And the update is
W10?
Microsoft has admitted that the battery problems hitting some Surface Pro 3 owners aren't down to hardware failure, but rather a software issue. Redmond's support forums have been inundated with complaints about the high-end fondleslab's battery life. The problem only appears to affect hardware that uses batteries from third- …
"...39,873MWh..."
Yep. 39,873 Megawatt-hours is worth approximately $6M dollars. Imagine paying $6M to recharge your tablet.
Some future Solar Impulse 3 would be able circumnavigate the Earth endlessly, for years on end, powered by the battery out of a Surface 3.
How can people get through life without knowing that M = mega and m = milli?
Probably the same guy who "fixed" the problem with the Surface 4, whereby closing the lid resulted in random shutdowns and resultant loss of work, by treating it as a hibernate, rather than sleep request, regardless of how that option is configured. You'd think they'd be able to get in house hardware working with in house software!
At one point I thought the idea of a tablet that's also a fully featured x86 Windows device might be a great tablet, given that it can perform double duty as a tablet and a PC. The more the Surface saga goes on, the more I suspect that I was wrong.
The concept is not necessarily utterly flawed. Microsoft's implmentation does, however, leave lot to be desired. For less money (depending on configuration) one could get for example HP Spectre X2 which actually quite nice.
For me the X2 has one big issue. It has a single USB-C connector which is used for charging, video output and USB 3.1. Thing is the charging part is non-standard this means that you can only charge the device using the HP charger. If you want HDMI output you can't do that and charge at the same time unless you buy the HP dock which is £200. If you try and use a standard USB-C to HDMI/USB-A/USB-C adaptor it stops working as soon as you connect the charger.
If this problem is linked to one specific battery vendor, then it could be a misunderstanding between ACPI power management and battery firmware. Like this one:
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht003431
It is also possible that bugs lurk on the ACPI side of things. Time will tell.
30GWh in 5 months lets us do some calculations. 5 months is 3600 hours, so the average power is 8.3 MW. The surface area of both sides summed is approx. 0.12 m^2, so temperature rise with the device vertical in still air with convection currents will be ~0.5K/W. So this thing will idle at ~4.7 megaKelvin. Display brightness will not be a problem.
I have a different suggestion: why not stop trying to imitate Apple and stay the f*ck away from hardware?
That way Microsoft can still use the customer's hardware as an excuse for things not working - they have something like 3 decades worth of expertise in that. Trying to do an Apple means making it very, very clear that it has never been the hardware but the quality of their software: even when they control both they can't make it work...
What do you expect from microsoft?
[x] Failure
[x] Excuses
[x] Overpriced rubbish
[x] Ruined usability
[ ] Selling an upgrade as a fix
[ ] Blaming someone or something else (usually the customer)
The last one is a digression from their normal behaviour, so I suspect someone has worked out they can't keep this one quiet.