What happened to March Firmware Update?

[Rvacha]

I have NEVER had a PC so riddled with problems as my SP2, not even my SP1. This morning I logged onto MS service and arranged a swap (I was surprised that there was no attempt to push me through the idiot screening gauntlet, that's a first). I am praying that I get a refurbished one that can go a day without crashing so I can sell it in relatively good conscience. I won't go through all the gory details, but I have to comment on the pervasive belief here in this thread and elsewhere that you should have a cover attached to assure a good update. I am not convinced that this is really true, but for a moment let's assume it is. Do you understand just how pathetic this is? For at least 15 years now manufactures have been able to successfully execute updates without device(s) plugged in. USB devices anyone? Monitors? Printers? Now I understand the covers are not technically USB devices, but really, is it THAT hard? People here are giving an MS a pass on this? Widespread problems since day one have including crappy wireless, high CPU with SD card plugged in (seriously? they can't find a way to boot a PC with an SD card plugged in?), random crashes, and inability to execute even PARTIAL fixes properly without bricking machines or needing to pull updates - and with all these non-trivial unresolved problems what is MS's priority this month? Pushing out a firmware update whose ONLY goal was to facilitate a power cover, and they couldn't even do that right?. At least to their credit they didn't pretend to be fixing these problems, and in fact it doesn't even seem to bother them that they aren't fixing them. This situation would be funny if it weren't so god awful pathetic

 

[Jabob]

I sometimes have this problem too. I find that if I put it to sleep with the power button then quickly wake it back up it sometimes fixes the CPU usage problem.

 

[GoodBytes]

I have NEVER had a PC so riddled with problems as my SP2, not even my SP1. This morning I logged onto MS service and arranged a swap (I was surprised that there was no attempt to push me through the idiot screening gauntlet, that's a first). I am praying that I get a refurbished one that can go a day without crashing so I can sell it in relatively good conscience. I won't go through all the gory details, but I have to comment on the pervasive belief here in this thread and elsewhere that you should have a cover attached to assure a good update. I am not convinced that this is really true, but for a moment let's assume it is. Do you understand just how pathetic this is? For at least 15 years now manufactures have been able to successfully execute updates without device(s) plugged in. USB devices anyone? Monitors? Printers? Now I understand the covers are not technically USB devices, but really, is it THAT hard? People here are giving an MS a pass on this? Widespread problems since day one have including crappy wireless, high CPU with SD card plugged in (seriously? they can't find a way to boot a PC with an SD card plugged in?), random crashes, and inability to execute even PARTIAL fixes properly without bricking machines or needing to pull updates - and with all these non-trivial unresolved problems what is MS's priority this month? Pushing out a firmware update whose ONLY goal was to facilitate a power cover, and they couldn't even do that right?. At least to their credit they didn't pretend to be fixing these problems, and in fact it doesn't even seem to bother them that they aren't fixing them. This situation would be funny if it weren't so god awful pathetic

15 years.. yes.. but Microsoft is not even 2 years into it. The company was always a software company. BIOS/UEFI is not easy. Documentation is extremely scares to none and finding qualify people is very hard. Already I am surprised that you can update the system firmware within Windows. This is something that just motherboard manufacture on the custom PC side started to adapted a few years back, and even then it's not smooth sailing. Gigabyte for example, while I can comment on today's bored, so it could be rectified, but the system was freezing when you did a BIOS update inside Windows. You had to wait, if you thought "Oh my computer just froze, let me restart it" -> boom your are done, lucky it has a second BIOS setup chip. I was expecting to use the old USB flash drive and do it outside of the OS with the Surface Pro 1.

Keyboard/trackpad on laptops have a firmware chip. Needs to be updated to improve the trackpad, or sensors in the case of the touch cover 1 and 2. Microsoft mistake is to have the firmware in the keyboard and not in the device supporting all keyboard. Now MAYBE you don't have to have the keyboard attached to get the firmware to install successfully. MAYBE. But it seams that, to me at least, that they are more success rate of being plugged in, fully charged at 100%, keyboard attached in laptop mode, than those who chose to ignore this.


The only issues that have been recognized as actual issues with the device is Bluetooth with the wireless 2.4GHz and MicroSD card making the CPU under load at 30%. That is only 2 problems. Not bad.
However, if you think other manufactures are better, well go switch then. Let me get my pop-corn out when you'll get any Sony tablet system, or how about the Dell Venue Pro 8 or 11. Good luck with that pen. Dell says that they fixed the issue of not working, and aren't looking into it. The pen clicks randomly and is simply unusable, not even to just use it as a mouse. Or how about my old laptop, with the awesome touch pad which stops working 6 second after Windows loads, then you need to wait 2 sec for it to work again for 2 other seconds, then the keyboard and track pad stop working for 1 sec, than it works. Good luck entering that password to login. Known issue, on a 2000$ system. Dell refused to acknowledge problem. The cool thing about this bug, is that it's not very visible with Vista on a 5400RPM HDD which is what they offered. No 7200RPM HDD. If you put a faster HDD or SSD, now it is in your face. Seeing that other laptops from Dell has faster HDD let alone SSD options, you can clearly see they were hiding the issue. This is again... twice the price of the Surface Pro 2. That is beside the paint chipping problem that many people have, and Dell refuse to fix it as "its cosmetic". Sure. There is cosmetic, and there is painting your laptop in ultra low quality paint. When it hit the media, they fixed it.. for a while.. then returned back with the cheap paint. And still nothing for those affected. Oh how about dear old Lenovo with problem of trackpad not working, speakers stop working just like that, god awful software which you desperately needs else the keys stop working, or are stick doing the action they are designed to do (mail, volume up/down, etc), instead of F# keys or what ever key it is normally supposed to be, or their famous coil whine issue, which apparently they can't hear it. How about explaining that in a room of 30 students, or flaky network issue. Or how about Samsung where they lock the OS that your system came with. Oh you got Win7 and want Win8? Or you have WIn8 and want to dual boot to linux based OS or another Windows, or use Win7.. Too bad! If you try you'll brick your system, with no way to recovery. And Samsung won't help you out as changing the OS voids the warranty. Or how about Lenovo covering ONLY select pads that you might lose due to teh failure of the glue used. That is right. if you lose a pad it may or may not be covered. And why did the pad came out in the first place on system not even 1 year old?

And I can go on and on and on.

All I am saying, is that the grass is not greener on the other side. It may not have firmware issues like Microsoft with the Surface Pro 2. Which I admit, it is unacceptable specially for a gen 2 product. But the other manufactures are far from being perfect.

 

[Rvacha]

Sorry dude, no offense but you are making excuses where none are granted. Firstly all the major drivers are not written by MS, they are written by the hardware vendors and except for Marvell they know what they are doing and have been at it a lot longer than 15 years. I think the only exception are the covers, and perhaps the embedded controller if they felt an urge to go totally off the reservation. UEFI? That's written by American Megatrends and they've been at it for more than 15 years. Only two documented problems?!!! At a minimum the "black screen of death" has been around since day one - there's entire threads on the official MS SP forum, and many "partial" treads here discussing strategies to avoid it. Lock the system? That's what MS is doing! Only problem is they lock in trash. Comparing the SP2 to Dell trash does not make a point. And yes, grass IS greener elsewhere. There's a lot of stuff out there that isn't crippled. Buggy, yes, crippled no. And I've never seen any moronic PC manufacturer pull as many updates as MS. Pen? Have you read the posts here regarding pen inaccuracy?

 

[GoodBytes]

I know it's not Microsoft doing the drivers. But you blame Microsoft regardless.
And you are wrong about UEFI. It's not American Megatrends. Here is the list: Membership List | Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Forum

I don't make excuses. I explained my experience. Now if you think it's better, then return your Surface Pro 2 or sell it, and get another product.

Pen calibration? You have clearly never used a Wacom product. The Wacom pens requires to be calibrated as the entire pen is being tracked. As we all hold the pen differently, and have different size hands, this varies.
If you want to calibrate the pen, I suggest the 60 point calibration using my tool available here: http://www.surfaceforums.net/forum/...surface-tweak-tool-surface-pro-2-release.html

 

[Sher the Love]

Pen calibration? You have clearly never used a Wacom product. The Wacom pens requires to be calibrated as the entire pen is being tracked. As we all hold the pen differently, and have different size hands, this varies.l[/url]

Between the Surface and various Samsung products I've tried with Wacom (500T Smart PC and various Galaxy Note products) the Surface is by far the worst. Out of the box, none of the Samsung products needed calibration (I'm not even sure if you can calibrate the pen on Galaxy products) and the Surface is much more sensitive to pen angles. Out of the box, the tracking point on my Surface was about 2mm behind the tip. Even after endless attempts at calibrating with Wacom and stock drivers (yes, I did the 60 point, 273, etc) it still tracked off in multiple places.

The solution (and this was because I got a Samsung Spen tip stuck) sand the tip of the pen (not the nib) down about 3-4mm. Tracking is greatly improved, almost regardless of angle. And I didn't even have to calibrate it.

Sorry to derail the thread, but the pen tracking really bothered me before I sanded the tip down.

 

[GoodBytes]

I fixed the 2mm behind the tip thing (which review sites, that talks about it, claim to be a downside of Wacom technology) via calibration. I just offset by 2 mm and took my time. Tracks pretty well on my side. My 60 point calibration needs a bit more fine tuning, maybe another line or lowering the one of the bars, and experiment. But so farm I am taking class notes without issue. All I can think about is that Samsung does the offset for you in that regard, and you just happen to use the pen as it was calibrated for the Samsung tablet.

The default calibration of the Surface Pro 2 looks like it perpendicular to the screen somewhat, as I think Microsoft expected most people using the pen to point at small icons and not draw or write notes. 'Most people' being the key word here. That was their evaluation of it's users. Not that they didn't change. Didn't the February firmware improved things by defaults? I recall people saying this.

 

[Sher the Love]

I fixed the 2mm behind the tip thing (which review sites, that talks about it, claim to be a downside of Wacom technology) via calibration. I just offset by 2 mm and took my time. Tracks pretty well on my side. My 60 point calibration needs a bit more fine tuning, maybe another line or lowering the one of the bars, and experiment. But so farm I am taking class notes without issue. All I can think about is that Samsung does the offset for you in that regard, and you just happen to use the pen as it was calibrated for the Samsung tablet.

The default calibration of the Surface Pro 2 looks like it perpendicular to the screen somewhat, as I think Microsoft expected most people using the pen to point at small icons and not draw or write notes. 'Most people' being the key word here. That was their evaluation of it's users. Not that they didn't change. Didn't the February firmware improved things by defaults? I recall people saying this.

There's still an area about 1cm from the left side where the tracking is off. It was actually like that on my 500T as well (so I shoudn't say they were that great in calibration). It's right where I want to start writing on the left side in OneNote, so I have to be careful there. Not sure what that area is all about. It acts the same regardless of calibration. So if you know how to fix that, that would be great.

 

[beq]

When you have several SP2 units (a mix of 256GB and 512GB units with 8GB RAM), and you're actively working on them side by side in front of you, it's funny how sometimes you'll see that different units would exhibit different behaviors or issues, even when they mostly have the same software state and such. That's been my experience over the months.

After the March firmware update and all the Windows Updates this week, one unit at one point showed that "System" process consuming 20-30% CPU, but not the others I don't think (I haven't examined this further since I've been following up other issues or doing other installs).

One unit failed to install the firmware update on the first try, but succeeded subsequently.

A couple of units offered the older "System Hardware Update - 2/11/2014" (only about 100K) after having installed "System Firmware Update - 3/11/2014" (about 100MB), but the rest of the units haven't offered this yet.

And so on...


P.S. Just to be safe I've also been trying to run the firmware updates with power cable and Type Cover 2 keyboard attached. Afterwards I'd swap each unit to the Touch Cover 2 to let them update it also...

And FWIW our units haven't seemed to run across the major crippling bugs others have had (at least not yet). I did have to reboot most of them a few times in different ways to get the cover to be recognized reliably. Initially some units would fail to load various different component drivers with a yellow exclamation in Device Manager (such as Sensors -> HID Sensor Collection, or one of the Human Interface Device entries I think). I admit though that thus far I haven't used the cover keyboards regularly on a day-to-day basis...

 

[GoodBytes]

When you have several SP2 units (a mix of 256GB and 512GB units with 8GB RAM), and you're actively working on them side by side in front of you, it's funny how sometimes you'll see that different units would exhibit different behaviors or issues, even when they mostly have the same software state and such. That's been my experience over the months.

And I bet you Microsoft is scratching their heads on that one. Especially that it is a different group mostly, but all, of people.

And FWIW our units haven't seemed to run across the major crippling bugs others have had (at least not yet). I did have to reboot most of them a few times in different ways to get the cover to be recognized reliably. Initially some units would fail to load various different component drivers with a yellow exclamation in Device Manager (such as Sensors -> HID Sensor Collection, or one of the Human Interface Device entries I think). I admit though that thus far I haven't used the cover keyboards regularly on a day-to-day basis...

I think Microsoft fixed that lately. 'cause I remember having the same issue back with the October firmware... and simply not have experience this anymore since the following firmware.

 

[Spike_Spiegel]

for me the update never shows in the windows update. maybe i have to wait a little more.