Surface Book Discussion Thread

I have to agree with Jeff on this one. You have too many compromises at this thinness to add trap doors or removable backs (so says an owner of the Samsung Slate 7 that harrowingly swapped out a mSATA drive on it - still get chills about that experience).

 

The industrial design of the Surface line is good, and I think most forum members here understand the appeal of the svelte form factor.

The issue is the use of adhesive vs hidden screws in the design. This would not impact the weight or shape of the chassis, but would make it far more serviceable.

The chassis of the Canvas is also unibody and durable:


So it not an design trade-off, it's a simply choice by the OEM on limiting end-user serviceability.

Trap doors are not required, you can use clever position of screw holes (like in the Canvas).

Can you suggest a scenario where adhesive provides a fundamental advantage for thickness/weight vs screws?

 

They absolutely could do this, but not for "free". It would come at the expense of some combination of weight, balance, thickness and/or rigidity. Certainly some would find that tradeoff worth it, but probably most wouldn't (considering most wouldn't ever consider opening up their device regardless of how easy it is).

Personally, I'm more than willing to open up a device to repair/upgrade, but I'd rather that they pull out all the stops on design than make it easy to open up and service... I'm fine rolling the dice on the gamble that I'll need to replace the whole unit, or paying the extortion upgrade prices (rather than the much cheaper self upgrade of RAM/SSD). I'd rather they ignore user serviceability, which gives them more freedom/potential in the design...

 

Yes, this was by design

 

"By design" doesn't make it good design. Look at the contour around the battery - they could have placed plastic clips virtually anywhere to hold down the battery, but they chose glue. They used screws for the speakers, so clearly they considered the option of using screws (or plastic clips) for the battery, and they went with glue - I'm not even sure it cuts down on weight, two plastic clips may very well weigh less than an entire battery underside worth of glue.

Quoth iFixit:

We don't understand the point of heavily-glued batteries. This kind of planned obsolescence is completely unnecessary.
​

It serves no purpose from a design standpoint, not in weight reduction and not in durability. It just drives up the price of repairs.

 

So I was able to make it to my local BestBuy and tried the SurfaceBook (i5, 8GB, 256GB) and the Surface Pro 4 (i5, 8GB, 256GB). The only software loaded on both units were the usual MS Office suite (including OneNote), FreshPaint, Paintbrush, et.al. I suggested to the staff that they should load "proper" art programs like Autodesk Sketchbook Pro or ArtRage so that people interested in using these for creating art can properly evaluate these devices in-person.

So, here are my initial impressions:

Microsoft SurfaceBook

• pen has laggy performance in FreshPaint but not in OneNote.
• pen feel on the screen is quite awesome; not exactly pen-on-paper but something like fine markers on glossy card stock.
  
• pen tracking in OneNote was crisp and precise - almost no parallax; edge tracking was a lot more precise that every Wacom-based TPC I've ever owned, i.e., no cursor drift.
  
• did not notice the "wavy lines" when drawing slowly in OneNote or Paintbrush (using the thinnest brush), even when using a credit card as a ruler.
  
• IAF is a lot better than on the Surface Pro 3. For comparison, I brought a Wacom pen to use on my Samsung Galaxy Note 3 in Sketchbook mobile - pen sensitivity between the NTrig and Wacom pens seem to be on-par with one another.
• hover distance seems shallower than Wacom pen. Also, hover lag is still noticeable but very much improved compared to the Surface pro 3 they had on demo.
• opening the Edge browser did not result in the flickering display bug; perhaps 11/2 firmware had already been applied but didn't have enough time to confirm.
• did not notice any display pooling when writing on the screen, not even when I pushed down harder.
• screen looks fantastic. Scaling the fonts to 150% made it much more friendly to the eyes.
  
• was (relatively) easy to remove and re-attach the Clipboard, the guide tabs (on the sides) are magnetized; however, it was a bit disconcerting when I tried to remove the Clipboard for the first time because of the amount of friction between the connectors on the clipboard and keyboard base.
• Clipboard almost flew out of my hands on my first detach attempt. It's that light.
• the whole thing feels heftier than I imagined. Holding it with the lid closed (in book form), feels very natural.
  
• track pad didn't feel as smooth as I hoped it to be; however, it's not worse than any other track pad on any Windows machine I've ever tried.
• did not notice any unusual popping or clicking sounds from the speakers.
• keyboard feels nice to me - not too squishy and not too springy.
  
• screen does noticeably wobble, especially if the device is on a soft surface but it didn't bother me too much.

Microsoft Surface Pro 4

• new Type Cover feels amazing compared to the older type covers still on display
• per performance very similar to Surface Book
• Although the display is also amazing, I personally prefer the Surface Book's larger display.
• This thing is so easy to carry around, even with the Type Cover.

Whelp, with this, I've definitely decided to pickup the SurfaceBook (i7,16GB, 512GB,dGPU) when most of the issues have been sorted out, possibly late this month or early December.

 

Could you explain how the adhesive that fixes the screen to the body enables some feature that small screws (or even magnets) couldn't?

This isn't the same issue as, for example, integrating the RAM or GPU on the motherboard, which opens significantly more options on component placement and heat dissipation.

For a pure structural physical connection, I struggle to see how adhesive offers any advantage: it's messy, weakens with re-use, and requires a very inconvenient heat gun.

If glue should be used at all, it should used when the connection is permanent and the materials require it (like fabrics, leather sometimes wood), not for the main access point of a metal device.

 

Manufacturers have been using adhesives to attach the LCDs to the display bezel for years - I've taken apart displays from Toshiba's M4, M7 and Thinkpad X201T and the LCDs were attached to the front bezel via adhesives.

Here's the Dell XPS13 using the same method (step 20):
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Dell+XPS+13+Teardown/36157

Apple fuses it's display units (step 21):
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Retina+Display+Early+2015+Teardown/38300

The only advantages that I see for adhesives is that there are no mechanical contact points that can loosen over time or can be damaged (i.e., if the screws become stripped) and as a sort of 'sealant' that limits dust particles from contaminating the display. Plus, this makes the parts easier to manufacture.

 

Bonding the display with glue, that's fine - I can see the sealant and aesthetics point of view. But an internal battery? That kind of lazy engineering has no excuse.

 

The new Mobos are designed with shielding to block ambient RF Noise, the silicon is routed to allow the PCIe SSD to mount flush, the adhesive approach allows them to keep it thinner and also with the adhesive used adds to the devices being both audibly more quiet but also adds to blocking the above ambient RF noise. Field Serviceability wasn't never part of the plan, factory refurb yes, depot or user no....

The Engineers are non-apologetic about this fact.