Surface Book w/ new Dock. Dock fails after a time and requires reboot of Surface Book.

Is there any unique markings on either the device or the packaging that would indicate when they were possibly shipped?

I don't seeing anything on my docks to indicate that. The only unique number than serial, mac, etc. is there is something next to the bar code sticker on the box that says "LOT NO:" The first dock I bought reads, "lot no: 1543" whereas the new dock I bought reads, "lot no: 1541" 

Maybe that means the shipment lot the docks were included in. I was banking on the possibility that the faulty docks came from the first batches of docks that shipped and maybe docks from a newer batch were good.

I've also purchased a new dock.  This one is just getting worse.  I have a monitor, keyboard, mouse, external hard drive, speakers, and ethernet connected and the only device that doesn't periodically crash and require a reboot is the speakers.

I too have purchased another dock to test against. The original dock I purchased from the MS mall kiosk so they might have the original batches of docks from the first shipment. This second dock I purchased from the brick and motar MS store, so I'm hoping they kept their inventory more fresh, although they didn't know how long those docks were sitting there.

I'll test and keep everyone posted.

In fact, I had purchased two docks and two Surface Book units, so had an extra to test with.  Over the weekend I swapped docks. This completely solved the display issue, and I have since returned the one bad dock; the display issue had nothing to do with drivers or OS apparently, since the other dock just worked. The replacement dock works as did my second dock, so it is confirmed to have been a bad unit.

The USB issue has not re-appeared today after update, I will update this thread if I see it again.

Yep. No dice on the new firmware update, though I do have something that has more or less corrected the behavior for me. As previously stated, if I boot up with the dock connected, I don't see problems until I undock and re-dock. 

Another issues I have is with battery drain in sleep. I changed all the on battery settings at some point to hibernate which basically is a break-fix for that issue. The interesting side effect was that I've noticed if the system was undocked, but then hibernated prior to docking, I don't see the issue with USB/sound disconnects. Even if I have the issue, I just have to undock, hibernate, redock, and power up. The downside is that it's still stupid. The upside is I don't have to reboot every time I want to undock and redock.