Allow Facebook friends to see your upcoming events? No, keep my events secretQ. How should I store my books?A. The ideal place to store books is pest-free, like an attic or a garage, as long as those spaces aren’t subject to big temperatures changes and are well ventilated. Never keep books in a humid spot; the mold that grows in damp places will damage them, along with any other paper-based objects. And don’t wrap books in plastic bags, plastic wrap, or foil, which encourage mold.Before storing, check the surrounding areas for signs of insects or mice. Pack books in small- or medium-size boxes or plastic containers, making sure they are weatherproof and moistureproof. New boxes work best. However, you can reuse old boxes if they are clean, dry, strong, and sealable. Skip boxes that have been used for food storage; the odors and residue can attract insects and rodents. Wrap each book in a paper towel or bubble wrap to protect the surface from dirt and residue buildup. Store similar-size books together, either lying flat or standing upright, with their paper edges facing upward, which will prevent the books from warping and the pages from bending.
Put the heaviest books at the bottom of the container, and pack paperbacks tightly, so they don’t fall over or collapse. Seal the boxes tightly with sturdy acid-free packing tape. Label clearly as needed. Keep the storage boxes out of direct sunlight and away from radiators or heating vents, as the increased temperature can crack bindings. Finally, place the boxes of books on a shelf, so they’re protected in case of leaks or floods.Ask a QuestionGot a practical dilemma? , including contact information, gives us the right to modify, use, distribute, reproduce, publish and display the submission indefinitely in all media, means, and forms without any payment to you. You hereby represent that you haven't copied the content from a book, magazine, newspaper, or other commercial source. , and your use of the website are subject to Real Simple's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.(For questions about your subscription, please visit the Customer Service Help Desk.)In October 2016, Microsoft revamped the Surface Book's hardware -- increasing the power and battery life (and price) of the top-tier model -- while leaving the exterior more or less unchanged.
The $2,399 Surface Book i7 offers 16 hours of battery life; a GeForce GTX 965M GPU that delivers twice the performance of its predecessor; and 2GB of video memory, making the device more palatable for gaming. It comes equipped with 16GB of memory and 128GB of storage capacity. The Surface Book i7 will begin shipping by mid-November.Microsoft also unveiled the $2,999 Surface Studio -- a desktop PC for artists and designers in need of high-end horsepower and display -- and the $100 Surface Dial accessory, a touch-friendly dial designed to sit beside your keyboard for fine contextual controls in whatever program you're using. The Surface Studio features an Intel Core i7 and a 28-inch touchscreen pixel display that rests on an adjustable hinge that allows it to tilt down against the table. The top of the line model costs $4,199. Microsoft says the Surface Studio will ship before the end of 2016. Editor's note: The original Microsoft Surface Book review, published in October 2015, follows.
What good is a touchscreen tablet and stylus if you can't really draw? Despite a teenage comic book collection thousands of issues deep (dating roughly 1985-1991), I never had much of a knack as a visual artist, beyond idle doodling. Sure, I've got a few standby sketches I can whip up when the need arises, from the googly-eyed generic newspaper strip character to some forced perspective boxes, but does that mean I need a $1,499-and-up laptop-plus-stylus Microsoft Surface Book that practically begs to be used by someone with actual artistic talent? Microsoft's other new system, the less expensive Surface Pro 4 , is clearly intended as a full-time tablet that can double as a part-time laptop, thanks to its clever (but sold separately) keyboard cover. And in practice, the Surface Pro is better as a tablet, and certainly great to draw on, but it doesn't do as much for the rest of us who live in the slightly more buttoned-down world of offices, meetings, word processing and all the things that work best on a traditional laptop.
Still, even after watching successive generations of Surface Pro tablet go sliding off my lap, I never thought to myself that Microsoft ought to make a more laptop-like version of its ambitious crossover PC. And yet, Microsoft went and did just that, surprising nearly everyone (including purportedly all the PC makers who buy Windows 10 from Microsoft to install on their own laptops and tablets) with the Surface Book, a 13.5-inch premium laptop with a detachable touchscreen display and the same high-end stylus pen as the Surface Pro 4. These two new Surface products are similar but different, like two cover versions of the same song. Both have unusual 3:2 screen aspect ratios, which matches the shape of the standard A4 paper size. If you're using the tablet half in portrait mode and working on projects designed for print, that may indeed be very useful. Both the Pro and Book versions of the Surface also share many component options, and in fact, our Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 review units had the same Intel Core i5 processor (from Intel's new sixth-generation chips, sometimes referred by the codename Skylake), and the same 8GB of RAM.
In the Surface Book, the Core i5 is included in the $1,499 (AU$2,299, but UK release details have not been announced yet) base model. On the Surface Pro 4, it's an upgrade (to at least $999 from the $899 base price). Our Surface Book review unit is closer to the $1,699 model that doubles the internal solid-state storage to 256GB (we have a 512GB SSD, which does not appear to be a currently available option with the Core i5 CPU). As this review was being written, we also received a second test unit that included one of the more intriguing Surface Book options, a custom Nvidia graphics chip built into the keyboard base (so it's only available when the two halves of the system are together), plus a faster Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM, for a total of $2,699/AU$4,199. Spoiler alert: The significant added expense doesn't turn this into the ultimate PC gaming laptop, but it's good enough for mainstream games at medium graphics settings, and helpful for HD-or-better photo and video editing.
(Look for some game benchmarks further along in this review.) I'm enjoying the Surface Book overall, and I don't feel like I'm wasting its potential just because I'm not using it to design websites or illustrate graphic novels. It's intended to be a three-quarter-time laptop and one-quarter-time tablet, as intuited by the fact that 75 percent of its battery capacity is housed in the keyboard base, with the remaining 25 percent packed behind the display, along with the CPU, memory and most (but not all) of the other components. So, now that I've got my lap-friendly version of the Surface, does it fulfill all my hybrid hopes and dreams? Microsoft calls the Surface Book the "ultimate laptop," which is a bold claim. Despite my positive impressions of the Surface Book, it's important right up front to say that if I were designing the ultimate laptop, it would not have the unsightly gap between the screen and base visible here when the clamshell is closed; nor would it weigh about 3.5 pounds.
Showing the Surface Book to others, those are first two things that nearly everyone mentions right away. The gap -- "Is it supposed to be like that?" -- and the weight. It doesn't help the latter issue that there's something about the slight wedge shape of the system when closed and its bulky hinge that makes it just slightly awkward to pick up and carry with one hand. It's telling that Microsoft allowed its engineers to work through several generations of Surface tablet (four Pro versions, plus a few non-Pro ones), giving the line time to grow and mature, and didn't drop it right away after the first couple of years of middling reviews. The investment paid off in the end, with the Surface Pro 3 hitting its stride, and the new Surface Pro 4 offering further refinements to an already excellent device. If Microsoft sticks with it, the Surface Book could evolve into a best-in-class product. Right now, it offers strong performance and useful, even unique, features, but also a handful of quirks and omissions that make it feel more like the first draft of an ultimate laptop.
But, that first draft is a lot more refined than the first version of the Surface that hit 2012. If you can live with its design quirks, this is a great all-purpose high-end laptop. 13.5 -inch 3,000 x 2,000 touchscreen display 2.4GHz Intel Core i5-6300U 128MB Intel HD Graphics 520 512GB SSD (retail version is 256GB) 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 4.0 Microsoft Windows 10 Pro (64-bit) With features and specs that are so similar to the Surface Pro in so many ways, the physical design is what really stands out about the Surface Book. It's hefty to both look at and pick up, especially compared with some of the super-slim laptops we've seen this year, such as the Dell XPS 13 or the Lenovo LaVie Z . The Surface Book, when closed, goes from 13mm thick in the front to 22mm thick in the rear, and weighs between 3.3 pounds (1.4kg) for the non-GPU version to 3.5 pounds (1.6kg) for the configuration with the Nvidia GPU. By way of comparison, a 13-inch MacBook Pro is 18mm thick and weighs 3.4 pounds (and no, there is no discrete graphics option for that particular MacBook).
Even though they're roughly the same size and weight, there's something about the MacBook's gently rounded edges and overall shape that makes it easier to pick up and carry around the house or office, while the Surface Book is just a bit more awkward, perhaps because of its sharp 90-degree angles or the thicker rear hinge. It's an especially apt comparison, as Microsoft spent a good deal of time during the Surface Book's introduction comparing it to the MacBook Pro. When opened in its clamshell shape, the Surface Book looks and feels like a standard Windows 10 laptop, and even its slightly different screen aspect ratio doesn't especially stand out. The hinge does, however. Microsoft calls it a dynamic fulcrum hinge, and it rolls open, making the keyboard base slightly deeper as it goes, giving the display the support it needs to stay upright and not tip the entire system back, which is an occasional hazard of top-heavy hybrids. The keyboard itself has the same familiar widely spaced keys as nearly every other current laptop, as well as the newly redesigned keyboard cover for the Surface Pro 4.