Microsoft's Surface Book 2 is among the new Surface-branded devices that people have been waiting to see for quite some time now, and unfortunately, it looks like they will have to stay on standby for a while longer.

While earlier rumors have previously indicated that the next generation laptop could still be made available within this year, the newer ones are not quite onboard with that notion.

In a recent article, ZD Net's Mary Jo Foley touched on the status of the upcoming Surface-branded devices, revealing that the wait for these new arrivals may last all the way into the latter part of next year.

The longer-than-expected wait for the Surface Book 2, and the other Surface-branded devices, apparently has something to do with the features that they will offer. The upcoming Surface devices are widely expected to come equipped with Intel's line of Kaby Lake processors and are also expected to run the Redstone 2 operating system right out of the box.

Potentially possessing those features means that the Surface devices won't be ready until the spring of next year at the earliest, and even if they are good to go by then, Foley reported that Microsoft may err on the side of caution and opt to let things settle for a bit before they proceed with producing the new items.

Folks still holding out hope that the next generation Surface devices may still arrive sooner rather than later will likely have to root for there being no problems detected with either the new processors or the new operating system so that Microsoft can push them out right away, but even then, an early 2017 launch seems unlikely.

More news about the status of Microsoft's Surface Book 2 and the rest of the next generation Surface devices should be made available in the near future.