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Surface Book Continues to Rack up Great Reviews

TimberWolf

Member
That is an old review, from back in Oct. 2015 when the SB first came out.

Problem with the SB isn't the concept or design. From a strictly hardware point of view, the SB is extremely good. A truly inspiring design, IMO. The issue with the SB is just the numerous bugs in the software and firmware. Even after more than 3 months on the market, there are still a number of bugs in this thing that drives me crazy and still make me not recommend it to my friends and colleagues.
 

Niterider4

Active Member
After working reasonably well for a month or so, my SB installed a bunch of Windows updates this morning. After that, I lectured from it for two hours during which it froze twice, causing me to have to hold down the power button until it went black and then do a hard reboot. That was running MS Word and nothing else - I know, a lot to expect for a Microsoft Windows computer.

The great reviews were with hardware (SSD) that did not end up getting shipped to actual purchasers, and were from users who did not use the surface book for very long and therefore did not suffer the horribly frustrating experience of having their brand new expensive Microsoft computers be unable to do simple tasks without freezing, losing all of its battery, or failing to wake from sleep.

For me, the Surface Book has been a far cry from a home run - more of a wild pitch, I would say.
 

netuser

Member
Reviews seem to be pretty mixed.
I have seen some positive reviews, but the reviews from people who have tried to use the Surface Book full time every day as their primary device are often negative when they get tired of the hardware issues, unexpectedly discharged batteries, crashing and freezing.
 
I don't know what you are doing with your SBs but I never experienced these freezes. Only experienced 3-4 crashes. Which is pretty much what my girlfriend has experienced with her Macbook Pro that she bought just 2 weeks before I got my SB in November.. So I tend not to believe all this hate talk ..
 

MikeBergin

New Member
I haven't had mine crash yet. The display driver crashed and fixed itself once, and IE stops responding all the time, but fortunately I haven't had a crash. I totally believe that the crashes are real.... I wonder if it is a particular model or config? If there is any common thread between them... I feel bad for those of you who have to deal with the crashing and bad experience. I feel lucky that I haven't been hit by it (yet)! :)
 
Yeah, we're imagining that our Surface Books are freezing and crashing. You're right.

The 712 people who have posted on this Microsoft forum are also imagining it. It's quite a popular thing to imagine, apparently. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/.../9889417d-32ff-46c7-8be5-5ce8b92799b6?page=72

Personally, I'm running MS Office. Do you think Microsoft hardware could handle that without crashing? You'd be wrong.


Don't get me wrong, I 'm not saying they don't exist. But I am using Drawboard, Word, Powerpoint, Onenote on a daily basis and I have used a whole bunch of other apps from the store and from the internet (acestream, popcorntime, bittorent, viber etc) and I encounter no such issues. Sorry if it came out wrong but that is what I experienced for the last 3 months I 've had my SB and the truth is that my experience has not been bad at all.
 

everalm

Member
Same for me, so far bought the i5 8Gb 256GB with dGPU second week of November and since the normal patch and update process, I have, to date had

One BSOD
Three "Your video card stopped and restarted" back in middle/end December
No issues with WiFi, Bluetooth
A couple of occasions of a freeze of a tab in IE more likely related to the website or the VPN connection
No crashes with Edge although it seems a bit of a power hog IMHO so lower usage than IE11

I run Office 2010 extensively, travel globally a lot so use a VPN connection as a standard, use One Note for note taking on a regular basis, ditto Skype, Viber and Netflix as well as a handful of games from the Store for disconnect time when I'm on the plane.

Not doing anything special, treating the precious as a work and home driver

I've had exactly the same effectively issue free experience with my Surface Pro 3 since purchase.

Maybe I've been lucky twice or maybe it's simply the nature of the beast, people are much more likely to complain than to praise
 

Niterider4

Active Member
After a VERY disappointing start, my SB has been behaving quite well lately, with only the odd hiccup. Granted, I have to set it to hibernate instead of sleep, but hibernate is better than it used to be, and I can live with the extra 10 seconds it takes to come to life. However, having the clipboard completely freeze yesterday while lecturing to 75 law students, not once but twice during the same lecture, is extremely frustrating. It is certainly disappointing given the claims that were made about this device and the price tag.

When my SB works, it's awesome. When it doesn't work, it's a worthless piece of crap.
 
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