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Leaked internal Microsoft memo surfaces deeper product issues

By Cookie Monster - on 16 Aug 2017, 12:00am

Leaked internal Microsoft memo surfaces deeper product issues

In case you missed it, Consumer Reports recently withdrew its recommendation for Microsoft's Surface devices due to "poor predicted reliability ". However, Microsoft does not agree with CR's findings and has a different story to share with its employees. 

According to an internal Microsoft memo written by Microsoft's Surface chief Panos Panay, the issues plaguing the Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book were initially believed to be caused by Intel's Skylake processors as other vendors reportedly faced the same issues. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella apparently met up with Lenovo executives to find out about their response plans. To his surprise, Lenovo did not encounter the same problems. 

It turned out that Lenovo and other more experienced hardware vendors were able to iron out the issues quickly with firmware updates, unlike Microsoft which has a different approach to the Surface devices with custom firmware and drivers. As a result, Microsoft's delay in solving the issues led to a decline in the reliability of the Surface devices. 

Panay went on to say that the company "worked tirelessly" to fix the problems, but the improvements were not reflected in CR's findings.  He claimed that return rates of the Surface devices dropped over the past 12 months because of these improvements. 

At launch, Microsoft saw return rates for the Surface Book hit 17% during the launch period and remained above 10% for the first six months. The Surface Pro 4 also had return rates around 16% during launch, but the rate dropped below 10% after a month. In comparison, the Surface Pro 3 had 11% return rates during launch which dropped rapidly below 10% and maintained at 5-6% throughout its lifetime. Simply put, the Surface Book has the highest return rates of any Surface device throughout the two years of its retail availability. 

If Microsoft's statistics are accurate, CR's next annual survey should reflect that and there might be a chance that CR will reverse its decision. 

Source: Paul Thurrott via The Verge

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