MacBook Pro Keyboard Drives Me Crazy

Holy shit, I know you're desperate but for the sake of your sanity DO NOT buy anything from the Microsoft Surface line.

I traded my Surface Book for a Dell XPS a couple of months back and, although the Dell is far from perfect, in day to day use it's about 10000x better than the Surface. Key point: it's a tool I can rely on.

Here are some examples of Surface issues that make it a very poor choice of tool as a "daily driver" machine:

- The keyboard is crap: differently crap to the Macbook Pro, but still crap (to be fair this isn't the XPS's best feature either, but it's still better), and I found myself having to correct an unusually large quantity of typos. Layout's a bit weird as well, although you do get used to that.

- The WiFi sucks: it just drops connectivity all the damn time, or refuses to reconnect, or doesn't recognise a network, or whatever. It gets boring. Yes, I've updated the firmware. Yes, I've updated the drivers.

- The battery drains fast whilst the computer is asleep. Like between 12 and 16 hours fast. This means if you don't have a full charge at the end of the day, and you forget to plug it in overnight, it's dead in the morning. My Macbook Pros can sleep for days and wake up; likewise the XPS - no problems with sleep.

- Sometimes, even when plugged in, it wouldn't charge - no idea why. Sometimes it would charge only one of the batteries (e.g., the one in the keyboard but not the one in the screen, or vice versa) - again, no idea why. Generally required a reboot to fix the latter. I got so tired of this machine letting me down because the battery was dead (for whatever reason).

- Battery life is nowhere near advertised levels. I forget what it's supposed to be: 11 hours, 13 hours, 16 hours? It doesn't matter. If you're doing any kind of serious work you'll be luck to get 3 - 4.

- Related to the above, the fans are always running and the thing runs really hot even in cool or temperate environments.

- Dumb power supply design with too-short cables (yes, you can buy generic replacements that are longer) and a fragile connector to the machine itself.

(If the above sounds really angry it's because that computer made me really angry on a regular basis. Without doubt the worst and least reliable machine I have ever owned, with the exception of two Sinclair Spectrums back in the 1980s. Do not buy one unless you're into more creative methods of self-flagellation.)

If I had to pick a machine now because, like you, I'm not going to buy another MBP[1] unless this keyboard fiasco is sorted out, it would probably be a mid-level to high end Lenovo. They seem pretty decent and offer plenty of options for customisation, depending on which range you pick.

[1] I'm still using a 2015 model, which is doing mostly fine, although one day it will need replacing.