Review Microsoft Surface Book
Transcript
from the CT advisor calm with a review of the netbook I'm sorry not but macbook it has a bigger window symbols here so not a mate that slip but real the surface book I don't know if they call it convertible but it's basically a laptop a tool one it one of the unique things about the surface books is that it comes with probably the best pia next to microsoft's or Apple's pencil in the market will give us like demo of the pencil one of the kind
of niche features of the pin is that it sticks to the side of the surface book via magnet it's pretty sturdy I can give it a good hard shake and it won't fly it off the seven year old has found pretty interesting uses for the pen outside of using the magnet outside of sticking it to the side of the surface book I found the pen all over the house talking to magnetic things it sticks to the side of my death everywhere if this a magnetic surface
she has found a way to put it there so you know some of the obvious things about the surface book obviously it's a four by three aspect ratio I thought that would be a little bit difficult to get used to I really haven't noticed it the screen is awesome I think it's 3,000 by 2,000 some insane measurements I'm not into it I just know that it is after coming from a macbook pro retina I used for the past couple of years ah the screen on here
is awesome Windows 10 doesn't handle text as well um application sisters one old and microsoft suite i haven't noticed a problem it's pretty cool use the touchscreen is pretty responsive as touchscreens are nowadays i don't think that's a difficult science anymore we have touchscreen down to of a science today the eject feature of separating the base from the tablet is pretty consistent my one complaint is that if the tablet is out of Spain out of power versus the base you can't eject the tablet why is
this important well if you want if you want to pick the device up and just put it into the reverse mold and use the extra battery capacity of the base you can't do that this is a software button and Windows 10 has to be up and running to fully engage the eject so to put it in any mode outside of the default tap laptop mode both the base and the tablet has to have power they have two independent batteries so that was you know first day
of getting device that was a little bit of a disappointment I had to let the device charger for at least a half an hour before I could separate the base from the tablet some of the other things that are gadgets when it comes to the base in tablet configuration Microsoft had to make some compromises one in tablet mode this thing works fairly the the design works fairly well so it will show you a couple of those kind of design elements or design decisions Microsoft head to
me one the tablet pins sticking to the tablet fixed works in a portrait mode it doesn't stick to any other side this is the dedicated metal strip that a lot of the magnet to stick which not a big deal I don't have a big deal about that but you want to use headphones the headphones are at the top on the other end of the keyboard so sitting this on your lap with the pin on it it becomes impractical in portrait mode other compromises is that again
this is how I would have it if I was if I had headphones i want to have phones at the top headphones at the bottom the power and volume buttons are on the side when it's in tablet mode makes perfect sense however most of the time since this thing only has like a three hour battery life you'll find that you have this attached to the base and laptop mode you'll primarily be using this device it's a lap time the power button be ends up being at
the top of the laptop so does the value buttons when I first received it received the device that was pretty non-intuitive so all you know the ahead in a clamshell mode and I'm looking for I'm looking on the sides for the power buttons where they usually be stored and it's in the front of the laptop which I don't know how that works while it's inside of a bag and if you get kind of the equivalent of a butt dial you end up powering this thing up
i haven't putting it in the bag another couple of things design compromises i'm not a fan of when it comes to the device is that there is no USB port on the tablet itself so if you buy 128 gig model which is this model is 128 gig and you were hoping to expand the system is windows 10 so it handles SD cards extremely well Microsoft has kind of gotten down pat been able to install applications have your default location for saving documents as a SD card
if you if you're planning on using a SD card to expand the capability you have two challenges one the SD card reader is not on the tablet itself the SD card reader is in the base the second one is if you're saying ok stick a USB port into this tablet that also is in the capability the only port on the tablet itself is the mic port so that is also a no-no so basically this is not an expandable tablet unlike the surface Pro which has both
USB ports and a hidden SD card which allows you to virtually expand the storage of a surface pro you can't do that with the surface book you're pretty much stuck with the 128 and this is why I say you're stuck with the 128 your primary method for expanding storage would probably be a SD card Microsoft meet the design decision to stick a standard laptop SD card reader on here when you put SD card in here it doesn't sit flush with the body of the laptop which
means that when you put it in the bag uh you can either damage the SD card or SD card comes loose so as a permanent storage or semi permanent storage solution SD card is not a great option although I've read that some companies sell modded SD cards so because the macbook pro has the same challenge you could use that but it's not as clean of a solution I'm pointing on the wrong side this is the SD card reader a performance 128 gig with the intel graphics
if you're a macbook pro retina user you know what you're pretty much accustomed to what the performance would be like it's very similar to that so for general compute the integrated graphics you know they're integrated graphics they work well as I 5 processor six generation decent speed memory the system performs well if you're a virtualization expert that you'll see that the your limitations will most definitely be I owe much before because memory and i/o before becomes CPU if you're a gamer probably not the laptop for
you occasional games you find my son install the witcher on here which is an older open-world game it ran at about 30 frames per second and 1280 x 900 i think it's the resolution and you know that so if you're a gamer that expects decent game performance that's its okay its playable so you step up to the next model to the obvious shortcomings with the base model is the amount of storage and the integrated graphics the next model up which is nineteen hundred dollars takes care
of that so the the floor to get into the surface book it's $1,500 the next model up is 1900 it has dedicated GPU so nvidia GPU which will be in the base of the unit and then 128 gig more ramps or 256 gig SSD solves two of the biggest complaints that i have about the unit obviously when you go from laptop mode to tablet mode you lose the GPU but of course gain battery because you're not soaking up or powering a dedicated GPU one of the
other nine not so obvious things about the surface book is that it's a Windows 10 device so what do I mean when I say that it's a Windows 10 device I originally had the idea of using a macbook pro I mean sorry I really had the idea using a ipad pro for the use case that i bought this for one the pen and been able to do like WebEx whiteboards whiteboards on the gold light content creation with the attached keyboard because the ipad pro has the
keyboard connector on it all those things are great use cases i think for this device because it fulfills most of that however it's a complete computer unlike the ipad pearl so like one of the gadget i ran with and i'm sure i run into another one i was at church yesterday and I wanted to take notes at church I usually whip out the ipad power it on from flea start going at it windows rent updates the night before the sheen booted up and the updates had
to finish applying so from the time that I hit the power button to the time that I was actually able to take notes was about a minute and a half the other piece is that it's a windows computer so you have the overhead of Windows 10 when it comes to updates and maintenance so unlike on the iPad where after you apply updates the rest of the package or previous package is gone had this device bought the fight device on a second yesterday or day before I
noticed that I had a Windows dot old directory already so there was a major upgrade from one version of Windows to another one I'd have to go back and perform maintenance on the on the file system to keep my storage footprint small so the five the $400 up charts to the 256 gig model might be worth it in that sense I think that was all of the questions I had gotten on the device the it has a front-facing and rear-facing camera has a flash my wife
took a selfie with it already she likes the device the family likes the device the granddaughter loves the device the pin is a mazing tool to occupy a seven-year-old for some time the microsoft paint application which you know you can download coloring books and she can call her erase her mistakes she loved it I think I gave it to her at maybe six o'clock in the evening and eight nine o'clock when it came bad time she was still happily going at it and I had to
basically pry it out of her sleepy hands a couple other complaints if I had mentioned it uh just two USB ports again if this is your everyday driver two USB ports is a little light I think us Windows users are not accustomed to having a small selection of USB ports so you most definitely will need a USB hub of some sorts I mentioned that I didn't I wasn't a big fan of not having expansion ports on the tablet itself it has a displayport no dedicated network
port so you will either be using USB or Wi-Fi in locations that you so you'll be traveling with dongles the other thing that I mentioned which is a thing that I might invest into a doubt if I really have the use case to connect this thing to a full keyboard or desktop setup if you this becomes your full daily driver your desktop replacement and most definitely has the power to be a desktop replacement I would advise getting the docking station the docking station answer three more
USB ports are dedicated um a dedicated network port as well as power and a display port so you could literally take this thing docket with one cable and it provides power networking and your peripherals as well as you're a laptop me as well as your monitor that's a big thing I wish the the macbook pro retina had was the ability to easily dock without any weird third party utilities that docking station is 200 bucks I saw it for about 175 on Amazon I think that's it
if you guys have any questions you can hit me up on at the CTL advisor on the I'm sorry head CT advisor on the twitters you can use hashtag CTO advisor and I'll be more than happy to answer questions thanks have a great week
