Microsoft said Friday that it has pulled a faulty update to its Surface Pro 2 tablet, and won’t have a fix ready until “after the holidays.”
In November, Microsoft released an update to the Surface Pro 2 that added an additional 90 minutes to its battery life, under PCWorld tests. But a December update to the Surface Pro 2, ironically, re-introduced battery issues, along with a host of other problems.
On Wednesday, a support engineer, “Josh_F,” reported that the update had been pulled:
“To ensure the best experience for our customers during the holiday season, we have taken steps to remove the update for Surface Pro 2 that was previously published through Windows Update on December 10th, 2013,” he wrote. “We are working to release an alternative update package after the holidays.”
Microsoft originally released an update on Dec. 10 that users said failed to install, prompting users to create the support thread. Some users reported that Microsoft pushed out another update on the same day, causing numerous errors.
Naturally, Microsoft users are wondering what went wrong. “Josh, that’s a great first step,” “”liftbikerun” commented. “What about those who have already taken the update and are finding huge issues with battery consumption, hardware failures, and issues with booting/sleeping? The issues have made our devices almost unusable.”
So far, Microsoft hasn’t released a definition for “after the holidays.” We don’t know whether or not users will have to wait until 2014 to receive a patch that will fix the problem. Until then, however, it likely means that the Surface will not be the panacea for holiday travel that Microsoft customers might have hoped it would be.