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Consumer Reports Refuses To Recommend Microsoft Surface Book 2 (betanews.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Earlier in the year, the review group said that problems with reliability meant that it was impossible for it to recommend any Microsoft laptop or tablet. Now Consumer Reports says that this extends to the Surface Book 2, meaning that the device will not be recommended. Microsoft is likely to be similarly disappointed with Consumer Reports' statement about the Surface Book 2. Speaking to Benzinga, Consumer Reports' spokesperson James McQueen said: "We will evaluate the performance of the Microsoft Surface Book 2 once we get it into our labs next month for testing, but we will not be able to recommend it. Our decision to withhold our recommendation of all Microsoft laptops and tablets is still in effect."
The reason is given in the first sentence, where it says they won't recommend due to hardware reliability problems with past Surface models. Once they receive concrete reliability data for this model, they may change their stance on recommendation if the reliability measures well. Until then it's fair to not recommend it.
Also, I'm going to make fun of your "ect, ect" where you misspell a simple, common, three-letter abbreviation wrong not once, but twice in a row.
Not really. If Toyota releases a mid-range commuter car you can assume it will be reliable due to the company's history and that the vehicle is based on established technology. Likewise, if Ford releases a fuel-cell sports car, you can assume it will be less reliable.
Microsoft has a history of making shoddy hardware, and the fact that they've upgraded the latest model doesn't mean they get to start with a completely clean slate.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
The real story here is that an organization that does professional reviews is unwilling to give a product an opportunity to convince them their preconceived notions regarding it are wrong.
An honest reviewer must always be willing to dismiss their preconceived notions regarding a product should the real thing either exceed or fail to live up to them. They need to be able to set aside their petty tribalism, their personal preferences, and any rumors they may have heard about the product, instead judging it based purely on what it actually is.
Pre-announcing your decision before you even have the product in your hands is a way of indicating that you're unwilling to do that. That you won't allow yourself to be convinced. That you're being intellectually dishonest with yourself. Why would anyone trust that reviewer?
CR typically doesn't get a big enough sample size (from its subscribers during their annual survey) for a single product within a single year to generate a reliability score within a statistically significant confidence interval. Consequently, they use a multi-year sliding window average of reliability to build up sample size. This has the unfortunate effect of conflating different year models, but the operating premise is that a brand's attitudes towards quality and reliability stays more or less consistent.
By pre-announcing that they're not going to recommend Microsoft Surface this year, they're basically saying the product's reliability in previous years was so low that even if the new model turns out to be 100% reliable in their survey, its multi-year sliding window average will still be so low that they can't recommend the product.
You can see this in action in their auto reports. In deference to their subscriber base (who is typically clueless about statistics) they won't throw around terms like confidence interval and standard deviation. But some of the less-popular cars will have an asterisk saying they have an insufficient sample size. Even if they do have a big enough sample size, I actually prefer the sliding window method (with decreasing weighting the older the data is). It avoids the situation where with the new year, everyone's slate is wiped clean. If you have a history of making crappy products, it makes it harder for you to pull yourself out of the pit you've dug yourself into.
Personally, I really like the specs of the Surface of Surface Books. But I won't touch them for the simple reason that they're impossible to repair. If you're gonna buy one, make sure you get a multi-year extended warranty with it.