Switch to Hibernate Until Microsoft can Deliver a Surface Fix in January

Microsoft has been increasing its cadence for delivering fixes to its latest Surface devices, in hopes that the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book will be usable by the majority of first-adopters. According to a post in the Microsoft forums, the company is working on the problems that impact the biggest group first and then working back from there. 

The approach we are taking right now is to address the issues that affect the largest population of users that impact productivity rather than a large update that address a lot of issues. 

Already, fixes for screen flickering, touchpad anomalies, and others have been delivered. But, unfortunately, there’s more to do. And, some of that is fixing the fixes, as patches delivered already only work for some.

The next big issue to get attention, according to threads in the Microsoft forums, is a severe battery drain that affects both the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book. A forum poster known as Joe (MSFT), who is also a Program Manager on the Surface engineering team, has provided an explanation and a suggestion. It takes a lot of guts to participate in threads from unhappy and irate customers sometimes. I guess Joe drew the short straw this week.

According to Joe:

Yes, The 'standby' battery life is an issue we are working on and have been working on.  We can put the processor into a deeper sleep state than it is currently set to.  We couldn't do it at RTM for a variety of reasons, power management is a very hard computer science problem to solve especially with new silicon.  Currently it is not in the deepest "sleep" that it can be so there are wake events that would not otherwise wake it.  We will have an update for this issue sometime soon in the new year.

One of the ways that you can improve the situation right away is to make sure you don't have web sites open that are actively streaming when you close cover of go put the device to sleep.  Especially if you have a website open that uses sound. This will keep the PLM service running.

To make it really sip power like your pro 2 did.  Pro 2 did not have Connected Standby. It went straight to hibernate or S4.  To do this on your book or Pro4 you can make that happen.

To do this have the device go to Hibernate (deeper sleep and not listening) instead of "Sleep" (always on or connected Standby)...

So, bottom line is that a fix is coming, won’t be until early next year, and if you want to keep your battery level topped-off while traveling, change the power properties to Hibernate.

A January fix seems a long way off, particularly for users who have had to deal with problems since the hardware arrived a month or so ago. Some are worried that the return policy will expire before Microsoft gets a handle on the situation. Others, who have been promised their shipment in January, are watching closely with a finger hovering over the “cancel order” button.

Even if the battery issue and the majority of problems are worked out, customers are still keeping track of past grievances. Diskw0rm put it this way: