Microsoft Cuts Surface Pro Price By $100

SmartAboutThings writes "After discounting the Surface RT tablet worldwide by 30 percent, Microsoft is now cutting the price of its Surface Pro tablet by one hundred dollars. Steve Ballmer himself has recently declared that he was unhappy with the number of tablets Microsoft has managed to sell. The price cut offer is valid between August 4th and August 29th. It might continue or stop, according to the supply. The price cut is applicable to Surface Pro 64 GB & 128 GB models."

Comments

Not enough

[Maxo-Texas]

Sorry but that's not enough- not nearly enough.

Perhaps if they were between $350 and $550?

Otherwise, I can have a 10" tablet for $300 (or much less) or I can have a laptop for $450 (or much less).

The touch is okay but the price point isn't right.

Re:Not enough

[ericloewe]

The price cut lets it undercut every direct competitor by 100 bucks. This thing doesn't compete against a puny ARM tablet or even a puny $450 laptop. It competes against ultrabooks and especially ultrabook-tablet hybrids (Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro, Sony Vaio Duo...).

It has its niche - less money for the same product is always better, but it's by no means overpriced.

Re:Not enough

[ozmanjusri]

Yea everyone knows a Nexus 7 beats a core i5! AMIRITE?

It does if your goals are to have a handheld tablet which runs cool, has great battery life, plenty of touch-optimised apps and low OS maintenance requirements.

And that's the problem with both the Surfaces.

The RT is late to the party with several irritations and nothing better to offer than the other tablet OSs, not to mention a lot less apps available. The Pro brings the same old Windows benefits, complexity and issues every other Windows machine brings, but also puts nothing new on the table. Technically there's lots of click-click cleverness and interface bling, but neither enables users to do anything new or better than what's already available.

Microsoft has been trying to do tablets for longer than most companies - I even still have a Compaq Concerto with Pen Windows on it - but they've never managed to give the actual users of the hardware any tangible benefit for the cost or complexity. For users, it's not so much "Where do you want to go today?" as a bewildered "Well, what can I do with this thing now?"

Pity it doesn't work as a peripheral...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

At that price, the Surface Pro is more or less even with the Wacom stylus-input displays (of similar size, larger ones are substantially more expensive) that don't have a computer attached to them...

Unless the pen input is totally gimped, this seems like it would be a serious competitor to those for everyone except people whose photoshopping is serious enough that the Surface's specs can't handle it. Especially if your demands are at all mobile, it's hard to justify buying the Wacom when you could get the screen and stylus input with the laptop thrown in for free. It's a pity that the Surface can't act as a monitor/input device (optionally, while charging at your desk, for example, it could go from a waste of space to an extra monitor) for more powerful computers.

Re:Excellent

[ericloewe]

Little third-party developer support? You must live in some fantasy world where Windows 95-Windows 8 never existed. A tablet that runs every 32-bit (and 64-bit) application ever written for the world's most popular OS since the mid-90's does not have "little third party developer support".

Re:Still useless

[Trepidity]

Well, I could use them for a faux-brick facade or something. How cheap are those bricks again?