Oh dear. The smaller of the two batteries on my Microsoft Surface Book laptop (Verity) has now stopped charging. This is the one in the detachable screen. It isn't very large, but it allows me to detach the screen from the keyboard and use it independently - like a tablet - for a while. As the charge in the screen battery has now dwindled to 0%, the screen can't be detached any more. Not that I ever did want to use it as a tablet, but this is now an option gone.
The larger battery in the keyboard still happily charges up to 100%, but overall, with the screen battery dead, my total battery capacity has shrunk to 78% of what it was. Meaning more frequent charging from the mains. That's never a problem in real life, whether at home or (as now) away in the caravan. I still expect Verity to give me excellent service for a long while yet. Just not as far into the future as I'd hoped.
Bought in August 2016, she's had five years of heavy usage, far more usage than most laptops I'd say. So I'm not complaining if, after so much hard work, one of her batteries has thrown in the towel. But things might get difficult if the main battery expires as well. That would mean spending money on a replacement device without delay. And when I'm at home, to take delivery. I'm not sure I'd want to go on an extended trip, if any further signs of mortality appear.
What would the financial hit be? If I go for another Surface Book from Microsoft - it would of course be one with Windows 11 loaded up, or at least a free upgrade in the pipeline - I'd be happy with just 256GB of RAM, as the new machine would be (just as Verity is now) purely for photo-processing and blogging duties, with mass-storage handled by external SSDs. I wouldn't really need a detachable screen, but I'd want that screen to be excellent, and the processor and graphics card to be adept at coping with large photo files.
What would such a specification cost me at the moment? Currently £2,199 from MS itself. Much as expected. That gets me a 15 inch screen, 16GB of RAM, and an Intel Core i7 processor with a good Nvidia graphics card. A 13.5 inch screen would be fine, but I'm thinking of occasional TV-streaming duties. In any case, the larger-screened version of the Surface Book is available to buy, whereas the smaller-screened (and cheaper) version is currently out of stock, due no doubt to demand, the world shortage of chips, and delivery issues.
Hmm. If Verity can carry on as usual with only one battery, I'll stick with her. And just keep my fingers crossed about being left with dead metal half-way through a future holiday. Although, for all I know, she can operate purely on mains power if both batteries are kaput, so long as she's plugged in. In which case, given a handy power socket, she may continue to do her stuff for years ahead - just like my last laptop did.
