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Comment by deathhand | Hacker News Reader

The Surface Book 3 may give the XPS 7390 a run for the money for the high end enterprise users. My initial concerns will be heat, weight and build quality. XPS metal body feels great and is durable. I wonder how this will compare.

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I use a Book 2 as daily driver but to be honest I would prefer the HP ZBook I had before. The Book is very unstable with multiple monitors, the docking station constantly runs out of USB resources, when I detach the tablet and reconnect the display settings get messed up and I spend ten minutes reconfiguring and overall it lacks speed compared to its configuration. Really not a good experience for a pricey high end laptop.

I've had the same experience, the thing eventually becomes a nightmare with display issues if you're using the dock, which I think most are. We also have had multiple people's Surface Book 2 batteries start to swell to the point that the lid is parabola when you close it. I've recently had a show-stopper charging issue too, which is very obnoxious when you're in the middle of work.

I have a Book v1, and let me tell you, that thing is riddled with issues.

The hinge is the biggest thing. Because it connects over PCIe to the base, the Book is very sensitive after a decent amount of time. If I adjust the screen, the hinge disconnects and reconnects.

Also, if I unplug my headphones while it's sleeping in laptop mode (which I use 99% of the time), the audio cuts out and I have to restart the machine.

That's why I'm typing this on a Dell Latitude with the same 6300u that's inside the book and with a worse screen -- at least it generally works even if I had to re-uninstall Candy Crush...

Long term surface book user. Can confirm the hinge becomes absolute trash after a while, and MS will wash their hands of you after the warranty period. Doing anything to the lid will cause the PCIE bus to disconnect and freak the laptop out, sometimes repeatedly.

Cute concept, garbage execution.

Heat has always been the problem with Surfaces, for whatever reason the firmware always has massive power/thermal management issues. When the firmware is working right the thermals and noise level are great (especially if you're using the dGPU in the keyboard base, because it spreads the heat across the whole machine), but it's so frequently not...

I hope they get it right this time.

I think the laptop to beat is the X1 Carbon. Feels completely solid and uncompromised.

What draws the high end to a surfacebook or an XPS instead of saving $1000 per laptop and going with the similar-specced Lenovo T543?

But you need to compare it with future XPS 9300 or XPS 9700.

I will never endorse the "nostril camera" of XPS 9XXX series considering they have now released better.

They've gone back to the 9XXX numbering scheme but those are the newest models. Ex: For the 13" line the 9300 is the newest iteration with above-screen camera replacement

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