Surface Book Demonstrates Frailty with Reported Issues

Microsoft Surface Book — Bill Roberson/Digital Trends

Early product adoption comes at a cost. And, as a small group of Surface Book customers have realized since the premiere of Microsoft’s first laptop on Monday, that cost is often a product that has a few rough edges to sort out.

Of course, not all of these issues are fatal, hardware-breaking affairs. In fact, most of them aren’t, but it’s alarming nonetheless to see such severe issues arising so soon after the product’s launch.

Zdnet compiled a list of complaints voiced by forum users, which includes everything from Surface Books being completely “dead on arrival” to “a screen wobble due to a weight imbalance between the screen and keyboard.”

Software issues, such as the reported “random crashes and lockups” are to be expected, but you’d think Microsoft wouldn’t want its customers taking advantage of their one-year limited warranties this early on.

One user called ericspt, of an unofficial Surface forums site, also took to the web to list some of the unsatisfactory experiences with the device. They are as follows:

Dell 34″ U-Wide cannot be used with the dock. Screen goes black every 2-3 minutes for 10 seconds or so.
Cannot boot with the dock. Monitor never comes on and my Kef X300 speakers just click over and over. Have to boot without the dock, then plug the dock in.
Strangest problem is color temp changes on web pages as you scroll. Goes from a light white screen to a purple or yellow hue once you hit a certain point in the page, happens consistently on long pages and easy repeatable. Happens on both the external monitor and the laptop screen.
Playing MPEG files on the laptop works fine, playing them connected to the dock will give an unable to decode error sometimes, program closes other times, and plays. After it errors out 2-3 times it refuses to play until reboot.
Going to a web page where there are a lot of animations or movement causes a black screen, won’t come back until you undock/redock.
Cannot detach dock, says I have to close SearchUI but it’s not a running service that I can find, have to reboot again.

Our Surface Book review went up exactly one week ago today, and our own Brad Bourque didn’t experience any of these issues with his review unit. Hopefully, if you purchased one early, you won’t either.

When Techradar asked Microsoft about the alleged technical drawbacks of its freshly released new system, the company replied, “A small number of customers have flagged some issues with their Surface Book. We are working hard to resolve them quickly and easily with Windows Update.”

Good luck fixing that screen wobbling via Windows Update, Microsoft.

Early Surface Book adopters report frustrations and bugs

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