While I did find this in your favor:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ssd-re...es-experience/

The paper has also concluded that SSDs would experience more troubles than HDDs.

It is pretty much a wash.

Active cooling is hardly superb on many laptops, and a passively cooled one is not subject to some of the environmental risks than an actively cooled one is. One rarely needs to clean out heat sink dust bunnies from a passively cooled machine...

Undetected bit error rate is an irrelevance in most consumer use. It explicitly states that SSDs are more reliable: " SSDs fail at a lower rate than disks "

Moreover, extrapolating from data center use to laptop/personal use is silly.

First, the workload is vastly heavier than any typical PC workload; in individual PC/laptop workloads, write lifetime is essentially an irrelevance.
Second, the thermal environment is very different (on the down side for data centers, generally higher continuous/average temperatures, but consumer drives have with and more unpredictable and possibly higher peak temperature.)
Lastly, and most importantly, data center drives are typically a fixed mount and are not subject to transit impacts/vibration, let lone drops.

Now that the Surface Book 2 has been on the market for a good couple of months, I was hoping to hear from FTers that have had one of these new babies in use.

As this thread can witness, Ive been salivating with these devices for a long time, and now that my Thinkpad W520 is starting to suffer from chronic overheating problems and my hard drive is at almost 98% capacity - I think that my replacement unit will have to be ordered within the next couple of weeks.

Would love to hear about some 1st hand experience with a Surface Book 2, especially with the 15 Inch version. Thanks !!!

Chronic overheating on older laptops can usually be solved pretty easily if you're mechanically inclined; the Lenovo W520 (or W530; I actually forget which I've gutted but they're very closely related designs) are not the easiest system to remove/replace the heat sink on (and potentially replace the fan on), but a thorough cleaning, repaste and if you have any doubts about the condition of your current fan, a $10 fan replacement will have the thermals on the machine basically like new.

That said, it's getting to be a pretty old machine, so don't let me discourage you from seeking a replacement. The Surface Book still seems inexplicable to me -- too much GPU, too little CPU, and zero expandability, for a weighty price (at least before discounting.) At least with the 8th generation quad-core U-series i5 and i7 processors, they finally have enough CPU power on them that I don't need to caution power users away from them entirely.

Would be curious if anyone weighs in with direct experience, as these are kind of niche. I'm not aware of any other detachable 2-in-1 with a reasonably powerful GPU; foldable rather than detachable ones are already uncommon enough.

I have been using the Surface Book for sometime now. I have been very happy with it. It does everything I need. Battery life is decent. I do not use the tablet as a separate unit often but when I have, it has worked well. I use for general business use not gaming so that may make a difference.

Thanks. Do you have one of the newer Book2 models..? Is it the 15 inch version...?

How do you rate the keyboard for feel and response...?

Interested in a little more feedback on your too little CPU and too much GPU Comment. Do you think this still applies for the Book 2 model with the 15 Inch and therefore I7 processor...?

I will not be using this as a Gaming Laptop, I may run the occasional game or two but it will be a Business laptop for 95% of its usage. I do want the tablet option and also a 15 inch screen, hence my interest in the Surface series of products. Also, I do need a real/full keyboard as Im a very fast typist and am worried about overall feel and response - if you have a review of the keyboard that would also be greatly appreciated.

Thanks !!!

I got the Book 2 when it first came out. I bought a mid-range model, most of my work involves Excel, simple PowerPoint Presentations and PDF manipulation. I love the keyboard and having the pen is great when I am annotating documents. I am not using the 15 inch version. I found it too big for travel. I do use a second monitor quite a bit and I have not experienced any issues to-date. To provide some perspective I also have a Surface Pro 3. It is not seeing much use these days.

Thanks for the great feedback.

Im not at all worried about oversize and weight, you have to bear in mind that Ive been schlepping around (for the past 6+ years) a now vintage ThinkPad W520 that has a 15.6" screen and is pretty much an aircraft carrier in terms of both dimentions and weight. Also, dont forget the massive power brick that comes with it. Trust me, I can handle weight and size... :D LOL

Im looking for a high-end specs machine that will work as a mobile desktop replacement unit... and has docking station options, etc. etc. as I will be eventually looking at an external monitor as well.

Great.... thank you once again for sharing your experience !!!