Firmware Update 2 Dec

[Niterider4]

I agree completely. I suspect the original intended release date was closer to the release of Windows 10, so this was already a major delay. Faced with the prospect of missing the window for early Christmas sales, Microsoft probably felt they had no choice but to release the product. Necessity is the mother of invention, and marketing is the mother of bad engineering.

 

[Telstar1948]

Intel is struggling in providing the correct Power Management Drivers for their new silicon to the OEM/ODMs. The Skylake SoCs are not able to fully enter into S0iX and the slightest Wake Event is causing it to come out of Connected Standby and then quite often it will not go back into S0iX.

This effects the whole system from Video, Disk, Network, etc.

Well...at least your information gives us a little better picture of the primary underlying issue... I think my issue now comes down to whether I want to try to stick it out (presumably past my return date) to see if software/firmware patches make all things right, or return my Book before my return date in case these woes are to continue for months (of course, no one knows that for sure until after the fact, which is, of course, part of the problem for consumers - if things don't turn out alright, then we're stuck in an undesirable situation that has cost us a lot of money as well).

 

[GreyFox7]

I agree completely. I suspect the original intended release date was closer to the release of Windows 10, so this was already a major delay. Faced with the prospect of missing the window for early Christmas sales, Microsoft probably felt they had no choice but to release the product. Necessity is the mother of invention, and marketing is the mother of bad engineering.

It probably was closer to W10 release date on paper however Intel didn't even release the core m and U series chips until September ... probably prematurely for the same reasons stated above... didn't want to miss the Holiday sales cycle and they could fix problems with firmware.

 

[Niterider4]

Now the question will be whether the profits from the sale of a bunch of early product will be offset by the negative goodwill associated with the product being released too early. It seems to me that Microsoft's answer to this question has always been: release now and fix later, so I guess we are just seeing another example of that approach. However, this may work on the OS that you are basically required to have if you want to run a PC - I'm not sure it will work equally to hardware where there are many options available.

 

[blakebishop]

It's been a few days for me and no still no occurrences of my usual external monitor issues.

The sleep issues remain, of course, and wake-from-sleep still disables output to one or more of my external monitors and/or messes up the text scaling. For the disabled screens, I just power off and then on again, which is a welcomed change from the gymnastics I had to perform in the past; if the text scaling is messed up, though, I have no choice but to logout and then login again.

I have the same "disabled screens" issue. I usually open Display Settings and then re-enable the two monitors. I'll have to try power cycling them instead.

 

[blakebishop]

I've also just experienced the full-on computer lockup that a few others on this thread have experienced. No BSOD, just...frozen. A hard reboot was the only thing that would clear the issue for me.

 

[dstrauss]

Well...at least your information gives us a little better picture of the primary underlying issue... I think my issue now comes down to whether I want to try to stick it out (presumably past my return date) to see if software/firmware patches make all things right, or return my Book before my return date in case these woes are to continue for months (of course, no one knows that for sure until after the fact, which is, of course, part of the problem for consumers - if things don't turn out alright, then we're stuck in an undesirable situation that has cost us a lot of money as well).

My son reports his replacement i5/256gb dGPU is much more stable than the first one, but still tends to not sleep/overheat in his briefcase. I am really thinking the SB is not stable enough for general use and may have to wait for SB 2. Remember, Surface Pro wasn't stable and reliable until v3, and then only after about 4-6 months of continuing updates. Even now, I still have random battery drain days, but far fewer problems than SP4 and SB owners are reporting. Personally, I think a near $3000 device needs to be far more reliable than this.

 

[mcsenerd]

...I am really thinking the SB is not stable enough for general use and may have to wait for SB 2. Remember, Surface Pro wasn't stable and reliable until v3, and then only after about 4-6 months of continuing updates. ...]

I don't really know about that... I personally feel that the Surface Pro 2 was, and still is, the most stable out of all of the Surface Pro devices I've owned. I think it's all luck of the draw personally...