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Aa someone who's been using a Surface Book, I gotta disagree. Battery is a bit shit but otherwise it is equal or superior to my MBP in every way. It is also the

Aa someone who's been using a Surface Book, I gotta disagree. Battery is a bit shit but otherwise it is equal or superior to my MBP in every way. It is also the only pro-grade laptop I've ever used that doesn't get hot. You can actually use this thing on your lap

baybal2 5y ago
SB is an interesting design, but more of a statement from MS "that we can." The prime majority of laptops of the market don't come with original engineering. It's almost always outsourced to no-name Taiwanese engineering shops, which largely copy-paste designs for internals, and mechanical engineering for every brand around. SB simply doesn't look to me it went through any of such design shops, and the engineering school feels very American (it's "one and done" assembly, they tried very hard to use less fasteners, and subassemblies.) At the same time they repeated the same mistakes that Taiwanese had 20-15 years ago.
- unknown_error 5y ago
  Mistakes like what? I'd love to learn more.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    1. Extremely huge, irregular shape, multilayer PCB 2. Complete lack of modularity, serviceability, and odd assembly order. This means minor changes will need mobo redesign. And defect found after test, or on return equals scrapping the unit. 3. Custom mechanical parts used liberally 4. Too many programmable ICs 5. Extremely wasteful use of case space to work around rigidity issues.
    - unknown_error 5y ago
      Ah, thanks for explaining! Sounds like pitfalls of going with a custom design. Do you think it's a necessary tradeoff? Are other laptops with custom designs subject to the same internal engineering mistakes?
- wly_cdgr 5y ago
  Would also love to hear more from a hardware engineering perspective I know nothing about that - was speaking purely from an end user UX perspective
- naikrovek 5y ago
  no one I know with a Surface Book at work have had any hardware issues at all. hinge never got loose, docking and undocking from the keyboard works fine and as expected, etc. not sure what you're basing your opinion on. maybe people near you have more issues, I dunno.

baybal2 5y ago

SB is an interesting design, but more of a statement from MS "that we can." The prime majority of laptops of the market don't come with original engineering. It's almost always outsourced to no-name Taiwanese engineering shops, which largely copy-paste designs for internals, and mechanical engineering for every brand around. SB simply doesn't look to me it went through any of such design shops, and the engineering school feels very American (it's "one and done" assembly, they tried very hard to use less fasteners, and subassemblies.) At the same time they repeated the same mistakes that Taiwanese had 20-15 years ago.

unknown_error 5y ago
Mistakes like what? I'd love to learn more.
- baybal2 5y ago
  1. Extremely huge, irregular shape, multilayer PCB 2. Complete lack of modularity, serviceability, and odd assembly order. This means minor changes will need mobo redesign. And defect found after test, or on return equals scrapping the unit. 3. Custom mechanical parts used liberally 4. Too many programmable ICs 5. Extremely wasteful use of case space to work around rigidity issues.
  - unknown_error 5y ago
    Ah, thanks for explaining! Sounds like pitfalls of going with a custom design. Do you think it's a necessary tradeoff? Are other laptops with custom designs subject to the same internal engineering mistakes?
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Would also love to hear more from a hardware engineering perspective I know nothing about that - was speaking purely from an end user UX perspective
naikrovek 5y ago
no one I know with a Surface Book at work have had any hardware issues at all. hinge never got loose, docking and undocking from the keyboard works fine and as expected, etc. not sure what you're basing your opinion on. maybe people near you have more issues, I dunno.