Microsoft on Tuesday surprised industry watchers by revealing it’s getting into the laptop computer business, taking the wraps off a powerful, 13,5-inch notebook PC, the Surface Book, that doubles as a tablet.
The machine, which starts at US$1 499 (about R20 500 before VAT at current exchange rates) and goes all the way to $2 699 (about R37 000 excluding VAT), is the first laptop the company has built.
Billed by Microsoft Surface vice-president Panos Panay as the “most powerful laptop on the planet” with the most pixels per inch in its class, the 13,5-inch screen serves up 6m pixels for a pixel density of 267ppi. The screen can be snapped out of the keyboard and the machine used as a large tablet, too.
Panay, unveiling the machine at a launch event in New York, said the Surface Book is twice as powerful as an Apple MacBook Air.
The device offers a laptop-class typing experience — unlike when using the keyboard-based covers that ship with Microsoft’s Surface tablets. The keyboard is backlit and there’s also a five-point-touch glass trackpad.
The machine ships with the latest generation Intel Core processors and they ship with an Nvidia GeForce graphics processing unit with high-speed GDDR5 memory. It has a microSD card slot and two USB 3.0 ports.
The machine ships with either 8GB or 16GB of RAM and solid-state drive options are 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB. It has an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and 5-megapixel front-facing unit.
“It is modelled and metaphored after an A4 piece of paper,” said Panay.
Microsoft claims the Surface Book will last for up to 12 hours on a single charge.
The machines go on sale on 26 October, with preorders starting on 7 October. There’s no word yet about whether they’ll be coming to South Africa. Given that Microsoft’s line of Surface tablets is not yet available here, we wouldn’t get our hopes up.
Meanwhile, Microsoft used the same stage in New York to debut two new high-end smartphones, the Lumia 950 and 950XL, along with an updated Microsoft Band fitness band and a new tablet, the Surface Pro 4. — (c) 2015 NewsCentral Media
