Microsoft Ships Surface Pro 2 Tablets With Wrong, Slower Processor

SmartAboutThings (1951032) writes "Microsoft launched the Surface Pro 2 tablet in October 2013 with several hardware upgrades, like the new 1.6GHz Core i5-4200U processor specifically optimized for longer battery life and increased performance. Three months later, Microsoft decided to upgrade the CPU with a 1.9GHz Core i5-4300U unit that would be capable of taking these improvements even further. Although Redmond kept quiet about the improvement, tech savvy buyers were aware of the change. Now, according to some new reports, it seems that the company is still shipping the old models to buyers, despite the fact that Microsoft promised to deliver only upgraded models featuring the new CPU."

Uhm

[Anonymous Coward]

So, company A decides to quietly upgrade gizmo X to ship with better-than-spec component Y. Months later, some buyers find Xes matching the original specs in the retail channel... news... not even at 11. A retail channel is a complex beast, you sell something into it, you'll never know when it comes out. Reminds me of the serial# checking you had to do on processors a few years back to determine if you had one of the good batches...

Re:Perhaps they are leftovers from old production

[AK Marc]

I RTFA, and aside from sales people on the phone quoting the wrong processor, I didn't see anything that indicated a "deadline" for shipping only the new one. The story isn't about something like MS promising the newer processer and not delivering, but a call center person making an error in confirming a specification. There is a difference in intent and action, even if not much difference legally.

Re:Perhaps they are leftovers from old production

[David_Hart]

Microsoft just promised that they would ship (eventually); the only date involved is the date they made the promise, not a dealine by which the new stuff would be shipping exclusive of the old stuff, and certainly not the unsold stuff already in the channel.

False. RTFA, which you clearly did not do.

Actually, the previous poster was right. Microsoft has never publicly announced that they were shipping the new processor. What happened is that the article writer called a customer rep who said that they would get the new processor. The customer reps may have been told that the new processor was coming and made assumptions. Its still on Microsoft as they obviously dropped the ball in clarifying the situation with the customer reps. But that doesn't make the previous poster wrong.

All of the articles I can find on the topic indicate the same thing. There was no official announcement by Microsoft. Someone leaked the information to the standard tech magazines and the rest has been speculation, rather than fact.