Microsoft's Surface Book won't surface in the UK until spring 2016

Surface Book
Surface Book 2 will be on the way before we see the original model over here

You might have been drooling over the prospect of getting your hands on a shiny new Surface Book, but sadly it seems that Microsoft's slick convertible laptop won't be hitting shelves in the UK until next year.

In fact, the Surface Book won't arrive until around March or April 2016, at least according to Michael Gillett, a web developer and Microsoft MVP for Windows consumer apps.

Gillett has been busy digging for info at Microsoft's Future Decoded event, which kicked off yesterday and continues today, and he tweeted: "Just been told at #FutureDecoded that the #SurfaceBook won't be available in the UK until March/April 2016."

So you'll need some patience if you've been looking forward to the arrival of the Surface Book in the UK, as it could be another four or five months before the device pitches up in this country.

There is always the possibility that Gillett's source is wrong on this score, and that Microsoft might crank up production, particularly if demand is brisk – we shall just have to see.

Meanwhile, the UK feels particularly out in the cold given that other territories are getting the Surface Book without much of a delay compared to the US. The hybrid goes on sale tomorrow over in Australia, for example, so they've only had to wait a couple of weeks after the big American launch.

Type Cover travesty

Unfortunately, there's more bad news for those who are interested in security and biometrics with the Surface, as Gillett also discovered that "there are currently no plans to bring the new Surface Type Cover with the fingerprint scanner to the UK".

Quite why this is the case isn't clear.

At any rate, if the Surface Book is popular, then so according to Gillett is the Surface Hub, Microsoft's 84-inch 4K digital whiteboard which costs around $20,000 (about £13,000).

He tweeted: "Something else I learnt at #FutureDecoded today, the production of Microsoft's Surface Hubs is at max capacity. Many orders so far."

There's also a smaller 55-inch full HD model which is a third of the price at $7000 (around £4500), but despite these hefty tags, businesses are evidently keen to pep up their meetings with this giant screen.

Via: Neowin

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - 'I Know What You Did Last Supper' - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).