I kind of regret my Surface Pro 2 purchase & putting faith into Microsoft

[DragonGamer]

I couldn't even make this up. 10 minutes ago my Type cover 2 stopped working. I have reboot my device, re-attached keyboard you name it... It no longer functions lol... It lights up and the volume keys and trackpad work but nothing else works.

F ME. Guess I can chalk this up as a Lemon

This isn't a general issue thread now..
But have you tried cleaning all the contacts once? And tried a 'reset'? Not sure what that one does but it's activated by pressing the volume-up button together with the powerbutton for 5-10 seconds. No data is being lost but it's said to solve the one or other issue...

 

[hazymat]

Hi, newcomer to the forum here.

For what it's worth, I finally decided to take to the forums to air my personal frustration with my new Surface Pro 2 (256 gig version)

Felt exactly the same as the original poster, *really* wanted my Surface to take over my old desktop and laptop PCs running Win7.

1. Trackpad on the Type Cover is excruciating. I've read review upon review saying how wonderful it's supposed to be, and I can only conclude the multitude of tech sites that write such reviews have never actually tried to do anything normal on the trackpad such as right-clicking, dragging, etc.
2. Keyboard and/or trackpad regularly cut out requiring I remove the type cover and reconnect it. Sometimes I need to do this a few times just to be able to carry on typing, WTF?!
3. Having tremendous problems with external USB drives. As a professional photographer I use a multitude of different storage devices including NAS and external USB drives (desktop drives with their own power supplies, mobile drives powered over USB, mobile CF card backup drives with their own batteries). Basically any time I plug a USB disk drive into the Surface, it randomly disconnects within a few minutes, reconnects, disconnects, says the drive needs scanning to fix errors, etc. The drives in question *ALL* work on my other computers with absolutely no problem whatsoever. Tonight I needed to use an external drive and thought I would test this properly, when I launched Lightroom (photo editing / library app), the USB drive disconnected, my 2GB catalog database file became corrupt, Lightroom tried to repair the catalog to no avail, meaning I now need to restore from backup = 2 hours wasted time. This is on a BRAND NEW USB3 disk which I took delivery of last week and copied a whole load of data to (on another machine). Like I say, all my drives work without hitch on my old laptop AND desktop PC, all the time, with no exception. It literally corrupts my data every time I plug one into the Surface. Can only conclude this is due to the drive losing power when it's plugged into the port on the Surface. Unbelievable.

I enthusiastically moved all of my working catalogs, email, files, and everything over to the Surface when I first bought it, but I now have to move back to my old laptop just to be able to keep working.

Although I've already had many hours of good use from the Surface with files stored on its own internal drive, fact is that overall my Surface is so riddled with problems that I am utterly sick, tired, disappointed, and financially wiped-out as a result of investing money and time into it in the first place. What a joke.

 

[godson594]

This isn't a general issue thread now..
But have you tried cleaning all the contacts once? And tried a 'reset'? Not sure what that one does but it's activated by pressing the volume-up button together with the powerbutton for 5-10 seconds. No data is being lost but it's said to solve the one or other issue...

Only tackpad and volume work on keyboard. Contacts are clean.... i tried the reboot with volume you mentioned with no luck. I'm waiting for a chat agent. Tomorrow I will dreadfully drive to the official microsoft store where i purchased the device from and hope to god i can get refunded.

EDIT -

I just refreshed my Surface AGAIN and now the keyboard works. Seriously w t f. This time I had nothing installed on it because I anticipated returning it. So basically it F'd up on it's own with a fresh install and required me to do another fresh install to get working properly...

 

[ChemCat]

Only tackpad and volume work on keyboard. Contacts are clean.... i tried the reboot with volume you mentioned with no luck. I'm waiting for a chat agent. Tomorrow I will dreadfully drive to the official microsoft store where i purchased the device from and hope to god i can get refunded.

You should be able to.

I have an i5 toshiba laptop that I've been using for years. It looks like it's been through hell and back. But it works. I use it for everything, from microstation to adobe photoshop to visual studio. I'd be hard pressed to give it up now for something else.

 

[dutchiedave]

For issue number 2, I had the same problem with the cover. I had it replaced and now my SP2 works perfectly.

Definitely replace the cover under warranty.

 

[SteveBorough]

You should be able to.

I have an i5 toshiba laptop that I've been using for years. It looks like it's been through hell and back. But it works. I use it for everything, from microstation to adobe photoshop to visual studio. I'd be hard pressed to give it up now for something else.

Where'd you get the Toshiba from, maybe godson can buy the exact same one as a solution to his problem. geospatial and time coordinates would be most helpful.

 

[SteveBorough]

Hi, newcomer to the forum here.

For what it's worth, I finally decided to take to the forums to air my personal frustration with my new Surface Pro 2 (1 gig version)

Felt exactly the same as the original poster, *really* wanted my Surface to take over my old desktop and laptop PCs running Win7.

1. Trackpad on the Type Cover is excruciating. I've read review upon review saying how wonderful it's supposed to be, and I can only conclude the multitude of tech sites that write such reviews have never actually tried to do anything normal on the trackpad such as right-clicking, dragging, etc.
2. Keyboard and/or trackpad regularly cut out requiring I remove the type cover and reconnect it. Sometimes I need to do this a few times just to be able to carry on typing, WTF?!
3. Having tremendous problems with external USB drives. As a professional photographer I use a multitude of different storage devices including NAS and external USB drives (desktop drives with their own power supplies, mobile drives powered over USB, mobile CF card backup drives with their own batteries). Basically any time I plug a USB disk drive into the Surface, it randomly disconnects within a few minutes, reconnects, disconnects, says the drive needs scanning to fix errors, etc. The drives in question *ALL* work on my other computers with absolutely no problem whatsoever. Tonight I needed to use an external drive and thought I would test this properly, when I launched Lightroom (photo editing / library app), the USB drive disconnected, my 2GB catalog database file became corrupt, Lightroom tried to repair the catalog to no avail, meaning I now need to restore from backup = 2 hours wasted time. This is on a BRAND NEW USB3 disk which I took delivery of last week and copied a whole load of data to (on another machine). Like I say, all my drives work without hitch on my old laptop AND desktop PC, all the time, with no exception. It literally corrupts my data every time I plug one into the Surface. Can only conclude this is due to the drive losing power when it's plugged into the port on the Surface. Unbelievable.

I enthusiastically moved all of my working catalogs, email, files, and everything over to the Surface when I first bought it, but I now have to move back to my old laptop just to be able to keep working.

Although I've already had many hours of good use from the Surface with files stored on its own internal drive, fact is that overall my Surface is so riddled with problems that I am utterly sick, tired, disappointed, and financially wiped-out as a result of investing money and time into it in the first place. What a joke.

Same here. Others on this thread may call you a fan boy, or say "what do you expect its new", use a 3 year old Toshiba or change your workflow to microSD but pay them no mind. USB is supposed to work, its one of the bare essentials of mobile computing (as is sleeping) I posted in your other thread about this, try it out.

 

[jnjroach]

Same here. Others on this thread may call you a fan boy, or say "what do you expect its new", use a 3 year old Toshiba or change your workflow to microSD but pay them no mind. USB is supposed to work, its one of the bare essentials of mobile computing (as is sleeping) I posted in your other thread about this, try it out.

Actually, I think my point was not everyone is experiencing the issues brought up in this thread, that most are using the Surface Pro 2 daily doing real work without issue. I use my USB Port all the time with external drives. We have 3 Pro 2 devices in the house, all used heavily all with different use cases.

If your device is defective exchange or have it repaired, it happens in all massed produced devices across all brands and manufacturers. The issue is with ranting and pile on the anti-Microsoft press jumps on it and spreads more and more FUD about the devices. I'm heavily invested in the Surface ecosystem and want it to continue if for nothing else to lose the Google/Apple Duopoly in the Mobile Space and the continued prodding of the OEMs to create better Windows devices.

 

[fonzman78]

Dang, looks like a few folks have had bad experiences with their SP's. That's unfortunate as most on this forum haven't experienced the issue's that godson, steveb, hazymat, and perhaps other are having. The thing is, no ecosystem is perfect. I've tried them all - IOS, Android, Windows. Of all of them, the Windows ecosystem works best for me.

I purchased the SPro on day one and never had any problems. I then traded it in for the SPro2 on day one and didn't have any problems. Well, at first anyway. Now I have experienced the random turn on problem. It was annoying at first then it became a big problem because it would turn on in my bag and really heat up. It also drained the battery to zero which was annoying when going into the next meeting. So, I contacted MS support and they sent me a replacement SPro2. Hopefully that will fix the problem.

I reply to this thread for a few reasons:

1. Much has been said in this thread about problems contacting MS support and it taking hours. A couple days before Christmas, I finally got irritated enough to contact Support, I went online to find their number. I then saw that I could start a chat session. I selected that and was chatting with a tech in less that 5 minutes. After about 20 min of explaining and troubleshooting, they decided to send me a replacement. No hassles. No long wait (certainly not 3 hours on hold). Just a friendly chat tech whose main concern was to help me solve my problem.
2. Some have implied that it would take weeks to get a replacement or that they didn't know when they would ever get one. Well, that wasn't the case with me. In my chat session, the tech helped me fill out the replacement request at myservice.surface.com. The tech let me know that it would take 5-10 business days to replace it. Again, no hassles, no problems. Just a friendly tech doing their job to help me.
3. Five to ten business days to replace it??? That's crazy, I said. My friendly tech mentioned that I had two options for replacement - Standard and Advanced. Standard would require me to send in my SPro2 and then wait for them to receive it and then send another one out. No way that was going to happen. This is my work device. Advanced would require me to give them my CC number and they would put a temp charge on it for ~$800. Then they would immediately ship out a replacement. I then would have 10 days to return my defective device before they put the charge through. Uh, no brainer. I went with the Advanced option. No hassles. Just a friendly tech doing a great job.
4. It was also stated that MS said they didn't have any units available to send as replacements. Uh, I don't think so. My tech said they would ship one right away as they had plenty of replacements available. I have the SPro2 256GB. Not word about not having any available right before Christmas. And sure enough, I got my replacement yesterday (FedEx, thankfully). I submitted the replacement request on Mon Dec 23 and got it Fri Dec 28. One week. No hassles.

I'm not sure why others have been told that it will take weeks or that there aren't any replacements. I just know that, for me, it just wasn't the case. I would recommend that if you have problems with your SP, then contact Support and they will help you. Their techs are friendly and eager to help. The same is true with MS Stores. They want you to be happy. It's in their best interest to make you happy.

Oh, in case anyone thinks I'm just a MS fanboy with a great made up story, here is my email from MS Support showing this all started on Dec 23.



Last, I don't know if the new SP has the random turn on problem. I will see in the next few days. Hopefully not. But even if it does, I have no regrets on purchasing my SPro2 (or SPro). I still consider it heads above any other tablet device in the market. Flaws and all.

 

[godson594]

I'm going to try and go to the Microsoft Store I purchased it from tomorrow. I was told over phone from the store they don't have replacements but to come in anyways.. I went on the online support and it said calling in had 140min wait. I opted to chat and was number 11 in que, by time I got to the number 9 slot something happened and the page seemed to have timed out. So that was over 20 minutes wasted and never got to chat with anyone... Trust me I'm not enjoying my sting of bad luck with this.

I would take a refund over a replacement at this point but I'm sure that won't happen. I would probably opt to give them a credit card so they can send me a new one asap. Thanks for that info.

 

[drolem]

Actually, I think my point was not everyone is experiencing the issues brought up in this thread, that most are using the Surface Pro 2 daily doing real work without issue. I use my USB Port all the time with external drives. We have 3 Pro 2 devices in the house, all used heavily all with different use cases.

If your device is defective exchange or have it repaired, it happens in all massed produced devices across all brands and manufacturers. The issue is with ranting and pile on the anti-Microsoft press jumps on it and spreads more and more FUD about the devices.

The issue with the USB port is not FUD at all -- it is significantly more finicky than the USB port on the original Pro. It works fine with *some* devices, and works very poorly with others, external USB HDs, in particular. I don't think MS has much to do how the USB port works because it's just a connection to the PCH.

 

[jnjroach]

The issue with the USB port is not FUD at all -- it is significantly more finicky than the USB port on the original Pro. It works fine with *some* devices, and works very poorly with others, external USB HDs, in particular. I don't think MS has much to do how the USB port works because it's just a connection to the PCH.

Again, many of us aren't having issues with external storage, like I said I use them daily with large copies (40-80GB VMs I use for testing). I have old USB 2 and newer USB 3 drives, 3.5 and 2.5 variants. I will say that I don't use a HUB.