Ask Paul: October 8 (Premium) (Updated)

With the release of Windows 11 and new Surface PCs this week, we can enjoy an epic set of reader questions and an early start to the weekend.
Surface Pro 8
crunchyfrog asks:

I know that you're currently evaluating the new Surface Pro 8 for a lengthier review at some point soon. I would very much like to hear how this new SP8 performs with its ability to wake up from varying amounts of sleep as a test.

So far, no issues.

The reasoning is that nearly every Surface device I have owned has been plagued by weird sleep/wakeup anomalies that are not always consistent but are persistently a problem. As a for instance; I closed my Surface Pro X the other day for 10 minutes and it did not wake up when I opened the keyboard like it should have. I have many more examples but would like to hear from you if perhaps these have been addressed at all.

I will pay attention to this over the next few weeks, for sure. I’ve also had weird sleep/wake issues on many Surface PCs. It’s been inconsistent.
Windows 11 bugs
madthinus asks:

A couple of days in and some of the bugs in Windows 11 is already making way to much noise. Why was this release so hell bend on shipping.

Microsoft will never admit to the real reasons for this, of course, and as I’ve written elsewhere, it is unprecedented for the firm to publicly test a major new release of Windows for just three months before dumping it on the public. The consensus is that Microsoft did this for the PC makers and, more broadly, for the PC market in general.

But there are many indications that the pandemic-era PC buying boom is over, and a pretty, simple new version of Windows at least gives PC makers something else to sell (in addition to new models). I don’t think that will amount to much, but that appears to be the rationale, with the added justification that Microsoft’s new updating system lets them keep fixing problems and adding features to Windows without having to wait for Windows 11 2.0 (or 22H2 or whatever it will be called).

And to be fair to Microsoft, it almost doesn’t matter how long it tests a new Windows version since the public release always unmasks new bugs, or bugs that didn’t seem all that important during the beta. So I’m not surprised that we’re seeing those issues now, of course we are. It’s just on Microsoft now to fix them quickly and prove that this new updating system works. Honestly, the most surprising thing to me is that we didn’t see a Day 1 Windows 11 update. Each day now, I expect to see something.
New Microsoft Store (and other Windows 11 features) on Windows 10
madthinus asks:

Do we know when the new Microsoft store is launching on Windows 10?

When Windows 11 launched earlier this week, Microsoft published several blog posts, among them one about the “new” Microsoft Store. In that post, it says that “we’re happy to share that it will be available to Windows 10 customers in the coming months, too” and that it will...