Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin

Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin? I’ve been using the Microsoft Surface book for more than 5 months and this ultrabook is a beast. This is an ultra-thin, high-performance laptop with exceptional power and versatility.

I don’t cover loads of technical specifications of the Surface book in this post rather this is a quick review from an IT admin perspective. To be more precise, this post is all about “Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin”.

SCCM admins like me need one powerful machine with loads of storage, memory, and processing power. I don’t care much about display quality and other usability options. I should be able to create a minimum of 2 SCCM CB environments with a couple of client machines.

I have purchased the surface book with the following configuration 1 TB, Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz 2.81 GHz, and 16.0 GB. Microsoft Surface Book has two batteries one in the bottom dock and another in the display. The bottom dock battery is the large one, and it gives me 7-8 hours of battery backup. It will give around 3 hours of battery backup if you are In tablet mode.

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Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin
Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin

There are two batteries in the surface book. As a tablet, this can be used for continuous 3 hours. The Bigger battery is in the base part, and that will last for 12 hours as Microsoft, but I could see it’s lasting for 7-8 hours. My typical scenario is working with Hyper-V virtual machines.

There is one charging connector in the display piece when you use this as a tablet. Trackpads are nice as per my experience. There is some issue with the quality of Wi-Fi hardware in Microsoft Surface Book as per my experience.

Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin
Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin

I use Microsoft Surface Book as my Hyper-V LAB environment apart from my regular use. I have several virtual servers running on this device. The performance of this machine is nice with all hyper machines running in the background.

The biggest advantage of this beast is a 1 TB SSD, and the performance of virtual lab machines is improved very much. The biggest advantage for me with this machine is the storage. I used to run out of my storage if I keep several virtual machines running. With a 1 TB SSD, I can easily overcome this limitation.

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Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin
Microsoft Surface Book Review from an SCCM Admin IT Pro Intune Admin

Surface Pen is included with the Surface Book to open OneNote and Cortana, take screenshots, mark up presentations, sign documents, and use art apps. I don’t use surface PEN much, but I feel it’s better than surface pen which I used with Surface 3 and 4.

Windows Hello works well with around 95% accuracy. The 13.5-inch screen is very useful for doing technical demos and sharing via online skype meetings etc… 3:2 aspect ratio comes in handy when you use Surface Book in tablet mode for reading documents, etc.

We need to be a bit careful while disconnecting the Keyboard/base dock of the Surface Book. To disconnect the base dock, keep pressing DETACH button from the keyboard and a green pop will come on your display when it’s ready to detach. You may need to wait an extra sec before separating the dock. If you wait longer, then it will automatically reattach the base to display. So, you may need to detach the button again.

There are two power sockets in the Microsoft Surface book one is in the base/keyboard part of the device, and another power socket is with the display dock. The power socket in-display dock is very handy if you are using this device as a tablet.

Resources

Surface Book User Guide from Microsoft – Here

Author

Anoop is Microsoft MVP! He is a Solution Architect in enterprise client management with more than 20 years of experience (calculation done in 2021) in IT. He is a blogger, Speaker, and Local User Group HTMD Community leader. His main focus is on Device Management technologies like SCCM 2012, Current Branch, and Intune. E writes about ConfigMgr, Windows 11, Windows 10, Azure AD, Microsoft Intune, Windows 365, AVD, etc…

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