I could not help myself, I had to get a surface book, it may end up in the pile of things with great potential but I had to give it a shot. Two devices were in the running for my 2015 tablet HW refresh, the Lenovo Yoga 3 and the iPad Pro. This sort of came out of left field.<p>It has a lot to live up to, I use my iPad every day and for a variety of things, but something I always wanted to do on my iPad, sketch, wasn&#x27;t very satisfactory. And while I liked the Surface Pro 3&#x27;s pen experience, its battery life was a challenge and some key Apps weren&#x27;t there.<p>So long battery life, a better drawing experience, and a useful typing experience, and, for bonus, I can stop carrying around a laptop as well? Well if this thing can pull that off its a win for me, and I&#x27;ll just put vmware workstation on it and run Linux when I&#x27;m doing my embedded work.<p>But the other thing it has done is really highlight the impact of market windows. Had the iPad Pro come out last year, or even in Q1 of this year, I would be using it already and probably not be buying the Surface Book.<p>For historical reasons the first thing I bought to try to do what I wanted was the &quot;Touchbook&quot; from Always Innovating. Detachable keyboard, touch screen. But not enough battery life, and the screen&#x27;s resistive touch screen was not very useful. I also have the Illiad 2 from iREX which an an epaper display with a watcom stylus, loved the pen, and the readability of epaper, but very little app support and challenging storage options. For a while I&#x27;ve lived with both a laptop and the iPad. I&#x27;m really curious if this new box can meet my expectations.