Keyboard Backlight Constantly Turns Off

Oh, I get that it shuts off by design to save battery. By flaw I mean it is a design flaw: The owner should be able to disable this feature in the power settings, just like you can for the screen dimming.

I totally agree on that one!  LEDs don't use any power so it is a crazy idea of shutting them off automatically.  I did have a laptop in the past where you could manually turn them on and off using a FN + F5 key combination and when you turned them on, they stayed on.  That was a HP model but phased out now.

There is no way and the keyboard/covers for the tablets work the same way.  I have a Dell laptop also that does the exact same thing.

Other companies are starting to do that to "save power" for some strange reason even though the LED lights use almost no power to operate.

The only trick is to brush the touchpad with a thumb before typing.  Once you are on the home keys, you don't really need the lights unless you need the use of the PrtScn key or other function keys.  Again, for that, just brush the touchpad and the lights come on.

I don't have the Surface Book itself but this is a growing (aggravating) feature that other companies are starting to implement.

My MacBook Air, on the other hand, keeps the lights on all the time!

I was afraid that would be true.  That's funny about the MacBook, exact same flaw, but opposite side of the same coin.  Thanks for the confirmation.

With the MacBook Air, it is a refurbished late 2014 model and the newer ones "may" shut off the lights.  That was a sample of a machine that leaves them on.  Seems that the newer models of laptops and 2-in-1 tablets shut off the lights on the keyboards.

The MacBook Air is fast as a bullet (i5 model) but it is a lousy business computer.  No touchscreen and no support for a pen.

The keyboards on the Surface models may have the annoying feature of shutting off the lights but as long as it works and the lights can come on "in some way", it should still be a very usable system.  I am on my Pro 3 now and use this rascal quite often.

The light shutoff feature is deliberately programmed to do that.  It is not a flaw.