Well, I tweeted Surface and Panos and no response. At this point, I'm hoping
Amazon will accept my SPro2 as a working trade-in. I feel bad even selling it to a friend since the updates are so unpredictable. What a waste of a great computer!
On the bright side, I found a used 2017 Surface Pro on
Ebay, arriving next week I hope.
I should probably learn from this and buy another brand, but I'm giving MS the benefit of the doubt that the newer devices have worked out such crazy bugs with firmware. At least those have a working UEFI where you can set options (from what I've seen). My Surface Pro 1 never had any big issues other than quirky Bluetooth. Surface Pro 2, bad firmware. Surface Pro 2017, if it has issues in the next few years, I will probably move on to Dell or HP or something else. But I'm trusting this will be a good one. Maybe that's why they renamed it to "Surface Pro", like Surface Pro 1/2/3/4 were beta devices and MS ironed out all their hardware growing pains (battery, firmware, etc.).
I still think Surface Pro's (all varieties) are the best small form PC/tablets available. I hope MS consumer support gets better.