Yes Virginia, there is a Surface Pro 11 Intel edition, and apparently the title of this thread is its official name (what morons at these companies are given authority to name products - "Samsun Galaxy Z Fold 6" - REALLY?).

It wouldn't be a Strauss (mis)adventure without high drama and suspense (and ruined computer equipment). HOWEVER, I'm putting the blame cleanly on the shoulders of Microsoft. The SP-I (new shorthand, "I" for Intel, "S" for Snapdragon) arrived on Friday (three days late after paying the up charge for next day delivery). Set it up with its existing 256gb SSD and I have to admit it was fast (although not quite as "screen snappy" as the SP-S) and NO ISSUES with my OWC TB dock, HP printer, or my Canon R40 scanner! But then the trouble begins...

I create two recovery USB's, one for each device. Then I pull the 2tb SSD from the SP-S, start the recovery USB process (THANKS AGAiN TO CBUTTERS - our tech best friend - for clear instruction videos), but it FAILS because the drive is BitLockered - and I DID NOT DO THAT. Apparently MS enabled that with an update for "professional" systems, and also enabled Security Defaults for my account - because of course it's a "business account." No amount of work-arounds let me install the 2tb SSD. A day of research led me to a discussion by someone who worked around this by erasing and reformatting the data partition only and doing recovery. Out it came, connected it to my SP-I, reformatted the data partition and what luck, it now accepted the USB recovery and I have 2tb working on the SP-I...

Then the SP-S disaster begins. I put the original MS SSD (512gb - which has not been touched since I upgraded th\at device to 2tb last August) into the SP-S and guess what - it is BITLOCKERED TOO, and worse yet there is no BitLocker key in my account to enable it. Try using the Recovery USB, and of course that fails. I pull the drive, plug it into the SP-I with my USB-C enclosure and reformat the data partition, but this time that DOES NOT WORK with the ARM64 Recovery USB. I try all the tricks I can find, including building an ARM64 bootable USB with Rufus and the Microsoft ARM64 ISO, but still no dice. I've reported all this to Microsoft, and they said they'd get back to me (as I could hear them scratching their heads on the phone - by the way, trying to get customer support at Microsoft is like a colonoscopy WITHOUT anesthesia).

So here I sit all broken-hearted, tried to fix and only fried it...also contemplating that if they can find me a solution I'll return SP-I and use SP-S until Apple can send me a fully specc'd M4 MacBook Air...

As for the performance of the SP11 Lunar Lake edition:

1. It is fast, but not as "snappy" as the Snapdragon

2. Battery life is good (I'd say real life 7-8 hours with Office, Outlook, and Chrome)

3. No hot bagging; no overnight battery drain; haven't heard a fan yet

4. Compatibility - solid, like any other Intel processor (even my Canon R40 scanner is working)

5. Really miss the 5g of the SP-S

6. Renewed hatred for Microsoft - finally able to disable Security Defaults (the endless two factor sign-ins)

7. Made another brutal mistake of telling Updates to accept and install all updates, not paying attention that the latest Preview upgrade for 24H2 would be installed, with all its moronic advertising and add-ons

8. Worst of all - I do love the all-in-one solution of the Surface Pro...