When I first began outlining an idea i had for a book on contemporary gold prospector and their tribal natures, I realized I needed to think very carefully about what i needed in a portable computer. List in hand, I went shopping for a new machine. A convertible seemed like a perfect fit so I marched over to the Main Exchange at Camp Pendleton and forked over $900 for a Microsoft Surface Book. I was attracted to the idea of its detachable screen-- which I could use to view and interpret sectional maps of the CA Gold country its overall performance and lightweight.
The icing on the cake for me was up to ten hours of battery life, a wicked fast SST and a keyboard I could use comfortably for hours at a time.The ground truth of my Surface book experience however left me convinced most notebook computer designers have never ever done much more than build to marketing design bullet points or copy other manufacturers’ reference designs. In the case of my first Surface Book I came to believe Microsoft had copied the worst of Apple’s MacBook Air, i. E, a sealed case.
And, the system battery went south shortly after the Surface book’s warranty expired and the estimated cost of repairing it nearly exceeded its original purchase price.My experience with the Surface book has made me very nervous about replacing my current all-in-one desktop with Microsoft’s sleek new Surface Studio desktop or moving from my current Lenovo-made cell phone to Microsoft’s forthcoming Duo cell phone.
hubba hubba,Please don't let them launch the Surface Duo nwith a sealed case.
Jim Forbes on April 20,2020
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