My Week With Microsoft SurfaceBook

Last week Microsoft unleashed the Surfacebook – Windows 10 powered laptop with a detachable screen that can be used as a tablet. What’s not to love? I ordered one in hopes that it would be as awesome as all Microsoft MVPs assure me their Surface tablets are. I blogged my first impressions here, it is an impressive looking device.

With all the Windows 10 features it actually is the most impressive laptop on the market by a long shot. You can pick a complex password and only login with a four digit PIN. Too much work? You can set it to recognize your face so every time you open it up it will automatically log you in. Enabling “Ok Cortana” prompts allows you to talk to it and accomplish many tasks as you would on your iPhone with Siri. To top it off, device is absolutely gorgeous!

If I were to struggle to find a single fault with it.. I guess it would be the fact that it didn’t really work.

Crashes Galore

I have a Windows 10 desktop PC that is a few years old and I have never seen a blue screen on it. On Surfacebook I got a few. Each day. To keep things fair, I only used Microsoft apps and the only third party stuff I installed were Chrome, Firefox and Skype.

Nearly every time I detached the screen from the laptop the thing crashed. I was so thrilled when I finally detached it to watch a Netflix movie when it didn’t crash – just to crash in the worst possible way when I attached it back. The power button on the top of it is merely a suggestion in those situation, as the speakers blared the fraction of the second of the movie it got frozen on holding the power button did pretty much nothing. Nor did closing the lid.

Weird Ergonomics

Surfacebook doesn’t feel like a notepad – in a traditional sense where the LCD panel is quite light and skinny and can be pulled up with one finger. Not so with Surfacebook, you need to use both hands to pry it open and even then it’s not really easy.

The screen itself for some inexplicable reason doesn’t come with the Surface infinity kickstand so when you detach it from the base you’re lugging around a 13” piece of glass basically begging for it to be broken and tossed around on the desk. Unfortunately, iFixIt reported that it’s the least repairable notebook on the market so while this might be a mistake you can make with your iPad it’s going to be a lot tougher to handle with a $2,500 Surfacebook.

Everything About It Feels Wrong

Sound sucks. Keyboard sucks.

Touchpad… dear god… English is still pretty new to me so I don’t know the word that matches my level of anger with the touchpad.

Using the Microsoft touchpad on Surfacebook is kind of like getting to know a new lover. There is a way she likes to be touched in a sensual mood, like when you’re scrolling from a document and every now and then you might hit that special spot that makes her tingle and accidentally scroll down 5 pages. Then there are times when she is kinky, like when you’re trying to select a piece of text in a middle of a web page, no matter how you angle it she swings back in the opposite direction. Sometimes she is tired, no matter how gently or how rough you touch her it does nothing. If I were to pick my favorite it’s when she is clearly lost in a fantasy… you swipe up, down, click.. and she closes Excel, opens whatever was behind it on the desktop 80 times and you just do your best not to get consumed in her passion and… #50shadesofSurfacebook

So yea, it’s like that – except you got fucked by a $2,500 laptop.

Of course, you can always carry a mouse with you. Along with a separate tablet case. And a kickstand for the tablet portion. And by the time you get everything Sufacebook needs to be perfect you’re pretty much stuck having to check her because there is no way all that gear fits into a backpack.

Conclusion

Microsoft Surfacebook is gorgeous. Beautiful. Powerful. Flexible. Almost too good to be true.

And then, much like the mirage that is getting a hooker in Las Vegas, that gorgeous girl turns out to be a dude. That you need a whole lot of parts to make work the way you want to that isn’t anything you actually wanted from a laptop.

I wrapped it up and sent it back to Microsoft.

P.S. I would like to apologize to the Las Vegas hookers. Particularly the ones that are transitioned/ing – I have never used your services and I did not mean to insult you by comparing you to what is likely the worst laptop I’ve had since a Dell about a decade ago.