 Well, they actually went and did it. Microsoft finally just went ahead and made the laptop everybody wanted them to make. A thin and light computer with so few compromises and so much going for it that it's easy to recommend to anybody. Actually, it's easy to recommend to everybody. Everybody that's looking for a Windows laptop at least. And if you've been using a MacBook Air for the past few years, this might be the first Windows laptop in a very long time that could convince you to switch. Because the Surface laptop totally lives up to expectations. I mean, look at this thing. It's burgundy. It also comes in a couple other colors, gold and blue and platinum. You may have also heard that the deck that bit around the keyboard is fabric. It's Alcantara, and we will get to that in a minute. The rest of it is aluminum, and it's really sleek. It has this matte finish and this wedge-like design. It's all angles. It's not very curved, which I really like. It's more of a Lamborghini than it is a Porsche, and it feels totally modern. The Surface laptop starts at the very important price point of $1,000, but you really should spend the extra $300 to bump up the processor, the storage, and the RAM. That's the model that I'm using here. You can also go crazy and spend up to $2,200 on a radically specced-out model, but I don't think most people should need to get anywhere close to that. There are also just a ton of nice touches and a few annoying things with the hardware. The speakers are underneath the keyboard, and they sound great, even managing to get decent stereo separation. Speaking of those keys, they're also great. There's a solid amount of key travel and clickiness, and everything is just the right size and in the right place. They're surrounded by that Alcantara fabric you've probably heard about. So, yeah. Fabric on your laptop. What? Well, I'll tell you what. I think it's going to be fine. Maybe after months or years of sweaty palms, this fabric will go to hell, but I think it's going to be durable enough. Honestly, I'm more annoyed by the fact that the way the fabric is glued to the body means that there's a seam between the screen and the laptop deck when the thing is closed. But more importantly, I kind of don't get the point of it. It just feels nice and looks good, and maybe that's enough of a point. But at the end of the day, I would have been just as happy with plain old aluminum. Eh, whatever. It's unique. I'll take it. And since this is a Windows laptop, I have to point out that the trackpad actually works. It's fast and accurate, although I do like the Mac's Force Touch trackpad a little bit better because on that one, you can click down on the top of it. My only complaint is that I wish it were just a little bit bigger. Okay, before we go on about the hardware on the Surface laptop, you know, we've got to talk about this other laptop, the MacBook Air, because this thing basically looks like a red version of this thing. Now, we've been living with this design of the MacBook Air since 2010, and in that time, a lot of other laptops have tried to topple it. Even Apple hasn't been able to topple this laptop as everybody's favorite laptop. And for good reason. It's basically the king of laptops. So yes, the Surface laptop looks a lot like the MacBook Air. They have practically the same dimensions. The Surface laptop is just a little bit smaller, but it's good at the same things that the MacBook Air is good at. It's thin, it's light, it's got this wedge shape. It's powerful enough for most things that most people want to do, and it's just good at hitting the basics of what a laptop should be. But because the Surface laptop was designed in 2017, it has features that you can't get on a MacBook Air. Like, you can open it up and unlock it with your face. And of course, it has this big, beautiful touch screen. I've used a lot of MacBook Airs and a lot of laptops and tablets since the Air, and all of them inevitably kind of cramp your style in some weird way, taking two steps into the future and one step back. The Surface laptop, though, it's not trying to force you to do anything. It's just trying to be the laptop that everybody really wants. As far as performance goes, I really have zero complaints. The model I'm using is using the latest Intel Core i5 with 8 gigs of RAM. It's the $1,300 spec that I think most people should get. Running eight or so apps isn't a problem at all, and really, the only thing to say is that this will handle basically everything you want it to, except serious video editing and hardcore games. Under heavy duress, this thing conked out at just over seven hours, and under more normal use, I was getting between eight or nine. I could probably extend that if I were more careful with my apps and my brightness, but the whole point of this laptop is that you don't have to think about it. Then there's the screen, which is just bonkers big and beautiful. It's a 13.5-inch touch panel under Gorilla Glass 3 that Microsoft claims is the thinnest around. It's also a three by two aspect ratio, which I really love because I don't have to do so much scrolling to see everything. It's also super high resolution. It's 2256 by 1504 pixels, so everything not only looks sharp, you can also fit more on the screen. Also, I should say, it's super, super reflective in sunlight, so be ready for that. Now, let's talk ports. Microsoft decided to play it super conservative here. There's no USB-C or Thunderbolt 3. I think that's a mistake, but Microsoft thinks USB-C isn't ready for mass adoption yet. I think we both make excellent points. Anyway, what you do get here is one single classic USB-A port, and there's another one on the power adapter when you plug it in, a mini display port, and a surface connector for power. That's all fine, but I do wish they'd found a way to put an SD card reader on this thing. Even with classic ports, you can never escape hashtag dongle life. I've gone this far without talking about Windows, or more specifically, the version that ships on the Surface Laptop, Windows 10 S. That's because I'm going to tell you right now that the vast majority of regular people who go out and buy this thing are going to take the free upgrade to Windows 10 Pro and never look back. It's a simple button click, it just takes a couple of minutes to switch, and I'm telling you you're going to do it. You're going to do it because the Windows Store is an app desert. Microsoft is shipping 10 S by default to try and juice developers into putting their apps into the store, but that hasn't happened yet. Other Windows Store apps are just really subpar. The official Twitter app, for example, is a joke, and many others aren't as good as their full Windows versions. All of which, honestly, I think is a huge shame because the core of Windows 10 is here in Windows 10 S. Windows snapping is great, the system for notifications is excellent, and Microsoft has really figured out how a touchscreen should work on a laptop. Most of the time you just reach up to the taskbar, which isn't very far, but you can go full touch on some apps if you really want to. I dearly hope that Microsoft can go developers into getting more and better apps into the Windows Store, because I do like the idea of a managed version of Windows that's better about handling battery life and updates and security. Other than being limited to only using the Edge browser, which honestly still needs a little bit of work, this really doesn't feel like a half-baked version of Windows 10. It feels like Windows 10, if only the apps would catch up. So I said up top that the Surface laptop totally lives up to expectations, and that is true. It does. I think it's the new de facto Windows laptop that most people should get, even if it is a little more expensive for the recommended $1,300 build. But the other expectation that we had is that Windows Store apps still aren't good enough and there aren't enough of them either, and that is also true. Which is too bad. But the upgrade to Windows 10 Pro is free for now, and I suspect that's going to continue for a while. So if you want a Windows laptop and you can afford it, you should get the Surface laptop, upgrade to Pro, and don't look back. Just make sure you wipe down the fabric every now and then. You notice when people do guns, they like, a gun, they go like that, like pew, and that's wrong, the hammer goes down. So pew, yeah. Pew pew. Not pew pew. Like that's dumb.