Why Microsoft's Surface Pro Could Fail

Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft's Surface Pro boasts one feature that could rapidly become an Achilles Heel, especially if Microsoft intends for the device to compete against Apple's iPad and a host of lightweight Google Android touch-screens. In a Nov. 29 Tweet to a customer, the official Surface Twitter feed claimed: 'We expect it [Surface Pro] to have approx. half the battery life of Surface with Windows RT.' That means Surface Pro will have roughly four hours of battery life. That's roughly half the battery life (if not less) of Apple's various iPads, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, Research In Motion's PlayBook, Hewlett-Packard's now-cancelled TouchPad, and Motorola's all-but-forgotten Xoom. In other words, pretty much every tablet currently on the market. Nor can the Surface Pro compete with other tablets on price. The 64GB version of the device will retail for $899, with the 128GB version coming in a little higher at $999."

Comments

It doesn't compete with tablets

[Guspaz]

It competes with ultrabooks. Unfortunately, it doesn't compare all that favourably to ultrabooks either (about the same price, same weight, smaller screen, no keyboard included), and stealing sales from Wintel ultrabooks doesn't really help Microsoft or Intel.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[ifiwereasculptor]

and stealing sales from Wintel ultrabooks doesn't really help Microsoft or Intel.

The Surface Pro IS Wintel.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[ischorr]

...That's what I came here to say as well. It's competing against Ultrabooks, but it's unclear what its selling point would be for most purposes. Ostensibly a "Pro" user would want it for compatibility with legacy x86 desktop apps. But it's not clear that for MOST purposes like that a touchscreen (even with stylus) would ever be better than the hardware keyboard and pixel-accurate pointing devices that come with every ultrabook. There's not really a "pro" market for tablets at the moment, though I suppose that won't happen unless there's hardware for it.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

Exactly. This is for people like me who bought an iPad hoping it would replace my old Dell Latitude XT tablet i used for note taking in class and as a research notebook. I am sorely disappointed with the iPad's note taking capabilities, but still carry it around with my laptop due to its convenience on planes and while traveling in general. A device like the surface pro is a perfect replacement for my iPad and laptop for the work I do. For $1000 I could buy it, or a tablet + laptop and end up paying more money and carrying two devices.

I didn't buy a surface rt because it doesn't solve my problem any better than the iPad, but the surface pro is actually offers many benefits over the iPad. Battery life is not one, but it's more powerful, has an active digitizer, and can run any windows x86 windows software, so i see it as a worth while tradeoff.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[omnichad]

Novelty.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Right. Wintel stealing sales from Wintel doesn't help Wintel. If you could have just sold the product you're already producing there's no point sinking money into research and development of a new product - the revenue would have stayed the same but profit is lower as you need to fund the new research and development. That's oversimplified, of course, but if - that's a big if, but what OP was arguing - the only market segment interested in a Surface RT was already buying Wintel ultrabooks then the Surface RT is not a good product for Wintel.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Anyone else tired of the constant negative stream of non-sequitir flamebait summaries and articles on Windows 8 or even Microsoft/Apple on Slashdot and any and all positive or neutral news being totally ignored?

After driving away all the folks with half a clue, even the echochamber seems to be losing interest in constantly talking to itself on Slashdot, with only 33 comments after half an hour of posting inspite of the flamebait title and summary, just hastening the steady descent of Slashdot into irrelevance.

Last one out turn off the lights.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

It has a micro SDXC, full size USB 3.0, headphone port, and Mini DisplayPort. The Surface RT also has micro SDXC port for storage expansion.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[interval1066]

My next device will be an ultrabook, I have no plans to buy a tablet and if I did it would probably be a Nexus 7.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Sir_Sri]

They aren't supposed to really compete on any point.

Surface are deliberately overpriced so that the 3rd party manufacturers can make the same product or better for less money.

It's a kick in the ass to the 3rd party guys to stop making shit, not a serious effort by microsoft to own the tablet space hardware and software.

Besides that, the battery life is why they have an ARM version at all. The biggest weakness of surface (either of them) is that it has windows 8 on it, and windows 8 is terrible.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[fermion]

stealing sales from Wintel ultrabooks doesn't really help Microsoft

MS has been bringing more services in house. With Windows 8 and surface there is a definite vibe that it is ready to be a full system builder. Traditionally the hardware OEM has been a lucrative business only because of volumen and MS kickbacks, but perhaps MS thinks it can do better. There is really no indication that MS is pushing Surface to third party OEM, and some indication that it is more than willing to let them fail. So, yes, there may be great benefit to MS for Ultra books to fail. MS may think it can do better on MS Surface.

The mode is tablet use it untethered. That is why it is important to have many hours of use. Plug it in overnight, then use off and on all day. Tablets are also made to be used anywhere, which is why they do not have keyboards. As usual MS believes that the current use of Tablets is silly, and is creating a slightly modified product category. A tethered tablet with keyboard.

This will appeal to some people, like the thousand button mouse that so many like. However, for most work, a well designed single button mouse or track pad is just as usable if the software is designed for it. I can't imagine why I would want to have a tablet if most of my work required a tablet though. I bought a keyboard for my iPad, but seldom used it as I prefer the efficient laptop.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Andy Prough]

Go to BestBuy. They've got a whole shelf of what they call "ultrabooks" for under about $500-$600. Although they just look like smaller laptops or bigger netbooks to me. Not even very light-weight. I think the term ultrabook was pretty quickly co-opted by the marketing folks.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Which ultrabooks are cheaper? All of the ones I've seen are $1000+

Several

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[TheMiddleRoad]

Have you used Windows 8 for more than 30 seconds in a store? I'm using it right now on a 6-year-old laptop. Windows 8 is just fine. It's certainly superior to IOS in every imaginable way. My only disappointment with the Surface is its low resolution. I've been rocking 1920x1200 for 6 years, and just got 2560x1440 on the desktop. I don't want to go backwards.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes a duck is a duck.
Sometimes Microsoft shit is Microsoft shit.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

I'm not talking about history notes, I'm talking about math and physics.... material where you need equations, charts, diagrams, and figures. How easily can you type me an equation or a chart? I've tried it, to be sure... and even with latex style markup it's just not fast enough. An active digitizer closely approximates the accuracy of pen and paper, something those fat capacitive styluses for the iPad cannot do.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[SomePgmr]

Yeah, people are still emotionally involved in microsoft's failure. It's a hold-over from when they really mattered, and behaved horribly.

Of course that's not so relevant anymore and there's no rational reason to get so worked up over "yet another device" or "yet another windows". I think even microsoft knows that getting traction with a brand new line of tablets with a new tablet-y UI on a new windows, in an already saturated market, is a difficult and risky thing.

We'll see what happens, but I'd guess (only guess) that the surface line will end up being like google's platform references while other companies produce their own, less expensive, more capable tablets with a breadth of options more like we're accustomed to in laptops.

Fire to Nexus to iPad to Surface... it'll be nice to see options filling in the cracks. You'll note the new, larger Nexus and new, smaller iPad. They're each trying to push out from their respective beachheads.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[joh]

It competes with ultrabooks. Unfortunately, it doesn't compare all that favourably to ultrabooks either (about the same price, same weight, smaller screen, no keyboard included), and stealing sales from Wintel ultrabooks doesn't really help Microsoft or Intel.

Yeah, it's a tablet that actually is a laptop that you can't use on your lap and is delivered without a keyboard anyway. Basically it's just an expensive PC that tries hard to look like a tablet. Because tablets are hot right now. So MS thinks that selling a bad tablet that also is a bad ultrabook must sell like hot cakes, because everybody badly wants the "full PC experience" everywhere.

Some people will love that thing, most won't care at all.

I think what MS will never understand is the simple fact that most people just hate PCs.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[truenoir]

The big selling point, to me, is the pen digitizer. Slate PCs and even convertible tablet PCs are relatively uncommon. Pricing is really not bad next to similar machines like the Samsung Series 7 Slate, or even relative to things like a Cintiq for entry level pen-on-screen stuff. It also seems like it'll have a much nicer screen than what's in most existing products to boot. If it was just a capacitive touchscreen with an included stylus like you can get for iPads/etc, then that'd be different. As a dual digitizer device, it actually seems like it'll be a rather attractive product for certain markets.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Don't forget the pressure sensitive digitizer with pen included and palm rest detection. That ain't cheap.

It's going to be very useful for meeting and class notes, especially when combined with One Note.

Not to mention digital art work and photography.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

Anyone else tired of the constant negative stream of non-sequitir flamebait summaries and articles on Windows 8 or even Microsoft/Apple on Slashdot and any and all positive or neutral news being totally ignored?

Let's see...

Monday - Windows 8 PCs Still Throttled By Crapware
Tuesday - Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC.
Thursday - NPD Group Analysts Say Windows 8 Sales Sluggish
Friday - Why Microsoft's Surface Pro Could Fail

Also, note how news on Tuesday that Microsoft has sold 40M Windows 8 licenses so far completely missed Slashdot's front page... only to be briefly mentioned two days later in the NPD story summary. But when there was a rumor that Windows 8 sales were below expectations, there it was hanging on the front page.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[smash]

Yes I've used Windows 8 since the beta. Yes it is terrible. It is NOT superior to iOS or any other OS on the market in terms of UI consitency if you are running the "pro" version which is, lets be honest the only version that has any sort of advantage over any other mobile OS due to the ability to run office/windows software.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[poity]

GP is right in some respects though. Slashdot will nurture even the shittiest open source projects (Openmoko anyone?), and rarely dare print harsh truths about them. Imagine an article that told us Openmoko was destined to fail as it did. That article would have "called a duck a duck", but I can guarantee it would have been deemed FUD, astroturf, written by someone with a grudge, etc. Some of us have a higher expectation of Slashdot, because nerds are supposed to be more intelligent and thoughtful, and we are disappointed when its behavior doesn't rise above the fray.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Joce640k]

It's a compromise, and, like all compromises, you lose one thing but gain another.

In this case you exchange battery life for the ability to run native x86 Windows applications. The iPad can't do that, neither can Android. This is a non-story.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Anyone else tired of the constant negative stream of non-sequitir flamebait summaries and articles on Windows 8 or even Microsoft/Apple on Slashdot and any and all positive or neutral news being totally ignored?

Let's see...

Monday - Windows 8 PCs Still Throttled By Crapware

Tuesday - Hello, I'm a Mac. And I'm a $248 Win8 PC.

Thursday - NPD Group Analysts Say Windows 8 Sales Sluggish

Friday - Why Microsoft's Surface Pro Could Fail

Also, note how news on Tuesday that Microsoft has sold 40M Windows 8 licenses so far completely missed Slashdot's front page... only to be briefly mentioned two days later in the NPD story summary. But when there was a rumor that Windows 8 sales were below expectations, there it was hanging on the front page.

Also Slashdot totally ignored the following:

The NPD survey didn't include the biggest sales day of the year, Black Friday.

Black Friday boosts Windows 8 net use in US above 2% http://microsoft-news.com/black-friday-boosts-windows-8-net-use-in-us-above-2/
Windows 8 sells 4 million copies in 3 days. 40 million in a month. Some apps get more than 1 million downloads and some apps go over $25K revenue.
Windows 8 overtakes all of Android web traffic in just 10 days http://www.androidauthority.com/windows-8-has-more-web-traffic-129925/

New tagline:

Slashdot, Fox News for tech zealots, Stuff that doesn't matter.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

It's great for artists and for non-techies who can't type very well. For people like us, there are also two types of keyboard covers we can choose.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[rtfa-troll]

Have you used Windows 8 for more than 30 seconds in a store? I'm using it right now on a 6-year-old laptop. Windows 8 is just fine. It's certainly superior to IOS in every imaginable way.

I'm guessing you haven't used it much on a tablet Have a look at what the usability testers have to say ("modern UI is a new codeword for Microsoft's Metro interface

The available advice on designing for the "modern UI style" seems to guide designers to create applications with extraordinarily low information density. See, for example

The tablet version of Windows 8 introduces a bunch of complicated gestures that are easy to get wrong and thus dramatically reduce the UI's learnability.

Oh no.. that's not what I was looking for. I guess the visual design must be better than iOS:

The Windows 8 UI is completely flat in what used to be called the "Metro" style and is now called the "Modern UI." There's no pseudo-3D or lighting model to cast subtle shadows that indicate what's clickable

Maybe it's the new powerful features they added over Windows 7?

One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. "Windows" no longer supports multiple windows on the screen

Maybe the sacrifice is worth it because it improves the desktop version?

. On a regular PC, Windows 8 is Mr. Hyde: a monster that terrorizes poor office workers and strangles their productivity.

My only disappointment with the Surface is its low resolution. I've been rocking 1920x1200 for 6 years, and just got 2560x1440 on the desktop. I don't want to go backwards.

For most people it seems that the main disappointment is the low quality of the apps, even where there are any available, and the lack of responsiveness of those apps compared to the swishy interface. Given this, the only thing surface is really good for is acting as a video player. In that role, the low resolution screen is probably less important than in other roles.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[toby34a]

Because tablets are hot right now. So MS thinks that selling a bad tablet that also is a bad ultrabook must sell like hot cakes, because everybody badly wants the "full PC experience" everywhere.

I'm actually pretty sure that with a Core i5 in a 10.6" screen chassis, that this tablet will certainly run pretty hot. 4.5 hours of battery life won't help very much either. It's too much of a compromise. To complete with tablets, you need 8+ hours of battery life. To compete with good ultrabooks, you need that as well. But that adds too much weight with an x86 processor.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Sir_Sri]

Ya, I've been running it since may in various forms. Horrid through and through.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[PCM2]

Also, note how news on Tuesday that Microsoft has sold 40M Windows 8 licenses so far completely missed Slashdot's front page

Sold to whom? To customers? To people who are sitting at desks, right now, running Windows 8? I highly doubt it. Most of those licenses that have been "sold" are to OEMs who have product sitting in the channel (or that hasn't even been produced yet) or to volume-licensing customers who are only really hypothetically buying it; the're not installing it. I say this as someone who's been running Windows 8 almost since it launched -- yes, I'm using it, but nobody else is.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[PCM2]

With Windows 8 and surface there is a definite vibe that it is ready to be a full system builder.

Yeah. "Put me in the game, coach! I'm ready!"

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Sir_Sri]

The main disappointment with windows 8 is that it's inconsistent in how it behaves, and because windows 8 is inconsistent the different types of apps are inconsistent, and it eliminates the most basic useful element of windows, which was simply accessible list of all of the shit on your computer you don't need to scroll through.

Don't get me wrong, Windows 8 has some technical progress, and it might be a useful foundation for windows 9. But it should never have been let out the door in its current form.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Guspaz]

If you look at it from the perspective of it replacing an iPad or Android tablet, sure, you lose one thing but gain another.

But if you compare it to comparably priced Ultrabooks, you're losing keyboard, battery life, disk space, and screen size, and gaining pen-based input and a slight portability edge (it's slightly lighter than an Ultrabook).

When you look at it from that perspective, I'm not sure it's worth the tradeoff. Pen-based input on a computer has failed miserably every time anybody has tried to introduce it, so trading a built-in keyboard for a pen doesn't seem worth it. Some people will love it. Artists, for example. But they were just as well served by Tablet PCs, and then Slate PCs after that.

When I look at the Surface Pro, what I really wonder is what differentiates it from the Slate computers. Surface Pro is about the same size, weight, thickness, performance... It's a bit cheaper, but really, I can't tell how the Surface Pro isn't just another Slate.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Can your iPad run Eclipse or Visual Studio? Or the real Photoshop and not the super crippled lite version? Or the real Matlab?

Does it have a full USB 3.0 port? Can you connect a Nexus to it and debug your Android app that you're developing in Eclipse on it?

Can you run two applications side by side on it? Like a chat or twitter client beside your browser?

Does it have a proper digitizer to take accurate notes on? Does it have a SDXC slot to add or swap 64 or 128GB microsd cards?

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[iHambone]

Go to BestBuy. They've got a whole shelf of what they call "ultrabooks" for under about $500-$600. Although they just look like smaller laptops or bigger netbooks to me. Not even very light-weight. I think the term ultrabook was pretty quickly co-opted by the marketing folks.

Exactly! Those cheap "ultrabooks" don't have the i5 that the Surface Pro does, lack touchscreen capability, eschew SSDs in favor of HDDs, and generally sport lower resolution monitors. You'll definitely be paying more than $999 for a touchscreen ultrabook with an i5 processor, 128 GB SSD and 1080p resolution. This is a high end device, and is priced accordingly.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

Licenses Sold is the same statistic that Microsoft reported during the lifetime of Windows 7, thus it's directly comparable. There were people in 2009 saying the same thing as you, but it turns out that Licenses sold is highly correlated with devices sold by OEMs. Seems like there are some smart people working at Dell, HP, etc. who figure out how much demand there is and buy the appropriate number of components (including OS licenses) so they're not left over with useless inventory (basic supply and demand economics).

As for whether real users are using Windows 8, sales of upgrades are outpacing Windows 7 upgrades... there are no figures by how much, but it's an interesting point nonetheless.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

and stealing sales from Wintel ultrabooks doesn't really help Microsoft or Intel.

The Surface Pro IS Wintel.

It doesn't directly hurt them(in the sense that WinRT makes Intel sad or iPad sales make them both sad); but it is somewhat troublesome for Microsoft's attempts to build a tablet-experience-that-actually-doesn't-suck.

If I'm a developer, and my prospective customers have the choice of buying ultrabooks for $6-$700ish, some with touchscreens; but all with conventional mouse/keyboard, or $999+ Surface Pro devices, only some of which will have a keyboard, fewer a mouse, I'm not going to be overly excited to go all touch crazy. It'd be cheapest and easiest just to re-hash whatever worked on Windows 7, maybe with some token status app widget for 'metro', and only slightly harder to just bump up the button sizes a touch to deal with touch inputs and call it a day.

The weaker "Surface Pro" is against just plain old laptops, the weaker the case for any serious MS-centric tablet development is(which then leaves WinRT out in the cold, with either a very thin software library or a bunch of really crappy ports).

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Col. Klink (retired)]

> Windows 8 overtakes all of Android web traffic

Duh. Windows 8 is available on desktops.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[nojayuk]

Modbook rebuilds Mac Pro hardware into a pen tablet format complete with a Wacom CintiQ display, a bit like the Surface Pro. It costs about 3000 bucks although the pen resolution is not as good and the pressure sensitivity is half that of the 900-buck Surface Pro.

I wonder if the Surface Pro hardware could run OS/X?

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[gbjbaanb]

Windows 8 overtakes all of Android web traffic in just 10 days

security updates are available already?!

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[hey]

The name has a definition.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultrabook

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[tlhIngan]

Windows 8 overtakes all of Android web traffic in just 10 days http://www.androidauthority.com/windows-8-has-more-web-traffic-129925/

Well, Android users don't really USE their phones for the web it seems.

iOS devices seem to take in (depending on who you ask) around 65-80% of mobile web traffic to sites. The rest is mostly Android, but despite Android selling way more than iOS (and being around 75% marketshare), the vast majority of those devices aren't being used for the Internet.

Given that Android phones sell just as cheap as featurephones, it's probably not a surprise people buy them - free featurephone vs. free android phone.

So Windows 8 traffic surpassing Android isn't a huge surprise - despite being the market leader, few Android users actually use it to surf the 'net.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[0123456]

If I wanted to type in application names to run programs, I'd still be using DOS.

If your GUI requires you to type application names to start them, you've just shown that it's a lousy GUI.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[adamstew]

It matters if those licenses that Microsoft has sold to the OEMs in the first month haven't made it to the end users yet. If end users aren't buying computers with Windows 8 on them, then the pace of Windows 8 license sales will slow as OEMs aren't going to keep buying licenses at the same pace. The OEMs will still have enough licenses in their inventory of licenses to put on PCs as they are actually sold to end users.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Pope]

Go to BestBuy. They've got a whole shelf of what they call "ultrabooks" for under about $500-$600. Although they just look like smaller laptops or bigger netbooks to me. Not even very light-weight. I think the term ultrabook was pretty quickly co-opted by the marketing folks.

Fucking LOL. "Ultrabook" is a marketing term that Intel invented to push laptop makers to clone the MacBook Air. "Co-opted" my ass.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[cbhacking]

Pen and also touch. A relatively low battery life for a tablet, but it *is* a tablet; it can run tablet-designed software, it can be operated with your fingers and thumbs while on the bus or the toilet, etc.

As for the keyboard, the Touch Cover and Type Cover both include keyboard and trackpad. The Type Cover is actually a quite nice ultra-thin keyboard. The Touch Cover takes a few minutes to get used to, but works fine. Combined with the Surface's built-in kickstand, they make a decent ultra-portable pseudo-laptop. The covers are stiff enough to be used on your lap, incidentally.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[magic maverick]

Get a Lenovo X230 Tablet. They are actually laptops with a screen that rotates and then you can use it like a tablet. You can choose whether or not to get a finger or a stylus screen. Or you could get a similar convertible type thing from any of the other manufacturer.

Then you don't need to carry around two devices, which is frankly just a little silly...

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[davidbrit2]

Sounds to me like this Surface Pro is going to be the El Camino of tablets. An ugly car, and an under-equipped truck. Now you too can enjoy running Visual Studio with awkward hardware all day, as long as you don't stray too far from an outlet. And all the traditional tablet/mobile use cases get to suffer from the increased bulk and heat, and drastically reduced battery life.

Now, the convertibles like the Iconia W510 could be promising, but that's only if the Atom really can get the battery life competitive with an iPad, and not leave the device frustratingly slow/hot.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[TemporalBeing]

Licenses Sold is the same statistic that Microsoft reported during the lifetime of Windows 7, thus it's directly comparable. There were people in 2009 saying the same thing as you, but it turns out that Licenses sold is highly correlated with devices sold by OEMs. Seems like there are some smart people working at Dell, HP, etc. who figure out how much demand there is and buy the appropriate number of components (including OS licenses) so they're not left over with useless inventory (basic supply and demand economics).

Not necessarily. That may have been true through WinXP, but starting with Vista there was a lot of double-counting (or triple-counting) of licenses going on.

For instance, many low-end laptops are sold with the "Starter Edition", which is cheap for OEMs but almost useless for customers. So customers have to go buy at least another license to upgrade to another version of Windows - e.g. Home Premium; a process which may repeat itself for the same computer. While MS may have sold 2 or more licenses, they have not received 2 or more customers or devices - only one.

Oh, and they don't break down the numbers between licenses sold and how many were upgrades to an existing license (e.g. Win7 Starter->Win 7 Home Premium).

Win8 has the same issues, though more limited than Win7 or Vista since there are not so many editions.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

My Latitude XT circa 2008 was one of these. What I found in my usage is that I liked the tablet side of the spectrum more than the laptop side. That is, while the Lenovo X230 and Latitude XT are laptops that can double as a poor tablet, the surface is a tablet that doubles as a poor laptop, and I think the latter option better suits my needs.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[spire3661]

Why in the fuck would they use DisplayPort??? Its the red-headed step-child of video interfaces. It means 90% of people are going to have to use a stupid adapter dongle.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[spire3661]

I want to see the end. You can call it emotional, i call it justice. Watching MS disintegrate is like watchin Barad'dur fall. All we are waiting for now is the eye to wink out.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

The double counting is fine as long as they're double counting consistently. What's important is that the metric by which Microsoft is counting licenses is increasing exponentially from version to version. This did not happen with Vista. But it did happen with Windows 7, and by my estimation it's happening with Windows 8 as well.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Hopefully you're comparing the unlocked price and not the on-contract prices.

Anyway, that's for a 5.5" 1280x768 display.
The Surface is 10.6" 1920x1080.

That's around 4 times more area and twice the pixels. No idea how much more it would cost though.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Same basic form as the Surface RT which works just fine in the lap. I'm guessing you've not actually tried it.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[w0mprat]

Can your iPad run Eclipse or Visual Studio? Or the real Photoshop and not the super crippled lite version? Or the real Matlab?

Does it have a full USB 3.0 port? Can you connect a Nexus to it and debug your Android app that you're developing in Eclipse on it?

Can you run two applications side by side on it? Like a chat or twitter client beside your browser?

Does it have a proper digitizer to take accurate notes on? Does it have a SDXC slot to add or swap 64 or 128GB microsd cards?

My emphasis. Oh shit: I hadn't thought of that. As an Android nerd that's reason enough for me to get one of these as my next tablet. Ironically this is a tablet you could develop for other tablets on. Surface Pro will also support SATA and will likely have a full-blown SSD. Storage I/O on tablets and right there you have 20-30x the throughput of the shitty cheap NAND controllers that tablets universally have. That halved battery life is because the Surface Pro's real-computer spec will wipe the floor with anything ARM based.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[magic maverick]

I've personally found that my X230 is a pretty good laptop (nor perfect by any means, but I've never seen one of those), that doubles as a good enough tablet. For my needs having an extra device is just silly (I do tend to fly too much though).

As for the Surface, I can't see what it does that the Acer Transformer doesn't. Except that obviously the OS is different (but I wouldn't use Windoze anyway). Not that I've paid any real attention to the Surface. I've got a laptop, I'm not about to buy another device, let alone a Windoze one...

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[TemporalBeing]

The double counting is fine as long as they're double counting consistently. What's important is that the metric by which Microsoft is counting licenses is increasing exponentially from version to version. This did not happen with Vista. But it did happen with Windows 7, and by my estimation it's happening with Windows 8 as well.

Only if you like misleading data. It could be a SEC violation for misleading investors, etc. Only fortunate part for MS is that their biggest investors - Gates, Ballmer, Elop, etc - are all MS employees who know about it and thus won't sue over it.

Re: It doesn't compete with tablets

[GreatDrok]

I have an iPad and a MacBook Air. The air has 7+ hours battery life in my experience and the iPad around 10. The combination is great since I always have a device with enough charge available and in the right form factor. Putting both into one box and dropping the battery life from a combined 17 hours to under 5 is a real step backwards. If I had to choose one I would go with the air because it isn't much bigger than a tablet and works well.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[m4053946]

>>It's competing against Ultrabooks

It's competing against both. If I have to go to the city (by train) for a meeting with a client, I need my laptop. But, I'd prefer not having to break out the laptop on the train to read the news. The current model is to bring multiple devices. The surface model is to bring one device. It's an interesting idea. We'll see if MS pulls it off.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[cduffy]

Can your iPad run Eclipse or Visual Studio? Or the real Photoshop and not the super crippled lite version? Or the real Matlab?

Yes, I can -- through remote control of my desktop, which is big, beefy and cheap.

Also, price matters. If I can buy a Nexus 10, a Nexus 4 and a Chromebook (which, again, can remotely control my real hardware at home) for the same money... why would I want a $1000 device with less battery life than either?

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[mystikkman]

Remoting works properly only on WiFi and will have annoying lag on 3G/4G which is not to mention expensive and comes with bandwidth limits and limits on tethering, and also is a huge battery drain. The Surface Pro is a very useful machine even when totally offline like when not in a coverage area or a bad signal area or building. The Chromebook essentially turns into a paperweight without a constant network connection.

Not to mention charging and carrying around a Chromebook and Nexus 10 together and the charging cables/adapters/covers is cumbersome when you can walk out with just one device.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[roc97007]

Excellent point. And with the tendency to want to display one app at a time, it really does remind one of a DOS environment. I just realized, the lack of shadowing and 3d effects also leads to this impression. So it's DOS, but more confusing. Bonus.

A year or so ago, I complained that with all the rounded corners and semi-transparency and screen gestures (up for full screen, left or right for half screen, etc) we've lost sight of the fact that "Windows" isn't an app. It's a program loader and resource manager. I never thought I'd get to a place where I'd regret saying that.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[shutdown -p now]

You should look at other Win8 Intel devices, though, not just Surface Pro. For development, you'll likely want a larger screen, and definitely a better keyboard. So Asus Transformer Book and Dell XPS 12 might be better candidates. Thinkpad Twist, as well, though that's definitely on the heavy side. Maybe even Samsung ATIV (though its screen resolution sucks).

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[spire3661]

damn it, dont let your logic cloud my hatred for dongles!

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[shutdown -p now]

I've tried Surface RT, and no, it doesn't work "fine" in the lap. At best it's tolerable. Still, the lack of hard surface to prop the support thingy against means that it's rather unstable, and the fact that you can't adjust the angle of the screen for convenient viewing from above is a major hassle.

Which is precisely why I've got Vivo Tab RT instead.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[gtall]

Yeah, most people do hate PCs. In MS's case, I think they thought IOS and OSX were going to converge when Apple figures out the proper way to do it. I don't think that is where Apple is headed, but MS thought they would just get there first and people would come down from the hills to buy up. And I think MS is much more vindictive that Apple even under Jobs. They've seen Apple steal a bit of their lunch and they are pissed. So they are determined to steal some of Apple's.

To make things worse for MS, Google showed that one could also change the marketplace in a different direction. So now we have the bizarre entity MS has become. It is inefficient, it is sluggish, and its markets are getting redefined for it.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Missing.Matter]

Actually Elop sold his shares and Ballmer doesn't even seem to be in the top 5 individual owners. Only 10% of the stock is owned by insiders, the rest being owned by institutional investors. So it seems that either Microsoft is defrauding everyone including the largest institutional investors in the US, or the Licenses Sold metric is a valid way to measure the pace of sales.

Of course, Microsoft has their own spin on the numbers, but if you take the Vista "Licenses Sold" statistics and put them into context with similar statistics reported by Microsoft for other OSes, you can tell the Vista numbers reported at the time were too low to indicate the OS was growing at an acceptable rate. For instance, consider the following chart, which shows reported sales data from Microsoft for W95 - W7, and projections for W8, based on historical trends. You can easily tell that even with all the double counting, Vista sales are far below what you would expect for an OS that is selling well, such as XP or W7. To me, this says the effect of the double counting from upgrades is negligible compared to the sheer volume of regular license sales that make it to end users.

To check the reasonableness of this, take a look at this data in the chart for W7 sales, compared to actual growth reported by market share trackers like statcounter. The linked chart shows relatively linear (R^2 = .99) monotonic growth of Windows 7 after launch, implying a constant per month rate of sales. The Windows 7 "Licenses Sold" data from Microsoft in my chart shows Windows 7 sold on average 20.10 +- 2.2 Million units per month over the course of 36 months.

So to check to see how the "licenses sold" number reflects real adoption of the OS, we could probably look at the ratio of the rates of sales for Vista and W7 in both units sold and marketshare gain. We would expect, that if licenses sold translates to marketshare gain, then these ratios should be the same.

From the statcounter figures, in the period where Vista was on sale but before W7 was released, it gains marketshare at about .61 percentage points per month. Windows 7, after its release, gained market share at about 1.4 percentage points per month, for a ratio of 2.3. The same ratio for average "Licenses Sold" data is 20.01M/9.54M over the same period (12/2008 - 09/2009 for Vista, 12/2009 - 10/2012 for W7), for a ratio of 2.1. That means that either Microsoft understated Windws 7 Licenses Sold by 6.05%, or the overstated Windows Vista licenses by 5.71%, or some combination thereof.... and factor in Piracy which would not count as license sold.

Anyway, the point is that from past data released by Microsoft for "Licenses Sold" and actual data representing actual OS market share growth, the Licenses Sold metric is very nearly identical to and indicative of growth of the OS.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[TheMiddleRoad]

I don't know about all that article has to say. I know that I can have multiple Windows on the desktop, just like Windows 7. I can also switch to the pretty Windows 8 interface. I can also split the screen between the two. I haven't tried to split it more than once, though I probably can. I like how it boots faster than Windows 7, wakes from sleep faster, wakes from hibernation faster, and so on and so on. I'm not upgrading my Windows 7 machines, but I am upgrading anything with Vista or XP. Windows 8 is great. I'm totally happy with it.

Well, the built-in Facebook app and mail apps aren't my favorites. That's mainly because Thunderbird and the web work much better.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[LordThyGod]

So who really cares? While I know (in my all knowing way) what you are talking about, I think if I ask around my family and friends (sadly, mostly non-geeks), I doubt seriously they could care less about these features. And probably would not know even what Eclipse is. So its a niche product at best, with some interesting features.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[thoth]

Can your iPad run Eclipse or Visual Studio? Or the real Photoshop and not the super crippled lite version? Or the real Matlab?

Does it have a full USB 3.0 port? Can you connect a Nexus to it and debug your Android app that you're developing in Eclipse on it?

Can you run two applications side by side on it? Like a chat or twitter client beside your browser?

Does it have a proper digitizer to take accurate notes on? Does it have a SDXC slot to add or swap 64 or 128GB microsd cards?

The problem here is the actual customer base for tablets doesn't care about #1, #2, or #4. Some of the might care about running two apps side by side.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[AlphaWolf_HK]

How is the parent flamebait? Insofar as the price of ipad vs surface surface, you'd be getting a better deal in that the surface pro has access to a much larger software stack (for example you can use the full blown photoshop, mouse and all) in addition to superior hardware for $70 more.

Personally I won't be getting a surface pro (already have a nexus 7, an ipad, and a laptop) but I don't see how the parent is baiting anybody.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I think even microsoft knows that getting traction with a brand new line of tablets with a new tablet-y UI on a new windows, in an already saturated market, is a difficult and risky thing

It is risky, but they really don't have a choice. When the market shifts, you either have to follow it or die trying.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[tftp]

How easily can you type me an equation or a chart?

I have studied before those newfangled laptops became widely available. I wrote my notes on paper, with a very nice ink pen. I wrote faster than most people could type - and much faster when equations and charts and drawings were involved. I do not even understand why would anyone want to use a laptop for such things. Writing and commenting the material is essential for understanding.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[StormyWeather]

I keep trying to launch safari by touching my MacBook screen, but all I get a nasty screen smudges. How exactly did you get yours to work better than windows 8 in touch mode?

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[The Infamous Grimace]

I use Alfred for OS X. Alt-Space, start typing the name of the app you want. Much faster and easier than mousing over to the Dock or using a menu.

My GUI doesn't require me to type in an app name to run it, it just makes it easier to do so. Point-and-click isn't always faster.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[rtfa-troll]

I think the main thing was pressing the on button. After that almost everything works better, including the fact that you don't actually have to reach up to touch the screen to launch programs since it's got a proper desktop computer interface.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[DinDaddy]

This is where we get into what is the definition of fail. I think there is a healthy number of people like you who will buy it for the same reasons. But I think that number will probably get them something like 1 million sales per quarter.

So is that a failure or success? I believe compared to the goals Microsoft has set itself, that is failure.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[DragonWriter]

iOS devices seem to take in (depending on who you ask) around 65-80% of mobile web traffic to sites.

iOS -- especially 6.x -- has some bad behaviors that increase the amount of traffic it consumes for the same functions. Its a bandwidth hog (and, on top of that, a WiFi hog), and generally doesn't play nice with infrastructure.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[Ledgem]

What note-taking apps have you tried? I use Notability, which allows you to split the screen into the normal view and a "zoomed up" view when using the writing mode. This allows you to write characters and figures with large strokes, which gets around the inaccuracy of the fat-tipped iPad styluses, but because you're writing in a magnified box, what you're writing doesn't appear large when you're viewing the document in the normal view. You can scale the magnification box so as to alter the "font size" of what you're writing, as well. You can also set a region in the magnified box such that when one of your written strokes touches it, the magnification box shifts to the right, allowing you to continue writing on the same line. Using this program, I'm able to take written notes about as quickly as if I were writing on paper. It may take some getting used to and I don't imagine that it could work for everyone, but I've been very pleasantly surprised with how well it works. (And if you use a Bluetooth keyboard, Notability does have a typist mode as well, and you can easily switch between the writing and typing modes.)

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[bingoUV]

Ok, so Microsoft won't release real figures for WP sales, talk in riddles in the form of 400% etc, and WE are supposed to take them seriously? Win 8 license sales being meaningless as they could as well be sales to OEMs / corporates with downgrade rights who will actually install Windows 7, but we are supposed to consider it news as if it actually meant something concrete? Chair monkey will publicly condemn craplets, but do nothing to prevent them in their next OS release, but we are not to take notice of the double standard ? And we are still to believe you are not a shill?

Isn't it too much to ask from us poor slashdotters?

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[bingoUV]

No, the internets were full of horror stories of Vista in early days of windows 7, so buyers of windows 7 licenses were actually likely to use them and not exercise the downgrade rights massively. Now the internets are full of stability stories of windows 7, and usability nightmare of windows 8, so users are expected to exercise downgrade rights massively. Not remotely comparable, regardless of your attempts to hide the difference.

Re:It doesn't compete with tablets

[bingoUV]

AND windows 7 didn't need 70% discount to reach those number of licenses sold, like windows 8 did.

Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a stupid person would think this. It is by FAR the most powerful tablet on the market, so obviously the battery life will suffer. To run full x86 applications will drain battery - its the best that it could be at 4 hours without being financially unviable. It's the same amount of battery life that laptop/tablet hybrids that already exist have.

The iPad may have more battery life, but it can't replace a laptop. Pro Surface can, and that is it's killer feature. Battery life at 4 hours is fine (plus, since it supports USB 3.0, how long until someone makes a USB charging block that gives you a full charge that you can carry around with you? Not long is the answer)

Re:Stupid

[alexhs]

It is by FAR the most powerful tablet on the market, so obviously the battery life will suffer.

Which means that it will run hot. Will it be possible to fry eggs on it ? Because it has the possibility to become the best kitchen tool EVER !

Re:Stupid

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

On the other hand, the Surface Pro has little to offer over an ultrabook - it includes a touchscreen. An ultrabook will have better battery life, and an increasing number are becoming available with touchscreens as well. All within the same price target as the Surface Pro. THis is a product looking for a market.

Oh, and ultrabooks all have keyboards - no extra charge.

Re:Stupid

[Missing.Matter]

The difference for people interested in the surface is that it can become laptop-like, while a laptop cannot become tablet-like. They have some that do: convertibles. But they never lose the bulk of their keyboards is tablet form. So there's a continuum here.... for people who want more tablet than laptop there's the surface. For people who want more laptop than tablet there's convertibles all the way to full laptops. No reason to knock the surface because it doesn't fit into the category you prefer; there are options for you and this is not one. Doesn't mean it won't sell to those who want this option.

Re:Stupid

[thetoadwarrior]

My 2 year old 13 inch MacBook Pro is intel based and gets 8 to 10 hrs on the battery easily. There is no excuse for surface getting only 4 hours unless windows just runs that poorly.

Re:Stupid

[smash]

The iPad may have more battery life, but it can't replace a laptop. Pro Surface can, and that is it's killer feature.

The iPad isn't INTENDED to replace a laptop. It doesn't matter how laptop-replacement-worthy your tablet is if it has 4 hours battery life when you need something to work away from an AC power outlet for a day or more. The surface pro is not good enough. You can't use it in the field without being tethered to a power outlet at least twice per working day.

Plenty of people seem to be failing to understand that a tablet is not and never will be a laptop replacement for doing laptop style things. Including microsoft it would appear, who are designing products by committee/feature tickbox sheet without any thoughts as to what it will be used for in the real world.

Re:Stupid

[s.o.terica]

The difference for people interested in the surface is that it can become laptop-like,

Actually, since it doesn't stand upright without a kickstand, what it really becomes is a portable desktop, since you can't use it with a keyboard in your lap, in bed, or on an airline tray table.

Re:Stupid

[poofmeisterp]

It is by FAR the most powerful tablet on the market, so obviously the battery life will suffer.

Which means that it will run hot. Will it be possible to fry eggs on it ? Because it has the possibility to become the best kitchen tool EVER !

Let's just put more fans in it!

In 6 months, offices and homes will sound like active roadways. But you'll have a literally cool tablet running an operating system that doesn't really bring anything to the table that hasn't already been put there.

Re:Stupid

[mystikkman]

The 13" Macbook Pro has a bigger and more powerful battery, I am guessing. The MBA is a better comparison and it's in line with the Surface's battery life. Not to mention the full HD screen on the Surface and the digitizer. Those eat battery.

Re:Stupid

[Guspaz]

The confusing thing is that they could have done better. Ivy Bridge goes down to 10 watts (which Intel says is intended for tablets and ultrabooks), and Haswell will improve on that even more. Putting a 17 watt processor in a tablet is just a bizarre choice.

Re:Stupid

[smash]

no... jobs was all about the tablet being a pc replacement....

Re:Stupid

[UnknowingFool]

I suppose this is where MS (and other OEMs) are at the mercy of Intel. To be ready for an early 2013 release, the hardware manufacturers would have been using older hardware in order to have a stable supply in the future. Depending on newer hardware would have been risky especially if Intel could not guarantee sufficient supply. Using ARM gives OEMs more choice. Also MS does not have the hardware design/supply chain experience that Apple has. For some of their products, Apple worked with Intel on new chips like some of the MacBook Air chips. In exchange for helping Intel, Apple gets first rights to the chips. Most often the chips are available only after Apple has launched a product giving them a six month head start.

Re:Stupid

[trboyden]

Except most ultrabooks under $1500 only have a 720p display. Given that you get a 1080p display and can get a Bluetooth keyboard for $25 (that can work with more than just the Surface), This is an OK deal. However having used netbooks and slates, I personally need at least a 13" or 14" class device with 1080p, so I will be a hold-out until such an ultrabook model with touch becomes available at a more reasonable price. Until then, I'll be lugging my ThinkPad T510. I have an Asus Transformer Prime tablet with keyboard dock, but that is more a toy/living room device than a productive work device.

Re:Stupid

[cbhacking]

It has a built-in kickstand, all the Surface models do. What are you talking about? I've used the Surface RT both on my lap and on an airplane tray table just fine with the kickstand, and when I'm in bed I just use it as a tablet.

Re:Stupid

[vistic]

To run full x86 applications will drain battery

Huh?

Re:Stupid

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I find the new Lenovo (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/lenovo-thinkpad-tablet-2) very tempting. Also runs x86 apps but uses a lower power adam processor so it claims 10 hours battery life. Also, no fan so it's light and thin, and has a pen. This is what the Surface RT should have been imo.

Re:Stupid

[Barlo_Mung_42]

I'm guessing you've not actually tried it. Surface RT works just fine in my lap and on a try table.

Re:Stupid

[sheddd]

This should meet your needs; just plug in a USB hub!

Re:Stupid

[gtall]

The real question is WHY would you want to run 86 apps on a pad? I've never seen a convincing argument for that. MS is merely using the only trick they know, i.e., tie everything they do into winders. They are essentially a one trick pony attempting to put different colored lipstick on everything they do.

Re:Stupid

[shutdown -p now]

. They have some that do: convertibles. But they never lose the bulk of their keyboards is tablet form.

That depends on the convertibles. Asus Vivo Tab (both RT and Intel ones) and Transformer Book, Samsung Ativ, and HP ENVY x2 are all convertibles with detouchable keyboards. I have Vivo Tab RT, and I must say that it's much more convenient than Surface, because it operates exactly like a tablet (hard keyboard base that can be used on any surface or on the laps, close like a clamshell etc), but I can detach it and use it like a true tablet as well - and it's actually 150 grams lighter than surface in that mode!

Re:Stupid

[Missing.Matter]

Yes, I like the Vivo tab a lot, and considered getting it, but I decided I really want a tablet with a digitizer, since I used it so much on my old tablet pc. But this is the beauty of a model that does not tie hardware to software like the iPad. Slashdot is so transfixed on how the Surface is doing and whether it's selling because they want to see MS fail. But so far the Surface has limited distribution, limited to Microsoft channels and mostly the US. And there are other Windows RT tablets out there that do nearly the same thing, but come in different configurations and price points that might appeal to someone more than the surface. If someone chooses the Vivo Tab RT over the Surface RT, that's not a loss for Microsoft.

Microsoft doesn't need to sell more Surfaces than Apple sells iPads, just like any one Android model doesn't need to sell more units than iPhone to outpace iOS adoption.

Re:Stupid

[thetoadwarrior]

You're right, it has a fairly wide and thin battery that takes up lot of the area within the macbook. I won't deny that but a Surface pro isn't exactly tiny compared to a 13" MBP. There's little reason there can't be a battery in it the height and width of the machine and giving it the same battery life. Hell, even if it were half the size, it should give more than 4 hours. It's screen size isn't vastly better. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's effectly the same as my MBP and why would should a pen take that much from battery life? 8 to 10, from my experience even include surfing the net and watching youtube videos (obviously not for 8 hrs straight). I managed to get over 10 hours out of it despite the fact Apple only claimed 10 on it.

If it were cheaper than a laptop fine. But it's as expensive as a pretty decent laptop and the battery life of a poor laptop. That's unacceptable. The ancient thinkpad I'm on now has ubuntu 12.04 on it which is apparently notorious for eating through battery and it still tops the surface pro battery life and that is powering a 1400 x 1050 laptop monitor and a 40 inch TV as a second monitor.

Sorry but there is no justifying a 4 hour battery life. That is pretty shit in this day and age.

Re:Stupid

[BronsCon]

Running full-on x86 desktop apps on a tablet is nothing new, you're right. Microsoft was doing this a decade ago, and they're still the only ones doing it.

Re:Stupid

[BronsCon]

For the average consumer, yes. For the average "person who makes stuff", no.

*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a full-blown Windows 8 laptop in a tablet form factor, stop comparing it to the iPad, the Galaxy Tab, the Playbook, the TouchPad, the Xoom, the Transformer Prime, etc....

Re:*facepalm*

[marcosdumay]

Ok, so let's compare it with full-blown laptops, that are both more powerfull and cheaper.

Re:*facepalm*

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Show it to the average consumer and ask them what it is. They won't tell you its an "ultrabook" ( and they wouldn't even if they knew what that was) they'll say "tablet" and compare it to ... other tablets.

Its like porshe comming out with a new model that looks idetnical to a toyota yaris. They need an easy way for consumers to tell where the extra money and reduced fue effiencincy is going. The nameplate of porshe helps, but you could also show them different performance specs and have them test drive it a bit. Microsoft needs to do something to make it easy to explain to people why its differnt than other tablets. Oh wait, they already have an identical looking device that does behavie like a tablet in surface with windows RT. That would be like porshe developing two cars identical to the yaris, one with great performance you'd expect of porshe and antother that has performance on par with the yaris. Basically, MS is screwed. That's too dificult to explain to enough people.

Re:*facepalm*

[wiedzmin]

And have keyboards stuck to them.

Re:*facepalm*

[SJHillman]

But full-blown laptops are also less portable... you do pay more money for that portability. For some people, it's worth it... much the same reason some people pay more money for a laptop over a desktop with the same specs.

Re:*facepalm*

[Drummergeek0]

Yes, and larger, and heavier. You are paying for the form factor. Shall I compare you laptop to a much more powerful desktop that was cheaper?

Re:*facepalm*

[oGMo]

When you're tethered to a power outlet, that's not "more portable". That's less portable.

Re:*facepalm*

[omnichad]

Or with the Macbook air, which is the same price and has better battery life.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

Alas, the power/price ratio hasn't been the only selling point since the major manufacturers' race to the bottom in terms of build quality and profit margins. Now it seems people are actually willing to pay a little more for devices if they offer features they care about such as touch screen and digitizers. Problem is, for a couple years now computers have become powerful enough that even the least powerful systems on the market accommodate the average person's daily tasks (facebook, web browsing, youtube, etc.) easily. Now they're looking for features that are beyond specifications.

From yesterday's NPD NPD story, which focused on slowing desktop/laptop sales but failed to touch on the following:

Average selling prices of Windows computing devices have jumped significantly this year. Last year, overall ASP was $433 while this year’s ASP over the past four weeks has risen to $477. Windows 8 notebooks have seen a nearly $80 rise in selling prices versus the prior year, propelled by the aforementioned strong performance of touchscreen devices and a solid uptick in the pricing on mainstream notebooks. Windows 8 desktop ASPs were also strong with selling prices up nearly 10 percent, driven by the same factors as notebook sales.

Slashdotters say touch screens on laptops and desktops are insane, but it's clear to me the general population enjoys them - and are willing to pay for them. My girlfriend uses the touch screen on my old tablet PC to click on shortcuts and scroll pages when she has a keyboard and mouse right in front of her. My parents have an HP TouchSmart they enjoy. My old university had those TouchSmarts in libraries and public areas, students routinely used the touch screen instead of mice (but not keyboard). The surface and other x86 tablets like it offer a full blown touch interface unlike previous Windows generations, and the hardware to go along with it, and that's something those cheaper more powerful laptops don't offer that consumers might be willing to pay for.

Re:*facepalm*

[MightyMartian]

Thus making them considerably more useful for running legacy apps.

Re:*facepalm*

[Just Some Guy]

It weighs almost as much as an entry level MacBook Air, and is thicker on average. The MBA has much better battery life. How is the Surface Pro more portable?

Re:*facepalm*

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the worst of both worlds.

If you want to use it as a tablet, it fails. Tablets with better specs and a better OS are half the price and have far better battery life. It's also too big and too heavy.

If you want to use it as a laptop, it fails. No real keyboard, bad specs, low battery life, and still too expensive.

Microsoft is trying to make a market for it, but it won't work. Nobody wants what they're pushing, and especially not at this price. Microsoft is making the exact same mistakes they've always made with this tech - trying to force standard Windows onto everything.

Re:*facepalm*

[joh]

Yeah, and people desperately WANT Tablet PCs, this is the reason Tablet PCs were such a hit since about 2000. Wait...

Re:*facepalm*

[toriver]

but hopeless for working on while carrying them around. Well, compact desktops are useful, too, I guess...

Re:*facepalm*

[thesandtiger]

Compare it to full-blown laptops that are also touchscreen tablets and the Pro is still overpriced and underperforming.

I just wanted to cover the "but but it's a taaaaablet, not a laptop!" counter to your very valid point :)

What's funny is that if ever there was a person who would have a need for a "pro" tablet, it's me - but the Surface just can't come close in value to what I went with.

Re:*facepalm*

[smash]

Yup, and this is exactly what you get when a device is designed to have maximum feature tickbox coverage without any thought as to what it will be used for. In an effort to include everything, it sucks at everything.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

It also has much lower PPI (135.09 for the air vs. 207.82 for the surface) and lower absolute resolution. Also weighs more and has larger dimensions, and no touch screen or digitizer.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

Because its occupied volume while being used is much lower. To use the Air or any other notebook you have open it, at which point it takes up much more space than when it is closed. Ever been in a meeting, a presentation, or sales situation where you had something to show on a laptop, and tried to pass it around the room? Ever tried to use a laptop while walking, standing (not at a desk or table), or on a ladder... or pretty much anywhere when a lap isn't involved (they're called laptops for a reason)? I'd say laptops like the air are portable only insofar as they are able to be transported... but they are not usable while said transporting is taking place, whereas a table surely is.

Re:*facepalm*

[KingMotley]

But you aren't tethered to a power outlet. Portable doesn't mean you can use something while moving it, just that it is easier to move.

Most people don't need ungodly amounts of battery. For me, 4 hours is plenty. Enough to allow me to carry it from the office to the train, sit on the train and use it for an hour, then carry it from the train to my car. I have power both at my house and at the office, so for 95% of my use cases, the extra weight of a full laptop (or larger battery) is unwanted.

In fact, there have been many years in which I would have taken a laptop/tablet with *NO* battery. I didn't need to use it while moving it, and all I cared about was a powerful, portable device that I could move from home to office and I would never have used it when I wasn't at one or the other. However, faster internet speeds and decent syncing software has eliminated my need for most of that (albeit, there are cases in which I would have liked owning my own hardware rather than the company supplied pieces of crap, and would have bought it for my own use if the company didn't directly tell me that they wouldn't allow me to connect it to the network AT ALL when I got to the office -- sigh).

Re:*facepalm*

[Kergan]

but hopeless for working on while carrying them around. (...)

until you start typing with the device onto your lap.

Re:*facepalm*

[omnichad]

Well there's nothing out there that's identical to the Surface. But if you're going to pick a device to compare to, it beats comparing to an iPad - with no full desktop OS.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

Well there's nothing out there that's identical to the Surface.

Precisely, which is why this whole article and most comments are nonsense... one camp says iPad is better than Surface for X reasons, the other camp says laptops/ultrabooks are better than surface for Y reasons, but no hardly anyone is considering there are people out there who don't want an iPad because of what Surface can do that it can't, and who don't want an ultrabook because it can't do what surface can, and are perfectly in the Surface's niche.

I'm wondering if these are some of the same people who said netbooks are better when the iPad came out, because they have more apps, are cheaper, etc. and completely miss the point that the iPad can be used in a different way than netbooks, just like Surface can be used in a different way than iPad/ultrabooks.

Re:*facepalm*

[poofmeisterp]

Yup, and this is exactly what you get when a device is designed to have maximum feature tickbox coverage without any thought as to what it will be used for. In an effort to include everything, it sucks at everything.

That's interesting that you say that... I agree 100%.

Something that crossed my mind earlier this week was the fact that this is the first Microsoft product I remember (sans Bob) that has actually
a.) been carefully scrutinized pre-purchase
b.) purchased only initially by a few people who want the new and cool thing
c.) has been reported to suck (I'll just leave it at that) by a massive amount of those people and
d.) actually DOESN'T have people STILL going out to buy craploads more of it despite all of the above points

In other words, it's not a typical (and I use that word tightly here) Microsoft pre-experience and post-failure buyer-self-approval massive sale success.
 
*breathes*

Re:*facepalm*

[WaffleMonster]

Slashdotters say touch screens on laptops and desktops are insane,

I think this is pretty much a universal consensus. If there are any questions sit in front of a desktop and hold your arm out straight in front of you for an hour then come back here and let us all know how much you enjoyed the experience.

Re:*facepalm*

[MrEdofCourse]

I've had a variety of tablets, phones and notebooks, and the number of use cases "on a ladder" is pretty low. Certainly the number of cases where I'd much rather have a solid case and keyboard like with a MacBook Air versus a Surface is much higher. I think that's true with most people. There may be specialized fields where this isn't the case, but are those that need a "tablet on a ladder" needing to run the full version of Office or legacy apps? Or would they be better suited with a real tablet that has dedicated apps?

To me, the Surface RT seems like too small of a fragmented niche that won't have sufficient development and be abandoned by Microsoft, while the Surface Pro seems like the same old tablet strategy that Microsoft did for a decade without success before the iPad.

I think a better strategy for Microsoft would've been to develop the market for the Surface Pro only, and start of with a very aggressive price point and be ready for the market to really take off when Haswell arrives.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

Except this is not at all an accurate representation of how such a device is used. It's like saying a mouse is terrible because if you constantly click for an hour your finger will hurt, or a keyboard is a bad device because you can get carpel tunnel through extended use.

Seems like you failed to read the rest of the sentence, because I talk about exactly how my girlfriend uses the touchscreen on my laptop. To elaborate, if she is browsing the internet she might tap a link, which is faster than moving the mouse to the link on a trackpad and clicking. Or she might scroll the page, which isn't faster then pressing page down... but she doesn't seem to care even after I pointed this out to her. Either way, she's not holding her hands in front of her constantly like a zombie for hours, but using an alternative input device along with others (touchpad and keyboard) where it makes sense and is comfortable (at least to her).

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

True, as you've taken my most ridiculous example, but for the general case of using a computer in places either than a lap or desk, the tablet form factor is much preferred. For the ladder example I had in mind my uncle, who is a contractor and now uses ruggedized tablets on the job for that very reason.

I firmly believe that the intersection of people who appreciate the tablet form factor but also would like to use legacy apps is large enough to sustain x86 Windows 8 tablets, especially in business and education.

Re:*facepalm*

[0123456]

To elaborate, if she is browsing the internet she might tap a link, which is faster than moving the mouse to the link on a trackpad and clicking..

Must be a pretty lousy trackpad if you can press a link faster than clicking it. Particularly when you take account of the number of times you accidentally press the wrong link because the text is a fraction the size of your finger and have to go back and do it again.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

I routinely press links the fraction of the size of my finger on my phone and iPad without zooming in. It's not as hard as you're making it out to be. Besides, the real time investment is moving the mouse to the target location especially if it's far away, not overshooting, etc. Targeting with a finger is just easier and more natural. By way of coincidence, this just popped up in my RSS feed:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/11/30/3710900/gorilla-arm-touchscreen-laptop-windows-8-apple

We've been looking at this all wrong. A touchscreen isn't a replacement for a keyboard or mouse, it's a complement. If I want to type things on my laptop and have enough room to comfortably open that clamshell and stretch out my arms, the keyboard's still my best bet. I'm not going to touch-type 70 words per minute on a touchscreen keyboard. But when I'm in the cramped quarters of a train, plane, or standing in a line — say, when the only thing standing between a critical email and its recipient is a few dozen words and a tap of the button marked "Send" — I can grab that Windows 8 laptop by its hinged section, one hand on either side of the screen, and tap out that message with my thumbs.

This is exactly what I'm saying. Best tool for the job. Best example I've encountered actually is scale/translate/rotate in photoshop. Currently scaling, rotating, and translating a layer in photoshop are serial operations, you have to perform one after another. This makes the process of properly resizing and placing an layer iterative: move it, then rotate it, then scale it, repeat until perfect. With touch, all three operations can be performed at once, with pinch, pan, and rotate gestures. Touch on a laptop or desktop would be much more productive in this situation, and I can think of many others. To unilaterally call it unusable is nearsighted.

Re:*facepalm*

[cbhacking]

Plus you can't separate the keyboard from the screen for a device that easily be used while walking around, or can be easily passed around a table...

Re:*facepalm*

[0123456]

I firmly believe that the intersection of people who appreciate the tablet form factor but also would like to use legacy apps is large enough to sustain x86 Windows 8 tablets, especially in business and education.

How often do you plan to be writing Word documents on a ladder?

Re:*facepalm*

[spire3661]

Every normal consumer on the planet is going to compare it to tablets. Thats the discussion.

Re:*facepalm*

[spire3661]

Here is the rub. A touchscreen on a desktop is a nice addition, but it has cost and will be used only in limited ways. It cant really be considered a primary input for very long. I get what you are saying, but price and absolute usefullness are still against you. This will change as time goes on.

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

Did I say I would? What I might be doing on a ladder is performing a building inspection, editing a form (maybe even a Word based form) with a stylus. Just you don't do this one example doesn't negate the fact that a laptop is not a suitable form factor for this particular example. Like I said, take any profession or activity that does not involve the formation of a lap, or any job that is dirty or cramped, and a laptop is a near useless form factor. For instance, doctors, coaches, contractors, teachers, engineers, musicians, writers, scientists, artists, mechanics, chefs... I can think of dozens of ways a tablet like the Surface is more useful than a laptop for these professions, especially with respect to integration of currently available software and infrastructure (Things like natively supporting USB drives and file operations for instance).

Re:*facepalm*

[Missing.Matter]

This will change as time goes on.

Agreed. But this is not reason to resist their adoption now. When the mouse was introduced, very few applications let alone operating systems took full advantage of them, and for a long time the keyboard was still a better and more efficient input. But because we didn't throw the mouse into the cupboard of curiosities and lock it away, and instead allowed it to exist along side the keyboard, today computers are much more usable and accessible. NPD is finding indications that people are actually willing to pay a little more for touch screens now, which probably reflects they see them as a feature that adds value to their computer. The prevailing attitude and common wisdom on Slashdot is that a touch screen on a laptop or desktop is a ludicrous idea and only morons and masochists would use such a thing. I think this is the wrong attitude and doesn't reflect actual popular sentiment.

Re:*facepalm*

[shutdown -p now]

It depends on your weight tolerance. Surface Pro with keyboard cover attached is just slightly over 1 kg. Dell XPS 12 is 1.5 kg. For many people, that's not that big of a difference - both are already way too heavy to comfortably use in one hand, so you'll need to use both hands either way.

Re:*facepalm*

[CaptSlaq]

Show it to the average consumer and ask them what it is. They won't tell you its an "ultrabook" ( and they wouldn't even if they knew what that was) they'll say "tablet" and compare it to ... other tablets.

Its like porshe comming out with a new model that looks idetnical to a toyota yaris. They need an easy way for consumers to tell where the extra money and reduced fue effiencincy is going. The nameplate of porshe helps, but you could also show them different performance specs and have them test drive it a bit. Microsoft needs to do something to make it easy to explain to people why its differnt than other tablets. Oh wait, they already have an identical looking device that does behavie like a tablet in surface with windows RT. That would be like porshe developing two cars identical to the yaris, one with great performance you'd expect of porshe and antother that has performance on par with the yaris. Basically, MS is screwed. That's too dificult to explain to enough people.

It wasn't a Yaris, and it wasn't Porsche, but you're close on both counts:
http://www.astonmartin.com/cars/cygnet
Hello Scion/Toyota iQ!

Re:*facepalm*

[danomac]

Its like porshe comming out with a new model that looks idetnical to a toyota yaris.

Yes, but just imagine the looks of other supercar owners that saw a Yaris pass them at high speed. That would be priceless!

Re:*facepalm*

[BronsCon]

...at which point you're not longer carrying it around. That was a nice try, though.

Re:*facepalm*

[BronsCon]

Ruggedized tablets.... Oh, how I miss my Kalidor 2000. 16Mhz 386 CPU, 4GB of RAM, 40MB hard disk, used to store it in a bucket of water and drop-kick it across the room to dry it off before using it and it just didn't give a fuck. It was stolen and had I caught the guy who stole it, I would have used it to bludgeon him to death, then typed out my police statement on it while waiting for them to arrive.

Re:*facepalm*

[BronsCon]

Compare it to digitizer tablets that also function as displays and you're getting a discount *and* a full-on PC.

Re:*facepalm*

[bingoUV]

Human concentration is limited. During actually walking around or while in awkward postures, a human cannot be expected to do heavy inputting into a device. Only reading from the device, and light input like checking a box, one or two words typing at a time etc are humanly possible. (The multi-tasking geniuses like the guy who writes independent texts with both the hands are an extremely small niche, though.)

Such light inputting is highly unlikely to be a specialized application, because the problem can be reduced to collecting input at "run time" and later collating into the specialized application.

All the entrenched windows applications like pro-engineer, AUTOCAD, Photoshop, visual studio etc. need heavy input concentration and cannot be humanly used effectively while on the go. The ones that can be, are easily reduced to a webapp or an application for IOS, Android or WINRT.

It's not competing with tablets

[Anonymous Coward]

The jury is still out, of course, but I'm going to take a hard look at the Surface Pro because it's an ultra portable, fully powered laptop. I have a Nexus 7 and they are in no way comparable. The Nexus is for light websurfing and gaming on the couch, the Surface could be for professional use as my main work computer.

But oh so much more power...

[Anonymous Coward]

Decent CPU, memory and hi-res display. Four-to-five hours is good commuting/coffee shop time, so while its a not a perma-road-warrior machine, its not horrible.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/microsoft-takes-the-wraps-off-surface-pro-tablets-018506.php

Re:But oh so much more power...

[93 Escort Wagon]

Decent CPU, memory and hi-res display. Four-to-five hours is good commuting/coffee shop time, so while its a not a perma-road-warrior machine, its not horrible.

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/microsoft-takes-the-wraps-off-surface-pro-tablets-018506.php

And we saw how well this model worked for them the last time around...

Basically this is pretty much the same tablet paradigm they offered a decade ago.

Re:But oh so much more power...

[smash]

but you can plug in a shitty keyboard now!!!!

Forget battery life - price is way too high

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Forget battery life - price is way too high.

I'd love to have a 7-8 inch Surface...if the price was around $250-280 and it included Microsoft Office. Instead, I'm moving my wife and kids Nexus 7s ($200/pop) and hooking them up to Google Docs. I've even abandoned my iPad/iPod infrastructure at this point - tablets are way too fragile (and easily stolen) to be paying $400+ for each one.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[ischorr]

Then this is clearly the wrong device for your needs, and it's not intended to be. The Surface RT would be a device aimed closer at you, though it'd be too expensive as well per your criteria.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[Cinder6]

Much as I agree it would be a cool thing at that price, $250 isn't much more than a full version of Office. Remember that Microsoft makes its money from software sales. I just don't see this happening, but it would be interesting to be wrong on this count.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[raftpeople]

"I'd love to have a 7-8 inch Surface" - Most people would but you just need to be happy with what God gave you

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[phantomfive]

Then who is the device intended to be sold to? The same people who've been buying Windows tablets for the last ten years, and were unpopular?

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[thesandtiger]

I'm on the opposite end - my use case recently changed and I needed a more powerful tablet (I was using an iPad2 for walkaround site visits), so I grabbed a ThinkPad X230T. With decent factory specs and some upgrades bought from Newegg (ssd, more RAM) it ran me $1030, and I get a battery life of 9.5-11 hours with the extended battery.

Surface Pro just seems like a product stuck in the not-so-sweet spot. People who need just a tablet can go with any number of choices (iPad, Galaxy, whatever) and people who need a tablet+, which is what the Pro seems to be going for, can just get a much better device for around the same price.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[thesandtiger]

The problem is that there are better devices at or just below this price point that have pretty much the same use-case as a Surface Pro.

Maybe I'm not being terribly imaginative, but I can't see a use case where the Pro meets form factor, function and price point while being a better value than many, many other tools.

And, it's aimed at "Pro" users - who will shop around and who likely have no particular loyalty to Microsoft.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[sandytaru]

People like my husband, who not only want one device that does everything, but also want something as powerful as their current desktop replacement laptops. He's aiming to get a Surface Pro when his laptop kicks the bucket (likely to happen in the next six months since it just rolled over the five year old mark.) He thinks my Kindle is cute but useless for anything but reading, my cheap laptop is too weak for any of his serious work, my smart phone is annoying, and my server class workstation is non portable so it's right out of the equation.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[gtirloni]

"Pro" doesn't always mean "Advanced user at home". Sometimes it's equal to "Enterprise with lots of Microsoft products (and cash)".

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[DavidD_CA]

$1030 for an X230T? That sounds like a pretty amazing price. They're listed right now (on NewEgg and Amazon) for just over $1300.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[bondsbw]

It is for people who desire to purchase both a tablet and a laptop. They save a lot of money over purchasing two separate devices, and never have to worry about having left their other device at home.

Ok, so the same can be said about Windows tablets for the last decade. But older Windows tablets were too underpowered to be a laptop replacement, and their usability restricted them from much use as a mobile device. They were poorly designed for their purposes.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[bondsbw]

How many other devices act as both a tablet and a laptop, and do justice to both use cases?

If you want a tablet OR a laptop, go get something else. If you want two devices in one, for the cost of one, Microsoft wants to sell you a Surface Pro.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[thesandtiger]

That is very likely with some factory installed upgrades. On the Lenovo site right now - without any affiliate bennies right now - you can get the stock X230T for - little over 900. When I look at it with my affiliated service (Barnes & Nobel Gold) it's a bit less than that.

Lenovo is like Dell - they have some amazing deals frequently enough tha anyone who wan can take advantage if hey are slightly patient.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[thesandtiger]

I posted in another thread about this about the ThinkPad X230T. Buying from Lenovo with an affiliated discount (I have a discount from Barnes & Noble Gold but there are tons of others) and being smart about upgrading after purchase (buying 16GB of RAM and a 240GB SSD from Newegg) my total, with a good warranty and all taxes, was a but under $1050.

The X230T blows the Surface Pro away and is a very good tablet and laptop.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[shutdown -p now]

How many other devices act as both a tablet and a laptop, and do justice to both use cases?

You can start here for a very incomplete list.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[DavidD_CA]

Heh. Okay. So first, that's a Cyber Monday deal. Not sure if you can count that against the list price of another item. But whatever.

The X230 for $920 has a HDD, not the SDD that the Surface Pro has. Further, there is no Bluetooth, only a 3-cell battery, it has Windows 7, the keyboard is not detachable to my knowledge, and appears to only have the one camera.

Don't get me wrong. I love Lenovo. But you cannot say the Surface Pro at $899 is too expensive, and point to the Lenovo X230T as a better alternative.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[stephanruby]

Forget battery life - price is way too high.

I'd love to have a 7-8 inch Surface...if the price was around $250-280 and it included Microsoft Office. Instead, I'm moving my wife and kids Nexus 7s ($200/pop) and hooking them up to Google Docs. I've even abandoned my iPad/iPod infrastructure at this point - tablets are way too fragile (and easily stolen) to be paying $400+ for each one.

If your kids need to write more than just a few words, or more than a few paragraphs for school, then they'll need a tablet with an integrated keyboard/trackpad like the Android Asus Transformer, or the Microsoft Surface (I do not recommend getting a third party bluetooth keyboard with a standalone tablet). The Asus Transformer does cost $350, so it's still less than half the price of a Surface, but $350 is still outside of your price range. So I'll recommend you something else.

The $200 Asus Nexus 7 is great for media, games, and browsing/reading, but it's not that great for typing and cutting and pasting. So instead of multiple "Nexus 7s", I'd suggest you get at least one Samsung Chromebook and one (or two) Nexus 7s. The Chromebook is not Android-based, it's not touch-based, and it's obviously not as fun a device as an Android tablet, but it comes at $250 a pop, it weighs little, it turns on instantly, it comes with an 11.6 inch screen, it has incredible battery life, and it's great for things like email and typing essays (and sharing the same device between multiple family members/guests).

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[thesandtiger]

I did not buy mine with a Black Friday deal. Lenovo offers sales all the time and it is also stupidly easy to get an affiliation discount on top of it. Literally anyone can sign up for the B&N Gold one, for example, which is what got me mine. After buying an SSD from Newegg and more RAM I had a much more functional machine for not much more that he surface would be - had I gone with the standard warranty, in fact, it would have been less (even with the after purchase addons) less than the Surface Pro. I'm not sure what you're on about with the 3-cell battery since even with that little battery it would have battery life comparable (better actually) an the Surface Pro.

My point here is still the same: the Surface Pro simply isn't compelling at that price point. There are more capable machines that can fulfill the same role (tablet that also can have a keyboard and be used as a laptop) with better specs for about the same price. It doesn't have the drool factor that makes people buy iPads, either. There's just no real reason for it to exist and so many reasons for it not to.

It is an ok piece of kit, just not at that price. Ad then on top of it it only has 4 hour battery life which totally defeats the purpose of a tablet. If you've got to be tethered to an outlet you might as well just use a laptop.

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[DinDaddy]

What percentage of the tablet buying public or like your husband? Enough to make the surface pro a success?

Re:Forget battery life - price is way too high

[norpy]

If he's using a 5 year old laptop he is not doing serious work on it.
It's probably a core2, probably 32 bit. Definately slow, hot and hungry for power by today's standards.

You can get some legs out of an older laptop by replacing the spinning disk with an SSD, but at that point you are spending 30% of the cost of a faster replacement for a slight extension in life when the rest of the laptop is starting to become pretty worthless.

Re:Too Expensive

[Anonymous Coward]

You can get a real laptop that does more, has more flexibility, more processing power/ram/storage/battery life/choice of operating system, for less.

In other words, "no sane price point. Less battery life than an iPad. Lame."

(Welcome back, CmdrTaco!)

Not surprised

[_0x783czar]

I'm not exactly shocked by this, with more power comes more power consumption. Although I can see how this can be a downside when one is evaluating the usefulness of the device for their purposes. I'm not a fan of Microsoft Products, but I can see why it would be tough to overcome this (at least in the first iteration).

Re:Flash memory prices

[skipkent]

Apple pays about 42 bucks per 64gb chip. I'm sure MS isn't getting as good of a deal, yet at least... I'm assuming the markup isn't some insane amount for what most people would think is a premium feature.

Space

[Anonymous Coward]

It will be very hard to convince people to use a Surface Pro as their all-in-one device when you are left with a little more than 32 Gb of space on a 899$ device.

Re:Space

[ReptileQc]

I just realized while reading TFA that at these prices, it won't even come with the keyboard included. So add another ~100$ for the touch or type cover!

So then...

[BillCable]

... it'll join the Surface and Windows Phone? Perhaps they should stick to video game consoles...

Re:Too Expensive

[autocannon]

Does more? No.
More Flexibility? No.

More hardware options? Yes.

The question is, do you want tablet form factor or laptop?

Consider, to do any real work on a laptop (ie not watching video or reading the interwebz), you need a separate keyboard and mouse and probably a bigger monitor. May as well have the dock then; so how portable is that laptop for getting anything done? The Surface has the click on attach whatever keyboard and touch screen. I really think the Surface has a chance to show a way ahead where laptops become an outdated option. I know that's a stretch for some to think of right now, but at the concept of what the Surface is trying to do seems valid IMO.

Too expensive!

[kencurry]

It's just too expensive; only clueless, rich snobs with more money than brains can afford it!

Sincerely,
Apple User

Re:Too expensive!

[Anonymous Coward]

WOOSH!

Re:Too expensive!

[toriver]

That was uncalled for: the poor man might be an Android user with no sense of humor.

Re:Too expensive!

[MachineShedFred]

an Android user with no sense of humor.

You just said two things that mean the same thing. Ba dum PSH!!!

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

consensus is they can make one hell of a keyboard though! :D

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[wiedzmin]

When was the last time you have heard of the red ring of death, and what is wrong with Zune hardware?

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[SJHillman]

What about XP? Windows 7? The entire server family of Windows? MS Office in general other than one UI aspect that some people like and others don't like? They make some pretty good software. Sure, they've had some blunders like Bob, Clippy, Me and Vista... but even those provided some insight and innovations that MS could use later on. I expect Windows 8 to be another insight-provider, but it's too early to call.

In spite of RRoD issues, the Xbox and 360 have still been wildly popular... I'd call it a success by most relevant metrics. They tried the Zune... it didn't work as planned, although marketing played a major part in its failure above and beyond any technical failures.

Can they do anything right?

[Luveno]

Reflecting back, it is sort of amazing how far Microsoft has fallen. From being nearly synonymous with everything computer related to now being the last one you think of when it comes to the technology that is nearest to us (our cell phones and tablets), it is stunning. And everything they make now looks like a desperate me-too move. Even more broadly, just a few years ago I was working in all Microsoft platforms from server and web development to desktop and office automation. Now, with the exception of Exchange, I don't even see Microsoft products. Amazing.

Re:Can they do anything right?

[chispito]

Perhaps their performance as a company is not always accurately reflected by Slashdot headlines, or the comments therein.

Re:Can they do anything right?

[smash]

They have no direction. All the smart people left and either retired or went to work for Google or Apple. Microsoft are just blindly firing money in all directions hoping to hit something at this point, but with design-by-committee products like this, they're not likely to get anywhere.

Re:Always about Microsoft

[DickBreath]

> Why don't we have an article on why Linux failed on the desktop?

Okay, here's your article about why Linux failed on the desktop. Explanation is simple. Microsoft has had a powerful entrenched monopoly on the desktop. The phenomena of software lock-in is very real. IBM learned this in the 60's. Competing desktop OSes never stood a chance. Does that answer your question about Linux on the desktop? It doesn't matter how good any competitor is against an entrenched monopolist.

In areas where Microsoft does not have an entrenched monopoly, it does not know how to compete. Competition is not even in their DNA. They have never had to compete. I don't think they even know how to compete on a level playing field. They cannot participate in a competitive market on their own merits. They simply must resort to dirty tricks. It's like predicting the sun rising in the East. It's like when long distance monopoly was broken and AT&T did not know how to compete on long distance. Sprint and MCI ate their lunch.

Furthermore, Microsoft has no vision. None. Zero. Every product from Microsoft has been copied from someone else, or acquired from someone else. To the extent some of these products are excellent, that is simply the result of pouring buckets of monopoly money into them.

As for Linux, in every area except the desktop, Linux rules the world and is gaining ground by the day.

Even more generally, open source, in general, is destined to always win. Even against well financed commercial alternatives. Proprietary products may be superior in the short term. But open source is here for the long term (forever). It's improvement can sometimes seem slow, but it just keeps inexorably improving until it is good enough, and then eventually best.

this is no surprise

[sribe]

- It's a shitty tablet: expensive, thick, heavy, short battery life, no mobile broadband.

- If you really need one in order to run your software, then you really need a laptop (or at least an ultrabook). In my opinion, it's not a shitty laptop, but neither is it a good one, especially for that price.

So, who needs this? Almost no one. In fact, maybe no one at all.

Re:this is no surprise

[bondsbw]

If you need just a tablet, or just a laptop, you would do well to shop elsewhere.

If you need both devices, and only want to carry one device and pay for one device, the Surface Pro is one of the better options on the market.

Re:this is no surprise

[sribe]

If you need both devices...

Yeah, right ;-)

Re:never mind.

[DickBreath]

For the price of this tablet, $899 or $999, I can buy several other tables with Linux preloaded. (eg, Android)

Why can't it run Rt software?

[TheSunborn]

Why can't it run software for Windows 8 RT?

  I thought RT used .net and thus the software would be supported on both arm and x86.

The biggest problem I see with the surface pro, is that it is a tablet with no tablet software, because it can't run RT software. So it is a niche marked, even within the niche windows tablet marked.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[tgd]

Why can't it run software for Windows 8 RT?

  I thought RT used .net and thus the software would be supported on both arm and x86.

The biggest problem I see with the surface pro, is that it is a tablet with no tablet software, because it can't run RT software. So it is a niche marked, even within the niche windows tablet marked.

It runs Microsoft Store apps just fine, just like every other Windows 8 computer.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[TheSunborn]

So what does the following from the article mean:

"although it won’t be able to run apps developed for Windows RT, unless the developers in question also built a version of their app for Windows 8—you really can’t get here from there"

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[PCM2]

"although it won’t be able to run apps developed for Windows RT, unless the developers in question also built a version of their app for Windows 8—you really can’t get here from there"

Nobody knows what that quote from the article means.

Let me explain it to you in plain terms: There is not one single developer, anywhere, who will develop an app for Windows RT and not simultaneously release a version that will run on Windows 8. Nobody is developing for Windows RT. They are developing for Windows 8, and the fact that it's easy to get the same app to run on Windows RT is cake.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[Quietust]

They're probably using "apps developed for Windows RT" to mean "Windows Store apps that the developer didn't bother to compile for i386/amd64", which is going to be a very small set of apps (in practice, it appears to generally be the other way around - apps that the developer didn't bother to compile for ARM).

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[tgd]

So what does the following from the article mean:

"although it won’t be able to run apps developed for Windows RT, unless the developers in question also built a version of their app for Windows 8—you really can’t get here from there"

It means the author was an idiot.

Windows RT only supports one kind of application that isn't signed with a Microsoft code signing key -- Windows Store apps. Those are .NET-based, and run on the Windows RT runtime, which is the core of "metro" apps on both platforms. Apps that work on ARM will work on Intel Windows 8, but the opposite may not be true.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[gbjbaanb]

All apps for Windows 8 (ie Metro) are built on WinRT (the runtime API), not .NET. There is no such thing as .NET anymore, its been superseded with WinRT. (you can still write apps in C#, but they no longer use the .NET runtime because there isn't one on Windows 8 Metro to use - unless you're writing desktop apps, but that's like writing Windows 7 legacy code).

All apps that can be written that use the new API will work on both x86 and ARM instructions, assuming you compile them appropriately.

You can write apps for WindowsRT in C# or Vb.net or C++. there are limitations, if you're writing a 3d game for example, you have to use C++.

Code compiled to work on ARM will not work on x86. You will have to recompile for x86 to make that happen. And vice versa.

Part of the problem here is that Microsoft decided that WinRT (the runtime) and Windows RT (the ARM-based device) were differnet enough that no-one would get confused. Its a lot like what they did when .NET was first coined - the term was used for practically every product.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[cbhacking]

It means the article author is full of bullshit. This comes as a surprise to you?

All Win8 (Pro or otherwise) systems can access the Store and run apps from there. There are actually going to be more Store apps for the Surface Pro than the Surface RT, because it's easier to test on x86, so some people don't make their apps ARM compatible (even when in theory it's just a recompile, in practice the certification requirements make ARM a little trickier than x86).

For .NET and HTML/JS apps, you don't even need to recompile, though, and there are definitely lots of native apps for RT as well. All of those will be available on the Surface Pro, and any other Win8 device, as well (in fact, they already are).

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[shutdown -p now]

Windows Store apps. Those are .NET-based, and run on the Windows RT runtime,

They are not necessarily .NET based. .NET is an option, but so is HTML5/JS and C++ (and combinations thereof). If it includes C++, then obviously those bits have to be compiled differently for different platforms. And it is theoretically possible for a developer to compile his app for ARM, but not for x86, in which case it won't show up in Windows Store when browsed from Intel devices.

Of course, it would take a particularly idiotic developer to do this kind of thing. I don't think there are any apps in the Store right now that are actually compiled that way. The reverse (x86 but not ARM) you do see occasionally.

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[tgd]

Windows Store apps. Those are .NET-based, and run on the Windows RT runtime,

They are not necessarily .NET based. .NET is an option, but so is HTML5/JS and C++ (and combinations thereof). If it includes C++, then obviously those bits have to be compiled differently for different platforms.

C++ has always been a supported target language for .NET applications. And HTML5/JS are effectively layers on top of .NET in Store applications (you can access .NET constructs from them)

Re:Why can't it run Rt software?

[shutdown -p now]

C++ has always been a supported target language for .NET applications.

Not C++, C++/CLI, which is a superset. You can compile ISO C++ (or rather the subset that VC supports) to managed code, but you won't be able to access managed libraries without language extensions, or author your own types that are accessible from other managed languages.

In any case, this is irrelevant, because Metro C++ apps are not managed - they're pure native; and C++/CX (the new set of language extensions to target WinRT) is not C++/CLI, despite syntactic similarity.

And HTML5/JS are effectively layers on top of .NET in Store applications (you can access .NET constructs from them)

You seem to be assuming that all the WinRT APIs are managed - they're not. You can access them from managed code because they're projected there, yes, and WinRT does use .NET assemblies to store its metadata, but they're all implemented in native C++ (yes, including Windows.UI.Xaml). So when you access those APIs from a C++/CX application, there's no managed code involved at all - it's 100% native on both your side and the library side. Similarly, for HTML5/JS, they've made their own projection of (a subset of) WinRT that has a direct interop boundary between JS and native - there's no managed code there.

This is a more detailed explanation of the relationship between WinRT and .NET that may clear some confusion.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[Guspaz]

Well, yes. I love my Microsoft ComfortCurve 2000, which coincidentally is (or was, anyhow) the cheapest one they make.

Their mice are decent too. I prefer Logitech, but I've never had any major complaints about Microsoft's mice.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[nyctopterus]

Where is this "Windows XP was good" coming from recently? It wasn't, its security was terrible, it's playschool interface embarrassing, and its usability poor. People got used to it, and its worst blunders (security) were somewhat patched up, but it wasn't ever good. The reason Vista bombed was because it had to reverse a heap of XP shit, and that was always going to hurt.

Re:title is incorrect

[hypergreatthing]

Even microsoft calls it the surface pro tablet. It has the word tablet in it's name, yet it doesn't compare to other tablets?
What exactly is a full-blown desktop OS? Android has a lot in common with linux. Hardware keyboard? I guess you've never heard of the asus transformer. What exactly is an ultrabook? It's just a small laptop, it's a marketing gimmick that apparently intel has sold you on.
What benefit does a surface RT has over android tablets? What benefit does the pro version have over the RT version? as far as i know the only pro is that it runs native x86 applications. That's the only benefit. At double the cost of android tablets? no thank you.

Stupid Comparison

[Bugler412]

Surface RT is the competitor for iPad/Nexus/Kindle/etc. Surface Pro's competition is UltraBooks, MacBook Air, etc.

Re:Stupid Comparison

[mystikkman]

You must be new here. Welcome to Slashdot, tabloid for neckbeards, news that doesn't matter.

Re:Stupid Comparison

[0123456]

Then why call them both "Surface"?

Why call the OS Windows when it's designed to run full-screen apps?

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

consensus is they can make one hell of a keyboard though! :D

Yeah, too bad they forgot to include one with the Pro.

Can it run Linux?

[thomasw_lrd]

Can I put Linux on it?

Re:Can it run Linux?

[mystikkman]

Only if Secure Boot can be disabled in the bios settings. Microsoft requires OEMs to have that option to get Windows 8 certification, but that rule certainly doesn't apply to itself. However, I do expect it to have the bootloader unlocked.

It'd be fun if it was locked, just to look at the Slashdot posts that simultaneously predict that it's DoA like the Kin and that no one is going to buy it and then in the same breath claim that the locked boot loader will kill Linux and the govt should step in to unlock it.

Looking at the comments, the Linux folks seem to think it's a terrible expensive device that does nothing right, why would want to buy it?

Re:Can it run Linux?

[thomasw_lrd]

So I can run linux on it when they have a fire sale next year. :)

Re:Too Expensive

[lister king of smeg]

its not innovative its crap. its supposed to be between a tablet and a netbook but it lacks any of the advantages of either and contains all of the problems of both.
It has a lower battery life than either a netbook or tablet
it costs more then a tablet or laptop
it is less powerful then a notebook,
it does not come with a keyboard you have to pay extra for that yet is supposed to repalce the netbooks?
it has less mobile software then any other platform,
it runs office but who wants to run office on a touch screen oh and it eat a significant portion of the on board storage. i know people say "oh well you can just use a micro sd card if you need more space." but if this this is supposed to replace you netbook ask your self would you ever settle for using an sd as a primary storage device on a netbook?

Re:Too Expensive

[MightyMartian]

Where exactly is the innovation here?

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[lister king of smeg]

the zunes hardware problem was not technical in nature it was purely aesthetic, in that it is commonly cited as looking like a turd.
the other problem it had is one of the same ones that is now plaguing Mickysoft they are/were very late to market are/were over priced and look like "me too!" products

Re:Too Expensive

[MightyMartian]

iPads and many Android tablets can connect to Bluetooth keyboards. Explain to me how Surface is a "new way".

I can buy that right now.

[Lumpy]

ASUS and Fujitsu both sell tablets in that price range that run windows and linux that have a 4 hour battery life.

Epic freaking fail Microsoft! These things are no different than the tablet I could buy 4 years ago.

Re:I can buy that right now.

[stonecypher]

Man, you didn't learn anything from CmdrTaco's pan of the iPod, did you?

There's more to life than picking a few random metrics and declaring fail.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[MightyMartian]

The Xbox is wildly popular because MS bought its market position. It will probably be years more before it starts making Redmond money.

Re:Is 4 hours too little?

[Lumpy]

Then why dont you have one now? I have been running windows OS tablets for well over 15 years. Or do you not know enough about the Microsoft Ecosystem that they have been available for a very long time now.

Why are you waiting? go to newegg and buy one http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100013681%2050001301&IsNodeId=1&name=Fujitsu Here is a buttload for you to choose from.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[lister king of smeg]

yes after 10 years of bug fixes xp looks great it didn't when it first came out. as for seven its is much better but much of that is from coming off of the disaster that was vista and needing a real 64 bit desktop (i know there was XP 64 bit pro but it had little hardware support) and standing next to the brainf#ck that is windows 8. as for the server edition how long do you wait before you transition your servers over to the new OS? sp1? R2?

Re:title is incorrect

[Lumpy]

"They made touch tablets back in the early 2000s that ran x86 chips that never got off the ground either."

They made x86 tablets back in 1995, I had one. it has a 486sx processor and ran windows for workgroups with pen computing extension. dauphin DTR-1 was the very first tablet.

I have a x86 tablet

[nebular]

I have an ExoPC. It gets about 4 hours of battery life. With current x86 mobile chips, that's about all you're going to get without killing the performance

The surface pro isn't competing with the ipad or the android tablets. It's targeted to those who need to be able to run existing windows applications, but want the convenience of a touchscreen tablet. That's what I wanted when I bought the Exo and it's why I'm interested in the surface pro. I didn't expect as long battery life.

If Microsoft knows anything they aren't expecting huge surface pro sales.

Re:Too Expensive

[smash]

If you buy a decent laptop with decent trackpad and keyboard (apple, or higher end PC gear) then you don't need to lug a keyboard and mouse around. The keyboard and trackpad on the MBA 11" are pleasant to use, for example.

It's better for people to think you're an idiot...

[erroneus]

... than to open your mouth and prove it.

Message for Microsoft above.

Microsoft is proving they don't get it. They are proving they aren't looking at what is going on our there or what interests users. How long before the stock traders take notice and the stock value fails? (I know when that will happen... when they show losses, which won't happen for a very, very long time. No way business is going to get rid of Microsoft any time soon as much as I would like to see otherwise... but the PC is the new typewriter... again. *ONLY* business people will use them... and then, only those who "work.")

Re:Always about Microsoft

[smash]

Okay, here's your article about why Linux failed on the desktop. Explanation is simple. Microsoft has had a powerful entrenched monopoly on the desktop. The phenomena of software lock-in is very real. IBM learned this in the 60's. Competing desktop OSes never stood a chance. Does that answer your question about Linux on the desktop? It doesn't matter how good any competitor is against an entrenched monopolist.

This is why OS X market share is growing in percentage terms, when paired with "Expensive hardware", Windows is in decline, and Linux hasn't gotten anywhere on the desktop in the last 10 years despite being FREE.

Linux isn't getting anywhere on the desktop because for the average PC user, for desktop usage, the Linux desktop experience is still crap. Yes, it can do a million things other operating systems can't with the super tweak-able GUI. However it can't remain with the same UI paradigm for more than 5 years at a time, continually deprecates/breaks applications from release to release and doesn't have enough polished, high quality software available for non-nerd usage (graphics, video, music, etc).

Not at all negative...

[mevets]

The story is titled Why Microsofts Surface Pro could fail; which implies that its failure is unlikely.
MicroSoft have had a decade of poorly received mobile computing devices.
The better, and unanswered question, is Why Microsofts Surface (pro?) could be a success. The field is already crowded with many competent options; and it seems unlikely that a MeToo that offers neither price, function or usability advantages will be appealing.
On the other hand, the cool character in Suburgatory likes it....

If you want a negative bent, lets try this:
The reason MicroSoft had to make the Surface was because they could not get the usual suspects to buy in. After having been burned by multiple generations of decent mobile devices laid to waste by the Windows Mobile experience, they collectively whispered: prove to us people will buy it, and we will make some.
This left a loose coalition of the co-erced (Samsung, Lenovo) and the desperate (Asus and Dell, who have been shooting up together in the alley) fielding devices, while the others stood buy and watched.
Yesterdays news: MicroSoft halves Surface RT production orders....

Summary failed to mention...

[mystikkman]

Summary failed to mention that the Surface Pro is much more expensive than a Raspberry Pi.

Why not offer a bigger preinstalled battery?

[dpbsmith]

I don't get it. Virtually every laptop or tablet has a choice of preconfigured, built-in amounts of RAM, flash memory, hard drive space. I realize the combinatorial issue, but why isn't a double-sized battery a user-configurable choice at purchase time? You can of course find all sorts of add-on third-party products but in general if you want 32 GB of flash memory in a tablet, you buy a tablet with 32 GB of flash memory preinstalled. You don't walk around with a USB stick or a compact flash card permanently poking out the side. Furthermore, how to say this except that users are willing to overpay for the convenience and security-blanket of preinstalled RAM and flash memory, so it could be a source of additional profit margin.

Why the reluctance to offer bigger batteries? Let the users who need longer runtimes buy longer runtimes, let the users who need lighter weight buy lighter weight. Is it fear that reviewers comparing competitive products would insist on citing the weight for comparable runtime instead of weight of the lightest unit?

Re:Why not offer a bigger preinstalled battery?

[0123456]

Why the reluctance to offer bigger batteries? Let the users who need longer runtimes buy longer runtimes, let the users who need lighter weight buy lighter weight. Is it fear that reviewers comparing competitive products would insist on citing the weight for comparable runtime instead of weight of the lightest unit?

Because it's already a heavy tablet and a bigger battery would make it even worse? My Asus Transformer weighs about two thirds as much and that's too heavy for my taste.

Re:Why not offer a bigger preinstalled battery?

[ebh]

More memory is usually just a matter of switching out a chip for a different chip of the same form factor. To double the battery life, you have to double the battery's volume. Inside a tablet there isn't a cubic millimeter that isn't accounted for, which means that the only way to put in a bigger battery is to build a different case, which has a cascading effect throughout the entire parts list. Much harder.

Plus, if you double the battery, some people are bound to complain about the longer charging time, which means they'll have to design around that, too.

Re:title is incorrect

[smash]

It runs a full-blown desktop OS, and has a hardware keyboard, which makes it an ultrabook competitor

And this is why it will fail. You'd think microsoft would have looked at the hundreds of millions of iOS device sales and figured out that most people DON'T WANT a full blown desktop OS with all the associated problems that come with it. They don't want some shitty half-assed excuse for a keyboard. They don't want 4 hours of battery life, they want much more.

Compared to an ultrabook, the surface has a crap keyboard and can't be used on your lap due to the flimsy link between keyboard and screen (no fold resistance) and kickstand. Compared to a tablet it just has no battery life.

The average person could quite happily get away with an ARM cpu in their desktop, let alone a portable machine that is going to be used for lightweight stuff like email, internet browsing, facebook, etc.

They do not need or want a full x86 CPU in such a device. It is a waste of money and a waste of the power budget.

Kill the Core CPU in it, drop in an atom, drop RAM down to 2gb, trim Windows 8 down to 2gb or so for a base install and drop the price down to 600 bucks.

It will still run Office just fine, the CPU will be plenty fast enough and they'll actually sell at that price, I suspect.

Re:Is 4 hours too little?

[smash]

Tablets (in a business setting, which is the only place one would realistically consider this over an iPad or Android) are most useful when you are in transit for extended periods (laptop is in luggage and you have a lot of downtime) or when you are in an environment without a desk, walking around doing stuff. Typically also without a power point in both situations. The average work day is well in excess of 4 hours.

If I'm bound to a power point i may as well just use an ultrabook, because i"ll most likely have a desk available or at least somewhere to sit, as well.

Re:Too Expensive

[autocannon]

Because Windows isn't going away. People can wish it and want it all they want, it's not happening. Surface Pro has the capability of finally giving people the truly portable PC. A laptop was great, but not exactly convenient for laying on the couch or sitting in a car. Yes they "can" do it, but tablets are what people want. iPads and Android tablets are nice. They don't replace anything though.

Surface Pro "could" replace laptops. I stress could. It may not be Surface, but it WILL be a tablet made by someone which can be used as a workstation. If you believe the iPad or any android tablet today could replace a laptop workstation then you would be wrong. Surface Pro at least might be capable of that feat. Either way, I expect laptops to all but disappear in the not so distant future, say 5 years or so replaced by capable tablets.

Re:shill

[Anonymous Coward]

ignore mystikkman he is a shill. if you read his latest comments you see he left more then 8 comments just on this story. why would someone care so much about a stupid /. story?

which begs the question...

[schlachter]

What market is there for a full blown laptop in tablet form factor. That's the original concern raised by the author. Seems like a small market. Esp when you have the power of a full blown desktop/server available on any tablet via remote connections and cloud services/apps.

No way, no how, no sale

[Overzeetop]

Sure, 10 hours is a stretch. I get that - sort of.

But I have an 11.6" acer i3 based laptop that gets 8 hours of light usage (the kind of usage that gets my iPad about 8-9 hours of use) on it's "internal" battery of 56 Wh. That laptop is 2 years old and cost me $350.

If MS can't dial in the battery life to show at least 7 hours on a charge, it really will die. It has everything I want - functional, if not perfect, keyboard, top notch screen, 300+ dpi / 1024+ level stylus input, and can run real programs. It's likely to replace both my laptop and tablet. But not if I have to recharge it more frequently than I have to pee.

The whole idea behind the Surface is portability, go anywhere, do anything. 4 Hours is, no questions asked, a deal killer.

Re:No way, no how, no sale

[BronsCon]

That's an i3, probably single core, with likely a 1366x768 display and a battery that probably weighs half as much as the entire Surface tablet. You didn't say, but I'm guessing 2 years ago it shipped with 2GB of RAM. I'll assume you have wifi but not bluetooth, a roughly 2.5" diagonal touch pad, no digitizer, no multi-touch, no ambient light sensor, no accelerometer, no gyroscope, no compass, and one or no camera.

You're comparing that to a dual core i5 at a higher clock speed and a 1080p display, twice the RAM (also at a higher clock speed), all of which means more power draw, but also a more powerful system. When you factor in the bluetooth, 10.6" multi-tough touchpad (e.g. the screen) and digitizer, additional sensors, and the one or two extra cameras, you can't possibly realistically expect the smaller and lighter battery to last as long.

Think about it. For what this device is and all it brings to the table, 4hr is excellent battery life. Do I wish it was better? Yes. But it's still pretty damned good.

Slashdot news generator

[gtirloni]

Why Windows 8 will fail...
Why Windows Phone 8 will fail...
Why Surface RT will fail...
Why Surface Pro will fail...

Re:Too Expensive

[MightyMartian]

Mitaybe Surface will be an enormous success. I have no idea, and neither do you. I do know they're overpriced and compared to most notebooks of the same price underpowered. Gambling that tablets are going to replace standard computing may pay off, but MS is the new guy in town and its record on new tech over the last decade has been tragically woeful.

The safer bet right now is that Surface will fail.

Re:Is 4 hours too little?

[Overzeetop]

Do you never go to a conference? Never spend a day away from the office? Never fly across the country? Never take the train...well, anywhere? Never spend a weekend away?

For a truly portable device, the beauty is that it is small and light - and that doesn't include a charger. One piece. Done. No remembering to pack the power cord and the brick. It's the nice thing about the iPad - I can grab it from the charger on Friday afternoon and take it on vacation, knowing full well that I'll not need to charge it over the weekend under normal use. Or my Acer timeline laptop which I can drop into my bag on the way to training and not have to worry about finding a seat next to an outlet, and have people tripping over the cord, because it runs 8 hours on a single 56Wh battery.

I really, really want one of these. It could replace both my iPad and my Acer. But not if it's got a 4 hour battery on a good day.

Re:Too Expensive

[poofmeisterp]

its not innovative its crap. its supposed to be between a tablet and a netbook but it lacks any of the advantages of either and contains all of the problems of both.

Amen... But this is just the Windows Me model of hardware - get it out there, have the users find the problems, create fixes, and release a whole new edition that says the old one was somehow "awesome", but this one is "more awesomer". Lather, rinse, repeat? Oh and the new one has major problems that counterbalance the fixed ones, but people will somehow clamor about how that doesn't matter because it's just "awesomer".

There ya go. The Me-LRR model.

Re:Flash memory prices

[poofmeisterp]

Can someone please explain to why flash memory in phones and tablets is so damn expensive? They charge in $100 increments to double storage space. It's ridiculous. At first I thought it was just scumbag Apple gouging its iTards on pricing but now MS is doing it as well. You would think they would charge less for storage to gain some kind of competitive advantage.

It's called profit. Mix the supply and demand model in and you have your explanation. :)

Ongoing terrible news coverage.

[stonecypher]

Reviewing the Surface RT? Point out how it isn't a laptop.

Reviewing the Surface Pro? Point out how it eats more power than tablets from years ago.

Why are we not shaming these article authors for their transparent bias?

WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

HOW COULD IT NOT?

1) 900 Dollars
2) Hot, Power Sucking Intel Chip
3) Boots desktop OS with a BIOS
4) Consumes 32+ GB of storage with system binaries
5) The frequently-discussed "Win8 trainwreck" UI
6) Needs Forefront/Essentials/McAfee/Symantec-Norton/etc..
7) Steve Ballmer

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[rgbatduke]

I was in our local supermall yesterday. They had an interior kiosk set up to sell Surfaces, manned by an easy half dozen earnest young salespeople hired for the season. They didn't have a single customer in view -- not one in all the times I walked by it. Everybody standing around looking bored.

The Apple store about fifty meters away, on the other had was absolutely packed, as it always is, with customers waiting in line. It wasn't even a busy night at the mall -- parking was actually pretty easy for the season.

The really interesting question is -- can Microsoft compete ANYWHERE on a level playing field? If they didn't have the world's computer retailers in a ball-lock with their pricing formula, would they even exist? The answer is not so clear. I've watched student PC and laptop ownership transition from nearly all WinXX PCs to nearly all Apple products in only five years. iPhone, iPad, iPod, thinline apple laptop -- standard operating equipment for current college students. A smattering of Droid tabs and phones in there -- it is the nerd product and also pretty cool. Even linux-based systems -- the choice of the ubergeek -- are starting to compete with Windows systems for a whole generation of kids.

If Valve/Steam works out and games move over the Linux big time, Windows could actually experience the start of its long awaited death spiral.

rgb

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[mystikkman]

Can the iPad or a Android Transformer or Nexus do any of the following?

1) It has a fully powered USB 3.0 port, connect any and all your devices you want to, even simultaneously with a powered hub
2) You can connect a Nexus tablet or phone and develop and test Android applications on it with Eclipse.
3) Has an active real digitizer and comes with Pen input, great for classroom and meeting use, especially combined with One Note
4) Can run the real Photoshop and not the lite crippled touch based stuff available for the iPad
5) Can run touch apps and browsing for couch use, although an additional cheap 7" tablet might be good for couch, bed and bathroom use.
6) Does not consume 32GB+, perhaps around 15-20GB.
7) Put in or swap through one or multiple 32GB/64GB/128GB SDXC cards. Upgrade to higher capacity or more in the future as prices come down.
8) Use real touch optimized apps and games on it, like Fruit Ninja. The Macbook Air fails at this.
9) Comes with builtin Defender(MSE) that's barely noticeable in daily use. Disable it if you're a capable geek trying to optimize the system.
10) Comes with a 1080p touch screen and a mini display port supporting a monitor upto 2560x1644 resolution
11) Alleged trainwreck UI is specially optimized for a device like the Surface.
12) Does not come with a BIOS. Comes with UEFI which has many more features but boots very very fast, like in 7 or 8 seconds. Update your hate machine.
13) Steve Ballmer? Ok you got me, Surface sucks if you're attracted to Steve Ballmer who you seem unhealthily obsessed with. Stay away. If not, there's some cool hardware and software in there.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Look.

I'm not a fanboi. I do have a long history with Apple - an Apple ][ in 79-81. I loved, and could never touch, the NeXT in its heyday. I wrangled lab work to get to the NeXT and Indigos....

At that time - Mac II FX & ci - I hated Apple. OS 6,7 made me laugh.

Despite being NeXTophile, I thought Apple passing Be for NeXT was a mistake. I got that one wrong...

It took a couple of revs on OSX before I was more than just curious. By the first Aluminum PowerBook? I was at least a partial user.

I'd rather be running Linux. Most of the time, I do. But I have a MountainLion setup that, after hours of tweak, matches most of my Mint/Ubuntu/Elementary setup. (Hit F12, and console visor drops, with multiple tabs. Full toolchain and POSIX/GNU essentials)

So, I am prepared to say that the Retina MacBookPro is - by far - the best computer I have ever used in my life. If Sony or Dell came up with something equal, I'd have no qualms - but I don't hold my breath. This thing is so fast and responsive, I run a fullscreen Quetzal VM instead of a 2010 Latitude.

This is not a fluke - but apparent to anyone who's had the opportunity to evaluate a daily experience between the me-too PCs and the Apple package.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[spire3661]

15-20 GB out of 64GB(pre-formatted size) is UNACCEPTABLE. how do you defend that? the 64 GB model should not even exist at those price points and shows MS' desperation in keeping costs down.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[mystikkman]

Some people don't need that much storage when everything is in the cloud or they're browsing. I could totally imagine my mother or sister not using 40GB of storage. Touch apps are usually not that big and music and video streaming apps like XBox Music, Netflix etc. are popular these days. Why should they be forced to pay extra now when they can always put in a SD card later if they need more storage?

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are a well-known MS booster. Your posting history would differ very little, were you actually paid to carry their water in this forum.

The fact is - besides a two-post detour on sleeping-pills and a catalogue of south-Asian acheivers - you are a single-issue poster, delivering opinion and rebuttal almost exclusively on Microsoft products and that of their OEM ecosystem, versus Google and Apple.

With that out of the way, let us respond. None of these capabilities or rebuttal points mean anything to those who will by tablets. Not even to the developers in my company.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[mystikkman]

You're a well known MS hater and Apple fanboi/zealot. You post short uninspiring snippets in unrelated discussions to boost Apple's bottomline at the expense of Linux. You're probably an AAPL shareholder looking at your posts.

With that out of the way, Surface is not targeting the Nexus 7 or even the iPad, or even the big ultrabooks. Perhaps you got confused with Surface RT. Pro is a different machine.

It's trying to define a new category in the market, like the iPad did, and remember how people on here said it was an oversized iPod Touch and not enough power for a tablet? Remember how that ended up?

Also, your sample size of the developers in your company that are probably fellow Appleheads is so laughably pico compared to the billion strong PC market and even the Windows shops out there that it doesn't warrant a response.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[NatasRevol]

What you described sounds like a decent laptop. Will the average user want to do any of that with a tablet? Nope.

They'll care about apps, battery life, size & screen.

None of which the Surface Pro is better at. You're missing the mark just as much as Microsoft is with this product.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[rgbatduke]

Oh, I'm not arguing -- a lot of our linux-centric sysadmin folks here like apple laptops, and as you say, they've long since gotten to where they've got a full or nearly full complement of unixoid tools and features and most of the important OSS offerings. Of course, the students I'm referring to are not in your (or my:-) geek class. They just like them because they are thin, cool as in socially acceptable, and work pretty well. I'd say the "work pretty well" is one of the most important things in the list, even.

My own gripes against apple are strictly premium price, the fact that I need cone-head amounts of compute power even on my laptops a lot of the time (e.g. i7 processors and a mountain of ram), the fact that all of my source is written under linux, and the fact that its "coolness" actually annoys me. Oh, and the fact that my wife's iPhone got a SINGLE DROP OF WATER on the charging port, popped the little red tab, and even though it was fully functional (until it ran out of charge) it refused to charge and had to be completely replaced for almost 1/3 of its cost in spite of us having a service plan on it. Otherwise known as "Rip-Off Hardware Design", brought to you by a company eager to take your money in exchange for coolness.

Personally, I like my Casio android phone with its waterproof covers on all ports. You can (reportedly) drop it into a meter of water, pull it out, wipe it off, and it not only works, it works literally untouched. Not that I care to tempt the gods, but all that AND it cost a fraction of the iphone and has all of the android apps available, most for free.

Apple does sell its own version of kool-ade. That's not to assert that sometimes they don't deliver value for money -- it is to assert that they display the same shocking arrogance that any market leader seems to gain when they get on top in the PC universe. All that engineering skill -- so much that they actually bother to engineer in the little red switch! -- but somehow they can't manage to build a charging interface or user interface that a drop of water can't kill.

Or worse, they could easily do so, but prefer to make all of that money when people have to buy second and third iphones etc.

rgb

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

You are new here - and have no sense of humor, either.

I despise the stock market - which is a "house wins the take" game.

The company at which I am employed is hardly "pico". I was formerly employed by Microsoft - and certainly understand just how badly they suck at product and R&D.

They are EXCELLENT at building a sustainable developer ecosystem. The model is one I champion. However, they suck so bad at everything in their core market, that the developers are abandoning this ecosystem at a rate rivaled only by how they signed-on, at the advent of Windows 3.0.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

I want to make sure I'm accurate. You should ask Redmond for a check.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The prices are premium - but they don't ship a shite box, either.

I have a 2010 Latitude that whips a comparable 2009 MacBookPro, on specs.

But the Latitude has the worst disk I/O channel I've seen since the era of RLL drives :-) Really. It slows compute to nothing while trying to DL with a Java-based app. A single VM can barely get past boot! Tried Windows XP, 7, Ubuntu and Fedora. 32bit, 64bit. Swap/Page big or none at all. Disable hyper-threading, you name it. Replaced the drive with a new, fast Scorpion. Crap. The world's most powerful MS Word terminal. :-)

If you buy a non-Lemon PC, then you pay the same dollar.

My bottom line? If you need commercial software support - buy the MacBook. If you want to run Linux, get the premium XPS-class PC book. The new Ubuntu pre-load looks tasty!

I don't look at desktops anymore - but if I did big compile/merge/builds or professional video, I sure would. Funny. In 2001, laptop/notebooks still made me slightly ill. Thank god for the Pismo Powerbook and the Thinkpad 600X.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[tokencode]

Count me as someone waiting to buy 2 of Surface Pros. $899 for the base model seems like a bargain with the price of a crippled iToy

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[spire3661]

By pay extra what you really mean is the 'storage tax' we are currently experiencing from the manufacturers. The price difference for MS between 64 and 128 is negligible enough to call them out for breaking out pricing in this manner.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[shutdown -p now]

The catch is that there are still better options available in the realm of other Win8 devices, for lower prices. For example, Dell XPS 12.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot:

14) Great if you miss the fan noise of your laptop whilst working - none of that disconcerting tablet silence.
15) Ensures you always fly business class - need to be near a power socket with that 4 hour battery life.

And the UI is still a train-wreck - read the Nielsen report. What parts of the UI respond to touch and what don't? No visual clues. visual feedback is patchy. This is not a good touch UI. I'm betting version 3.0 will be OK.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[thoth]

Yes, the Surface is more powerful than other tablets.
But "the market" has shown that the people buying these things DON'T want that stuff.
This is the downfall of the device, it straddles two worlds and is compromised.

I actually tried a Surface out, at the local Microsoft store. Honestly, I didn't think it was bad. I got used to the touch cover after ~10 mins, it seemed OK. I'd get one just because I like gizmos, but it would need to be about 50% of the current price for me to do it. That's the Windows RT version, I wouldn't mind a device with limited software and basically use browsers and so on. But not for $600. And no way for $900 or $1000. For that I'd either get a tablet for cheaper, or a notebook for a little more.

Granted, I'm just one data point. We shall see how well this Christmas season treats Windows 8 and these Surface devices. I have a feeling it is going to be very ugly for Microsoft, just based on software availability (RT and app store), UI issues (not talking just getting used to Metro, I mean the confusion people are going to have when they can't find their files because of Metro app sandboxing), cost, and the sheer momentum of the other mobile ecosystems.

I mean seriously, just to pick from your spin list. #3 - active digitizer. Hasn't that failed to be a selling point for 15+ years? And #4 - photoshop. Of course the ipad version is "crippled for touch" - running photoshop full blast means a real keyboard/mouse not the touch cover implementation (keyboard and touchpad is OK, not a heavy use replacement for the real things). Kinda defeats the purpose at that point. #2 - dev system for other mobile devices. Seriously, who the heck is that a major use scenario for?

Sorry but that list is something only a Microsoft product group manager would come up with, which is "how can we make a mobile device that leverage Windows" and not the other way around which is "what do normal people do with mobile devices?"

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[mystikkman]

The Surface Pro won't be available for Christmas. Coming to your point, it matches a lot of use case in Enterprise. Supports AD and Group Policy. Can push apps and updates while pushing them to desktops and laptops, take meeting notes. Can easily get away with using it on business trips for most folks. iPads are bought but only for executives who think they're playthings meant for playing Fruit Ninja and thus cannot be trusted with a regular employee.

>I mean seriously, just to pick from your spin list. #3 - active digitizer. Hasn't that failed to be a selling point for 15+ years?

That doesn't really mean it will continue to fail, especially with devices becoming faster and getting more capable. For example, the Galaxy Note II is selling quite well with one. A device like the Surface wasn't technologically possible 10 years ago.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[MightyMartian]

In short, it has no market and Microsofy is basically admitting that pretty much everyone has beat them to the punch.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Don't care, how or why. :-)

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[MightyMartian]

And what is it exactly the Surface can do? Who the fuck cares if it can run x86 apps. Most of the current ones are built to work with the old GUi. As to RT, it's about four years behind on the ecosystem front.

I don't care whether surface lives or dies. Why the fuck do you? Is there something wrong with you. I don't believe you're a shill, Redmond wouldn't want dimwitted fucktards bragging up their stuff. What, you own lots of MS stock? You're girlfriend left you for some hipster doofus with an iPad? Or did you catch your dad jerking off to pron on a Nexus 7?

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[StormyWeather]

My e6430 feels faster and more responsive than my MacBook pro especially under a heavy load. The best part about the mbp id s the vents placed behind the bezel in front of the monitor. Heat dissapation on the macbook is great. I can set it on my blanket in bed and do light web surfing without it melting down unlike most windows PC's. I know everyone here lives the retina display but I can't get over how shiny the screen is. I felt like I needed to clean it nonstop. when perfectly clean yes the display is crisp.

I saw more window manager lockups (2) in three weeks of usage on the macbook than windows 7 pro and I use 7 pro more. The lockups are more difficult to deal with under Mac because the task manager wouldn't start or ran super slow.

Mac still has a bad bug in its vpn subsystem on connecting to windows small business server VPN through some routers where windows systems have no problem. Every single business professional I know has another windows laptop or boot camp for when they need to actually get stuff done.

I dunno maybe I'm just pushing the Mac too hard? I usually just run a bunch of remote desktops, listen to Pandora, have a few logmein sessions up, a few SSH sessions, some graphics editing apps, and Google apps under chrome. I seemed to have no problem crushing the Macs performance constantly though.

As far as swapping between apps and keeping the desktop organized I prefer Linux. I'm not sure why I just seem to get more done under linux than any other OS. Of course my customers use MacWin so that is where I am at more often.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[StormyWeather]

If you can't rebut his arguments without attacks hen abstain please.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[gumbi west]

"can Microsoft compete ANYWHERE on a level playing field" I do really like their keyboards.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[bfandreas]

The one thing the Transformers have got for themselves is that portable keyboard/docking station/clamshell cover. It's got an awful lot of ports and connectors on it and is actually a decent keyboard. but more crucially it has an additional battery in it.
That thing charges the tablet and can be charged separately while detached. It's a clever little thing and much more than that floppy rubber thing of the Surface while not being much fatter.

The thought of running stock wintel stuff on a tablet is intriguing. But I don't think MS has the experience to design such a thing. Now ASUS and Lenovo with all their Ultrabook experience propably will be able to pull this off.
I find the thought of an i7(ok, let's be honest, i3 propably is sufficient and wiser) tablet in that form factor intriguing. Also it scares me a bit. Time got get one at company expenses. Now all I need is a reason for them to get me one. Reading my Batman comics on a 13" tablet propably isn't good use of company resources. Just guessing.

Then again I got them to buy me a Transformer Prime...

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[bfandreas]

64GB is bare minimum. What is important is that they need to support 128GB SDHC cards. Those cost 120€ a pop. got one for my tablet and I'm happy to report that this baby will hold Babylon 5, Farscape AND Galactica. 42MB/s read rate isn't too shabby, too.

Now all you need to do is get Windows to mount an SD card as user directory and Bob is your uncle. That's where the majority of storage will get wasted. Unless you are mad enough to think you want to use such a thing to run the latest and greatest AAA 30GB+ disk hogging games on such a thing. Integrated graphics are bound to suck. For productivity stuff 64GB + external user directory propably is enough.
Just keep your pr0n collection on an USB come Fleshlight drive like the rest of us.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Technical Whiz. Microsoft.

I see what you did there.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[spire3661]

Im so tired of people saying 'X storage is enough' when talking about consumer grade stuff and accepting the lower grade limit. I want BUCKETS of storage on mobile. I want a music player that can hold weeks of lossless audio that can fit in my pocket. I want a pocket DVR that can hold weeks of video. 64 GB is a JOKE when it costs $1/GB RETAIL. We are purposefully being held back from this to force us into the cloud model.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[cthulhu11]

The kiosk at Bellevue Square always has a handful of customer types, but since this mall is pretty much a Microsoft employee ghetto (eg. Tesla has a shop) that's to be expected. The Apple store is always surprisingly busy.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[cthulhu11]

So, I am prepared to say that the Retina MacBookPro is - by far - the best computer I have ever used in my life.

Your trackpad must be way less flaky than mine.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[bfandreas]

That's why you need to be able to have a reasonable way to extend the local storage. And that means you need to be able to insert full-sized SD cards(they can hold up to 128 gigs ATM) and USB thumb drives.
64gigs are a joke if you are not able to mount removable media. Which is why I think a tablet/portable device without SD card slot or USB connector is not fit for purpose.

For Joe Schmoe couchsurfer 64gigs are enough. If you carry around lots of data then it isn't. But then you are not a standard user.

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[nobodie]

I got tired of lappies in 2005 and went back to desktops, don't miss them one bit. When I started with laptops I needed mobility, was doing international consulting and such. But now, when I am away from my desk I am AWAY from my desk, my phone might be in my pocket, but I erased all the ringtones so it vibrates only. I miss a buttload of calls, oh yes I do and everybody who calls me knows it.

So all of this is moot, it has no great importance. I see that when Apple realized that people could be convinced to spend extra money on something just so they could take it out to the coffeeshop and be seen with the newest toy, they knew they had a nice fat bag of fools to sucker in. And they were not proven wrong. I still am amazed by the number of people who carry a laptop around with them and never use it except to check their email while they drink a coffee. Hey, howabout just taking ten minutes to ..... think about something. Yeah, think bout it, now.... think.....

Re:WHY COULD IT FAIL?

[redback]

sounds like you need a small wallet filled with SD/microSD cards

The better question:

[Cyko_01]

Why microsoft surface could succeed

Re:It's better for people to think you're an idiot

[DavidD_CA]

Yes, and there's only like 20 business people in the world. Maybe 30. This product is doomed.

You DO realize that there is a market for "business people" who want more than just a cheap tablet, right? They'll get the Surface Pro.

And fo those who want a iPad-like device, but in the Windows system, there's the Surface.

Re:Always about Microsoft

[WaffleMonster]

Okay, here's your article about why Linux failed on the desktop. Explanation is simple. Microsoft has had a powerful entrenched monopoly on the desktop.

Yep it was all MS not playing fair while their competition was GIVING THEIR PRODUCT AWAY.

It does not matter what anyone says the simple truth is life aint fair. You succeed or fail with what you have not with what is "fair". There is no "level" playing field. Your onesided fairytail about how evil MS is responsible for linux failure is like blaiming the ref for your teams loss. You can either learn and do better or be like my whiney little sister.

In areas where Microsoft does not have an entrenched monopoly, it does not know how to compete. Competition is not even in their DNA.

They are competing with Oracle... and we all know brother Larry is a saint who plays fair.

They are competing with webkit and firefox.

They are competing with google on search and "free" messaging.

They are competing on smartphones.

Furthermore, Microsoft has no vision. None. Zero. Every product from Microsoft has been copied from someone else, or acquired from someone else.

Welcome to the real world. It is a universal truth in business big fish eat the little fish.. and you know something most little fish are ecstatic to be aquired by big fish.

$1K for tablet with keyboard!! Better solution

[daboochmeister]

This reminds of the old adage, "The Lottery: a tax on people who are bad at math". For that price, you could buy:

• - A good PC for home, to also act as an RDP target (heck, it can even have Windows 8)
• - A Nexus 10 or comparable tablet
• - A bluetooth keyboard
• - Internet connectivity for the PC (you probably already have it, but just to demonstrate how overpriced the Surface Pro is)

And now you have a better PC and a better tablet that can run any Windows app (via RDP), including Win8 apps, even from the MS store (ahem, if you find such an app that doesn't have a better version available in the Android store). And with the money left over, you could pay for your internet access for a couple of years!

Or forego the PC at home and use a cloud-based Windows desktop solution for a couple of bucks/month.

Heck, replace the Nexus 10 with an iPad, and it's STILL cheaper than a Surface Pro.

Re:shill

[miknix]

ignore mystikkman he is a shill. if you read his latest comments you see he left more then 8 comments just on this story. why would someone care so much about a stupid /. story?

LOL. My comment was modded down thought, a bit harsh..

It's a cloud car

[Kataire]

Another good reason PRO is likely to fail... I've said it before & I'll say it again. Surface is a cloud car.

If I need Intel horsepower on a tablet, I'll remote desktop into a real computer (or cloud-hosted VM). Why pay for Intel in a tablet when the RT version will provide excellent mobile functionality at significantly lower costs (in terms of both price AND power) with the ability to hook up to heavy iron to do the heavy lifting?

Re:Always about Microsoft

[DickBreath]

It does not matter what anyone says the simple truth is life aint fair. You succeed or fail with what you have not with what is "fair". There is no "level" playing field. Your onesided fairytail about how evil MS is responsible for linux failure is like blaiming the ref for your teams loss. You can either learn and do better or be like my whiney little sister.

So if the the game is rigged, the field is not level, the ref is bribed, the scoreboard is rigged, etc, then you believe that is the fault of the team the game is rigged against. Got it. They should just stop whining and try harder. If they can't win in a rigged game, it's their own fault.

Yep it was all MS not playing fair while their competition was GIVING THEIR PRODUCT AWAY.

There is nothing unfair about giving your own work away for no ulterior motive. On the other hand, can you say Internet Explorer? IE was given away for only one reason -- in an attempt to monopolize the web so that it would be the Microsoft Web. It's also ironic that you complain that Linux is given away, which is somehow unfair, but then you complain that Linux failed on the desktop. Very amusing.

I love the general hypocrisy about giving a open source code away. On the one hand, it is said that the software isn't any good and therefore couldn't be sold. Yet when it wins, it is said that it has the unfair advantage of being free. Clearly nobody would buy bottled water when water is available for free.

They are competing . . . [short list of areas where Microsoft is competing.]

But Microsoft is not winning. Or if it is (and sometimes even if it is losing) it must resort to dirty tricks. Example: Microsoft makes more on Android than on their own lousy product. Yet Microsoft had absolutely zero to do with Android. Android has absolutely zero code from Microsoft. While Microsoft is not alone in doing so, Microsoft is using dirty tricks in exploiting the broken patent system.

Welcome to the real world. It is a universal truth in business big fish eat the little fish.. and you know something most little fish are ecstatic to be aquired by big fish.

I live in the real world, thank you. Little fish would probably rather grow into big fish. If they know that they have absolutely no chance of that, then their second choice would be to be acquired by the big fish. That's like saying restaurant owners are ecstatic not to have their business burned down by the extortionist. Maybe so, but they probably would rather never have met the extortionist, or monopolist.

It is telling that you didn't refute my actual points.
1. Microsoft had entrenched monopoly on the desktop.
2. Software lock in phenomena is real and well known.
3. Microsoft does not know how to compete -- and win without using dirty tricks -- and sometimes even that isn't enough
4. Microsoft has no vision -- everything copied or acquired.
5. Linux rules the world everywhere but on the desktop.

You could argue with my last assertion that open source is always destined to win. That is not as clear. But it is much more clear now than it was ten years ago.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[cbhacking]

There was one model in brown, and plenty of other colors. The brown model also actually sold pretty well; it turns out if you looked at it the impression that came to mind was leather, not feces, and some people liked that.

Apparently the color of one of the models is the easiest thing to mock about the Zune hardware. That's pretty sad.

The hardware is pretty interesting

[Etherized]

Honestly, I might get one of these things - assuming it can run Linux. GNOME 3 would have a touchscreen-based device on which it could really shine :)

This is news?

[roc97007]

We've seen dozens of articles on why various Surface branded products aren't going to make it in the marketplace.

I want to see an article "Why Surface Pro Might Not Fail". (But not written by Ballmer.)

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[PlusFiveTroll]

No, the reason Vista bombed was because Nvidia and ATI couldn't write a stable video card driver!

You forgot the part ', because Microsoft changed up the Vista game very late in the product cycle.'

Thanks for telling us why NOT to buy a Surface Pro

[Rob Y.]

5) Can run touch apps and browsing for couch use, although an additional cheap 7" tablet might be good for couch, bed and bathroom use.

That pretty much sums it up. The Surface Pro is usable as a tablet, but not really handy as one. Why not just buy a cheap laptop. It would be as powerful as the Surface, have much more storage, and the savings would pay for the Nexus 7 you admit you really ought to have for the times you really want a tablet.

Re:Thanks for telling us why NOT to buy a Surface

[mystikkman]

Which cheap laptop has the features of Surface like 1080p screen, pen with active digitizer, SSD etc? Even if there is, it's not a full replacement for the use cases of Surface though.

Re:Microsoft can't make hardware.

[wiedzmin]

I like my black mini-Zune. Things it can do that iPod can't? It has radio, I can sync music to it via WiFi, without having to unplug it from my entertainment center, I can play music from it on my Xbox, wirelessly, oh, and I can control volume and songs with my gloves on, or through the cloth of my pocket. It is an amazing piece of hardware, which was killed by elitist simpletons not willing to get past their Twitter-feed bias and actually try something everybody else doesn't want.

Re:Thanks for telling us why NOT to buy a Surface

[Rob Y.]

Obviously, But my primary point is that the cheap laptop is not a full replacement for the 7" tablet. That's why you buy the tablet in addition to the cheap laptop - or better yet, a cheap desktop with a cheap big monitor and mouse. Just because it's now possible to do all possible things with a Surface Pro, doesn't make it desirable. I'd rather do software development on a desktop system any day, with a real keyboard and mouse. If I need to travel with my dev system, then okay, I'll compromise and make it a laptop - though that's less than ideal for development. But I see no scenario where it makes sense for my dev system to be a tablet. As the original comment conceded, a Nexus 7 makes more sense for couch browsing, or even email when travelling. It's cheap and portable with good battery life - and that's what a tablet should be. The Surface Pro remains an impressive piece of hardware that has very little reason to exist.

Re:Jeremiah Cornelius is a well known

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

List my other UIDs.

I'm too lazy for that.

Win8 x86 tablets are neither fish nor fowl

[DragonWriter]

I firmly believe that the intersection of people who appreciate the tablet form factor but also would like to use legacy apps is large enough to sustain x86 Windows 8 tablets, especially in business and education.

I both appreciate the tablet form factor and expect to need to continue to use legacy desktop apps designed for keyboard-and-mouse Windows-before-8, so in theory I'd be part of what you see as the market sustaining Windows 8 x86 tablets. OTOH, I have zero interest in a Windows tablet (whether Windows 8 or otherwise) -- because I'm not interested in using a tablet to run legacy apps designed for a desktop UI, and I'm not interested in sacrificing the usefulness of a tablet for extended away-from-power use so that I can use the tablet for legacy apps. Just because I appreciate the utility of a road vehicle for travel and I'd like to have a home to live in doesn't mean I'm part of the market for RVs that can serve both roles, but neither purpose as well as something dedicated to that one purpose.

Re:Jeremiah Cornelius is a well known

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

OK Joel. ;-)

Re:Jeremiah Cornelius is a well known

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

IDs are cookies. Has nothing to do with location.

Touchpad II...

[erp_consultant]

The Surface Pro is going to be an absolute flop. Half the battery life? Complete non starter. My wife has an iPad and that sucker runs all day long on a single charge. What's the point of having a tablet if you have to run around looking for a plug? $899 for the 64GB version? I could get a Samsung Galaxy Note (very nice tablet with full annotation via the pen input) for a little over half the price. Then there is the $149 keyboard. I can buy a Bluetooth keyboard for any iPad or Android tablet for less than $50.

The only chance Microsoft had was to do what Samsung and Google have done - make a quality tablet for less than an iPad costs. Samsung has even gone a step further and offers features that the iPad doesn't have. There is a nifty application that comes with the 7 inch model that allows you to use it as a TV remote. It will control your stereo, DirecTV box..everything. Very cool app...and I picked it up for $179.

Microsoft on the other hand offers up this bloated, expensive slab. It's the modern day Edsel. Surface Pro...coming to a landfill near you.

Re:Jeremiah Cornelius is a well known

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Heh! That's Stevie! I think he was also hairpin blue. Not sure.