Surface Book 2 Task View Lag (and other high-resolution laptops included)

It's very disappointing to see that Microsoft doesn't give a **** about this! Even their own (Surface) products have had this problem for years, and they still don't care. It really surprises me.

I also thought about getting a MacBook and switching to MacOS only because of this annoying problem.

Microsoft will definitely lose their users if they continue to not giving a **** about users' problems.

However, I googled terms like "Macbook Animation Lag", "MacOS Animation Lag", etc. and I found out that some Mac users have faced this problem as well:

Why is Sierra's UI animations so jittery and laggy?

Why are the window resize animations choppy and laggy on the Mac Pro?MacBook Pro 2017 '15 UI Laggy Animations

That's why I thought that the problem could be universal, and because of the crappy Intel integrated graphics.

However, I'm not quite sure yet, I'd like to get a good response from Microsoft or Intel, but they didn't give any valuable solution to this problem yet, I'm still watiting...

Just save yourself some time and buy a MacBook. Windows became a joke. I was also a huge Apple hater and Windows made me so angry that I switched to Mac just out of some internal protest, and now I wish I did that sooner.

I had a Lenovo Yoga 920 fully specked, returned it because of lag. Then switched to a fully specked out Surface Book 2 15", same issues followed by constant GPU disconnecting, detachment mechanism failing to work and so on (all of that in a span of 2 weeks), returned that one. Tried a friends XPS 15, saw the same problems, said f*** it and bought a Macbook Pro a few weeks ago.

I'm just sick of troubleshooting stuff every few days, fixing, then a new update comes, steals an hour of your work time and makes even more problems.

With the Mac it's a refreshing feeling to open up the laptop and just start working. I lost 20 hours on troubleshooting the SB2, 20 hours that I could have worked and earned money!

My thoughts exactly! I became really frustrated because the SB2 didn't deliver what you'd expect from a device with that price tag and advertised as a powerful machine. And it's THEIR OS with THEIR device, geez! You'd expect to run better than any other Laptop+Windows combination!

Guess what, 2 days after my post I did just that: returned the SB2 and got a Mac instead :)) I couldn't take it anymore, was so frustrated for paying that much money for a device that actually prevents you from being productive. I was only hesitant to do that because I had a friend at the store I bought it from, and he added an extra 5% discount for me, somehow. Was thinking I'd get him into some trouble, but then I was so frustrated that I asked him if it's ok to return it. And the moment he said "it's fine", I reseted it and then next morning I went to return it. And, like you, I wish I had switched to a Mac sooner! I can't believe I worked on Windows laptops all these years :)) I am really really happy now! And I also used to say "I don't need a bigger touchpad", but this one is amazing. And even more than the size, I like it's responsiveness and force feedback for the hard press, instead of a mechanical hard press. It works the same no matter where you want to hard press, as opposed to the surface one where, if you want to do a hard press in the top part, it doesn't work unless you put some really really hard pressure (I think you might even break it if you'd do that all the time). Comparing it to the Mac's touchpad, now I realise that the SB/2 touchpad is a cheap excuse for a touchpad, even though it's better than on any other Windows laptop I've seen.

And as for battery life, I get about the same while working, BUT there are 2 things to consider:

#1 - I believe the MacBook's battery life is advertised to be less than that of the SB2's (won't search again now, so if I'm wrong...) so: points for that! I get the same, even though it was advertised to be less.

#2 - guess what, while at my desk I can simply keep the Mac plugged in and not worry! I even know people that have been keeping their Macs plugged in all day, for 4 years, and their Mac is still fine (although I wouldn't keep a device for that long). That is one thing you can't do with the surface book, because the battery heats up and in combination with the cpu also heating up, those temps make the battery in the display inflate and ruins your whole device, and you're left with a base that does nothing on it's own. And if (like most people, I guess) you didn't buy extra warranty, you're screwed. You've paid over $3000 (in US, but much more in Europe) for a device that keeps you from being productive for 1 year and 2 months, and then it also breaks.

Sure, I wouldn't go as far as also replacing my desktop with an All In One or something. I don't have an issue with Windows per say, only with the SB2 not delivering. Plus, that's working perfectly fine (the desktop), I don't have issues with it. And it's nice to have for when you need some real power and occasional gaming. Although, I was surprised to see there ARE top titles that work on Mac. I couldn't believe it! Sure, they're quite a bit behind, but still for what I play: I've actually found Rise of The Tomb Raider and F1 2017. I guess Shadow of The Tomb Raider and F1 2018 will follow. But from "didn't even think there would be top games and a Steam version for Mac" to "finding top titles"... I was pleasantly surprised!

I'd try the "visual effects" suggestions I made earlier in the thread.  It should improve things quite a bit.

Still frustrating as hell to have these issues on Microsoft's flagship computer running its own OS.  If the graphics card isn't adequate, how come Microsoft put this card in their Surface Book? If it's software, how come they can't put out a version of Windows 10 that's able to handle high resolution displays?  I've had Office issues too.  IMO, in the last two years Microsoft has become a **** show.  I'd love to dump it, but I need native W10 tools for work, Office, and I also use tax software that's only available under Windows.  I could go dual boot or run a VM in Linux I suppose, but I'm not sure that would be less stressful.

For now, my machine is working fine.  Until the next Microsoft "upgrade" that is, when it will get hosed yet again.

If I knew that this issue was present before I purchased my SB2, I wouldn't have bought it. IMO this is unacceptable for a $3000 laptop, and if this is bugging you, return the laptop. Honestly the hardware is great, but the software experience is much more terrible than I had expected.

Could you give me a few hours let me see if I can get some folks to look into this?