Already Bought Book Then Returned It For SP4

[fletch33]

so this morning i went to BB and grabbed an i5 256GB Book with much excitement as i have been enjoying my SP3 for some time now.

i know this isnt the Book section and frankly they wouldnt want to hear about it anyway and just thought i would post that if your on the fence and then like me (haha) pick the SP4

quickly i will just say that it didnt take but a few minutes with the Book to see that i personally wasnt going to care for it. its felt like a BIG tablet attached to a keyboard but not like the surface where you get it and the kickstand just makes it all together but more like when you put a keyboard on an actual tablet like iPad or Android.

also i use it a LOT on my lap even during work and in shorts i pinched my leg (painfully) at the hinge point almost every time i opened it.

it also did not feel small and lightweight but large and odd shaped. i dusted off my MBP 13 and it was taller and longer and in feel much more than in actual measurement.

i took it back and grabbed the same spec SP4 and maybe as the Surface took 3 editions to get it right then i will try the Book again later.

 

[callihan_44]

maybe a laptopish device isn't for you, one thing I noticed when I purchased a Lenovo yoga pro 13.3 after using a surface pro 2 is it felt HUGE in tablet mode. It took me a little bit to adjust to the increase in screen size but later on loved it. The surface pro tablet has almost hit perfection IMO

 

[zhenya]

This is kind of the conclusion I came to even without any hands-on time. The Book is a fairly big laptop once you've become used to the svelte Surface Pro. With the new Type Cover now as good as most laptop keyboards there is even less reason to go back to a laptop form-factor

 

[Grape Jelly]

Thanks, this validated what drew me back to the Surface Pro 4. I had not thought about the kickstand. What stopped me is the low clipboard battery life and the lack of any ports on the clipboard. Hello - USB drive?

 

[hughlle]

The more I read and watch the bigger pile of poop this itterqtion seems to be. I've just read (is it true?) That the keyboard cannot recharge the tablet. That is just absurd if true. So once I've drained the tablet, I cannot even turn the screen around for inking without having to reboot the thing in the process?

I had figured that I could drain the tablet in a lecture, meeting etc, and then dock it with the key oars and have it charge up until it's next needed. Surely what I've read is wrong??

 

[Grape Jelly]

The more I read and watch the bigger pile of poop this itterqtion seems to be. I've just read (is it true?) That the keyboard cannot recharge the tablet. That is just absurd if true. So once I've drained the tablet, I cannot even turn the screen around for inking without having to reboot the thing in the process?

Sounds silly. The charging for the power cover was different. It would at least charge the surface to 50% before charging the cover. I did read the charger can be attached directly to the Clipboard.

 

[hughlle]

Sounds silly. The charging for the power cover was different. It would at least charge the surface to 50% before charging the cover. I did read the charger can be attached directly to the Clipboard.

Every 3 hours though, that seems inconvenient. I'd then look at sp4

Hopefully it is simply silly, and by that I mean just a silly blogger or whatever they are called. After all I did watch a surface book video and half way through the review he states he thinks it might have touch screen..

 

[barry.pearson]

I read somewhere that the reason for the keyboard section not recharging the clipboard/screen is there would be too much lost energy in the transfer and this would make it inefficient.

 

[hughlle]

I read somewhere that the reason for the keyboard section not recharging the clipboard/screen is there would be too much lost energy in the transfer and this would make it inefficient.

I'd rather have an option in bios or Windows that lets me make that choice. Inneficient is better than nothing.

 

[jason10mm]

I wonder if they just couldn't get it to work right. I have the SP1 with a power cover and it is a bit janky at times. Sometimes it won't draw from the power cover when the cover is folded behind the surface, there are issues getting it to charge properly with the power cover attached (this may be due to high heat on the SP1 when gaming though). Anyway, it is a nice thing to have but ultimately perhaps they couldn't get enough polish on the process so they blocked it. I can't imagine there is a physical limitation preventing smart mangement of dual batteries but perhaps there is no direct connection between them allowing power to flow from one to another.

 

[fletch33]

i knew going in it was the 1st Edition and if you think about the Surface Pro it really took until the 3rd version to get it right so the Book may become something i am interested in again someday.

loving my SP4 though

 

[Grape Jelly]

i knew going in it was the 1st Edition and if you think about the Surface Pro it really took until the 3rd version to get it right so the Book may become something i am interested in again someday.

loving my SP4 though

Totally agree. I was an early adopter of the SP1. Great little device but it was a first try. The SP4 is far ahead of it's predecessor. The book is a fantastic concept, but too early for me to jump on.

I saw an article summarize it well. The SP4 is a Tablet turned Laptop. The Surface Book is a Laptop that wants to be a Tablet. I think they would have been better off providing a hard keyboard base for a Surface Pro. Imagine a Surface Pro 4 with a firm keyboard that you can put on your lap and has an extra battery and discrete GPU. You could chose to travel with a type keyboard or hard keyboard. Maybe that will come next?