Microsoft’s November updates to the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book appear to be designed to fix complaints that users have had about the screen flickering on both devices.
According to Microsoft, the Surface Book received five updates, while the SP4 received four. The only difference is that Microsoft pushed a keyboard and trackpad fix to the Book that it didn’t choose to add to the Surface Pro 4’s firmware.
Customers had previously complained that the new Surface machines suffered from issues associated with screen flickering, apparently tied to a driver issue when the device was running Hyper-V virtual machines. But a number of additional minor complaints also plagued the Surface Book, including the trackpad issue.
Here are the improvements that the update makes for the Book:
- HD Graphics 520 driver update (v20.19.15.4308) addresses some display issues, including some scenarios that result in screen flickering.
- Display audio driver update (v8.20.0.659) supports compatibility with the updated graphics driver.
- Surface Embedded Controller Firmware update (v88.855.257.0) improves system stability.
- Surface System Aggregator Firmware update (v88.853.258.0) improves the keyboard and trackpad experience.
- Surface Pen Settings driver (v10.0.302.0) adds support for future functionality on Windows 10.
All of these are in the update for the Surface Pro 4, except for the trackpad/keyboard update.
Why this matters: Customers eagerly awaited the Surface Pro 4 and especially the Surface Book, and it had to be a disappointment to see that they weren’t working as expected out of the box—especially when Microsoft did so much to compare the Surfaces to MacBooks, products that supposedly “just works.” Will the new updates solve the remaining problems on Microsoft’s latest Surface tablets? Let’s hope so. Do they? Let us know in the comments below.
