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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."
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.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's not our duty to improve your experience. You bought a tablet with little third party developer support, so suck it up.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
The Surface Pro is actually a really nice device. But at it's price point why would you get it over similar devices that have the haswell chips in them or the devices from Lenovo/Asus/Acer/Sony which each have differing advantages ranging from lighter, longer battery life, better screens or more powerful. I like the device but if you want a windows device their are better value/performance options.
Not interested. Won't buy it. No use for it. Wouldn't take one as a door prize if was bacon wrapped, dipped in milk chocolate and came with a free weekend on Martha's Vineyard with Warren Buffet's Gold Card. I'm confident that even if they were pulled back and sent to the crusher, the crusher wouldn't want them either. Ballmer isn't going to learn until losses like this start coming out of his lily white hide. Let the lesson begin...
Quick question:
I have a pile of bricks for sale. You're building a wood house. If I cut the price of the pile of bricks, does that make you more interested in buying them?
Of course not; You still have no use for a pile of bricks.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
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".
Much ink has been spilled about the failure of the unloved RT model...One that other than it being severely crippled with Secure Boot was ARM, something I liked a lot...the pro has a fan! I don't see what is compelling about another Windows 8 Ultrabook (Pen input aside...that is great)
What we do know is that the $900m writedown was related to Surface RT only, but the $853m revenue figure includes sales of Surface RT and Surface Pro combined. Microsoft upped its sales and marketing budget for the Windows Division in 2013 by a jaw-dropping $1bn, which included an $898m increase in advertising costs "associated primarily with Windows 8 and Surface.
ASUS Transformer Pad.. :)
I travel with it, it is light, has a nice keyboard, good apps and developers (android).
1080p instead of the inflight movies, priceless....... for everything else there is bitcoin
Seriously you are saying windows X86/X64 has little third party support? seriously?? like it or hate it, it is perhaps the single most supported platform by third parties on the planet.
Steve Ballmer himself has recently declared that he was unhappy with the number of tablets Microsoft has managed to sell.
Can someone please pass the message on to Steve Ballmer that being unhappy isn't a strategy for business growth?
Where do you expect this Windows 8 and Surface fiasco will ultimately take Microsoft? What will happen?
Windows 9 will be 'The best Windows ever! Now with NEW mouse and Start Menu support!'
Little third-party developer support? You must live in some fantasy world where Windows 95-Windows 8 never existed.
You've clearly never used one if you think that Windows software is mostly practical on a tablet. If it was then there wouldn't have been any need to develop Metro. Of course, you can use it as a half-assed laptop, but an actual laptop would be cheaper and better so why bother?
Congratulations, you've won the bronze in the "Miss the fucking point completely" competition!
Hint: most desktop apps from "most supported platform on the planet" are mostly useless when running on small touchscreen. There's a reason tablet computers didn't really catch on until iOS - and not for the lack of tablets with "most supported platform on the planet". There was even Windows XP Tablet Edition, which still didn't help a bit.
Ever tried using any "application for most popular OS since mid-90's" on a touchscreen? Keyboard and mouse oriented interfaces *suck* on a 10" touchscreen.
Well, then, hook up a keyboard and mouse. Touch is optional.
Surface Pro is just as doomed as Surface RT:
It's a shitty tablet: low res screen, a ridiculously short battery life, with just as little tablet useful and good quality apps (they're the same ones as Windows RT) i.e. apps with a touch UI, to most people, to a lot of people, being a "standard x86 computer" (but with touch) also means dealing with the problems they've had for years with their Windows PCs (malware and what not). The OS takes far too much of the SSD, and it's bloody overpriced compared to an ipad. It just doesn't have any advantages at being a tablet over iPads or Android-based tablets.
It's a shitty laptop: the overpriced keyboard sucks, the screen is too damn tiny (and not very high res), the screen angle doesn't adjust well like a laptop, it has less options for connecting it. Want to plug it to this external display or an ethernet port? That requires a proprietary overpriced cable!
For the price of a Surface Pro with the keyboard cover and the necessary cables, I can get an ipad that's a far better tablet in every way, and a "good enough" laptop (better than a Surface Pro at anything I'll do on it) that'll last me 5 years.
Sure, the Surface Pro "replaces" both but all-around in a very sub-par way, and that's only a real gain if you're travelling. I don't mind leaving the laptop somewhere else in the house if I go read an ebook elsewhere with the ipad, nor that it bothers me to have the ipad lying elsewhere if I'm working on the laptop.
The Surface Pro is truly the worst of both worlds, and it's not exactly cheap either.
So is this retroactive? Will Microsoft be sending a $100 check to the two dozen know-nothings in the Pacific Northwest who bought one of these?
If I'm asked, should I tell them to return the things to the Office Depot or Staples store where they bought them? Every single one would qualify for a return as "unfit for purpose". Hell, most of them would qualify under the store's "no questions asked if returned in 60 days" policies. Then if they really wanted to, they could buy another at the lower price.
Will
"If you can only sell on price, you have nothing worth selling."
for as good as the surface pro is, i'd rather have a Windows 7 laptop for half the price.
my fucking horrible samsung windows 8 laptop (NP550P5C-A01UB, catchy name, no?) types wherever the hell the cursor is, not necessarily where i had intended to type. fuck windows 8.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Ever tried using any "application for most popular OS since mid-90's" on a touchscreen? Keyboard and mouse oriented interfaces *suck* on a 10" touchscreen.
Well, then, hook up a keyboard and mouse. Touch is optional.
I really love it when people keep moving the goalposts.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Does it run Linux?
Wow, I can't believe it! At $999 the Surface Pro was a great deal on a wonderful device, and now at $100 less, it's even a better deal!!! Buy one before they sell out!! I'm going to sell my car and put all my money in Surface Pros!
(Well, you know someone was going to say it.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Wrong, a mobile i5 is dual core not quad core, though with four threads.
It therefore has probably the largest developer support base of any desktop platform.
Which might be good, if it wasn't a tablet that tries to be a crappy laptop.
Whatever you may think it's trying to be, it's the best ultraportable laptop on the market when used as an ultraportable laptop. I came from a Zenbook UX31A and an X230 and neither are as good as the Surface Pro even if you just use the SP as a laptop with a type cover.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
You're right of course, it shows in device manager as 4 cores, but it's two threads per core.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Why was this modded "troll" when in fact the MS camp on /. is obviously trolling:
Look at the scores. Remember that one a few days ago that got a +5 Informative for being an obvious MS Shill?
Some of the trolls language: "DAMN GOOD travel companion", "Drawing right on
the tablet screen IS AWESOME." "it's predecessors were ...(AWESOME)...The surface
Pro VASTLY OUTSTRIPS either of those..", " This machine REALLY SHINES with
the Click Keyboard."... Boots in 7 SECONDS FLAT.
And its PERFORMANCE is AMAZING, and the
interface is WELL THOUGHT OUT". I could go on. Include any of those keywords
and automatically get 1 mod point for at least 2. An army of moderators needs to go
out and downgrade these unworthy posts about Microsoft or it's products, changing points on some of these clowns'
postings, some of which are from people who post like 5 or more times each. Are we living
in a world where talk is cheap and we can just use ultra-positive words without
giving actual evidence as to _how_ the product is great. Go back to English 101. Explain your point and develop an argument. Shame on these
moderators!
> In the history of all consumer products in the world, I can think of no other product so publicly rejected as Microsoft's newest products.
In all fairness, I can think of a few that are in the same sad category:
* Sony's sad excuse for a digital Walkman, that made everything secondary to DRM-enforcement and was basically useless, with MiniDisc as a close second.
* Logitech Revue
* Motorola Photon Q (that's *Photon*, not *Nexus*. Google gets a free pass with the Nexus Q since they ended up giving them away for free).
* Pretty much every version of Windows Phone
Vista was legitimately bad in most regards. The UI was the one "redeeming" aspect; everything else was half baked.
8 is the reverse. The UI blows, the core is good. All problems MS is having with 8 are self-inflicted.
If they hadn't arrogantly locked the ARM-based devices into Win8 ONLY with UEFI/SecureBoot, there might have been a market for them among people that would have bought them, wiped them, and put something else on them.
I'm sure the dev community would have come up with an Android load for them, and I'm sure Linux hackers would have had fun with them too.
Instead, they will follow the fate of the Zune, and MS are stuck holding millions of near-worthless paperweights.
Good for them.
There is an entire world of people who still don't understand that Surface Pro is radically different than RT.
And the reason for that is misleading marketing... MS are so obsessed with the idea of forcing the windows brand everywhere that they are blind to the fact that this brand is poisonous on mobile devices. Windows is not a desirable brand, its something people put up with because they have no other choice in many cases, it's highly detrimental in a market where users realise they do have choice.
The only thing it has going for it is compatibility, and yet they dilute the brand with incompatible products, which again turns customers away.
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Ultrabooks can be used on your lap with a keyboard. Try doing that with a Surface Pro. Ultrabooks let you decide on the angle the screen sits on a table, try doing that with a Surface Pro. It's severely limited as a laptop replacement because the keyboard and screen can't be connected at an arbitrary angle with only the keyboard supporting the device. Ergonomics for the use as an ultrabook competitor are severely flawed this way.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?