I haven't had any issues with my SB falling back on the display, (the keyboard is nice and heavy on mine) so I'm wondering if it's the graphics card or something else.
8th gen intel processors were not out when the new Surface Pro released. And they had to release it because it was long overdue since SP4.
> On the road my 12" Surface Book is a bit too little screen area and so I use my 15" macbook pro 2015 for that. The 15" version of the surface book 2 would be a win there but at 4.2lbs my shoulder will complain. (I briefly had the 4+ pound Sony VAIO and it was painful enough that I just never took it on trips as powerful as it was.)
15"MBP: 4.49lb(2015), 4.02lb(2016&2017)
First, I did not think the MBP was that heavy. But you are absolutely correct. I put it on my scale and it comes in a bit over 4.5 lbs. (I'm attributing the extra weight to the stickers.) So that does make the SB2 faster, better screen, and longer battery life. Could be an expensive realization :-).
I was recalling the article in ars where they were talking about the LTE version [1], which is missing the i7. I suspect I'm the only one who wants a laptop with a decent LTE radio that can take advantage of the increased area to offer something which can pull in even weak LTE signals and work at something resembling full speed. I guess we have to wait for Intel to do some sort of Centrino type deal with an LTE modem manufacturer before we see something like that.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/09/microsoft-seems-to-h...
Seems like a solid follow up to the original Surface Book (which I have). In my experience my Surface book is most usable in 'studio mode' (their name for folded back over the keyboard with the display up) and an external keyboard. That gives the maximum graphics power and its possibly to use the stylus to draw on it easily.
As a laptop the weight balance is off enough that there are a lot of orientations that just don't work (the system falls back on the display.
As a development machine with the dock to add extra displays I've found it both responsive and powerful enough. On the road my 12" Surface Book is a bit too little screen area and so I use my 15" macbook pro 2015 for that. The 15" version of the surface book 2 would be a win there but at 4.2lbs my shoulder will complain. (I briefly had the 4+ pound Sony VAIO and it was painful enough that I just never took it on trips as powerful as it was.)
At the end of the day I think Microsoft is doing a good job of exploring the mobile development workstation space in a way that is currently out pacing Apple. Microsoft is still behind (as far as I am concerned) in software but with things like WSL they are plugging the gaps which made them unusable for my purposes.