Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Just scanning through the reviews, it seems there are some very different experiences here. What is clear, though, is that all of those who are disappointed were first-day buyers so I'd look at the one star reviews as a cautionary tale about the perils of being an early adopter. I was a bit lucky, in that I live in Australia and the release was delayed until Microsoft's new flagship store opened in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. I also had another delay when I broke mine. Apparently you should not try to repartition PCIe drives. Oops. So I took it back to the store and they reinitialised everything and applied the latest updates. The service was excellent and it means my experience is of a Surface Book with the latest Windows 10 updates, which seems to make all the difference. People who look at this device as something to replace your laptop and tablet are not seeing it properly. I love my Thinkpad 8 and have no intention of replacing it any time soon. But it has it's limitations and the gulf between it and my laptop is sometimes vast, a bottomless chasm, so what I end up doing is taking both my tablet and laptop with me, jus tin case. What my Surface Book (which I shall henceforth refer to as sBook) does is to bridge that gap completely. It eliminates the inner dialogue where I try and work out which device will involve the fewest compromises for any given task and it means I can now leave my tablet at home when I have my sBook with me. For example, at night when I remember something I should have done before I left work, I don't have to think "can I do this on my tablet or will I have to get up and sit at the desk to get this done". Instead I can just whip the screen section (Clipboard) off my sBook and continue to wallow on the sofa while I do a bit of work The pen is key to this as it gives me a very accurate pointing device that makes using desktop software easy to work with on the Clipboard. Speaking of the pen, it is something of a revelation. I had a Surface Pro 2 and I reckon in just over a week I have already used the pen on my sBook more than I did in a year with the SPro 2. Why? Because it's right there, stuck securely to the side of the Clipboard, ready to go whenever you think it might be handy. And it's always handy. It's also much nicer than the old pen, which felt and looked really cheap, and far more useful into the bargain with it's built in eraser. So, for me, this is what makes the sBook a five star product - the overall experience and massively expanded utility over my old laptop. The specs are far less important, other than being more than adequate to run all my professional software, from Adobe Creative Suite 6 to Autodesk 3DS Max and Maxon Cinema 4D. It is also very capable when it come sot my realtime music software and I can't wait for an opportunity to use it on stage, in front of an audience. The 3:2 screen aspect ratio is also much better than I thought it would be. It seems to be something Microsoft have actually thought deeply about, rather than just designing around a standard screen spec. Is it perfect? No, there are a few niggles. Probably the most annoying for me is that SD cards only fit half-way into the slot, leaving around 12mm (half-an-inch) sticking out of the chassis. I'd rather a microSD slot that completely swallowed the card. You also need to find a new way of opening the laptop up as the magnet that keeps it closed makes your usual method unsuitable. I crack the seal from the sides, with both hands, then open it out from the centre. The keyboard backlighting also makes it hard to see some of the keys during the day, even indoors. It should be adjustable but I haven't been able to find any controls. But these are minor quibbles and don't detract from the overall experience too much. Overall, this is a brilliant laptop with extended functionality that makes it worth whatever premium you have to pay. The build quality is exceptional and the designers have obviously sweated over every detail. If I think about all the reasons I bought a Surface Pro 2 and then all the reasons I decided to go back to a laptop, the Surface Book ticks off every point in both lists. Right now it is as close as you can get to the perfect portable computer for professionals who need to get things done. EDIT/UPDATE: Many of the problems other users were reporting kicked in for me after a month or so and took until about April for Microsoft to finally fix them all through firmware and software updates. Since then it has been mostly back to brilliant, with just one incompatibility problem outlined in the comments below. This incompatibility has forced me to move on earlier than I might have otherwise, although I do tend to replace my laptop every year so it's not like I have given up in disgust or anything like that. It is more that my needs have changed significantly this year and I no longer need such a high-spec machine, nor are the unique advantages of the sBook as important to me as they were.