Where are you Microsoft???

Question

I joined this forum right after I started to have issues with my Surface Book (i7/256/gPU) and since then I come to this forum every single day at least 5 or 7 times per day to see what other people are doing to fix all the reported issues. What I am starting to notice is the change in tone from all users, from a peer-to-peer support and collaboration space to a place where we are all expressing our frustrations and disappointment while we count our days to make a decision if we return or not the Surface Book. But I think that the WORST part of all, (at least for me) is that Microsoft is not stepping up to address any of these issues. 

We know you (Microsoft) read these comments and follow some of these threads closely. The only thing we ask you to do is to acknowledge us, jump in and speak up. Tell us that you are working on it, share ETAs... something. Most of us believed in the product and pre-ordered it the same day it was launched. The least thing you can do is to work with us so we can help you to fix the problems. What is the point of having a forum if you are not going to lead the conversation?

Answer 1

I have a Dell XPS 13 which uses a LiteOne ssd. It boots or comes out hibernation lightening fast. SB I have wait, wait, wait. It is much much more than noticeable. I paid $1300 for the Dell. $2000 for the SB. Why can't MS uses the faster SSD? The only reason I am switching to SB is because the Dell handwriting on screen is horrible. But everything else on the Dell is 10x smoother/better.

This is why I even bring the SSD issue up... Most flagship machines are equipped with a fantastic SSD. It is what makes them lightning fast! Why did Microsoft settle for this older technology? And why are we paying a thousand dollars more for it?

Edit: Officially have blue screened after trying to undock with all firmware updates present. Picture included - has to do with display drivers.

Answer 2

Hi everyone

I have lots of updates. I went and spoke to the Microsoft store representative and manager. He allowed me to exchange my surface book for another of the same exact type. I went ahead with this and now I am on a lot 1544 surface book vs. the old one which was lot 1542.

He also offered to allow me to exchange my surface book for any other machine in the store - ie. dell xps 13 or Lenovo yoga 900. The issue is that the refund would have only given me store credit and I don't have much to do with a thousand dollars in store credit.

Before completely shutting down that idea, however, I ran benchmarks for SSD speeds on the yoga 900 and xps 13. To my surprise, both the yoga 900 and xps 13 use the same Samsung ssd with the same nand design. Pr2459 you must be lucky to have the LiteOn ssd because the store models had Samsung for sure. Due to this, I actually experienced the same junk write speed on both machines and an actually slower read speed than the ssd in the surface book. I have images and I'll try to upload them of the benchmarks. When I saw this, I realized that unless I bought a mac or a 512gb ssd, I wasn't going to see any faster ssd speeds so I stuck with the surface book. I was also given the opportunity to replace my surface book for the 512gb ssd one, but I would have to pay the difference for the upgrade. Unfortunately I don't have 700 dollars for such an upgrade, nor do I need that.

My new surface book has been used very little and the only thing I have to report is that the SSD in it is even slower than my old one. While the old one managed to squeeze 310MB/s in sequential write, this one only squeezes 260-280MB/s. That is quite pathetic and I'm very unhappy with it. I'm not sure what I will do, I'll give it more time. Maybe it'll speed up to at least 310MB/s. It seems that no PC oem has any idea how to match Apple in SSD speeds.

The trackpad has been behaving more normally on this device and the device has been sleeping quite well. Albeit I haven't used it much since it was thanksgiving, it seems that the device actually sleeps and doesn't drain the battery. I will report more findings as time goes on.

Lenovo Yoga 900:


Dell XPS 13:


Edit: My SSD has sped up to exactly 311.7 MB/s on seq. Write. Must have still been indexing. I haven't experienced other issues except the usual battery drain. will keep everyone posted. 

Answer 3

I have this same issue with my Surface Book (i7 256gb 8gb ram). It takes way too long to boot up. Is the slow boot-up speed due to the quality, or lack thereof, of the SSD?

Answer 4

There is a chance, however that would be more due to read speeds being slow, which are not. These drives actually read quite fast so slow boot time is probably bad optimization. I also, however, have a bit slow boot time unfortunately.