New (2017) Surface Pro’s narcolepsy, battery, Bluetooth bull

[Karlston]

The new Surface Pros are out and, like roses and puddles follow rain, complaints have come pouring in.

 

If you’re a Bluetooth connoisseur, you may be distressed to find that your early Surface Pro — advertised to come with Bluetooth 4.1 — may, in fact, only have Bluetooth 4.0. The complaint on the Microsoft Answers forum from PBPB2222288888 says:

Just brought I surface Pro 16GB, 512GB mem,
The description on the website states Bluetooth 4.1, however the box for the surface states 4.0 and the HCI number for the Bluetooth module 6.33536 which also indicates to me that it is version 4.0.
I have looked at stores that also sell the Surface and some say 4.0 and others say 4.1. I have also spoke to a number of Microsoft agents and technical people and I have had conflicting answers.

Looks like the best advice at this point is that, if you want Bluetooth 4.1 and kinda figure you should’ve gotten 4.1 as advertised, you should return your Surface Pro and get a new one. Apparently all of the latest Surface Pros have 4.1.

 

Maybe they should call it Surface Pro 2017.4.1? (I just hate hardware without readily accessible version numbers.)

 

Then there are complaints about the Surface Pro 2017 narcolepsy. Posting on Reddit, srkhannnn says:

Just picked up the Surface Pro I5 Friday.

At random intervals the screen goes black and the device seems to power off while I am actively using it (typing). Pressing the power button presents the black and white windows logo and a few seconds later a login screen with the desktop in the exact setup before the shutdown.

Similar symptoms from Pro (mid 2017) owners are described in that Reddit thread, and from this thread on the Microsoft Answers forum. beccas05 says:

For some reason my new Surface is shutting off randomly. I check the setting and a few other things but it’s still randomly turns off without warning. I’m losing some of my school work because of it. Is anyone else having this problem?

The one stellar bull flinging that still has me laughing: Microsoft says you may need to replace the Surface Pro 2017’s battery at some point. The box, no less, says:

Battery has limited recharge cycles and may eventually need to be replaced by an authorized service provider.

Unless the MS authorized service provider has telekinetic powers, that seems unlikely — although it may well “eventually need to be replaced.” As PKCano said earlier this week:

It would seem Microsoft has created a $1000.00 (minimum) disposable laptop

Surface Pros have been plagued from the beginning — going all the way back — with bad hardware or, at the very least, bad firmware and drivers. I have no idea why anybody would pay real money for one. The fact that it’s a billion dollar business reminds me of PT Barnum’s admonition – but I guess there’s more than one born every minute.

 

Triumph of hope over experience, I s’pose.

 

Source: New (2017) Surface Pro’s narcolepsy, battery, Bluetooth bull (AskWoody)

[straycat19]

Microsoft trying to imitate Apple and how is that working out.  They ought to concentrate on their software and get that right.  I see a class action suit here for false advertising.  Free Surface Pro 4's for everyone!

 

[steven36]

15 hours ago, straycat19 said:

Microsoft trying to imitate Apple and how is that working out.  They ought to concentrate on their software and get that right.  I see a class action suit here for false advertising.  Free Surface Pro 4's for everyone!

 

Why should they anything they do with Windows turns to shit . If you buy a Mac OS at lest you keep getting free upgrades  but even many   users  are levering Mac for Linux now. Because there not happy with Apple and never liked Windows. Microsoft make most of there money off office software and the cloud but not the most money Amazon does .. you can run office 2010 in wine or you can run office in Mac OS No one other than fanboys  has anything positive to say about windows in 4 years . 

 

There was one article after the other about how bad windows 8x was  for 2 years even though it's stable . And there has been one  article  after the other about privacy and bugs in windows 10 for 2 years now.

 

Why a MacOS user switched to Ubuntu Linux

http://www.infoworld.com/article/3156804/linux/why-a-macos-user-switched-to-ubuntu-linux.html

Windows is full of broken promises and shattered dreams . Redstone 3 is shaping up to be a real bug fest this fall just like Redstone 2 is . 
 

Quote

 

To kind of explain what Linux is, you have to explain what an operating system is. And the thing about an operating system is that you're never ever supposed to see it. Because nobody really uses an operating system; people use programs on their computer. And the only mission in life of an operating system is to help those programs run. So an operating system never does anything on its own; it's only waiting for the programs to ask for certain resources, or ask for a certain file on the disk, or ask to connect to the outside world. And then the operating system steps in and tries to make it easy for people to write programs  - Linus Torvalds

 

Well Microsoft, making a Windows store full of resections for there own profit   is not helping developers make new apps nobody wants to use windows store apps.

 

Reviewers give a giant thumbs-down to Windows 10 S

http://www.zdnet.com/article/reviewers-give-a-giant-thumbs-down-to-windows-10-s/

Quote

 

Me, I just don't care about proprietary software. It's not "evil" or "immoral," it just doesn't matter. I think that Open Source can do better, and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is by working on Open Source, but it's not a crusade – it's just a superior way of working together and generating code.

 

It's superior because it's a lot more fun and because it makes cooperation much easier (no silly NDA's or artificial barriers to innovation like in a proprietary setting), and I think Open Source is the right thing to do the same way I believe science is better than alchemy. Like science, Open Source allows people to build on a solid base of previous knowledge, without some silly hiding.

 

But I don't think you need to think that alchemy is "evil." It's just pointless because you can obviously never do as well in a closed environment as you can with open scientific methods. - Linus Torvalds

 

Microsoft has went as far as putting some open source apps in there store and trying too sell them when you can get win 32 installers and portables or ether install them on Linux  for free. If Microsoft can make money off noobs installing open source  that's good  for the devs but it would take a fool  too buy them  People on Linux dont mind buying software if it can do something open source can't and many donate too keep open source aloft but buying it from Microsoft  what a joke. .

 

After hearing people bellyache  about Windows for 4 years  i came to the conclusion only people who are fanboys will ever be happy with Windows and I have lost most interest in post about Windows in  general ... Only reason i see news post on it at all is because i come here and you don't see me going out of the way too post new topics negative or positive about it anymore.

[Stricken]

Its been awhile guys!

I love reading what you guys have to say on the matter

I personally hackintosh'd a Lenovo laptop following a guide

 

OS X sucks, but for getting stuff done its okay

[straycat19]

On 6/24/2017 at 6:16 AM, steven36 said:

Why a MacOS user switched to Ubuntu Linux

 

Why Apple switched from OS9 to MacOSX...because that is FreeBSD based, in other words it is Unix and only differs from Linux in its scope and licensing.  I was running FreeBSD years before (1993) Apple used it as the underlying code for their OS.  FreeBSD, produced by Berkeley, is also the basis for the Sony's Playstation 3 and 4, for Nintendo's switch system software and Jupiter JunOS.  FreeBSD is the most secure form of free Unix available and is the major version of BSD ran on over three quarters of all BSD installaions.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, straycat19 said:

 

Why Apple switched from OS9 to MacOSX...because that is FreeBSD based, in other words it is Unix and only differs from Linux in its scope and licensing.  I was running FreeBSD years before (1993) Apple used it as the underlying code for their OS.  FreeBSD, produced by Berkeley, is also the basis for the Sony's Playstation 3 and 4, for Nintendo's switch system software and Jupiter JunOS.  FreeBSD is the most secure form of free Unix available and is the major version of BSD ran on over three quarters of all BSD installaions.

FreeBSD is never talked about I would never knew it existed if it were not for Distrowatch  and still never even tried it.

 

Here some info i found on it though

Quote

 

What it comes down to is that whether to use FreeBSD’s vs Linux is a matter of personal preference, skill level, and project need. Long time Linux users have switched to FreeBSD with no regrets, others have barely gotten past the setup process.

 

The consensus seems to be that although the setup of a FreeBSD operating system may be a longer and more involved process, it’s well worth the time invested to switch. If you’re looking for a quicker switch that is more automated and less involved, you may want to explore Linux distros such as Linux Mint, Ubuntu, or Elementary OS.

 

 

Quote

 

Before getting onto performance, if you’re considering running unix or linux on your laptop, on the bare metal and not as a VM, then your primary considering is going to be drivers. There’s a much better chance of all your hardware supported by Linux, you may not even be able to get BSD to boot on the metal and may have to use a VM.

I’m curious why it doesn’t matter too much what flavour of *nix. If it really doesn’t matter, then you could try running the latest test releases of 64 bit Windows 10 and install the latest test versions which come with a true linux environment.

Personally, I prefer to run a linux desktop environment because of the way I work, and then load Windows up as a VM. If I need to, I can also run a FreeBSD VM (because I sometimes need to experiment with pfSense).

On the subject of performance, for specific workloads, BSD has been shown to be faster. I’d suggest looking at the Phoronix benchmarking and comparing results. However, unless your laptop is really struggling and you really have specialist workloads, I think this is not really of importance.

 

 

Quote

 

A not too long time ago I was a big FreeBSD user, with dozens of production installs. Gradually, I've been using it less and less and now I feel I must describe why, in a hopefully productive and positive fashion.

 

In short: it's all about the packages and ports. An operating system is useless without its applications, and the currently blessed binary package management system, the pkg is seriously broken.

 

I was very enthusiastic about pkg (then called pkgng), and I'm very much dissapointed that several YEARS of its existence and bug reports (yes, I've submitted them to the right mailing list), have had no effect and it is now as broken as it was in the beginning in a critical area: it doesn't handle inter-package dependencies in a robust manner.

Currently, the only significant way package dependancies are honoured at all is when a package is first installed. At that time, it will bring up all the dependancies required for the package to work. Unfortunately, once installed, common install and upgrade operations which must take dependancies into effect don't do it, or do it incompletely or erronousely, so upgrading a complex package can leave the system in a broken state.

 

 

 

 

It took AMD  a year to get good open source drivers for Linux so I could run new versions of it after they dropped AMD catalyst  i dont need another headache .

 

1. Free BSD it sounds not easy too install so it would never be a hit with windows users.

 

2. Free BSD drivers is not compatible with a lot of hardware .. So It would never be a hit for many Linux or Windows users in this regards.

 

3. Free BSD sounds like it was a good idea that went bad a few years ago.. it has less software packages than any of the other 3 desktop OS choices . Back years ago when Linux  was new Free BSD had better support than Linux...  but the Linux kernel  passed Free BSD kernels  and has much better hardware support than Free BSD now and GNU distros  have better packages open source and proprietary software

 

4. Here's the best reason why not to use FreeBSD: It's not Linux.