System Firmware Update - 12/10/13 fails to install

I just heard from the Surface Care Team that has a case open for me since October that the firmware update for January has been cancelled.  They want to do more testing.

Hello XXXXXXX

Thank you for your updates. I am glad the store was able to take care of your refund, but we are still sorry it had to come to this point. Microsoft did actually decide to wait longer before releasing the fixed firmware update in order to give Engineering additional time for testing. This is due to the previous release causing such problems for our customers. We want to make doubly sure that when it is released it will not cause any issues.

I am glad that your refund was taken care of and that all is well for you at this point. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to reach out to me by replying to this email. I will go ahead and close this service request as no further action is required from the CARE team at this time, but replying to this email will reopen it to my attention. Thank you so much again for your patience throughout this case.

Best regards,

XXXXXXX

Surface CARE Team

Josh,

We are working through the holidays to deliver a fix for the small number of customers that have experience decreased battery life and booting/sleeping problems as a result of the December update.  We took the update down to prevent additional customers from ending up in this state. All hardware failures, none of which are known to be caused by the December update, are being handled promptly through our warranty exchange policy.

The UEFI firmware that we released in the December update prevents some devices from entering sleep mode (and other low power states) properly during periods of inactivity. In order to release an updated version of the UEFI firmware we need to test the new version with the other drivers in the set to make sure we are not releasing yet another unknown state to customer machines. We certainly feel your pain and assure you that we are doing everything possible to make this right, as quickly as we can.

Thank you,

Tim

Please have the courtesy to read my most recent question  and advise me on course of action. In the event of not getting any satisfaction from Microsoft I intend to take some action in relation to UK sale of goods legislation.

Roy

Where has the detailed question I posted gone?

On a new SP2 which managed to evade the Dec, 10 update. Today I received several updates; performed search for each and read every update carefully and decided to install the following:

KB2909569, MS Camera Codec Pack, KB2913152, KB2913320, KB2916626, KB2914440 and all of security updates.

There are three optional updates which I haven't included in the install: KB2911106, KB2913270 and KB2917993.

After the installation:

1. Firefox immediately became unstable. I don't know what else has adopted the symptoms, I am still testing.
2. Upon a cold boot with a MicroSD card inserted, the System and System Interrupts consume high CPU. An old problem which existed since the product was released and was fixed after the November update. Better than csrss.exe running high I suppose. Sigh... Well now the battery crunching CPU hogging thing appears unstoppable by Microsoft. I needed to eject the SD card before every cold boot and push it back in after. Twice now the card flew a couple of meters out of the socket and landed on the carpet boasting the prowess of the SP2 card slot spring. VERY UNCOOL, UNSAFE AND ANNOYING.

Microsoft, could you please re-release the November firmware update to us? That was the time before you went off your meds. Thank you.

UPDATE Wed 15-01-2014 @ 10am: I have removed all updates and the system is now back to stock. Hooray! System stable. Now I only have the MicroSD card to deal with.