Porsche Design Book One

[Afy]

Anyone have a Book One. Saw it at the Porsche Design shop in the airport the other day.

Essentially an i7 Kaby Lake, 16 GB/512 GB surface book type of deal, with a few exceptions. The screen is detachable and the hinge goes a full 360 degrees. More pots than the Surfacebook including Thunderbolt.
Screen resolution is marginally higher. Wacom Pen 2048 pressure levels, 14 hours of claimed battery life.

About the same price as a SB. Also available as a Microsoft Signature series offering.

So the question is :
The Surfacebook or new Surface Pro, or this Gizmo?

I currently have a Surface Pro 4 that I am looking to replace. Definitely want similar functionality, and as such have no use for a dGPU. (No gaming, Photoshop, etc.)

BTW can't spell tosave my life.

 

[MickeyLittle]

To answer your question there are 2 deciding factors in my opinion.
1) The Porsche is a 1st generation product and historically that is usually not good
2) You must decide is you want 75% laptop - 25% tablet or vice versa
Surface Book is mostly a laptop then a tablet while the Surface Pro is mostly a tablet then a laptop

 

[Afy]

Well even my SP4 is mostly a laptop, other than note taking and white boarding. For pure laptop use cases I have a Dell XPS 15.

I would agree on most 1st Gen products.. however this one actually looked to be quite solid.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Well even my SP4 is mostly a laptop, other than note taking and white boarding. For pure laptop use cases I have a Dell XPS 15.

I would agree on most 1st Gen products.. however this one actually looked to be quite solid.

Sorry I guess for most people would have been a better way to state that claim

But I think the jury is still out on this new device and it may appear to be solid simply because of its specs. Think about it. They are only offering 1 device (that I'm aware of) and it is loaded and even offers 14 hour battery life for $2500.

Several of its specs are better than the Surface Book including screen resolution, battery, 7th gen Kaby Lake, and 2 thunderbolt 3 ports.

 

[Afy]

Then again the new SP has similar specs and is lighter. Even the battery is in the same ball park. I guess I need to go play with the Book One a little more.
This really isn't a case of need, but more want.. At this point the price point between a similarly speced SP i7 Kaby Lake, SB and Book One are comparable, and for all practical purposes so are the specs. Since for my heavy lift work loads, there is Azure.

 

[MickeyLittle]

Then again the new SP has similar specs and is lighter. Even the battery is in the same ball park. I guess I need to go play with the Book One a little more.
This really isn't a case of need, but more want.. At this point the price point between a similarly speced SP i7 Kaby Lake, SB and Book One are comparable, and for all practical purposes so are the specs. Since for my heavy lift work loads, there is Azure.

Oh yeah for the new SP coming next month the battery life looks to be a huge improvement and Kaby Lake. So I guess the main differences would be the 13.3 to 12.3 in screen and the thunderbolt USBs on the Porsche.

 

[Afy]

Decisions.. decisions...decisions..

I certainly don't need three devices. 1 inch of screen space.. isn't much of a differentiator. I guess it will probably boil down to being different.. which is stupid I know. Lets see. I am not making up my mind until the new pen becomes available at the earliest.

 

[Gio]

DO NOT buy a Porsche Book one !

I own one since may 14. I bought it because I needed an i7 with touch screen and 16 GB RAM, and there was no recent machine at that moment. The Surface pro was not out yet so I took the bet.

The Book one is clearly not worth the money :

• - it is heavy and far less practicall than the surface
• - the latch mecanism often blocks when putting the screen back into the keyboard. I detach the screeen by profesionnal use 10x/ day. It will never last
• - the screen make continuously a small insect-like noise
• - the windows hello camera blocked after 2 weeks, saying I deactivated windows hello, which I did not. I keeps doing that even after a windows hello reset
• - the machine has trouble loading programs and drivers. I often need to restart twice or more in order the boot to work completely
• - one of the USB c port has a contact problem, not good to connect external screen
• - the vent is quite loud when on (although not as much as on my old SP3)
• - there are no forums on Porsche website

the good :

• - fast
• - the stylu works well, is well designed with a strong magnet
• - Porsche answered my questions by mail. Will it now admit all these problems I just mentionned them ?

I have a surface pro 3, which never stopped working as goog as 3 years ago. it's just it does not have 16 GB RAM which I need now.

 

[Afy]

Gio,

That is extremely disappointing to hear.
I am surprised to learn of all the issues you are having.
Have tried getting the unit replaced?

The weight issue doesn't really bother me. And the difference is quite little.

I guess I will have to go back to looking for a replacement for my SP4. Maybe a SB?

 

[Gio]

Hi,

I sent them an email 2 weeks ago : no answers. Unfortunately, it seems they're absolutely not up to the job of producing a true working tools, with a follow up, as MS did. As a matter of fact, I had no choice since I had the business need at that very moment

If it was to do again, I'd buy a SP 2017 I7. I miss the lightweight, ther versatility, the userfriendlyniss of the design

 

[Afy]

On the plus side you helped me avoid making a fairly expensive mistake. Thank you.

 

[Gio]

Hi, I must say I finally received an answer from marketing who sent me to their support. It needed 2 weeks in order to get this info. After that the support was responsive and gave a solution for the windows hello problem, and it worked. It also helped the restart problems