Tuesday 22 October 2013

Windows 8.1 on the Surface Pro

In June I blogged about my nightmare experience buying the Microsoft Surface Pro and summarised with 'Buyer Beware!' and a strong recommendation that potential purchasers avoid this item. Since then we've had the Surface Pro 2 announced and I don't know whether to laugh or cry at all the hypocrites who raved at how wonderful the Surface Pro was, now telling us just a few months after it launched how much better the Surface Pro 2 and its new keyboard cover (no refunds on the old one, sorry!) is!

The Surface Pro has largely been a useless paperweight since I bought it. Way too heavy with too little battery life for a tablet. Way too under-powered for a laptop.

But I thought I'd give it another go, now that Windows 8.1 has been released. This, by the way, is the release that had so much quality control applied to it that the version for the Surface RT had to be pulled within hours of release because if totally trashed the Surface RT. You really couldn't make this stuff up! So, anyway, I downloaded and ran the upgrade and the Surface Pro did some reboots and then told me...

Couldn't update to Windows 8.1 0xC1900101 0x30018

Updating Microsoft software on Microsoft hardware I should have known!

I'm not even surprised any more. Apple announce their new iPad today and I'm afraid after all the pain they've caused me and so many friends and family it's hard to see how aside from some niche enterprise scenarios there's anything to stop them a decade from now having gone the same way as Kodak. Time to start learning node.js I guess!