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[Owari]

Just got a surface book. Loving this thing. The build quality is great and it's pretty speedy. I did notice the fan goes crazy when playing starcraft 2 (lowest settings) I feel like uninstalling it. Im pretty new to laptop gaming, but im guessing this is normal?

Fan noise is normal. You'll find it's actually much quieter than many other laptops with a DGPU. The SB can handle settings much higher than that btw, but it only utilizes the DGPU when the charger is plugged in. (I believe there is a workaround for this.) So if you want better unplugged performance, you may want to keep it on lower settings.

Glad you like your Book! It's quite the machine, you'll find.

 

[x3sphere]

Yay. Put my surface book to sleep, it didn't go to sleep. Got super hot in my bag, and getting the yellow tinting on it.

Sigh.

Sleep is broken for me again after the recent round of updates. I started leaving it on hibernate again, takes a bit longer to wake but works fine at least and no significant battery drain.

 

[ElNino]

Sleep is broken for me again after the recent round of updates. I started leaving it on hibernate again, takes a bit longer to wake but works fine at least and no significant battery drain.

Yeah, I don't suggest trusting sleep for prolonged periods. If I'm just shutting it down for a short period (ie. an hour or so) then I'm fine to just close the lid and it usually resumes fine. If I'm shutting down for longer, then I use the power button to go into hibernate. I get almost no battery drain in hibernate and it only takes a few seconds to come back on.

Sleep should go into hibernate automatically after two hours I believe (the default setting), but I've found that it isn't reliable.

 

[AbundantChoice]

My 2013 Macbook Air finally gave up the ghost, and I was looking to get back into Windows laptops (jumped over to OSX with the MBA and loved the build quality and crazy battery life, but hated OSX with a burning passion). Luckily I could use some of my research budget on the laptop since the fiscal year was ending soon anyway, so I said "screw it" and got the i7 512SSD Surface Book.

Playing around with it today, I really dig it! It's one of the first Windows laptops i've used where the build quality feels on par with the Apple offerings. I also really dig the pen; playing around with it it seems great for annotating and marking up documents while reviewing them; flipping the screen around turns it into a nice journal reviewing machine for long flights and whatnot.I was actually shocked that it played Overwatch just fine with the settings turned down, and stuff like Endless Legend seems to run just fine.

I'm actually glad I got it now versus at launch; sounds like it's been a rocky six months in terms of bugs and firmware updates, but mine doesn't seem to have any issues so far.

 

[K.Jack]

GT 1040M is gonna do big things for this machine.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

GT 1040M is gonna do big things for this machine.

Hold me, K.Jack. 960m tier power in the sb has me all hot and bothered.

 

[Widge]

Surface Book 2 rumours popping up. Improved hinge, KabyLake processor, 4k screen.

 

[Funky Papa]

Surface Book 2 rumours popping up. Improved hinge, KabyLake processor, 4k screen.

Sounds plausible, but I'd take any Surface rumours with a huge grain of salt considering Microsoft's track record.

 

[maeh2k]

Surface Book 2 rumours popping up. Improved hinge, KabyLake processor, 4k screen.

The fishy details about this rumor is the 4k screen.

The Surface Book has a 3:2 screen with a 3000x2000 resolution.
4k is 3840×2160 in a 16:9 ratio.

I don't see them radically change the aspect ratio of the Surface Book screen. 3:2 is great.
And the current resolution is already comparable to 4k.

 

[wachie]

The fishy details about this rumor is the 4k screen.

The Surface Book has a 3:2 screen with a 3000x2000 resolution.
4k is 3840×2160 in a 16:9 ratio.

I don't see them radically change the aspect ratio of the Surface Book screen. 3:2 is great.
And the current resolution is already comparable to 4k.

4096x3072

 

[Widge]

We're a Mac household but, if they sort out the drivers, photoshop could be a revelation on this for my other half. No need for separate drawing tablet, start drawing right into Photoshop.

 

[ElNino]

The fishy details about this rumor is the 4k screen.

The Surface Book has a 3:2 screen with a 3000x2000 resolution.
4k is 3840×2160 in a 16:9 ratio.

I don't see them radically change the aspect ratio of the Surface Book screen. 3:2 is great.
And the current resolution is already comparable to 4k.

Yeah, I don't see a big need for a higher resolution than what it has given the size of the screen. Seems like it would be overkill just for the sake of a 4K marketing bullet point.

We're a Mac household but, if they sort out the drivers, photoshop could be a revelation on this for my other half. No need for separate drawing tablet, start drawing right into Photoshop.

What driver problems are still around? Genuinely curious, as I haven't had any issues for quite a while with my SB, but I don't really use Photoshop much (and only the Elements version).

 

[Tathanen]

What driver problems are still around? Genuinely curious, as I haven't had any issues for quite a while with my SB, but I don't really use Photoshop much (and only the Elements version).

I dunno if these are necessarily "driver" issues at this point, but I have two persistent issues with my Book still. One, the connection between the screen and the keyboard seems to be flaky sometimes, tapping on the screen so that it moves a little bit will break the connection, and it takes a second or two to come back. If I disconnect the screen and reconnect it it seems to be solid after that. So it must be somehow jostling loose in my bag, which seems weird, since it's really locked the hell on there.

So yeah that's more hardware I think, but what I'm unsure of is this machine's uncanny ability to bluescreen and turn off when it's not supposed to. Sometimes it will just hang and bluescreen for fun, but most often it'll just lose power after going to sleep. If I let it idle and it goes to sleep, if I come back to it after an hour or two it'll just be powered off entirely. Not even hibernated, just power failure and all things lost. And this is with it plugged in half the time. I've bound my power button to "hibernate" so when at all possible I don't let it go to sleep now, which is kind of a pain in my ass. Often it'll also just not wake up if I close the screen and re-open it, I have to hard-reboot to get it alive again. The whole sleep situation is a complete shitshow.

It's a testament to how great the Book is overall that I don't just throw it at a wall despite all this power crap. It's a bummer tho, I've never had a Surface device that didn't have some sort of fundamental underlying issues like this.

 

[JaggedSac]

I dunno if these are necessarily "driver" issues at this point, but I have two persistent issues with my Book still. One, the connection between the screen and the keyboard seems to be flaky sometimes, tapping on the screen so that it moves a little bit will break the connection, and it takes a second or two to come back. If I disconnect the screen and reconnect it it seems to be solid after that. So it must be somehow jostling loose in my bag, which seems weird, since it's really locked the hell on there.

So yeah that's more hardware I think, but what I'm unsure of is this machine's uncanny ability to bluescreen and turn off when it's not supposed to. Sometimes it will just hang and bluescreen for fun, but most often it'll just lose power after going to sleep. If I let it idle and it goes to sleep, if I come back to it after an hour or two it'll just be powered off entirely. Not even hibernated, just power failure and all things lost. And this is with it plugged in half the time. I've bound my power button to "hibernate" so when at all possible I don't let it go to sleep now, which is kind of a pain in my ass. Often it'll also just not wake up if I close the screen and re-open it, I have to hard-reboot to get it alive again. The whole sleep situation is a complete shitshow.

It's a testament to how great the Book is overall that I don't just throw it at a wall despite all this power crap. It's a bummer tho, I've never had a Surface device that didn't have some sort of fundamental underlying issues like this.

You are still having idle power issues after the Jan(I think) firmware updates.

 

[Jag]

GT 1040M is gonna do big things for this machine.

How do i convince work that I need it for email?

 

[Widge]

What driver problems are still around? Genuinely curious, as I haven't had any issues for quite a while with my SB, but I don't really use Photoshop much (and only the Elements version).

Responsiveness drawing directly into photoshop is quite laggy, even with a workaround.

 

[Animator]

For sketching I would recommend everyone to try out autodesk sketchbook pro. It is amazing on surface book.

 

[Stat Flow]

Is there a planned sequel/2016 Version of this thing? Upgrading my computer this fall and might look into this compared to Apple's new MacBook pros.

 

[ElMexiMerican]

Is there a planned sequel/2016 Version of this thing? Upgrading my computer this fall and might look into this compared to Apple's new MacBook pros.

Yes, there have been rumors it may be announced in the summer along with new versions of the rest of the Surface products.

 

[Oppo]

Is there a planned sequel/2016 Version of this thing? Upgrading my computer this fall and might look into this compared to Apple's new MacBook pros.

met too. I need a new laptop and it'll be down to a Skylake MacBook or one of these.

 

[ElNino]

Responsiveness drawing directly into photoshop is quite laggy, even with a workaround.

Is it? I thought it was good as long as you set the dGPU to not be in power saver mode. I'm not an artist though so maybe I just don't notice it. I guess I'll compare it to my wife's iPad Pro (9.7' version) once I give it to her for her birthday.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

If the rumours about mobile Pascal are true, the 1040m is slightly more powerful than the 960m was. That is to say, a SB with 1040m (940m is in the current range) would be able to play games about as well as a 750ti desktop card would, roughly console parity for a lot of games as long as the CPU could keep up.

That would be very impressive performance for a device like this.

 

[btrboyev]

If the rumours about mobile Pascal are true, the 1040m is slightly more powerful than the 960m was. That is to say, a SB with 1040m (940m is in the current range) would be able to play games about as well as a 750ti desktop card would, roughly console parity for a lot of games as long as the CPU could keep up.

That would be very impressive performance for a device like this.

I feel heat would be too big of an issue.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I feel heat would be too big of an issue.

They already use a 940m, so it should be fine. The SB already has pretty great cooling in my experience.

 

[K.Jack]

Nvidia always slots the new mobile chip at the same TDP and price as the one it replaces, especially on the low end.

 

[gamz]

Yes, there have been rumors it may be announced in the summer along with new versions of the rest of the Surface products.

Perhaps, but I've been reading no new hardware until next Spring with Redstone 2.

 

[Dinjooh]

Which event should you look out for if hoping for a refresh over the summer?

Currently deciding if I should buy one of these at the end of the summer or wait till autumn if that's when the next model is. Probably won't wait till spring 17.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

Any other Surface Book gamers attempted Overwatch? Really want to play that game with a keyboard+mouse and I know it scales pretty dang well as most Blizz games do (I do play Heroes of the Storm on mine from time to time) but it's a game I definitely feel is going to need 60fps. I'm willing to go as low as 900p rendering to make it happen on my SB, as I know it's not a gaming machine, but I don't think I'd be willing to go any lower.

 

[ksdixon]

How can the SB have a dedicated graphics chip in the base, and from what I understand one that isn't a slouch, and still not be too good of a gaming laptop?

 

[gamz]

How can the SB have a dedicated graphics chip in the base, and from what I understand one that isn't a slouch, and still not be too good of a gaming laptop?

Because it's not meant to be a gaming laptop.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

How can the SB have a dedicated graphics chip in the base, and from what I understand one that isn't a slouch, and still not be too good of a gaming laptop?

It is a slouch really, the 940m is not a very powerful card. It's roughly twice as powerful as the standard integrated graphics, but still a fair bit less powerful than most desktop cards. It's a bit less than half as powerful as the 750ti, which is the standard "budget" card that people get to run console games at roughly console settings. It can play last-gen console ports and simple games like Starcraft, LoL etc very well, but it's not going to run graphically intensive modern games well. It's also using a dual core notebook CPU, and not one of the more powerful ones.

It's not the worst laptop for gaming on, but it has many limitations.

 

[ksdixon]

Hmm. I can't understand why MS wouldn't put a gaming class CPU/GPU in their "ultimate laptop"? When the higher models go up to like $32,000, why not?

But then again, on an unrelated note, I also keep forgetting that SB doesn't have the SP4 kickstand either, which is something of a deal breaker for me. The more I try to choose between them, the more I wish an SP4 could use SB's keyboard bottom to have w solid bottom, or take advantage of the additional battery like Power Cover, and additional dGPU.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Hmm. I can't understand why MS wouldn't put a gaming class CPU/GPU in their "ultimate laptop"? When the higher models go up to like $32,000, why not?

But then again, on an unrelated note, I also keep forgetting that SB doesn't have the SP4 kickstand either, which is something of a deal breaker for me. The more I try to choose between them, the more I wish an SP4 could use SB's keyboard bottom to have w solid bottom, or take advantage of the additional battery like Power Cover, and additional dGPU.

It is not a matter of price, but one of thermal limitations. The CPU is limited by its need to act as an independent tablet in tablet mode - the Surface Book clipboard is extremely thin and light for its size, and just as with the Surface Pro range, it uses an ultra-low voltage intel CPU. This is as good as it gets for low power computing.

As for the GPU, they probably could have put a more powerful one in the bottom, but it would come with tradeoffs in the battery life of the device as a whole. It is intended not so much for gaming as it is for productivity, for accelerating things like Photoshop or Lightroom or what have you. A potent laptop GPU may also be bottlenecked significantly in gaming performance by the somewhat weak CPU, although that is speculative.

As for the kick stand, I 100% agree that it would be improved with it. It's the feature I miss the most. I would use it in tablet mode all the damn time if it had a kickstand, even with the ~2-2.5 hour battery you get in clipboard mode (nb - the batteries in the upper half are significantly reduced so that the weight-distribution of the whole device would make balancing it in laptop mode possible. If the top was heavier than the bottom it would topple over). As it is currently, I hardly ever use clipboard mode because of the poor battery life and the inability to prop itself up. It's a damn shame, because it's light as a feather and would be a pleasure to roll around with as an independent unit for watching videos while I cooked or showing off videos to my coworkers and what not.

 

[Tathanen]

Any other Surface Book gamers attempted Overwatch? Really want to play that game with a keyboard+mouse and I know it scales pretty dang well as most Blizz games do (I do play Heroes of the Storm on mine from time to time) but it's a game I definitely feel is going to need 60fps. I'm willing to go as low as 900p rendering to make it happen on my SB, as I know it's not a gaming machine, but I don't think I'd be willing to go any lower.

I played the beta at around 1080 at low/med settings at 30fps. I wasn't able to get it up to 60 with any amount of kajiggering, so I just pushed it as far as I could while keeping 30. Felt pretty alright at 30, but yea no 60.

I did like that I could set the resolution to 3000x2000 tho, and just reduce rendering scale, so my HUD remained super crisp.

 

[Dinjooh]

Which event should you look out for if hoping for a refresh over the summer?

Currently deciding if I should buy one of these at the end of the summer or wait till autumn if that's when the next model is. Probably won't wait till spring 17.

Well that turned out to be an easier decision than I thought. I stepped on my macbook yesterday which currently has a huge bend down the middle of it. So I opted to buy the Surface Book i5 with dGPU instead.

Currently pondering whether I should get some sort of sleeve for it or not. Worried that the hinge will attract a lot of dust and shit.

 

[ksdixon]

I understand they have slightly different use cases, with surface pro 4 being a tablet that can act as a laptop, and surface book being a laptop that can act as a tablet. But I can't get over the feeling that they are almost two halves of the same "ultimate" product, as though there is a missing SKU in-between them. Looking around at competitor's me-too devices, pretenders to Surface's throne, no one else seems to have hit upon the missing SKU either.

I'm talking about a theoretical device I call the "surface book pro". Combining the best of both surface product lines into a machine with no compromises. Spro4-like device with a USB3 port and kickstand built into the tablet's body, but which has a surface book-like detachable 'hard' keyboard (with extra battery and dedicated gpu in it). You wouldn't necessarily have to launch a fifth surface product line (alongside surface 3, pro, book and hub), if there was a way to make both the spro type cover and the sbook cover be able to connect to the same top half tablet, then it would just be a matter of the user choosing the keyboard type that is right for their needs.

I'd also like it to include LTE like that one outlying configuration for... I believe it was the Surface Pro 2. This would allow increased portability with the 2in1 tablet/laptop, compared to currently, where it is confined to acting more like a laptop only, in wifi enabled areas.

 

[HP_Wuvcraft]

Yes, there have been rumors it may be announced in the summer along with new versions of the rest of the Surface products.

*drooling intensifies*

 

[Hilbert]

I understand they have slightly different use cases, with surface pro 4 being a tablet that can act as a laptop, and surface book being a laptop that can act as a tablet. But I can't get over the feeling that they are almost two halves of the same "ultimate" product, as though there is a missing SKU in-between them. Looking around at competitor's me-too devices, pretenders to Surface's throne, no one else seems to have hit upon the missing SKU either.

I'm talking about a theoretical device I call the "surface book pro". Combining the best of both surface product lines into a machine with no compromises. Spro4-like device with a USB3 port and kickstand built into the tablet's body, but which has a surface book-like detachable 'hard' keyboard (with extra battery and dedicated gpu in it). You wouldn't necessarily have to launch a fifth surface product line (alongside surface 3, pro, book and hub), if there was a way to make both the spro type cover and the sbook cover be able to connect to the same top half tablet, then it would just be a matter of the user choosing the keyboard type that is right for their needs.

I'd also like it to include LTE like that one outlying configuration for... I believe it was the Surface Pro 2. This would allow increased portability with the 2in1 tablet/laptop, compared to currently, where it is confined to acting more like a laptop only, in wifi enabled areas.

I m fairly confident this is the end goal.

 

[Bright Side of Life]

When oh when will it drop to $1000 or less

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

If they announced a sb2 with no other changes but a kickstand I'd upgrade without hesitation. Pascal 1040m, if rumors are correct is on par with 960m and would make the upgrade even easier to swallow.

 

[Stinkles]

Currently pondering whether I should get some sort of sleeve for it or not. Worried that the hinge will attract a lot of dust and shit.

Not a thing at all in my experience.

 

[ElNino]

Currently pondering whether I should get some sort of sleeve for it or not. Worried that the hinge will attract a lot of dust and shit.

Not a thing at all in my experience.

Yeah, I haven't had any issues with the hinge either.

I do have a sleeve case though from Waterfield that I use when carrying the SB in a bag. I doesn't really need it, but I like the extra protection from getting bumped/scratched/etc.

 

[Triforce141]

Any other Surface Book gamers attempted Overwatch? Really want to play that game with a keyboard+mouse and I know it scales pretty dang well as most Blizz games do (I do play Heroes of the Storm on mine from time to time) but it's a game I definitely feel is going to need 60fps. I'm willing to go as low as 900p rendering to make it happen on my SB, as I know it's not a gaming machine, but I don't think I'd be willing to go any lower.

i7 / dGPU / 16GB RAM

Mostly 60fps and some dips to 50 with the lowest settings, resolution set to 1280x720 and rendering scale set to 75%, locked 60 with no drops if I lower the scale to 50%.

 

[LukasTaves]

If they announced a sb2 with no other changes but a kickstand I'd upgrade without hesitation. Pascal 1040m, if rumors are correct is on par with 960m and would make the upgrade even easier to swallow.

Pascal drops the power draw as well right? Perhaps they can even crack a higher tier gpu this time. How much say a 1060m uses compared to a 940M?

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

Pascal drops the power draw as well right? Perhaps they can even crack a higher tier gpu this time. How much say a 1060m uses compared to a 940M?

They usually have similar tdp in similar ranges. The 940m is like half the electricity of the 960m, so such a jump is improbable.

 

[Loxley]

I deliberately held off on getting as Surface Book last year because I wanted to wait for Microsoft's second go-around at it. So my wallet is prepped and ready to go for the SB2.

 

[ThoseDeafMutes]

I deliberately held off on getting as Surface Book last year because I wanted to wait for Microsoft's second go-around at it. So my wallet is prepped and ready to go for the SB2.

Kaby Lake will hopefully have resolved all the sleep wake crap on a hardware level because it's still after like 20 firmware updates a bit shaky from time to time. If Pascal mobile is as good as those early rumours, that would be enough for me to upgrade. If they had that plus a kickstand on the clipboard, I'd probably faint from hype.

 

[K.Jack]

Pascal drops the power draw as well right? Perhaps they can even crack a higher tier gpu this time. How much say a 1060m uses compared to a 940M?

At the same performance, sure. If the GTX 1060M remained at the 960M speed, the TDP would be ridiculously low. Which is why the 1040M is rumored to be 960M speed, and the 1060M will be far, far beyond that.

p.s. - Mobile Pascal is looking like September/October at this point.

 

[LukasTaves]

They usually have similar tdp in similar ranges. The 940m is like half the electricity of the 960m, so such a jump is improbable.

At the same performance, sure. If the GTX 1060M remained at the 960M speed, the TDP would be ridiculously low. Which is why the 1040M is rumored to be 960M speed, and the 1060M will be far, far beyond that.

p.s. - Mobile Pascal is looking like September/October at this point.

I see. Either way, matching the 960m performance 960m performance on something so small and thin will be glorious.

 

[Bright Side of Life]

just got my surface book , it's glorious but what's up with the scaling on some the programs. I opened up photoshop and everything was ant sized. Hell even as I'm typing this, I can barely read what I'm typing. Does anyone know how to fix this? otherwise great product cant wait to draw