Tuesday, October 6th 2015
Microsoft Announces the Surface Book
Microsoft announced its very first laptop, the Surface Book. It's Microsoft's imagining of the Surface with the strengths of a proper laptop. Microsoft claims at weight-by-weight, this is the most powerful 13-inch class laptop ever made. What sets it apart from other performance laptops in its class is that it's a convertible. You can detach the top half from the bottom, and use it like a large Surface tablet; or you could dock it with its base in either direction, and get the advantage of a proper mechanical keyboard, a multi-touch trackpad, additional battery (up to 12 hours), and additional connections.
The two halves join at a curious looking spinal joint, and an electric muscle joint that senses when you're trying to detach the two halves, and makes the process effortless. When it senses that you aren't trying to take them apart, it lends enough grip to let you lift both halves by holding one of them. The top half features a 13.5-inch display with a high-precision multi-touch touchscreen that's primed for Microsoft Pen (a smart stylus with 1024 pressure levels and high drawing resolution); with 267 ppi display resolution. Both halves are made out of milled aluminium, and are about 7.5 mm thick, each. Most of the hardware is located in the top half, while most of the battery is located in the bottom one. Microsoft has taken advantage of modern connectivity such as 4G LTE, 802.11 ac WLAN, USB 3.0 type-C, SDXC, and more.What makes this the most powerful notebook is what's under the hood - a 6th generation Intel Core i7 "Skylake" processor, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX "Maxwell" graphics with dedicated GDDR5 memory, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, and 1 TB of storage. It comes pre-loaded with Windows 10, Office 2016, and a the Windows Store app ecosystem. Pricing of the Surface Book starts at US $1,499.
The two halves join at a curious looking spinal joint, and an electric muscle joint that senses when you're trying to detach the two halves, and makes the process effortless. When it senses that you aren't trying to take them apart, it lends enough grip to let you lift both halves by holding one of them. The top half features a 13.5-inch display with a high-precision multi-touch touchscreen that's primed for Microsoft Pen (a smart stylus with 1024 pressure levels and high drawing resolution); with 267 ppi display resolution. Both halves are made out of milled aluminium, and are about 7.5 mm thick, each. Most of the hardware is located in the top half, while most of the battery is located in the bottom one. Microsoft has taken advantage of modern connectivity such as 4G LTE, 802.11 ac WLAN, USB 3.0 type-C, SDXC, and more.What makes this the most powerful notebook is what's under the hood - a 6th generation Intel Core i7 "Skylake" processor, discrete NVIDIA GeForce GTX "Maxwell" graphics with dedicated GDDR5 memory, 16 GB of DDR4 memory, and 1 TB of storage. It comes pre-loaded with Windows 10, Office 2016, and a the Windows Store app ecosystem. Pricing of the Surface Book starts at US $1,499.