Reports Of Surface Book And Surface Pro 4 Problems Proliferate

Megalith

Megalith

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I’d like to think that these are just isolated incidents, as I’d hate to see Microsoft make a serious fumble after the momentum they’ve managed to achieve for their new Surface lineup.

There are reports of Surface Book freezes all over the Web. Tweetium Windows author, former developer at Microsoft and all-around guru Brandon Paddock @BrandonLive had a series of freezes and hangs with the laptop, at least some of which were apparently caused by the Intel graphics card.
 
Driver issue. Unfortunate but it'll be resolved.

Not impressed with Intel drivers or their support. Recently I along with others reported 5th gen iGPU WebM codec playback issue and info to replicate. After repeated denials or just laziness they finally saw the issue and issued a fix. Complacency at Intel will allow ARM to run them over.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/76640
 
mi7chy said:
Driver issue. Unfortunate but it'll be resolved.
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Got my i7/16GB/512GB Surface Book Monday morning. The GPU drivers seem to be the biggest issue and I've experienced the flickering issue with Hyper-V on myself. Disabling Hyper-V resolved it for me though there are reports where that's not working for some.

Some other quirks. Cortana's voice interact will stop working after a while and requires a reboot to get going again. Converting to draw mode with the screen flip over will blue screen if the device is off for me. With Threshold 2 coming this month with what I would assume would be new firmware and drivers I'm expecting most of these issues to be resolved this month. They seem to be very specific and all GPU related except the Cortana issue I'm seeing.

That said, this is a hell of a piece of hardware and the build quality is amazing. The screen is fantastic. The keyboard is great, the track pad is good for a Windows device. The most impressive thing about this device physically to me is the tablet section. It's the size and screen quality along with the thin and light nature of a tablet this size is remarkable. And it's an i7 with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Unfortunately the batter life of the tablet section is poor, I've seen about 3 hours in my informal testing.

It's not a gaming machine but it does handle a lot of modern games as well at lower settings and resolutions. Couldn't get Batman Arkham Knight to run well, that game pretty much requires 2 GB of VRAM and the 1 GB into the Surface Book doesn't cut it. But I've gotten MGS V Phantom, Alien Isolation and the Wolfenstein to play quite well. For something in the heavier side of the ultraportable range it's pretty good.

Bleeding edge and not something I would recommend to anyone because of that and the price. But it's a freaking cool device, it's the best hybrid laptop I've ever used by far.
 
GaryJohnson said:
so not as good as a regular laptop then. got it.
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You might be surprised by someone that's regularly called a Microsoft shill who put down a good chunk of change on something they never saw before buying, but I would tend to agree.

The hinge and attachment/detachment mechanism and cost and complexity that may not interest someone who only wants a conventional laptop. Hybrid laptop designs are tough, especially ones with detachable screens. The guts in those designs have to be at the top and not the bottom like a conventional laptop or even a non-detachable with causes a weight balance issue, thus that hinge that everyone was talking about which then introduced that gap. Then there's the attachment/detachment mechanism that's not physical and uses an exotic mechanism that I'd never heard of. And then the Surface Book has two disparate GPUs which even on conventional hardware is problematic. Tons on complexity that aren't issues for a conventional laptop. So why bother if all one wants is a conventional laptop?
 
I just fail to see the advantage of the hybrid configuration over a light weight laptop where you can definitely get way more powerful components on the laptop. Maybe the high density screen resolution sets it apart mostly over laptops since 4K laptops are rather expensive.
 
My only reservation with this thing. I really fail to see why they didn't use a gpu solution from amd or nvidia. I can't say I've ever owned a single Intel gpu that wasn't absolute trash.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
My only reservation with this thing. I really fail to see why they didn't use a gpu solution from amd or nvidia. I can't say I've ever owned a single Intel gpu that wasn't absolute trash.
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I think they have one with an nvidia GPU?
 
heatlesssun said:
Got my i7/16GB/512GB Surface Book Monday morning. The GPU drivers seem to be the biggest issue and I've experienced the flickering issue with Hyper-V on myself. Disabling Hyper-V resolved it for me though there are reports where that's not working for some.

Some other quirks. Cortana's voice interact will stop working after a while and requires a reboot to get going again. Converting to draw mode with the screen flip over will blue screen if the device is off for me. With Threshold 2 coming this month with what I would assume would be new firmware and drivers I'm expecting most of these issues to be resolved this month. They seem to be very specific and all GPU related except the Cortana issue I'm seeing.

That said, this is a hell of a piece of hardware and the build quality is amazing. The screen is fantastic. The keyboard is great, the track pad is good for a Windows device. The most impressive thing about this device physically to me is the tablet section. It's the size and screen quality along with the thin and light nature of a tablet this size is remarkable. And it's an i7 with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of storage. Unfortunately the batter life of the tablet section is poor, I've seen about 3 hours in my informal testing.

It's not a gaming machine but it does handle a lot of modern games as well at lower settings and resolutions. Couldn't get Batman Arkham Knight to run well, that game pretty much requires 2 GB of VRAM and the 1 GB into the Surface Book doesn't cut it. But I've gotten MGS V Phantom, Alien Isolation and the Wolfenstein to play quite well. For something in the heavier side of the ultraportable range it's pretty good.

Bleeding edge and not something I would recommend to anyone because of that and the price. But it's a freaking cool device, it's the best hybrid laptop I've ever used by far.
Click to expand...

Why is Hyper-V even enabled by default? Talk about overkill. It is a tablet, not a workstation.

Hyper-V is a bad idea on any computer in which you care about graphics performance because it virtualizes everything, including the primary operating system.
 
you guys like the keyboard? I thought it was chunky; it didn't seem very high-end
 
Metro was actually designed? Not a bunch of kindergartners using crayola crayons making icons? Live tiles so you can sit and watch endless streams which you really can't read but you just might catch that news snippet that has been making the go around for the last month.
 
DeathFromBelow said:
Knowing Microsoft, the engineers responsible will get promoted to custom executive positions like that bonehead woman who designed Metro.
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ahh yes, the ribbon lady, aka Julie Larson-Green. How she's still employed there is anyone's guess.
 
mi7chy said:
Driver issue. Unfortunate but it'll be resolved.

Not impressed with Intel drivers or their support. Recently I along with others reported 5th gen iGPU WebM codec playback issue and info to replicate. After repeated denials or just laziness they finally saw the issue and issued a fix. Complacency at Intel will allow ARM to run them over.

https://communities.intel.com/thread/76640
Click to expand...
At what point is it not the name on the device's fault when their device overheats? Although people investigated whether it was a Samsung or TSMC's chip was causing overheating issues with the iPhone 6S, ultimately any blame laid with Apple. If a Dell device overheats, it's Dell's fault. If the driver is the reason it overheats, Dell better update their driver. They validated it for their device, and they don't even run the WHQL (Windows High Quality Lab) that validates drivers for quality with Windows.

When downloading the driver for a graphics card in a PC, you can go to the manufacturer of the graphics card. It has long been advised if you're using a laptop, you should go to the laptop manufacturer for the driver. With everyone not creating Microsoft Windows-based tablets, you don't worry about getting the driver, it's the responsibility of the maker of the tablet, is in the OS, and is out of the user's hands.

As is said, I'm sure the problems will be fixed in short order. However, it's not Intel's fault that Microsoft can't release a device without these flaws in software or hardware design. Microsoft is not unique in this (I've already mentioned Apple). Microsoft is a software company first and foremost though. It's not like Microsoft is the only company creating devices using Intel processors, and every device out there that uses the same Intel processors do not have this issue. Don't let Microsoft off the hook on this.

If I buy a new car that overheats right off the lot, I'm not blaming Bosch, Delco, or whoever made the parts in the cooling system, I'm blaming the car manufacturer and taking it back to the dealer for warranty service. And this comparison is valid because more and more systems in cars are controlled by software.
 
DPI said:
ahh yes, the ribbon lady, aka Julie Larson-Green. How she's still employed there is anyone's guess.
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well well well. So this is the name i have to remember when it comes to spoiling my efficiency with my CAD applications (and now, so many others) and the name i'll curse every time my hands hurt from RSI due to having to click twice (at best) as much in said applications thanks to this god darn UI change.

Good to know :p
 
Reports all over the web? Just how many of these have they sold already? 67?

As for drivers and updates, I've noticed a huge nosedive in quality from all companies over the past couple of years. I really don't think they do QA testing anymore and just push them straight out for testing in the wild. Doesn't matter if it screws up, the next untested driver might fix it.
 
HoffY said:
well well well. So this is the name i have to remember when it comes to spoiling my efficiency with my CAD applications (and now, so many others) and the name i'll curse every time my hands hurt from RSI due to having to click twice (at best) as much in said applications thanks to this god darn UI change.

Good to know :p
Click to expand...

Try learning the shortcuts. Ribbon was by far one of the best ui improvements they have had. If you knew shortcuts before it, you became that much more efficient. While I'll sit in your camp all day on how terribly stupid metro was, you are just dead wrong on ribbon amd clearly refusing to change for the better.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
My only reservation with this thing. I really fail to see why they didn't use a gpu solution from amd or nvidia. I can't say I've ever owned a single Intel gpu that wasn't absolute trash.
Click to expand...

High standards for what is acceptable. Outside of gaming I have never seen the Intel HD graphics as being a problem. In fact I have even been impressed that it can handle 3340x14440, albeit at 50Hz

And QuickSync has come in handy when I needed to rip a bluray on my laptop.
 
ccman said:
As is said, I'm sure the problems will be fixed in short order. However, it's not Intel's fault that Microsoft can't release a device without these flaws in software or hardware design. Microsoft is not unique in this (I've already mentioned Apple). Microsoft is a software company first and foremost though. It's not like Microsoft is the only company creating devices using Intel processors, and every device out there that uses the same Intel processors do not have this issue. Don't let Microsoft off the hook on this.
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Not making excuses but there's always gotchas with new stuff. It's not uncommon for even Apple to launch wonky stuff as they are often praised for their stuff "just working". The main issues surround the Surface Book are related to it's complex design relative to conventional laptops, like the dual GPUs and high and screen attachment/detachment mechanism.

There are several other members on this forum that have picked up the SB and yes there some GPU issues. One member has reported installing the standard Intel HD 520 helped with his issues. So other quirks but everyone seems to like the machine overall. It's an impressive device that's powerful and flexible and extremely well built.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Try learning the shortcuts. Ribbon was by far one of the best ui improvements they have had. If you knew shortcuts before it, you became that much more efficient. While I'll sit in your camp all day on how terribly stupid metro was, you are just dead wrong on ribbon amd clearly refusing to change for the better.
Click to expand...

This all day long. The ribbon literally has been one of the best up changes MS has ever done. If you're still hating on it years later, the fault is yours and you may wish to move to Pennsylvania and join an Amish community..
 
Climber said:
This all day long. The ribbon literally has been one of the best up changes MS has ever done. If you're still hating on it years later, the fault is yours and you may wish to move to Pennsylvania and join an Amish community..
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This just shows how difficult it is for older and widely used products to change like Office and Windows. Whether the change is seen as a positive or irrelevant to large majority there's always going to be those that just won't like it and then they'll call for keeping a legacy implantation around forever.

I just don't see what inherent advantage dropdown menus and tools bars have over the ribbon. I think it's just what people have become used to and that's that. The ribbon is now almost 10 years old and in every Office client, Windows, OS X, iOS, Android and web. It can't possibly be as bad as some make it out to me.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Try learning the shortcuts. Ribbon was by far one of the best ui improvements they have had. If you knew shortcuts before it, you became that much more efficient. While I'll sit in your camp all day on how terribly stupid metro was, you are just dead wrong on ribbon amd clearly refusing to change for the better.
Click to expand...

If I'm suppose to memorize shortcuts in a graphical UI, why not go back to the command line?

Its not a change its a regression.

As a user who occasionally needed advanced features, the menu system helped me find those features. Now I google them when I can guess my way into them.

They had shortcuts with menus, that is not a ribbon benefit. You're defending Ribbons with something that has nothing to do with Ribbons. Makes it kind of obvious they have no virtue to a user.
 
jpm100 said:
If I'm suppose to memorize shortcuts in a graphical UI, why not go back to the command line?

Its not a change its a regression.

As a user who occasionally needed advanced features, the menu system helped me find those features. Now I google them when I can guess my way into them.

They had shortcuts with menus, that is not a ribbon benefit. You're defending Ribbons with something that has nothing to do with Ribbons. Makes it kind of obvious they have no virtue to a user.
Click to expand...

One of the reasons Microsoft stated for doing the Ribbon was that it was getting indie feedback that users were having a difficult time discovering features in Office. 90%+ of request for "new' Office features were already there, people just didn't know.

Traditional dropdown menus allow for commands, the Ribbon adds control. To change a font in a traditional dropdown menu app you'd normally click on something like a "Format" menu, then look for "Font" and then you'd get a dialog box and adjust the font. With the Ribbon all of that is combined in the Home tab and all of the common font controls are exposed and adjustments to the document can previewed in real time without having to go through the dropdown menus again to see and change and going back and forth.

There are a lot of people that love the Ribbon and would reject dropdown menus. The only way to satisfy everyone is to have to completely different command on controls UIs in Office that do the same thing. That's a lot of overhead for something I think has very little return.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Try learning the shortcuts. Ribbon was by far one of the best ui improvements they have had. If you knew shortcuts before it, you became that much more efficient. While I'll sit in your camp all day on how terribly stupid metro was, you are just dead wrong on ribbon amd clearly refusing to change for the better.
Click to expand...

Absolute blind rubbish. The first thing someone that blindly goes with whatever-is-new-just-for-the-sake-of-it jumps to when they have no actual points to show as proofs is attacking someone for "not wanting to learn the new system" or "you just dont like change".

Abslute rubbish. How about we take a look at some actual facts... based on the actual UI's.
 
You claim that "learning the shortcuts" is the key. yet shortcuts have absllutely NOTHING to do with the Ribbon UI. We had those before its inception.. and luckily.. we have them after. They make the Ribbon usaable... just like using it for a period of time. Getting used to something doesnt mean its more efficient... doesnt mean its easier... and it deff doesnt help your case that the Ribbon is a step forward.

So there you go... any more none factual name calling to go with your great claim of the Ribbon UI being better because of... shortcuts?
 
heatlesssun said:
One of the reasons Microsoft stated for doing the Ribbon was that it was getting indie feedback that users were having a difficult time discovering features in Office. 90%+ of request for "new' Office features were already there, people just didn't know.
Click to expand...

nice claim... where is this claim from MS? I'd honestly like to read it because i've not seen any official article on the subject of why they think its better... let a lone one stating actual points of benefit of the Ribbon UI.

Traditional dropdown menus allow for commands, the Ribbon adds control.
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Piffle. Nice marketing speak there. A lot of buzz words that actaully say nothing at all, and in most cases is just outright silly. A dropdown menu was only ONE PART of the previous UI's that were available. The Ribbon doesnt add control.. thats already there in teh software. The UI just allows you to access it, some in ways more frustrating then UI's before it.

To change a font in a traditional dropdown menu app you'd normally click on something like a "Format" menu, then look for "Font" and then you'd get a dialog box and adjust the font. With the Ribbon all of that is combined in the Home tab and all of the common font controls are exposed and adjustments to the document can previewed in real time without having to go through the dropdown menus again to see and change and going back and forth.
Click to expand...

Again.. using pulldown menu's as the whole of what UI's were previously. Thats not the case at all. Secondly... i had used many applications that were WAY easier to change a font type then how you describe. There were graphics font menu's before the Ribbon was enforced. Nice aversion though.

There are a lot of people that love the Ribbon and would reject dropdown menus.
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What? This has nothing to do with the merits of one UI against another. Which yes, is a rather deep topic. But one i'm prepared to make points in to show the annoyances i have with it. and unfort all you people do is rump straight on the "you no like change" bandwagon instead of having a construction, factual, point based discussion on the matter.

For example... there are UI elements that the ribbon brings to teh table that are excellent. But if someone says they'd take a ribbon over a pulldown menu, they are simply not seeing the forest for the trees. Thats just a silly statement to make. Lets not forget.. that i've yet to see a Ribbon UI implementation that STILL HAS pulldown menu's. (even ones that have been bastardized).


The only way to satisfy everyone is to have to completely different command on controls UIs in Office that do the same thing. That's a lot of overhead for something I think has very little return.
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Enter the previous UI. It had pulldown menus (the one thing thats great for discover-ability, one thing the Ribbon has a lot of trouble with). Although there are some new things that have been developed that lesson this issue. But again.. those things existed not because of the Ribbon but in spite of it.

having a great UI, does not mean its instantly full of a lot of overhead or would have little benifit. What an irrational statement. That is the very reason User Interfaces have customisability. So that they can benefit a massive about of users different tastes or preferences with little effort, or "overhead" (as you may like to call it).

I'd gladly point out the areas of frustration that he Ribbon has caused me personally. i know others have the same frustrations... mostly those that use software in depth. And those that use software that is fairly command-rich. They usually show up the negatives a bit earlier because the former UI's they had were fairly user friendly and quite customisable. Things that often seemed to get left out of your beloved Ribbon. Which is yet again.. another negative tick for it.
 
heatlesssun said:
One of the reasons Microsoft stated for doing the Ribbon was that it was getting indie feedback that users were having a difficult time discovering features in Office.
Click to expand...

Sort of like how they ripped out the start menu with Windows 8 because 'feedback' indicated people don't use it? How did that work out?

I've worked retail. Some people are so stupid they need help finding stuff right in front of their face. I don't recommend tailoring products to those people, even if they have some money they're probably just going to steal your stuff anyway.
 
HoffY said:
nice claim... where is this claim from MS? I'd honestly like to read it because i've not seen any official article on the subject of why they think its better... let a lone one stating actual points of benefit of the Ribbon UI.
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It's something I read about 10 years ago, I'll see if I can find it.

HoffY said:
The Ribbon doesnt add control..
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The Ribbon adds the UI control elements for many functions. For instance on the Home Tab in most of the Office suite, the controls for Fonts, Styles and Paragraphs is all laid out in the Ribbon. The controls are right there with no need to use a modal dialog box.

HoffY said:
I'd gladly point out the areas of frustration that he Ribbon has caused me personally. i know others have the same frustrations... mostly those that use software in depth. And those that use software that is fairly command-rich. They usually show up the negatives a bit earlier because the former UI's they had were fairly user friendly and quite customisable. Things that often seemed to get left out of your beloved Ribbon. Which is yet again.. another negative tick for it.
Click to expand...

The Ribbon flattens the menu system and adds control UI elements. That's really all it does but that allows it to be more interactive so that you don't have to drill up and down through menus and into dialogs. People comparing this to the Windows 8 UI changes that proved unpopular. Much of that changed in the next version of Windows. Office 2016 is now the fourth major version of Office to use the Ribbon over the span of nearly a decade. And it's also now in the OS X, iOS, Android and even web versions. How can something be that bad and have endured all this time?

The answer is it couldn't. I remember people jumping and down and screaming how Office 2007 would add all kinds of training costs, etc. We rolled it out to over 100k users and it went very well. We didn't have tons of confused users and now few give it a second thought.

No one is going to like everything but the evidence is very clear that the Ribbon has been successful and that people are simply using it and not debating something from a decade ago that's apparently worked fine.
 
heatlesssun said:
Ribbon Ribbon Ribbon
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I understand that you're trying to divert conversation to focus on the Office Ribbon thing-y, but just because you want to avoid admitting that the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are basically cheap garbage in a wanna-be Apple shell doesn't mean you're allowed to derail a thread with posts like those.

Some of us here are trying to discuss the broken junk Microsoft is foisting onto the world so please take that discussion to a thread from 2008 that you're welcome to necro from the abyss of this forum.
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I understand that you're trying to divert conversation to focus on the Office Ribbon thing-y, but just because you want to avoid admitting that the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are basically cheap garbage in a wanna-be Apple shell doesn't mean you're allowed to derail a thread with posts like those.

Some of us here are trying to discuss the broken junk Microsoft is foisting onto the world so please take that discussion to a thread from 2008 that you're welcome to necro from the abyss of this forum.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes: So, any evidence of a proliferation of problems?
 
CreepyUncleGoogle said:
I understand that you're trying to divert conversation to focus on the Office Ribbon thing-y, but just because you want to avoid admitting that the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book are basically cheap garbage in a wanna-be Apple shell doesn't mean you're allowed to derail a thread with posts like those.

Some of us here are trying to discuss the broken junk Microsoft is foisting onto the world so please take that discussion to a thread from 2008 that you're welcome to necro from the abyss of this forum.
Click to expand...

I wasn't the one who bought up the Ribbon in the first place. And I actually own some of the supposedly broken junk you mention. There are threads in the Mobile Computing section detailing the problems. Most seem to be related to bad GPU drivers. There is also an issue with high battery drain in sleep when using Windows Hello.
 
ManofGod said:
:rolleyes: So, any evidence of a proliferation of problems?
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So I'm guessing that you didn't even read the quote thing-y that started this thread or the mountains of articles pointing out stuff like how the drivers for those junky Apple copycat computers aren't working right, huh?

heatlesssun said:
I wasn't the one who bought up the Ribbon in the first place. And I actually own some of the supposedly broken junk you mention. There are threads in the Mobile Computing section detailing the problems. Most seem to be related to bad GPU drivers. There is also an issue with high battery drain in sleep when using Windows Hello.
Click to expand...

Stop trying to deflect blame for the Ribbon onto other people. In fact, just stop talking about the Ribbon already. Sheesh, it's 2015 and that thing came out in like what...Office 2007? Just let it go already and move on. Why is that so hard? It's been eight years. That's EIGHT YEEEEAAAAARS and you're still discussing it. :(

And it's too bad that you own that stuff, but if you'd done any research on the things you buy, you may not have had to deal with the shoddy way they made it or the fact that no one thought that maybe a little battery life was a good idea.
 
I bought 2 pro 4's yesterday. My wife got one. It pops once in awhile and the keyboard just doesnt pop up when I click on a field to type something.

We both decided that was enough for us to just stick with the android tablets we already have. But the tablet looked and felt great though.
 
noko said:
I just fail to see the advantage of the hybrid configuration over a light weight laptop where you can definitely get way more powerful components on the laptop. Maybe the high density screen resolution sets it apart mostly over laptops since 4K laptops are rather expensive.
Click to expand...

For anyone that wants tablet like action its a nice design. especially because unlike the yoga and other fold behinds you can detach the keyboard so you don't have to let the keys get all scratched up on whatever surface. Also allows it to be lighter for a tablet in whatever situation you desire. Now for many that might not be worth the premium price, but it is a nice option.

Personally I still think the old style tablets with rotating and pivoting keyboards were the best but for whatever reason companies don't seem to invest in those anymore.
 
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