Slashdot Mirror
Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2: Now With New Kickstand!
UnknowingFool writes "For consumers who had hoped that Microsoft would greatly upgrade their recent entries into the tablet market, leaks and rumors have said that both machines will receive modest hardware changes. Surface Pro 2 will sport new Haswell processors which will increase battery life to 7 hours. RAM is expected to increase from 4GB to 8GB. Surface (formerly RT) will get Tegra 4 processors. The only other confirmed change will be new kickstands that have 2 positions instead of one."
Kickstands!!
So, it has come to this.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
I feel these manufactures are moving backwards. I don't want a small tablet, I would much prefer something more usable with a 15" or 17" screen. These things are just too small to really be useful.
another billion dollars into the drain.. oh wait now they have a new devices guy onboard with proven track record so it'll be 3 billion down the drain.
also: why the fuck would any other manufacturer get on-board botched-windows-on-arm rt? am I rt?
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Are they just trying to see how tall they can make a mountain of unsold Surfaces?
Is it still going to cost as much as a 10" Android tablet AND a low-end laptop, while offering neither the portability of the first nor the big screen and hard drive of the second?
Yeah, I think I hear another billion dollar write-off coming...
0 1 - just my two bits
Notebook and tablet. Hello Surface Pro 2.
Can't wait.
If they want something that wins Sell me the 2560 x 1600 screen I want. SOLD. We need two. The google pixel cost too much for what or I'd have that.
for 499.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Some people never learn.
OMFG that's the funniest comment I think i've ever seen on here.
well played, sir! well played.
No one else in the tech world is so willing to cover the most exciting tech news like Microsoft's latest tablets! Other sites just blather on and on about Apple and Android and other irrelevant tech topics, only SLASHDOT is willing to put up stories about the real movers and shakers of the industry. Thank you Dice.com! BEST SITES ON THE WEB!
Does it run GNU/Linux?
Holy crap ... a kickstand with 2 positions.
Now that is innovation and market leadership.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
hey, honey, I'm taking down the retirement account and getting me two of them Surface 2s with the high-wattage kickstand! it has TWO positions! AND they have Windows 8.1 with the start button!
.
.
.
why are you packing everything? oh, it's only my stuff?
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Boring...
If the price is right and the battery life is accurate, I wouldn't mind having a Surface Pro 2.
"It will be in the old features such as durability, battery capacity, cost, and weight. This is where Nokia can excel."
You might be right about specs being less important, but people will care about the OS and apps its running and right now MS is losing. And decisions like Windows8 on the desktop, SurfaceRT, and XBone make MS look incapable of reading their customers.
It will be in the old features such as durability, battery capacity, cost, and weight. This is where Nokia can excel. Thus if Microsoft can keep from putting MS office on everything...
Talking about Nokias soon to be released tablet the Sirius...basically a big Lumia Phone, with none too shabby specifications at least on paper, would at least been on topic.
Nokia as was is seriously gutted, its best people have been driven away or been sacked...anyone left will either be sacked by Microsoft...or assimilated by Microsoft famously know for snuffing talent. Nokia has killed off its Manufacturing and is simply another "Designed in" which translates as "Made in China"...In context of this article Office fails to sell to the consumer market.
I thought the Surface v1 kickstand already had two positions: opened and closed ? Wasn't it working as advertized ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
Does it run GNU/Linux?
It doesn't even let you run your own programs. Its a locked down tablet.
They're going to be a commodity, but people are going to buy the one which runs the ecosystem which they have been using to buy their apps etc. So my kids, who have been hooked by their ipod touches, are going to stick with Apple. My wife and I are going to stick with Android, where I have paid for a number of apps I find useful. And Winphones are going to be left out, unless the gamble of making people hate using their desktop os just to force an installed app base pays off. I know I just bought a $1500+ Dell laptop over an equally nice Sony, purely because the Sony only came with Windows 8. And I actually have Win8 on a home laptop, so I know why I'm avoiding it.
Except that Nokia laid off everyone from their factories, sold the land and buildings, and have their phones made for them in China now. How are they going to differentiate again?
I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because ________.
Examples, leaving iPad's out:
I want _a_Tivo_ because _I_don't_like_my_Cable_DVR_.
I want a _Honda_ because _I_trust_the_brand_based_on_past_experience_.
My point is that the Surface doesn't fit anything for me.
Based on Microsoft's own site http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/surface-with-windows-8-pro/
Microsoft believes our answers are :
I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because _I_Need_Office_on_a_tablet_.
I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_a_neat_keyboard_on_a_tablet_.
I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_USB_Port_.
I'm not the target market, but I don't know who is?
First of all you're assuming that MS/Nokia could compete with the Asian manufacturers and still be profitable? As it stands today, Nokia sells a lot of dumb phones but for no profit. The Asian manufacturers like Samsung are not going to stand still. It really doesn't matter much if your product is the best out there if you are not making any money. Second, given the history of MS acquisitions destroying the other company, do you really think the Nokia today will not be consumed in the MS inner turmoil? Look at what happened to Danger. Maybe Nokia can keep up with their quality and execution despite MS. I don't think so. Lastly, consumers don't want really want Office. Businesses might want a practical convertible laptop/tablet. Right now MS needs to work more on Win8 to get there for this to be practical even if the hardware was available. I personally think the Nokia deal is the start of a patent war by proxy. MS did that with SCO, I think they'll do it with Nokia.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The more interesting question is where is the graveyard holding millions of unsold original Surface tablets? Were they dismantled in Asia? Were they buried next to ET? Were they lost in a warehouse and locked up only to be discovered in 2021? Have they been lost at sea along with the cargo ship necessary to hold them all?
I find this question far more interesting than a new kickstand on a product that has failed before ever getting released.
...because microsoft customers were tired of taking it from behind.
And what operating system will they run?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Balmer and Elop are playing a giant game of Jenga with unsold Surface RTs
Specs ARE largely irrelevant, albeit within reason. There's almost no practical difference between an i7 and a Pentium g CPU for most desktop computing purposes and there's little difference between a quad core ARM and a single core version for many mobile applications. Screen resolution, form factor and speed of data access are the biggest differentiating factors most of the time.
That said, Android is nearly-free-except-for-some-licensing-fees and Apple isn't going to open up iOS. Does anyone really think Microsoft is going to start giving away ANYTHING that's branded "Windows?" Because if Microsoft is trying to make money on its mobile OS, it's just going to price itself out of any sort of wide adoption.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Tablets aren't really about having huge amounts of ram or a bigger gpu/cpu. Its about convenience. If I cared about portal power Id buy a laptop. I want a tablet because I can check emails, watch videos, surf the internet, have the calendar, run a few apps and such and its convenient to do so. I really don't care about horsepower and ram in a tablet. Im not going to be playing battlefield 4 or editing videos on a tablet, no one will.
Its going to be expensive as well. So much that Ill be able to find plenty of alternatives from companies that understand tablets for half the cost.
As you run up to kick the thing from 25 yards?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The funny thing about the USB port is that it is both a feature and necessity. Yes you can expand your storage, but because Windows 8 and Windows RT takes up 41GB and 16 GN respectively, you need the port just to compete with Android or iOS. While iOS and Android take up max about 3-4GB, they don't take up half of the device's storage space.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The problem here is that all manufacturers don't innovate.
They keep milking the same cow. When iphone 4 or 5 came out, Samsung came out and said their is better.
Then the next year samsung came out with the s4 and it looked the same as the S3.
Ballmer will still be in charge, and this time will be real the "betting the company" on this one. Could be the final push for a company at the edge of the abyss.
... the kickstand goes up to 11.
These small additions, although welcome additions, will do nothing to increase MS's tablet market share. How about throwing in the keyboard for free? How about some steeper price cuts? How about some free credits from the MS store?
Look - I applaud MS for trying to make a mark in the tablet space but they are fighting a really uphill battle. If they expect to have any sustained success with these things they are going to have to do something really aggressive. As it stands now, I can't think of a single compelling reason to buy a Surface over an iPad or one of the (better) Android tablets. Your move Mr. Ballmer.
Then again, it's not difficult to get confused about an MS product lineup these days. So do I understand that Surface RT is now just called Surface or Surface Pro while they then have the Surface Pro 2? Having Surface RT in the mix was confusing enough, but at least the RT implied something was different. Now they're both called Surface, dropping the RT on the ARM model? Huh? I can see this resulting in a lot of returns when people realize they purchased the wrong model the hard way. Or few returns since they aren't exactly selling. Did I RTFA too fast and miss something or what?
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The community here is doing a good job of driving me away from Slashdot as a source for tech news. Every single story that mentions Microsoft turns into a circle jerk bashing the company. Few here seem capable of having a mature discussion about the topic with the level of cynicism going beyond any sense of reason. What makes anything Microsoft is doing inherently inferior to Google, Apple or Sony? Excluding, of course, the fact that Microsoft remains the company it's cool to hate. Nevermind everything they've enabled over the last few decades.
It's one thing when the topic specifically discusses Microsoft's missteps, but this is getting ridiculous.
More RAM and a better processor, which entails almost every single hardware update ever, for some reason paints a lackluster picture when Microsoft is behind it. Other than the stupid decision Microsoft made in offering the Surface RT, there was nothing wrong with the hardware. I'd be more concerned if they went with a totally new form factor.
And what's with the fixation on the new kickstand? It looks to me like tech specs were leaked and some internet twat specifically brought up the kickstand to turn the news into yet another anti-Microsoft joke. They don't even know what the kickstand improvements entail, but that's what this writer chose to emphasize.
The ironic thing here is that Infoworld even listed that kickstand as one of the 10 things Microsoft needed to improve. Microsoft has done so and now they're bashing them for it. But some of the stuff they're complaining about seems unreasonable because they tolerate worse from Apple. I don't think I've ever seen a single person complain about Apple charging $40 for a rubber cover embedded with a few magnets. Not to say I don't think the Surface Pro isn't expensive, but it's also far closer to being a proper laptop than the iPad.
With Haswell, a built in wacom, AND 2560x1600, I think the pricepoint would be rather higher.
Hey that gentleman made out well selling me his adenoids, they were not cheap. The transplant was a win win for all.
I am currently in Malaysia for business, Kuala Lumpur.
Had planned to take a new tablet back; not for major work but minor stuff, reading mail, light gaming, when on the road.
KL is a good place for such things.
Saw a really beautiful RT. Sorry, I am a Linux person, an MS-hater, but it looked good to me. Smooth, bright. Nice keyboard. Nice build-quality. RM 1099. Could fit my bill. Nice to touch as well. Next to it a Surface. To me as a non-Windows person, the same as the RT (I know, I know, I know the difference). RM 2700. On the next table an Asus Fonepad. RM 749. I know, I know, this is different. 7" instead of 10" or whatnot. But also great build-quality.
I went out with the Fonepad. No, not a single sen comes my way for this comment. However, I do think that this is what the current market is all about. Most customers with a limited budget will do likewise, as long as a tablet is not a full replacement for a desktop. And since the tablet market is not a market like Office Suite with MS having a stranglehold, MS is pretty much "cooked" as the French say.
Idon;t blame you at all. I had my first brush with Windows 8 yesterday when a friend asked me to help him sort out why his mp3s weren't playing - A "Music" "app" was asking him to pay for an upgrade. Fixed by installing Foobar 2000 and changing default file association.
But what a complete pain in the arse it was dealing with Metro. What a total, utter crock of shit. Windows that maximise themselves whether you want them to or not. Some half arsed collection of "tiles" that kept popping up. Ever single piece of the user interface seems to be designed primarily to GET IN THE FUCKING WAY.
It is without doubt the single worst O/S I have ever seen in my life. Utterly vile rotten crap.
If they carry onlike this Microsoft truly are finished.
..you're just looking to use a higher powered microscope before you can discern between pixels?
If we colonize Mars, it won't be the World Wide Web anymore. UWW?
Microsoft "gave" me a Surface Pro a while back and it's actually a decent device, I use it a lot as a replacement for my old netbook, but it's not really a tablet so much as a new netbook with touch. The RT ... I am amazed anyone thought anything about that was a good idea. As far as I can see the RT is completely full of fail whereas the Pro is merely a bit overpriced.
What makes anything Microsoft is doing inherently inferior to Google, Apple or Sony? Excluding, of course, the fact that Microsoft remains the company it's cool to hate.
Bless You. I am a little tired of whiny fans of bemoaning the fact that others do not admire their favourite mega corporation as much as they do. Microsoft deserve hate, they are a vile company, whole abuses stretch across two decades...except this is not what is happening here. What is happening is Microsoft is a Loser. Windows has had 5 quarters drop in sales...and that is set to continue. Its flagship products Windows 8 and Office 365 are largely criticised and have real competition in the form of Chrome Os/Android LibreOffice/Google Docs, Its Mobile strategy on both tablets and smartphones have made it a Joke. Ballmer has been Sacked...Nokia has been sold off for chump change Its Xbox strategy has been to be as anti-gamer as possible. Good news is slim on the ground...ans unsurprisingly most here do not see any change with Microsoft doubling down on their mobile strategy...one that is bad for most of its supporters here.
(10:00am meeting somewhere in Redmond)
CEO: We need to act quickly. With Balmer gone, and Elop a flop, the shareholders are getting nervous.
Marketing Droid: Any way we can spin some spin on something to spin it?
Manager: There isn't much left to spin.
CEO: We need a new feature
(silence)
Marketing droid: How about a kickstand!?
CEO: That might just work!
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
except the market they're aiming for isn't you and me but Corporate - offering a unified ecosystem that's managed by the AD servers and such. Allowing access using Office 365 Corporate Lan Version to those Tablets and Phones so companies can tell people "It's out network and no you can't BYOD unless it's running a supported OS such as Windows". That's what they're trying to do and one way MS could improve this is to buy Dell entirely. They've got enough Cash and to replace Balmer, bring in Michael Dell instead of the fucking idiot Elop.
I wish I was actually paid by MS to be shill instead of just being someone who has absolutely no loyalty to any product or company. Think about it. Could MS actually pull it off if they did this?
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_a_neat_keyboard_on_a_tablet_.
I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_USB_Port_.
Except I got an ASUS Transformer with both of those for half the price.
so they just keep continuing with the misguided believe if they build it they come even when they must know but now that the locks they had on the channels for PCs are no long in place. Every single version of "the new great, rebuilt from the ground up release of Windows got lots of PR time about how many units were sold. They'd get these stories out for 1+ years after the release without a single mention of how they really were just preload numbers and customers were forced to take what was put on the devices. Sure businesses started upgrading 3+ years later but it was all riding the tail of the monopoly they held on the desktop.
And now they still seem to think an unrelated product(unrelated to the desktop) is going to sell because they pack in more horsepower, more RAM( not storage but RAM ) and add a 2nd step to the kickstand? Wow are they seriously living in a fantasy world or what.
I want a _Surface_Tablet_(pro) because I'm an artist and like having a Wacom tablet that is also a computer. And games.
It's actually gotten good reviews from artists. Here is one example. Of course the same doesn't go for RT, which is just overpriced.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That will be two legs and half an arm please?
Ok Where do you want to cut?
Like anything else, I'm going to give Microsoft a pass on their tech until there are a few more iterations and improvements on their products. Don't feel like paying for a 'guinea' pig product.
41GB
Lie. Windows 8 32-bit needs 16GB and 64-bit needs 20GB.
I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because _I_Need_Office_on_a_tablet_. I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_a_neat_keyboard_on_a_tablet_. I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_USB_Port_.
You missed a few of the marketing points:
I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because _I_Need_Performance_ -- Windows based tablets, from Microsoft or otherwise, come with vastly more powerful hardware compared to *any* Android or iOS based tablet. Aside from the obvious i5, Windows based tablets typically come paired with a full SSD instead of cheap eMMC storage. For anyone who doesn't understand what this means, typically you'll see 10x better transfer rates on the Surface Pro compared to a tablet like the 4th gen iPad.
I want a _Surface_Tablet_ because _I_Need_An_Active_Digitizer_ -- Almost all x86 Windows tablets come with an active digitizer, and so do many ARM based tablets. Apple offers exactly zero options for this, and the options on Android are few and far between. Also, Android cannot compete with Microsoft's handwriting recognition software, as it's easily best in the industry and probably won't be beat in a long time (I'm familiar with the machine learning approaches they are using). Windwos also has the software to match which is adequate for professional artists and yes, usable in tablet mode despite being x86 applications.
I want a _Surface_Table_ because _I_need_Ports_ -- Not just a USB port, but HDMI, full size USB 3, SD, and sometimes all three at the same time. A dongle system like the iPad has doesn't work for me. Some Android tablets have these features, but what's even more important is what the OS can handle with them. Surface turns into a full desktop system with full desktop apps and a full desktop OS when plugged in to KVM. Android tablets remain primarily touch-based shoehorned with some keyboard and mouse functionality.
I highly doubt a clean install of Windows 8 takes up 41 GB. Have never done one, but it'd be absurd, especially given their efforts towards saving disk space.
Might I add that it is not corrrect to use forces to describe something's resistance - you have to use stress. 16 GN divided by approximately 2330 mm^2 (assuming you're applying the force parallel to its long edge) means approximately 6,9 MPa. It's up to everyone else to guess just what those 6,9 MPa are. Stress at the yield point? Stress at the breaking point? If you're going to bring materials engineering into this, do it right.
As one of the few Surface owners, I can say on a general level the hardware is solid but the software makes me want to start straggling some UI designers.
Issues:
* on screen keyboard is overlay, so some applications you can't see what you're typing.
* some basic functions (ie. sleep timer) is on the Desktop interface, which makes no sense since MSFT is trying to push the Modern Interface. Plus, Desktop interface is a pain to use on a touchscreen
* "Home" button is capacitive touch and if you use it in portrait mode you'll hit it accidentally very very often
* factory reset takes 2 hours to complete. And then another hour or so to "update" the laptop. Makes me miss Apple's OTA updates.
* to close an Internet Explorer (in Modern), sometimes its swipe up, click on the tab's "x", which switches the active tab to another tab, click "x" on that tab again. Other times its single click on the tab's "x" you want to close. No very consistent
* on-screen keyboard pops always pop up when you want it, like when filling in text fields on a web page
I'll bite..
I want a surface (pro) tablet because my users want tablets but like millions of businesses, mine is run using software that cannot execute on iOS or Android and porting everything would suck or be impossible at this time. The surface pro solves a very real problem for my IT dept. We have deployed hundreds and receive positive feedback constantly.
The non pro surface, on the other hand, is of no interest.
-Lod
Is doubling the ram and moving to a newer generation CPU (with presumably the faster GPU it brings) with a 2 hour boost to battery life really a 'modest' spec boost?
I know it's fun to hate on the Surface pro but an all round boost to memory, power and battery life is a pretty good spec bump no?
If they could give you the best of both worlds - a laptop/PC when you need to do work, a tablet when you want a bathroom reader - I would consider it. Travel would be a lot easier too because I'd only bring one device instead of a laptop and a tablet.
They should never have made RT. No one wants it and it just dilutes the Window's brand name. They should have admitted they can't match competitors on battery life (at this time) and just tried to convince consumers the battery life compromise is worth it because it can do everything a laptop can do. They could have put extra battery in the keyboard instead of the tacky colored click covers they sell now and sold that as their long flight solution.
The other problem is I don't think they have figured out how to make a single product that does both well. Windows8 seems like it would be good on a tablet, but it stinks on the desktop. I think they could find a better solution (if Windows success tells anything its that the solution doesn't have to be perfect) but they are married to the Metro on the desktop abomination.
They "upgraded" the Surface RT sales figures by silently removing the 'name recognition' associated with the dismal sales of the same product. Everybody knows not to buy an "RT". So, just remove the RT from the name! If MS can confuse enough people by changing that well known name, then some hapless individuals might accidentally buy one by mistake, thus boosting quarterly MS sales figures in the process.
If they could give you the best of both worlds - a laptop/PC when you need to do work, a tablet when you want a bathroom reader - I would consider it.
That's fundamentally impossible, because, to be able to use it as a tablet, you have to put all the heavy parts behind the screen, which makes it a really crappy laptop. Hence the need for the glorious NEW! IMPROVED! kickstand.
Anyone who's used an Asus Transformer should have been able to tell them it was a bad idea for that reason alone.
Having two incompatible devices both called Surface was bad enough, but at least you could ask a clueless user or sales drone if they had a Pro or an RT. Who the hell is in charge of marketing these things?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Calling two very different products by the same name is incredibly stupid and confusing, and dropping "RT" does nothing to address the issue. Apple makes it almost impossible to confuse their Mac and iOS products, MS deserves to be bashed for failing to do so even on their second attempt. And the Windows 8/8.1 "F*ck U, no Start menu" debacle has hardly earned them any good will.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
No, it's about a quarter of that, but Microsoft does strange things so every hotfix and service pack needs to store it's installer forever, so that can easily expand to much larger.
Millions of kids will now associate Microsoft products with homework and exams. Soon, adolescents everywhere will break out into stress-induced hives the moment they see the Windows logo come up. That will do wonders for sales in about ten years' time. :-)
Koans and fables for the software engineer
MS is the one who is the has put out confusing numbers. Like all things MS, they clarified it later.. Even by MS best estimates, it takes about 32GB of space on a Surface Pro. If you use a tool, you can reclaim 8GB more. So Windows 8 on a Surface at best requires 24GB of space after optimizations.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
According to this was the original spec.. MS has since changed it but it is slightly better.. This is what MS says not me.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Go buy a laptop cause you clearly doesn't need a tablet.
Haswell i5 and 8 gigs of ram are all fine, i could live with 7ish hours of battery life, but what is holding me back from getting a surface pro is the lack of thunderboltd and a desktop dock. With the kind of power that the surface pro (more so with rumored surface pro 2 specs) has it could be my main computational device... outside of gaming, but that is a whole other wishlist. Sure you can hook the surface up to an external monitor, and a usb hub and be 'good to go'... but why stop there. Go for the gusto, build me a nice slick dock where all i have to do is slide the tablet in and BAM! hoooked up to my monitors, usb peripherals, and thunderboltd devices (which could be monitors for all i care... or giant raid array... whatever really, that is supposed to be the beauty of thunderboldt isn't it? more bandwidth that your body has room for - except the really cool things like external graphics cards... which is on the future wishlist, thunderboldt v3 is equivalent to x8 or x16 pcie3 and suddenly external video card(s) no longer take an atrocious hit to bandwidth/performance...) Bonus points if in docked form the tablet is still useable (i don't care what witchery is needed, just let me set it to a useable angle and lock it in place) as a graphics tablet with the digitizer. Unhooking would be just as easy, unlatch button/slide/thing and pull the table out, throw it into a bag and away i go. I will throw money at whoever does this
Maybe it will have a hinge for the kickstand?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
I have the impression that calling the tablets "Surface 2" and "Surface pro 2" will at least doom the "Surface 2" - because, again, it won't run the apps that people expect it to run. Too damn close to its x86-based sibling.
I didn't say anything about my application? Why are you assuming I need a laptop? Does a laptop come with an active digitizer and touch screen? Does it weigh only 2 lbs? Is it only .5 inches thick? Let me clue you in, no. I need a light computer with touch and pen input and the ability to run x86 applications. Surface Pro and other similiar Windows Tablets are the only machines out there that offer this to me. Don't tell me what I need.
We don't allow DROIDs here at Microsoft.
Im not clear why theyre not selling. I dont particularly need one (the touchscreen would be of no use to me, and the form factor only marginally so), but my experience with them in the store was that the pros were solid. Certainly the folks at Penny Arcade gave a glowing review of the pro, and IIRC the newer comics are being done on it due to its excellent built in wacom.
Is it just the price point? $800 for an ultra-bookish laptop with an incredible touch screen seems pretty competitive to me....
Microsoft has fallen prey to it's own most powerful weapon - platform lockin - it's just this time the platform isn't owned by them. It's owned by Apple (and increasingly Google).
Are the Redmond guys as dumb as they look, or did they not get the idea that Windows8 and Metro was in a seriously hampered position without the PC software chain behind it? ANd then they go cripping their existing desktop monopoly (and the Surface Pro) by forcing Metro on those, too.
The hubris smells from hundreds of miles away.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The Galaxy Note II phone (or micro-tablet might be more apt) has one as well.
I got to play around with one for a bit and the stylus is quite nice, other than the worry of how much a replacement will cost when you lose it :D
The 'Surface: Android Killer' Edition and the 'Surface: Linux Killer' edition and all it a day :)
It's all the backwards compatibility cruft...
So you can play games from the '90s on your surface (Pro), without an emulator, like X-Com, Everquest, etc.
I've been using a Surface Pro for a few months and it works like a charm. It's a Core i5 running Metro + Win 8 pro. Runs full Office and has access to all network resources. At my desk it has its desktop extended to another monitor (try doing that with a f*cking iPad) with attached keyboard & mouse. Away from my desk it's got a detachable proper clicky keyboard and a nifty stylus.
If I'm "tableting" with it and I just want to check something I tap a metro tile's app and pull it up
If I need to do 'real' work I go to the Windows desktop.
All my colleagues carry two devices (iPad + Notebook) - I carry one. Every time I pull it out at a meeting or at the airport people say "oooh... what's *that*?" The RT noise is distracting people from what is otherwise a very cool machine.
This is a serious question of Surface users. My laptop screen must stay pristine.
How do Surface users, when toggling the device back to desktop mode, deal with the finger grease?
- Battery life
- Disk space
- Decent keyboard
- Screen size
These all take second place to the chore of dealing with a smudged up screen on a machine that would seek to function as a tablet and a laptop.
Give me a good mGPU on the Pro and I'm sold.
Why does RT require 16GB then? According to MS a 32GB RT tablet only has 16GB of free space or so.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
After formatting, the 32GB drive (decimal), the system has 29GB (binary) of usable space. 5GB is reserved for a recovery partition which can be removed, leaving you with 24GB before the OS. Windows RT + Apps + Office costs 8GB together, leaving you with 16GB at first boot. I'm not sure what Windows RT by itself costs.
Heavy parts? The two heaviest parts are the battery and the screen, which every tablet has to have. Everything else is insignificant.
which is that no-one wants to buy them because they can't be used on your lap comfortably unless you remove the keyboard, and then its just bloody screen!
As much as I find it completely unproductive to hold my computer at all times in one hand and bash out words at about 3WPM with my other hand, I just can't help but feel that all of the parts you might want on a computer have been left out in the cold.... like the input devices. If it instead came with, I don't know, MIND READING capabilities, it would be a fancy little unit, but as it is, it can't even stand up on my lap.
The only thing I'm hoping for is a fanless Haswell processor in the pro version.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
RT has a lot of the cruft cleaned out, but not all.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It has a new hat!!!!
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)