So I had a similar experience - after taking the SD card out, the update finished succesfully. Then I installed the new Nov 9th drivers and then the WU found the 7/23/15 hardware update and installed it...
Khangozzy - how do you know it downgraded only the Surface Touch Controller Firmware? Did you check the versions of all the drivers? (still.. it's not very good thing to have older drivers there
)
Less battery drain - that's great news! I was not able to see it yet, but hopefully I will.
Btw. Did you notice that the Nov 9th zip file is much bigger than the msi file? Any idea why is it like that? (e.g. zip file contains all drivers, but the msi files only new ones?)
One more thing: after the upgrades I noticed that hibernation is available (powercfg /a; and also when changing the powerplans) - it was not listed (possible to select) before the upgrade - does it mean the upgrade turned the HyperV on? (other option is the S0 state - is it the connected standby/InstantGo state?)