Microsoft Surface Book teardown reveals almost impossible-to-repair design

Microsoft has been making the first-party Surface Windows tablets for a few years, and they’ve actually won a lot of fans. Now the company is trying its hand at a more traditional laptop form factor with the Surface Book. Well, it’s not very traditional when you look at thatwacky flexing hinge, but it actually looks like a laptop, and it’s packed full of high-end hardware. In fact, it’s packed so tightly that it’s almost impossible to open and repair anything yourself. The teardown experts at iFixit have dug into the Surface Book and given it the lowest possible score for repairability.

Laptops, like smartphones, have moved to a slimmer profile and more compact design. That necessitates some changes to the design that are not as friendly to tinkerers. You’d be hard-pressed to find a laptop these days with a removable battery or RAM that isn’t soldered to the motherboard. However, some devices are still more friendly than others, and the Surface Book definitely isn’t. Right from the start, it’s a hassle to open it up.

Just like with the Surface Pro 4, the only way to open the tablet portion of the Surface Book is to apply some heat and very carefully pull the screen away from the metal frame. Too much force can break the glass, which sort of defeats the purpose of opening your computer to fix it. When the Surface Book is open, a new problem presents itself — the motherboard is upside-down. There’s probably a very good engineering reason for doing it this way, but for consumers, it means almost any repair will include actually removing the motherboard completely from the casing.

Getting the motherboard out to actually see any of the components requires removing myriad connectors, most of which are taped and glued down. There’s a theme here — almost no screws, making the process of opening the Surface Book much more frustrating. The motherboard itself is vaguely anvil-shaped and sprawls throughout the chassis, meaning everything else needs to be taken out to free it. One small mercy, the SSD is not soldered to the board — it’s just incredibly hard to reach. The CPU and RAM are soldered, though. The battery for the tablet portion is glued to the frame behind the motherboard, but it’s only 2,387mAh in capacity. Microsoft claims just 4 hours of battery life in tablet mode.

Unpacking the keyboard portion of the Surface Book is a comparative walk in the park. Again, you need heat to pop the cover off (no screws). Inside are a few small circuit boards for the ports, dock, and a custom Nvidia GeForce GPU. There’s also a huge 6,800mAh battery glued securely to the bottom.

The Surface Book got a 1 out of 10 from iFixit, indicating it’s very hard to repair. If anything goes wrong with the Surface Book, I’m not even sure how Microsoft could repair this thing. When you figure in the labor, it might be cheaper just to replace the entire device.

Microsoft sets sights on gamers with low-end Surface Book

Costing $200 more than the most basic Surface laptop, this model features an Nvidia GeForce graphics chip rather than relying on graphics tech built into the main processor.

Microsoft has tweaked its Surface Book lineup just before next week’s launch by adding a low-end model designed to lure gamers with better graphics.

This new version of the most basic Surface Book laptop, spotted Thursday by TechRadar, adds a separate Nvidia GeForce graphics chip rather than relying on graphics tech integrated directly into the model’s Intel Core i5 processor. Separate graphics chips cost extra but help endow video games with lavish landscapes and snappy performance. Until now, the GeForce option was available only on higher-end Surface Book models.

This low-end, gamer-friendly Surface Book, which includes 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage, costs $1,699 (£1,100 or AU$2,350). That’s $200 more than the same model without the GeForce chip. This new version is set for release Monday, the official launch date for all Surface Book models, but is not available for preorder. All other models are showing at least four-week to seven-week waits before shipping, according to Microsoft’s site.

The Redmond, Washington-based company has touted the Surface Book, with its detachable keyboard, touchscreen display and atypical hinge, as the “ultimate laptop.” Microsoft’s first homegrown laptop, the Surface Book embodies an ambitious transformation for a company that, aside from its Xbox game console, chiefly sold software for most of its history. That has changed with the release of the first Surface tablets in 2012, as well as the Lumia smartphones released since Microsoft bought Nokia’s devices and services business in 2014.

The Windows 10 laptop is entering a crowded market, but Windows 10 has helped fuel Microsoft’s strong quarterly results, released Thursday. The Surface Book will compete not just with Apple MacBooks but with laptops from Microsoft’s own business partners that sell Windows-powered machines. Microsoft launched Windows 10 this summer in an attempt to improve a reputation damaged by the confusing Windows 8.

Microsoft has apparently been rejiggering its final Surface Book lineup since the October 6 unveiling. It also added a top-end Surface Book with 1TB of storage for $3,199 earlier this week, though that model shows a January 22 shipping date on Microsoft’s site.

The extra Nvidia graphics capabilities add $200 (£130 or AU$275) to the price of the most basic $1,499 Surface Book. The $1,699 price tag is the same as an upgrade on the most basic model to 256GB of built-in storage. Customers in that price range will need to decide whether more storage or improved graphics is a better bet for them.

One unknown factor: Microsoft hasn’t detailed which Nvidia graphics processor is in the Surface Book other than to say it will have 1GB of GDDR5 high-speed memory.

Surface Book preorders back on track, but you may wait weeks for the laptop

Microsoft’s new laptop launches on October 26, but preorders show a wait time stretching well into November.

You can once again preorder a Surface Book through Microsoft but don’t expect it to land on your doorstep anytime soon.

The Windows 10 laptop that turns into a tablet via a detachable keyboard is set for release on October 26. It has been available for preorder since October 7. On Tuesday, Microsoft’s online store displayed an “email me when available” message, indicating that all five models of the Surface Book were sold out for preorder.

The device is once again available through Microsoft’s website, but with some lengthy ship times listed. Three of the models show ship times of five weeks to six weeks, while the other two won’t ship for seven weeks to eight weeks. You can also preorder and try out the Surface Book at a Microsoft retail store, but the wait time to receive one will be the same.

The Surface Book is Microsoft’s attempt to shake up the computer market in light of weak overall demand. Microsoft’s goal is to generate sales for its first homegrown laptop and also show other PC vendors how to build a laptop that takes full advantage of Windows 10. Panos Panay, Microsoft’s head of devices, calls it the “thinnest, most powerful PC ever created.”

Microsoft must first get the Surface Book into the hands of consumers, though.

“We’ve seen strong demand for Surface Book and have sold out of preorder supply for October 26 availability,” a Microsoft spokesperson said Wednesday. “We will have limited quantities of Surface Book available in store on October 26.”

So what are your options if you’re yearning to get a Surface Book? You can hope your local Microsoft store will have one in stock come October 26. In the meantime, you can try to preorder at a couple of other online vendors, though not all models are in stock.

Amazon shows some variations of the Surface Book as available and will email preorder customers when it has an estimated delivery date. Frys.com lists two variations available and estimates that preordered units will ship by October 26.

Best Buy will also carry the Surface Book, but its website displays a few Surface Book models with a “coming soon” message and no option to preorder.

Best of luck Microsoft, but the Surface Book isn’t going to save the PC

Microsoft has unveiled the pinnacle of laptop design as the format faces a terminal, and possibly unstoppable, decline

Three things happened in the space of two days last week that explain perfectly the state of the market for personal computers.

On Wednesday morning, at a glamorous Apple-style event in New York,Microsoft unveiled its first laptop, a breathtaking combination of design and function called the Surface Book that the company, without a hint of humility, dubbed “the fastest laptop on any planet”.

Then just a few hours later, it emerged that Dell, a computer hardware giant with its better days behind it, was in talks with data storage company EMC over a $60bn deal that would be the biggest technology takeover in history.

And finally on Thursday, IDC, a research company that tracks worldwide sales of tech products, said that sales of PCs in the third quarter of the year had fallen 10.8pc against the same quarter a year ago, a much worse decline than expected.

To understand these events, it is best to look at them in reverse-chronological order. First, the IDC figures. Sales of PCs – laptops and desktop computers combined – have been on a downward trend since 2012 after a decade of unbroken growth, and now sit at roughly 2007 levels.

Reasons for this include stretched corporate IT budgets, diminishing returns from upgrades and Microsoft’s lacklustre software releases, but the main factor has been the rise of mobile. Touchscreen smartphones and tablets have redefined personal technology, combining the internet with portability and ease-of-use to become the dominant platform.

This brings us to Dell. Once the world’s biggest PC manufacturer, whose low-cost manufacturing and fashionable designs allowed it to disrupt lumbering giants such as Compaq in the 1990s, it has suffered more than most from the decline of the industry. In 2013, its founder, Michael Dell,took it into private ownership, saying a radical strategy to turn it from a hardware company into an enterprise-focused services group would be easier out of the public glare.

Buying EMC, a move that reports suggest could be announced this week, is the clearest manifestation of this. “Selling PCs isn’t working for us, we need to try something else,” the company is saying.

Similar things are happening at HP, which is splitting into two next month to free its growing data and infrastructure unit from its declining hardware operation, and Lenovo, which bought Motorola’s mobile business from Google last year. In other words, the world’s PC manufacturers are getting ready for the demise of the PC.

This brings us on to Microsoft, and the company’s first PC. The company never really had to make hardware. Its ludicrously-profitable software made it the biggest company in the world at one point, and its founder, Bill Gates, is still the world’s richest man. It could rely on Dell et al to compete away their margins and promote the hell out of computers running Windows.

The Surface Book isn’t Microsoft’s first physical product – its Surface tabletis now in its fourth generation, and it makes a wearable fitness device called the Microsoft Band – but it is the first in the category that made the company such a success.

Why is it making such a bet on hardware, just as the rest of the industry is pulling back? Well, that’s exactly why – when the PC was on the rise, Microsoft never needed to be its champion: Dell, HP and so on did it for them, with Microsoft simply taking all the profit. Now, as computer sales fall into decline and PC manufacturers ask whether they really want to be PC manufacturers, Microsoft has to carry the flag itself.

It can’t afford to watch the PC fade into obscurity: Microsoft has missed out on mobile almost completely, despite a few costly but ultimately futile attempts to break Apple and Google’s hegemony. Satya Nadella, its chief executive, has made admirable attempts to make Microsoft more relevant, putting its software into rivals’ smartphones and tablets, but the company does, and probably always will, rely on PC software for the bulk of its profits.

In making the Surface Book, which by all accounts is the pinnacle of laptop engineering, Microsoft is screaming: “Hey, PCs are still exciting, look at this one!” It is also sending a message to other computer manufacturers that they need to up their game if they want to keep a slice of what is left of the market.

Can it save the PC? Probably not. Consumers are unlikely to give up using their ever-more capable smartphones just because a slightly-better PC comes along. One could argue that laptop and desktop computers will always have to exist to get “real work done”, but it is becoming increasingly apparent that this is not really the case.

Slack, an office collaboration tool that works just as well on mobile as on computers, is replacing email in many workplaces. Last month, Apple unveiled the iPad Pro, a high-powered tablet with a laptop-sized screen and keyboard that many will see as a realistic alternative to buying a new computer. Google has a similar proposition with its new Pixel C.

But history has few instances of a declining technology being saved by a spectacular version of it – Sony’s decision to develop higher-capacity MiniDiscs in response to the iPod never really paid off, to give one example.

Microsoft is doing everything it can to keep the industry that has defined it alive. But it’s probably too late.