Surface Pro 4 and Microsoft Support a disaster

I am writing this to warn people, and to save you from a lot of frustration. Now I am obviously super mad because I can not use a 1200Dollar device and it is not even my fault. Actually, it is the fault of a Microsoft support agent. More to that at the end.

My first advice is to not listen to YouTube reviewers.You never know until you use it in real life environment.


So I purchased a Surface Pro 4 about 1 year ago. I chose the Surface because I am an artist, and I was looking for a pen-enabled device.

The Surface seemed perfect. I watched all kinds of Youtube reviews and everyone was impressed. I thought not much could I do wrong.

The first thing that disappointed me was the pen. Yes, the one thing I was looking for the most.

The pens shape and size

It just did not feel nice. Look at Wacom and Apple. They know what it should feel like.

But if it is just about feel, you can get used to it.

Pen buttons

Missing the second button. No configuration possible. Useless erase button. With no second button and customize feature, useless for artists who want to use Zbrush for instance.


Line accuracy

Drawing diagonal lines shocked me so much, I just could not believe they are allowed to sell this piece of junk. Diagonal lines are so jaggy, it was literally useless for me. Putting a plastic sheet on top of the screen helped with the drawing feel but still. I ended up using a Wacom tablet with the Surface. Great isn't it? So Pen was out.


Camera and Touch keyboard

So the Face login would start failing after a few days and it would prompt for PIN login. Never mind. But the Keyboard? I could not write a single sentence without typos. The worst touch keyboard ever used. So I bought a Bluetooth keyboard. Not the Microsoft one as I think it is way overpriced. Also as an artist, I like to have my keyboard a little off the way.


Screen flicker

Just recently, strangely enough right after my Warranty expired, my screen started to flicker whenever I used the CPU or GPU a lot. Up to a degree where text was not readable anymore. Vey frustrating as I always had to cool down before I could continue working. Lost a lot of time as I am freelance.

So I decided to contact the support. When you visit the Microsoft support website, you get that ridiculous Virtual Agent. I mean that thing is so useless, it must be made for dumb people. So I choose Surface Pro, and Technical issue. It then gave me a screen showing that my warranty has expired. No other option or choice. Sort of like GAME OVER! So I decided to first go through Windows support. At least I could then talk to a real person. It was a huge mistake. So I tried to explain my problem, and he kept telling me it was a driver problem. But I knew it wasn't because it would also flicker in the BIOS. So he asked me to update to a different driver and restart. In order to reconnect, he gave me a reconnect link to him. After a restart, the link gave me an error. And the flicker problem was still there...of course. Next agent. I explain everything again, try to make him understand it is not a drivers problem. He then remotely connects to my PC and does a few things. Then restarts without even giving me a re-connect link. Of course, I never saw him again. The problem still not fixed. Next several days this disaster repeated and even got worse. The next guy told me to contact the Surface Support. He gave me a link, but I told him, that link would lead me to the Virtual Agent again which is of no help. He said he will remote connect to my PC and connect to the Surface Support for me. I took a video of this because I knew he would not find it. And, indeed, he was clicking all over the website, and did not find what he was looking for. I wrote him, believe me now?? You guys don't even know your own website. He must have got embarrassed and simply disconnected without a word. Great staff Microsoft. After about 20 Support agents, the final blow came. The next guy told me to disable all Services from the msconfig and restart. I already thought "hmm??" And I told him, I am pretty sure it is a hardware issue. Nevertheless, I restarted...and bang. cannot log in anymore. The login window simply does not appear. If I wait for 20 minutes or so, it will come but won't accept my password. Camera login also doesn't work probably because of the deactivated services. I contact another Support agent, and he was actually nice. I tried the repair startup via USB recovery image but get an Error. I tried reactivating the services using the command prompt from the startup menu, but it does not work either. So basically I tried everything I could think of. The end of the story, all my client's data is lost. I do my backups once a week, so about 50% is lost. It will cost me a fortune and I don't even have a Surface anymore which means I have to buy a new device. Be assured it won't be a Microsoft product anymore. The worst support ever. Another funny thing is that all the names of those agents were fake English names when it was clear from their English that they were Indians or whatever. I will also be doing a Youtube video showing that video of how he tried to find the Surface Support. This just needs to be shown to the world.