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Comment by shlewis | Hacker News Reader

I will never buy a Surface device ever again. I've been using an SL4 for the last four years with Linux on it, thanks to the surface-linux kernel.

It's awful. It feels like it's actively refusing to work properly with Linux.

Fair - it's not for Linux, and clearly that is expected with a Microsoft device.

I've recently had to call their support for missing rubber feet. I figured I could get the replacement mailed(that was how it went when it first happened about two years ago). An AI answered, did not understand what I was saying at all, hung up the call. I called again; it told me to check the website and hung up, not even giving me a chance to say anything.

Okay. Guess I'll never buy anything from you ever. Ordered them off of Aliexpress and moved on.

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When will these companies realize nobody wants to talk to an AI? The reason we begrudgingly pick up the phone is because some problem is not solvable through the website. The last thing we want at that point is an automated system parroting the website back to us, or telling us to go there ourselves

I guess if you see customer service as a checkbox you have to have, and also a cost center skimming from your bottom line, you will do whatever to make it as cheap and hostile as possible.

They don't care.

Support call center is operation cost. They did they math and think this will save them more money than losing a few angry or disappointed customer.

And they're right. If terrible support were an obstacle even slightly, they'd have all gone out of business decades ago.

Some percentage of telephone service, service chat etc. is stuff that could be easily found via the website, I know 98% of the time when I call it is just not possible to resolve through reading the documentation on someone's site (the last 2% it is, but the site sucks so much I don't want to try) and I'm sure it's the same for you and probably for most of HN, but having worked at a help and documentation service for a major telephony provider in Denmark I do know there are statistics that in fact show most of the stuff could be found on the site, people just don't want to take the time.

At that point the main problem for a service is to figure out when they are dealing with someone who could solve the problem through the website, and when they are dealing with someone whose problem is too complicated to be solved that way. Although it also seems like many people don't want to spend the money on doing that analysis and serving their customers, as you have pointed out.

I wonder how much Microsoftisms are going to be thrown into the Surface Ultra.

Surface-linux has done a ton of work to get some support, but yeah: they are quite the special devices:

> In contrast to other devices, however, some newer Surface devices route their keyboard and touchpad input via this controller. Unfortunately, every new Surface device requires some (usually small) patch to enable support for it, since devices managed by SAM are generally not auto-discoverable.

There is a huge feature matrix, so at least you sort of know what you are getting. Amazing work from open source folks! https://github.com/linux-surface/linux-surface/wiki/Supporte...

After all, I'm still using it. But I'd have ditched the laptop if it weren't for the linux kernel. Can't thank them enough.

Linux surface is awful, but also not actually Surface Surface. I did it, it sucked. I went back to windows and everything works primo, exempt its windows. So while I agree, I dont. PSA: wayvnc

What made it awful? I have been using a Surface Pro with fedora as my main portable device for the last 2 years and enjoyed it.

I work at an ewaste recycling company. We're inundated with Surfaces often, from Gos and Pros, to Hubs (the TV-sized touchscreens). You haven't played solitare until you've played it on an 84-inch touchscreen.

I use a Surface Go at home (running BlissOS) and a Surface Pro as my work "laptop" (running Debian KDE). I forget which generations they are, but they're probably 8-ish years old, so if they haven't died yet, they're probably good. They both work well for what I use them for, and are better laptops than actual laptops for what I need a laptop to do.

In recent times support is part of what I consider when I buy Apple products. It is by no means the best but I can always get a human at whatever time of day and they will listen to my problem and attempt to address it.

But as for getting rubber feet, I'm sure it's some backwards process with Apple too, if at all possible.

I thought maybe they were available with the new self service repair portal for Apple but nope, you have to order the entire bottom case.

Apple does positive scripting ("I understand that must feel frustrating, I had a similar issue once, I'm going to solve your problem"), but at least I can reach a human, even if that human talks like they've been brainwashed by a cult.

My ISP has actual techies answering the phone, and their approach is more "well that's a bit crap, I can have an engineer there by Thursday". I've only needed them a couple of times in a decade, but I've been left with a mile-wide grin both times. As long as that's true, I'm a customer for life.

Yeah the support is scripted and annoying a lot of the time. There's always a song and dance like having you remove your VPN (mine is split tunnel but they don't care) to verify some failure case, loading profiles, etc. - but at some point when all avenues are exhausted they will escalate to an engineer and make detailed notes, and usually follow ups which might be with another engineer usually has a full understanding of your situation. A few times they've managed to fix these issues but it can take months.

For hardware issues too it's pretty good, though I've only ever dealt with the Genius bar, and never done a mail in of the product in question.

For software I've never really seen this kind of service at scale, e.g. with Microsoft. And for hardware, it's essentially chatbots in a loop these days which I experienced with Lenovo trying to get support for a laptop that wouldn't power on (never managed to get a human to support me and gave up).

The last time I called Apple the phone service employee hit me with “I understand your issue as I am also a student” when I replied that I wasn’t a student he then followed it up with “Oh, neither am I”

My phone slipped out of my pocket as I was getting into my car, and I unknowingly ran over it.

When I submitted an AppleCare replacement request for it, the employee said “Oh man, I hate it when that happens!” and approved it.

I figure that’s the script, or maybe he had a chronic issue of running over his own phone.

>My ISP has actual techies answering the phone

Lucky you. My ISP is so incompetent they connected me to another customer when they wanted to connect me to another support agent (Vodafone).

Hilarious, "Designed for serviceability" is one of the headline features about 3/4 down

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/devices/surface-lapt...

Isn't that a little unfair? You'd have an even worse experience running Linux on a MacBook.

I had no problem with it not supporting Linux, like I said, it was expected and if anything, I'm to blame.

I would be 3d-printing some janky feet in TPU before submitting myself to that process. Even if they "wear-out/fall-off", I can print some more.

It sounds interesting from a hardware perspective, but yeah, IMO no one other than Apple has the luxury of shipping a PC with second-class Linux support anymore. If the Linux experience is anything less than perfect, it's DOA.

Also, USB-A in 2026? Really? That was already an automatic disqualifier for me at the start of the decade.

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