quirks and limitations.

For a mobile device one big plus of USB-C is USB-PD and the ecosystem of fast chargers and power banks it brings/will-bring. You can also use one charger for both your phone and laptop, which is useful even if you can’t charge both at the same time.

Ignore everything else and it’s a nice upgrade just for this.

Wait what, they just announced the successor to the SB without any fanfare?

Did I miss something about today? I didn't even know they were doing a SB refresh.

What?

Having worked at Microsoft and now at Apple (and a startup before these two), in my opinion

The overall distribution of proficiencies and talent across engineering teams (both hardware and software teams) in my opinion were about equal across the three.

(One major difference though is finding engineers who don’t mind doing nitty gritty dirty work like Dev ops and/or setting up test automation stuff is harder in big companies because somehow many of the senior engineers at big companies feel that if the setup isn’t given to them by someone else, it’s not their job to set it up for their team, so they just use what’s available/existing even if it’s insufficent for good quality.

(Not trying to bash on any oldies on my existing or previous teams of course there were few exceptions)

At startups though engineers don’t have this “that’s below me” Attitude and will put in the time to set up automation if it makes the team more agile.

In fact setting up developer automation was one of the first things I set up for my team before getting to my feature development tasks and team has acknowledged it made huge difference in the overall team agility and reduction in regressions found by the QA folks every time code was checked in )

Anyway this made me realize the importance of good marketing which Microsoft lacked a lot imo and also engineering leadership product vision

Since generally I’ve noticed you’ll get about the same distribution of engineering talent

And what really makes the difference are a good marketing team and good engineering management team

who believes in the importance of code quality (ensuring things like checkstyle and findbugs are enabled as required to pass for check in and having required code review approvals for check in) and automation in tests (ensuring some set of unit, integration, and functional tests are run to be passed before check in), and automation in deployment.

Interesting. Does anyone here actually use the dial, or know someone that does? Otherwise, it doesn't look like a compelling upgrade to my Surface Book (1) though. Even though I paid an arm a leg for it, I've grown to love it over time. Glad they are providing both 13" and 15" options though.

Are you comfortable with the touchpad of your Surface Book 1?

Not the OP, but I have a SB1 and the touchpad has had no problems. Works very well, and is natural for me to use.

The one on my MBP 2014 is definitely superior, but I don't mind it. Gets the job done, and I found it precise enough to work on corporate presentations, a place where neurotic detail reigns.

After reading through the product announcement I had to chuckle a bit... If you'll pardon the shameless plug, I just purchased a used Lenovo X230 Tablet (ThinkPad) a couple weeks ago and my bet is that for the average HN reader use case it scratches all the same itches as the Surface Book. Granted it's bulkier and slower, but it's about $2300 cheaper.

On the other hand it's easily repaired and upgraded, and has an easily swapped battery, so you can bring a couple spares along on a trip. The Surface Book obviously targets the "creative" market, but as long as you spend most of your time in a terminal, an editor, or a web browser, and have an occasional need for a pen and touch screen, then the old Lenovo ThinkPad tablets are awesome.

If I read correctly that's a 3rd gen CPU. This will be really inferior in terms of virtualization.

For the 2300$ more, you get a better and fully-featured CPU, GPU, a great screen (My eyes hurt at 1920x1080 already), great battery life, a lightweight tablet, great touchpad. I think the sentence "my bet is that for the average HN reader use case it scratches all the same itches as the Surface Book" isn't that true in practice.

I usually think it's good to make no compromises on my main development machine. It just boosts productivity and fun in the end.

1366x768 itches pretty badly

Especially in a 12" screen, I've been using an X240 for a couple of days and it feels old.

Hopefully they improved the wobbly hinge/upper half and the sharp scratchy corners.

What is the main reason behind the 17 hour battery life, mainly in comparison to a MacBook Pro? Does this come mainly from the battery size, power management in the OS or components?

Given that the only battery life number they quote is for video playback (with no specs about the video format, bitrate, resolution, full-screen state, etc), I suspect that number just happens to be extra high when you choose the optimal video in the optimal format and play it full screen (so the OS can stop spending cycles on UI rendering). Note that Apple specifies 10 hours of "iTunes Movie playback" for the 15-inch Macbook Pro. It's probably possible to improve on that with some other format. Apple also gives a quote for "wireless web" usage (the same 10 hours). The 15-inch Surface Book 2 is also significantly thicker and about 5% heavier than a 15-inch Macbook Pro. So I'm sure more battery plays a role as well.

They advertised 13.5 video playback for the sp2017 and I'm getting 7-10 real world usage. But people have said to actually use their sb's for 13 hours, so it'll probably be 11-16 hours of real world usage.

They use core i7-8650U which is a 15W while the MBP uses HQ model which is 47W. And the low power idle mode difference is even larger 5W vs 20, not entirely sure about the 20.

Microsoft Windows and their software is not ready for these new devices, that is the sad part of the story. One clear example is Microsoft Office not working in different DPI displays. For example if you have a ~4k display in your notebook and you plug two 1080p monitors the fonts will be blurred. And we are talking about the Microsoft core product.

I can't even count the times they say Macbook Pro... Can't they just let the product shine by itself instead of trying to make the competition look bad? Do they really need to get that low? Don't get me wrong, I dislike 99% of apple products, but it makes the entire ad just awful...

How's the track pad on these things? The track pad on the latest XPS is atrocious and at times unusable.

I find the trackpad on the original Surface Book to be good. As good as any MacBook I've used, but I'm not a Mac user, so I don't think I can speak to the more subtle differences.

Most reviews of the original Surface Book concur that it's "nearly" as good as the MacBook's trackpads. Also remember that the display is a touch screen.

While I do love the Mac trackpad, the important part is the amazing gestures built into OS X- things like workspace switching and window management are far easier in OS X as a result. But maybe that makes a more dramatic difference for me because I've always disliked alt+tab.

If it’s anything like the first surface book then it’s likely to be pretty bad. I had to carry a mouse with me at all times to be able to properly use the surface book. So far Apple laptops are the only one’s with a trackpad I can actually use all day and not miss having a separate mouse (for work not gaming obviously).

Can't agree more on this. I wish the fall creators update pushes out some kind of driver update for it.

I've had a SB1 since it was released and never had issues with the trackpad. Works just fine for me.

Having the 'original' Surface Book, I would love to just upgrade my base (keyboard and ports) and keep my current screen (CPU, RAM, Antennas).

I don't see why they can't sell screens and bases separately. This would be a huge plus if I could upgrade different parts of my laptop.

Excited to see a VR-ready notebook that doesn't look like garbage (higher-end configuration).

Kind of overpriced, but, as a non-gamer, it's been painful to "downgrade" to any of the clunky boxes that pass for gaming desktops (100% personal opinion).

Has been a seriously empty niche.

Still stuck with only 16GB of ram, https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-book...

Unsurprisingly, any laptop which cares about battery life will remain limited to 16GB until Intel supports LPDDR4.

Anyone notice that the pic of the surface book with the display rotated around (like you would if you were switching to tablet mode) doesn't actually follow how it would rotate in real life? The keyboard should be on the bottom, not the top...

Actually that photo does match real life. Rather than opening more than 180 degrees, the screen can be popped off as a standalone tablet, then flipped around and reattached to the base.

I believe that you don't rotate the screen around while it's attached, but you pull it off, flip it around and reattach it...

How tall is the hinge when closed?

It looks the same as the original Surface Book, which puts it at approximately 1 inch.

$ 99.99 for the ____ing pen?

I get that the Surface Book is supposed to be a high-end device, but that is ... far out.

Still, as much as I dislike most of their software, I have to admit Microsoft knows how to build some neat hardware. If only it weren't so pricey...

Guessing they're just playing "follow the leader" with the Apple Pencil...

https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MK0C2AM/A/apple-pencil-fo...

Is anyone excited?

I'm super excited. I've really loved my Surface Book (probably the first piece of hardware I've felt that way about), but 512GB was too small, a proper gaming graphics card with VR support will make it so much better, and USB-C is good (though no eGPU support is a disappointment).

Well, I bought the Surface Book 1 and returned it after a month of it barely working. So no, not really.

What issues did you face?

Laptop manufacturers messed up by not behaving like cell phone manufacturers. without planned obsolescence and scheduled component failures, there just isn't the same demand for iterative improvements.

I use a six year old Thinkpad and it feels like a new machine. This just doesn't look like it's worth ten of my laptop.

I’m excited in that I hope this pushes Apple to do better with the next MBP.

Seeing in the article:

> Surface Book 2 brings you a full array of ports, including USB-A, USB-C, and full-size SD card reader which makes it easy to connect other devices, accessories and memory cards without the need for a bag full of dongles.

I find there is a good reason to like it, compared to this:

https://marco.org/2017/10/14/impossible-dream-of-usb-c

The surface page completely fails to load on my windows phone. That didn't take long! Sat what you will about Microsoft, but their making-discontinued-stuff-not-work-anymore department is amazingly good at its job

I have a Surface Book and absolutely love it. The trackpad is something I've had problems with on my previous Windows laptops. The Surface book has a fantastic trackpad, on par with Macbooks.

I suppose the tech is too new for this product launch...but I would have loved to see 1070 max-q in this version of the surface book, especially at this price point.

edit: I checked the price.

My Alienware 13R3 has a 1060 GPU which runs at 90W. So, I imagine their 15" 95W laptop is running the 1060 using "Max-Q" to keep it well under 90W in power draw as well as thermal dissipation in such a small form factor.

I wonder how accurate their battery life claims are, I highly doubt 17 hours of battery life with a nvidia Getz 1060 video card, I would love to be proved wrong thought.

It says 17 hours of video playback. I am guessing that video playback is using the integrated graphics in the tablet portion while the 1060 in the base is powered down.

Microsoft measures their battery life by movie playback duration, which may or may not reflect a realistic use case.

I went into a Microsoft store, sort of for a laugh, mostly to see if they did a good job with the surface book. My main takeaways were: 1) There is no bevel on the base which makes it hard to pick up unless you grab it my the screen. You can't get your fingers under it. I lost my grip and dropped it from about 1cm off the table. 2) The screen is awkward to use on it's own. It's huge. 3) It wasn't obvious to me how to take the screen off. When I did figure it out, if memory serves, I had to yank it off in an unpleasant way.

Could somebody please tell me: How do they bend this thing so that the keyboard and the display face upwards as shown with the device on the right?

The screen is detachable. It can attach to the keyboard facing either direction.

I understand that in Microsoft you often override the keyword "type" in Python. Just look 1:30 in the video.

It has a USB-C port and an... SD card reader? Use that port for something useful!

That aside, I wonder if I can put Linux on it.

No Thunderbolt 3. Still won't buy but would want to.

Throw in 32GB RAM next time please, by then i'll need it.

I’m glad to see some competition, my hope is that this pushes Apple to improve the next MBP more.

I hope the hinge is much tighter than on the old models (the display shook waaaaay too much).

I hope they decrease bezels and make it more sexy, like the Dell XPS, in future versions.

Please don't. It's a tablet, it needs some bezels.

In particular as Windows 10 in tablet mode makes use of gestures that involve swiping in from outside the screen edge.

GTX 1050 in a 13” model. Apple, please copy this feature...

Their Precision mouse charges via Micro-USB...

pre-order "not avilable"; that's foolish, MS

There are constant comparisons to the macbook pro here, but Windows will always be a boner killer. Is there a decent Linux desktop that copies macOS' design sensibilities properly yet?

First surface book was a disaster. I took mine back after a week. Did they fix the BSODs by now? And can it run Linux?

It's infuriating that they don't include the pen at these prices.

Can I wipe out Windows and put a better OS on it?

You could try out Hackintosh/Linux but not sure how compatible would it be in the beginning.

Issues will need to be tinkered with and fixed.

Yes, and there isn't a great history with getting surface's to work well with linux - though I think things are much better now. Still, probably much easier than getting linux on it than a macbook pro.

I'm more interested if one can put better Windows (Win7) on it.

You could, but not without sacrificing many of the features that make the Surface Book unique. The pen support in Windows 7 is significantly worse, and face authentication wouldn't work. Windows 7 isn't very usable on a tablet. To use the GPU when you reattached the tablet you'd likely have to reboot the machine, also a much slower operation on Windows 7.

If you don't want the above features, you could get a machine that runs Windows 7 well with good hardware specs for less money.

I also count that as a better OS

Does Microsoft even encrypt its own laptops by default these days? Or are they still nickle and diming users for the use of Bitlocker encryption?

It comes with Pro, which has Bitlocker.

Yeah ultimately the os itself has it's limitations, I get more done on a Thinkpad 420 I picked up refurbed for $300 with Ubuntu instead of windows 10 pro. I can run systemd daemons on Ubuntu but trying to run services like postgresql on windows subsystem for Linux is painful with no daemon support it's like a crippled Linux.

Yep, I have no problems with the 600$ Asus I bought 3 years ago. I would literally quit programming and find something new if I had to use MacOS or Windows -- totally uninterested in developing on platforms that could fall out from under me at any time, whether by ceasing to exist or through some legal BS.

You sound like a reasonable person

https://www.postgresql.org/download/windows/

You can use Docker or Vagrant on Windows

Why does every single high end laptop need to look exactly like a macbook?

I want anybody who doesn't believe me to google up a picture of one next to the other.

It's magnesium and not aluminum. Its keyboard is color-matched to the metal. Its screen detaches. Its trackpad doesn't take up the entire space between the keyboard and the edge. Its chamfered edge is the full width of the trackpad so you don't hurt your wrist. It has the Surface Book's signature "fulcrum hinge" and the associated gap. Its display has air vents. Both the base and the display are the same thickness.

But it's a metal laptop that comes in two sizes, so it looks like a MacBook to some people.

This... looks nothing like a macbook. It's got a matte metallic frame and a black bezel, but that's about where the similarities end as far as it looks to me.

Are we looking at the same thing? It looks incredibly similar to Macbooks.

I think what you mean is, "why do so many high end laptops have thin, metal, unibody chassis?"

But, when you ask the question that way, it kind of answers itself. People like metal, because it feels more high end than plastic. Unibody chassis don't need to be fastened together, which is good for manufacturing and looks. People like thin laptops because they are more portable than thick ones.

Unibody helps make it thinner, too. A traditional laptop design had to have both structrual components and outer casing -- unibody designs do both and save space

It's technically not unibody, the keyboard (and its GPU) detach.

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