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Surface Pro Sold Out; Was It Just Understocked?
TechCrunch is one of the many outlets to report that Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet computer sold out on its first day of wide availability. Business Insider points to Reddit threads complaining that "selling out" was largely a product of not having all that many in stock to begin with, in some cases not even enough to cover pre-ordered devices.
Isn't that the definition?
I want this thing running linux before the month is out. I'd even settle for Windows 7. Just... not the Windows 8 abomination. Anything but that.
If it weren't for the price, I rather like the idea of an x86 high-spec tablet. The android offerings have to make a lot of compromises to keep weight down and battery life up. The Surface pro doesn't: It's a lap-burning battery-sucking brick with processing power to rival a laptop. That's the type of tablet I want.
a standard marketing technique? That makes it possible to be "Amazed and pleased at the huge demand that has far exceeded our expectations!"
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
You know, it's silly to even have this type of "story" at Slashdot since it is a TROLL to began with. It does not matter what happens with Surface, since it's a Microsoft product, good bad or great, it will not get an unbiased review here.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
All the pro-Surface stories I've seen over the last few months don't pass the sniff test.
They all give me the impression that MS marketing is pulling out all the stops for this one,
sensing serious implications if they fail.
You know, it's silly to even have this type of "story" at Slashdot since it is a TROLL to began with. It does not matter what happens with Surface, since it's a Microsoft product, good bad or great, it will not get an unbiased review here.
Exactly so. Much hated and despised and derided here on slashdot. Yes its heavy, thicker, and has a shorter battery life and costs more.
So what? It still meshes perfectly with your existing software.
Surface Pro will sell, because most businesses can simply write it off of their taxes, an put it immediately to use without having to first rewrite all of their corporate apps to run on IOS or Android, or Surface RT.
With Surface PRO, you install your existing apps and go. Its that easy, and all of a sudden the shop floor has inventory management (or whatever) without having to leave workstations all over the place.
I actually expect it to outsell Surface RT, because even though those apps written in C++ can (allegedly) be cross compiled for RT, not every company has access to the source of the commercial products they use, and not every company wants to jump through Microsoft's hoops to get their software released for RT.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Yeah, but Apple runs out of stock when it sells fifty million things in the first 48 hours after launch. Microsoft announcing "SOLD OUT" because it only sent one single unit to the retailer is a little bit different.
Some things sell out because they just can't make enough. The company has made as many as it can and put them all out to retail, and they all sell. However other things sell out because the company deliberately limits production/distribution to make them scarce.
I can work too. People seem to have an irrational need to own things if they are told they can't have it. So paradoxically it can work to increase sales in the long run. People are told "you can't have this" and that makes them want it, even though they didn't before.
Look at the massive run on firearms/magazines what with the proposal for new gun legislation. These people were perfectly happy with what they had prior to this, but suddenly they get told "you can't have this" and they want to rush out and buy it.
BTW: Andy Rubin was responsible for Danger and Hiptop, and sold it to Microsoft for one billion dollars. Microsoft turned it into the KIN. He was also responsible for Android and sold it to Google for fifty million dollars. He stayed at Google and together they turned it into, well, Android. Isn't that ironic?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just thought would mention, normally for new product releases there are at least 2 distinct batches to arrive in stores.
First is air freighted typically not many units(often on pallets), second about a month later for the US, are standard shipping containers with the vast bulk of the supply. Air freighted products quite a bit more expensive (i looked at costs a couple of years ago and it was >5x).
If have just spent large $ on a production run, want to get some return as soon as possible but don't want to wreck quite often tight margins by air shipping too much and have it sit around for the month it takes the bulk to arrive. By selling out early can quite often get publicity and pre-orders to help shift the volume arriving later without having to discount the initial price too much.
If they purposely understocked the Nexus to make it look hotter than it was then they need to be called out on it, just as we are seeing sites call MSFT out for understocking to try to make Surface look like less of a fail.
We already know SurfaceRT and Win 8 have bombed HARD, not only did MSFT not get the traditional Xmas bounce like they have had for every previous release for ages but sales actually went down 12%, and we've seen the WinPhone fail, MSFT blaming the OEMs because they wouldn't build $1000 WinTabs to join the Ultrabooks in the big pile of unwanted shit, look we ALL know the score here. But as a small shop owner there is one thing that made my mind up for anything Win 8 not to be had in my shop (The first since WinME) and that was the fact I had a beautiful Athlon triple system running win 8 for nearly 7 months and not ONE offer, not one. Nobody wanted it. I put win 7 on? It sold in 3 days.
Will they sell SOME Surface pro units? Sure, there is a Zune owners club you know, in today's market you can find a small niche for just about any product. Look at what WinXP and Win 7 tablets sold and that will probably be what Surface pro sells, but at the end of the day Ballmer is bound and determined to make Windows a "premium" brand and that just isn't gonna happen, it would be like doing a re-release of the Pinto and having it priced to compete with Ferrari, it just ain't gonna happen. If he believes in metro so much he should spin it off and let THAT be the premium brand and Windows be the regular brand, but at the end of the day it just isn't gonna work this way. after all WHAT is the selling point of Surface pro? "You can use all your windows programs on it!". Really, so it is magically gonna make those millions of programs that were designed around a keyboard/mouse UI work on a touch UI?
While I don't own any Apple products, I think they are overpriced and have too much control by Apple, i have to give credit where credit is due and they were SMART to not jam OSX on a tablet and call it an iPad. Trouble for MSFT is X86 backwards compatibility is really their only selling point. Nobody buys Windows because they LIKE MSFT or want to stare lovingly at a WinFlag, they buy it because they have a ton of software NOT written by MSFT they want to run. Apple didn't have that problem as the biggest apps like iTunes were owned by Apple. So at the end of the day while I'm sure they'll sell a few it sure as fuck isn't gonna "save the company" or be any kind of "iPad/Android killer" and they can lowball the units all they want, at the end of the day i predict it'll be another Zune.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually it will NOT sell except to a few niches like taking inventory and here is why: Business runs on OLD SOFTWARE. Check any business, be they large or small, and look at the age of the software. Business has tons and tons of old software because the cost of replacing it all would be insane and "if it ain't broke?".
What does that have to do with Surface pro? simple what UI was all that old software written for? A mouse and keyboard. ever try to use mouse and keyboard software on a touchscreen? sucks big hairy balls as the software either has too small a target to hit or it doesn't know WTF you are trying to do and it becomes a guessing game to figure out WTF it'll take to get what you want in using the touchscreen.
But this comes down to the core of what MSFT has a serious problem with and why they need to try to stop aping Apple and Google and ape IBM instead. You see Apple and Google? Its all Apple and Google software on Apple and Google hardware and backwards compatibility don't mean shit to them, this is the exact opposite of the MSFT situation where ALL they have going for them is backwards compatibility. Nobody buys MSFT OSes to look at the wallpaper, they buy it because they have an assload of older software not written by MSFT they need to run and all that software, billions of dollars worth, wasn't designed for touchscreens.
Apple is ultimately a consumer electronics company, no different than those that sell TVs or consoles. Google is an ad company that don't have to worry about anything other than making sure the browser takes you to Google, MSFT is a 30 year old company with a shitload of software written by others that had damned well better "just work" and it just won't on a slab. This is why IBM makes a better company to ape, sell services to go with that software, but Ballmer can click his heels and say "There is no place like Cupertino" all he wants and he will never turn MSFT into Apple, its just two different business models that just don't work together.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Having worked in IT at two wholesale outfits, I doubt it'll even do for inventory taking.
Warehouses aren't very friendly with electronics, devices get dropped or stuff gets dropped on them, there's always dust, so every fan is extra time spent on servicing (and Surface has two).
You need it as cheap, rugged and light as possible - Surface is neither. You can ease "rugged and light" requirement, say, if you put it on some kind of cart with a stand - and then you don't need Surface again, because you can just put a cheap laptop on that stand.
I just can't see where it makes sense. In places where "it can do what a laptop could do!", you can get cheaper laptop, why Surface? In places where "it's a tablet, but it runs full Windows with all legacy applications!", there are no legacy application for use in those places, they're either still on Windows CE, or they're already on iOS/Android.
Work to "secure" a windows environment is often wasted, since you will still have serious design flaws rendering all your hard work pointless...
As for surface pro, windows tablets have been around for years and you can already run existing software on them... They have always failed while the ipad succeeded, and the surface pro only changes one of those reasons while leaving the others...
1, The OS is not touch friendly, well windows 8 goes a long way towards fixing this but it still has its quirks...
2, The apps are not touch friendly - installing your own existing apps isn't gonna be popular if they are unusable, you will end up rewriting them anyway at least to add a new touch friendly ui.
3, The hardware is bulkier than an ipad or android device, with inferior battery life, surface pro still has this problem. For something your meant to carry around in one hand, bulky is not good.
4, The hardware costs more - surface pro hasn't solved this either.
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