14 DAY TRIAL // Although quite expensive, the Surface Book is already experiencing important success on the premium laptop market, but shipments could very soon be impacted not because of Microsoft, but due to the shortage of Intel Skylake processors.
A report by Digitimes reveals that shipments of Surface Book laptops in the fourth quarter could be reduced because of this shortage, as Microsoft has decided to postpone some orders to the first quarter of 2016, until more processors are manufactured.
Thanks to this production boost, the Surface Book could reach 100,000 units shipped per month, the aforementioned report states, while Surface Pro 4 could even get past 200,000 units in Q1 2016.
Microsoft hasn't yet issued a statement to confirm if this is true or not, but we've reached out to the company to find out whether a possible Skylake shortage could have an impact on customers and if any delays are possible too.
Surface Book processors
Depending on the version you choose, the Surface Book comes with a choice of two different Skylake processors, as follows:
6th Gen 2.6-GHz Intel Core i7-6600U processor with Intel HD graphics 520 6th Gen 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5-6300U processor with Intel HD graphics 520
At the same time, the Surface Book features 16 GB of RAM (for the top-of-the-range version), NVIDIA GeForce graphics (again for the top model), and a maximum of 512 GB of storage space. Another option with 1 TB of storage will ship in early January, Microsoft says, but storage can be anyway increased with an external USB hard drive.
Pricing for the Surface Book goes all the way up to $3,199 (€2,950) for the 1TB + NVIDIA + i7 version, and it also includes a Surface Pen that allows you to draw and write on the screen when detaching the keyboard.