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Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost
SmartAboutThings writes "The original Surface Pro didn't have quite a good battery life and that's why Microsoft tried to fix this with the Surface Pro. After the Surface Pro 2 has hit general availability, Microsoft has silently pushed out a firmware update which, according to some new battery benchmarks run by Anandtech, made significant improvements to the battery life of the Surface Pro 2. After the new web browsing battery life test it was discovered that the Surface Pro 2 now manages better battery life than the ARM Surface 2, which is pretty impressive. With the firmware update, Microsoft was targeting over 8 hours, and AnadTech's benchmarks show Microsoft has succeeded, registering a 25% increase in battery life over the no-firmware version. The unpatched Surface Pro 2 lasted for 6.68 hours while with the firmware update installed, its battery life increased to 8.33 hours. The video playback test involved playing a movie until the battery died, and here, albeit smaller, improvements with the battery life have also been noticed: 7.73 hours compared to 6.65 hours."
Apparently, the origonal version they programmed the Marvell Wifi chip wrong, so it didn't go into power save mode and now they fixed it
a) The digitizer stylus replaces the mouse in nearly all win32 applications that are hard to work with using touch.
b) OneNote. It's the killer app - handwriting directly into OneNote without a seperate drawing tablet is a surprisingly good experience. For those who are into such stuff, the same applies to graphics software like Photoshop.Compatibility with most 32 and 64 bit Win32 applications ever made is an added bonus, as is compatibility with hardware.
c) Replacing a full laptop in situations where one isn't absolutely needed - we are talking about Ultrabook performance, so the keyboard and a bluetooth mouse turn it into a laptop when it's not being used as a tablet.
d) You can install any x86 OS you want on it. Sick of Windows? Try some Linux distro, it should have drivers for everything.
Clearly, if you believe an iPad or equivalent device is enough for you, you are clearly not the target audience. This isn't a stupid fashion statement/gimmick like an iPad - it has real uses and those who have a use for it knew it the moment they saw it. No single product is ideal for anyone - it's a matter of choosing what you need.