Microsoft really had a hit on their hands with the Surface series, and last year's models, the Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4, were a hit among consumers, especially around last year's holiday shopping season. Unfortunately, their have been many reports about certain problems with the hybrid devices, but some new update is about to fix the Surface bugs. For those that have these devices, this is how to download the latest firmware.
According to PC Mag, Microsoft rolled out a set of driver and firmware updates for both the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book. According to Panos Panay, the head of Microsoft's Surface division, these updates are design to "help you get the most of the power management options that Surface is designed to offer and continue to make your Surface more productive".
This was stated on a recent Windows blog post, and it was promised that Microsoft would listen to user feedback, and answers about the updates would be available here at the Microsoft Answers Forum.
There are actually 13 updates, and they cover the Intel graphics, the audio drivers, as well as the Surface Management Engine. What the user will see is overall system stability, fewer glitches, not to mention some improvements in the display stability, battery life, and auto-rotation reliability.
Stuff reports that power management and sleep mode bugs in Microsoft's 2-in-1 Surface tablet/laptops is causing them to drain their batteries and get extremely hot when they should have been in an ultra-low power state. One of the issues was Connected Standby, which is supposed to let the system check for emails or accept Skype calls without draining the battery, but the opposite effect was happening, and the device was effectively drained.
Considering that it took a while for Microsoft to acknowledge this problem, it is a good sign that they are responding to it, even if it is a little too late, as complaints of the unusual power drain had started appearing on Microsoft's support forums back in November. Most people attempted to fix the battery drain issue by enabling hibernation instead of the Connected Standby.
If you have a Surface Book or Surface Pro 4, you might not have to do anything to gain these updates, as they are installed automatically via Windows Update. The issue is that these fixes are happening in stages, which means that not every Surface will receive them at the same time.
For those that wish to install them manually, then they should go to the Start button, select Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update, followed by selecting "Check for Updates". Assuming that the updates are available, they should install right away, but you may need to restart your device after installation.
