Microsoft Surface Book 2 Puts Desktop Brains in a Laptop Body (wired.com)

David Pierce, writing for Wired: As Microsoft went to create the Surface Book 2, the company once again tried to bust categories. The result is the most combinatory device Microsoft's made yet. It's a laptop (screens measure 13 or 15 inches; there's a keyboard and trackpad) -- and it's also a tablet (the screen detaches, you can use a pen, everything's touch-friendly), and it's also a desktop. A stupendously powerful one, at that: It runs on Intel's new eighth-generation quad-core processors, in either a Core i5 or Core i7 version. The higher-end models come with Nvidia's GeForce discrete graphics, up to 16 gigs of RAM, and as much as 1 terabyte of solid storage. All that in a fanless body that gets up to 17 hours of battery life, and weighs about 3.5 pounds for the smaller model or 4.2 pounds for the larger. What does all that mean? Microsoft claims the smaller model is three times more powerful than the last Surface Book, and the 15-inch runs five times as fast. Those are meaningless comparisons, but the point holds. This thing screams. More useful are the comparisons to Apple's latest MacBook Pros: Microsoft claims up to 70 percent more battery life, and double the performance of Apple's laptops.

Comments

That's nothing

[DontBeAMoran]

Apple's innovation is impossible to beat. Witness the specifications of the new low-end 2017 MacBook Air:
- 5th-generation Intel Broadwell processor, your choice of dual-core or dual-core processor
- Your choice of 8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3 or 8GB of 1600MHz LPDDR3
- Impossibly-large-to-fill 128GB SSD storage
- Low-resolution twisted nematic (TN) display (patented in the 1970's)
- "only" USD$999

I have to agree with Apple on this one, it takes courage to still ask that much money for ancient technology.

Re:Cost?

[ColdWetDog]

Well, they might double the performance but Microsoft has a long way to go before it even approaches build quality or customer care. Of the 5 surfaces and 3 Surface Books we've purchased, two of the Surfaces are still working. None of the Books.

Trying to get a warranty service from MS is like Time Tunneling back to the '90's and dealing with Dell. Unenglish, unorganized, unhelpful.

Although I really liked my Surface Book for the entire month it worked, we've dropped Microsoft hardware entirely at this point. Details matter, it's not just 'innovation'.

No, it's not a desktop

[dabadab]

That desktop part is pure bullshit.

Its CPU is a U series (that's the low power one) mobile CPU (i5-7300U or i7-8650U, both have 15W TDP) and it has the mobile version of the Nvidia GPU, too (and 16 GB max memory is pretty puny).

So it actually has a pretty run-of-the-mill laptop HW, it's the case and the display that is interesting.