Pre-orders now available at Amazon for Microsoft’s new Surface Dock

Over at Windows Central, readers have been sending in photos from retail stores around the country where fans are lined up to buy (or at least test out) one of the new Surface devices.

On the Surface Book side things were a little different. With an iterative update (Surface Pro 4) and a whole new product (Surface Book) becoming available at the same time, you can expect the company to see new revenue milestones for this part of its business. But for those who find the premium version of the Surface Book too expensive to buy, Microsoft is offering a new model of its convertible laptop that compromises on price, but still retains the NVIDIA GPU, which drives the device’s excellent 3D graphical performance. Until now, the GeForce option was available only on higher-end Surface Book models. This firmware and driver package contains drivers for all of the components in the Surface Pro 4 / Surface Book, as well as updates to the system firmware that have been released via Windows Update. To help facilitate that, the company has a Surface Pro 4 deal that slashes the price of Microsoft’s latest Apple alternatives by a good amount. The 2015 Surface Pro 4 type cover has smaller keys but a wider trackpad (made of glass), is thinner than earlier models, and has a fair amount of travel.

The device is powered by a 6th Generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processor and features Intel HD graphics, and up to 1TB of storage. It keeps the magnesium frame of the Surface Pro 4, but it expands that out into a keyboard dock with its own batteries and graphics processor.

There are two docks that are available for the Surface Pro 4. Until the launch of the Surface, its only major hardware product was the Xbox.

Both of these devices are arriving on store shelves today along with a new set of Surface accessories.

Microsoft still pitches the Surface Pro 4 as “the tablet that replaces your laptop”, while the Surface Book is supposed to be “the ultimate laptop”. The Surface Pen included with both of them has interchangeable tips so that users can customize how they feel as their scribbling notes in apps like OneNote or just navigating Windows 10.

Pre-orders for the Surface Dock have been open at the Microsoft Store for a few time, priced at $199.99, with the promise of shipments beginning on October 30. The Surface Book is playing even hard to get.