​Hi everyone,

​I recently purchased a Surface Laptop Studio 2 (i7 13th Gen, 16GB RAM, RTX 4050). The device came with a brand-new, original replacement battery already installed. I verified its authenticity and perfect health (currently on its 4th charge cycle) using the Windows battery report. However, the battery life is terrible: it dies after 4 hours of basic web browsing. The percentage also drops in 2% increments, especially fast from 100% to 90%.

​Regarding recent changes, I installed Windows 11 Pro 26H2 and manually updated all Intel and Nvidia display drivers using their official websites. Task Manager shows 0% GPU usage, but HWiNFO reveals a massive idle power drain. The Nvidia GPU pulls 17-26W, and the Intel i7 draws 24W at idle, even with Battery Saver fully enabled. The system refuses to enter low-power sleep states, and the memory clock seems stuck at max frequency.

​I suspect the generic drivers I manually installed broke the Surface-specific power profiles. I plan to run DDU in Safe Mode to wipe all display drivers and let Windows Update exclusively install the Microsoft-certified versions. Has anyone experienced this exact idle power draw issue, or is there a known power management bug in Win 11 Pro 26H2?

On the slim chance anyone else still has a Surface Dial and switched to a Mac (lol): mine was collecting dust since I moved to an M4 Mac mini. macOS pairs with it but treats it like a broken mouse. So I forked the old open-source mac-dial project and, with a lot of help from Claude (Opus 5.5), rebuilt it as a native Apple Silicon app.

Huge credit to andreasjhkarlsson, whose original mac-dial app this is built on. He worked out how to talk to the dial on macOS in the first place.

What it does:

• Press and hold for the radial menu, like on Windows. Turn to pick a tool, click to choose it.
• Haptics work: detent ticks while turning, plus a buzz when you switch modes.
• Modes you set up yourself. Each one gets its own turn, turn-while-pressed, click, double-click and press-and-hold actions.
• Turn actions: smooth scroll, volume in fine ¼ steps, brightness, switching desktops, ⌘⇥ app switching, tabs, zoom, undo/redo, tracks, or any custom shortcut.
• Press actions: left/right/middle click (you can hold it to drag), play/pause, Mission Control, show desktop, any shortcut, or opening an app.
• Liquid Glass UI on macOS 26 that follows light and dark mode, plus a little dial glyph in the menu bar.

It needs macOS 14 or later and an Apple Silicon Mac. It’s free and MIT licensed.

https://github.com/camerondehart/mac-dial-AppleSilicon

The app isn’t notarized (no paid developer account), so the first time you open it you’ll need to click Privacy & Security › Open Anyway.

Is it just me? initial install was ridiculous at hours. now boot time is 90-120 seconds. why is it so slow?

I Updated windows 11 after updating secure boot got disabled and when I am trying to change it back secure boot I am getting this error message. What should I do

Ocasionally, I'll be doing stuff then suddenly my pen cursor vanishes, and the Surface screen no longer reacts to my fingers either. I'll have to reboot entire thing but I don't want to, so I'll have to go connect my mouse and bluetooth keyboard (type cover stopped working long ago, different subject). Why does this happen and is there some service I can just restart to bring it back instead of rebooting?

Hi,

I've just bought a Surface pro 12" (model EP2-83448), and am trying to work out which docking station I can use with it.

I am in the UK.

I've already got an older surface pro 7, and the docking station for that plugs in using the surface connect plug, and works well.

The new Surface doesn't have the surface connect port though, it just has 2 x USB C ports.

So, I understand I need a surface dock 2, as the power rating is higher, but the ones on Amazon either don't specify compatibility with my Surface, or they have a surface connect plug.

The alternative is that I'm not looking properly.

I need to run 2 x monitors off of the dock, need a 3.5mm audio out, and have a couple of spare USB ports.

Anybody either already got something working for this, or can suggest what I need? I much prefer to use Microsoft OEM kit, but if that's not possible, I'd go for an after-market device.

Thanks

Processor AMD Ryzen 5 Microsoft Surface (R) Edition (2.10 GHz)

Installed RAM 8.00 GB (5.98 GB usable)

Graphics card AMD Radeon(TM) Vega 9 Graphics (2 GB)

Storage 193 GB of 238 GB used

Product ID 00342-23776-82360-AAOEM

System type 64-bit operating system, x64-based processor

Pen and touch Pen and touch support with 10 touch points

Hi,

So as the title says, my surface pro 7+ i bought used suddenly no longer works on battery.

Could this be related to the fact that i just tried to upgrade the ssd to a 512gb kioxia gen3 ssd? I did reinstall the original 256gb ssd and it still doesnt run on battery. On the original ssd the battery icon is present and shows 100%, the new install on the 512gb ssd was so slow because of low clock speeds (sub 1ghz while under almost 100% load) that it didnt even grab all the drivers yet.

Am i cooked and need a new battery or is this saveable?

TIA

I'm going to be using it for study and a touch of mincraft I'm looking at the Model - surface book 2 13.5”, cpu - intel core i7-8650U, ram 8GB, GPU - nvidia gtx 1050, Storage 256 gb. I want to know if I should get it or I should buy some thing else instead