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Surface Pro 3 Has 12" Screen, Intel Inside
crookedvulture (1866146) writes "Microsoft unveiled its Surface Pro 3 tablet at a press event in New York this morning. The device has a larger 12" screen with a 2160x1440 display resolution and a novel 3:2 aspect ratio. Intel Core processors provide the horsepower, starting with the Core i3 in the base model and extending all the way up to Core i7 in pricier variants. The tablet is just 9.1 mm thick, which Microsoft claims is the thinnest ever for a Core-based device. Microsoft developed a new radial fan that's suppose to distribute airflow evenly inside the chassis without generating audible noise. The tablet weights 800 g, shaving 100 g off the Surface Pro 2, and it's supposed to have longer battery life, as well. Microsoft has also rolled out new keyboard accessories, a pressure-sensitive stylus, and a docking station that supports 4K video output. The Surface Pro 3 is scheduled to be available tomorrow with prices starting at $799." Update: 05/20 17:12 GMT by T : Mary Jo Foley points out at ZDNet that one thing not announced today is an ARM-powered Mini version.
Or I can go buy a notebook for $300, keep my Nexus 7, and not shell out huge amounts of money for one big fucking tablet.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Damn it, how is it phones and tablets keep getting these awesome high-rez screens, yet it's impossible to buy a laptop with anything better than 1366 x 768 for less than 1K?
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
Pricing is reasonable, still totally NOT sold on the kick-stand idea, have run a surface 2 for a week and did not like. Would much prefer the ability to run it like an ipad with a touch cover on a desk, rather than vertical like a pc monitor or laptop.
That said, i think the biggest bugbear is going to be Windows 8. It doesn't work very well with touch either. Yes, as I said above I've run a surface 2 for a week and did not like. Will be interesting to see whether it can have other OSes loaded onto it, but really the other other available tablet OS with software support is android. And if you're going down that path you're competing with some very cheap hardware.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
...fuggedaboutit @$799
Specs and prices are available in this file: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/may14/05-20surfacepr.aspx.
Unfortunately at no price point will they go above 8GB RAM.
I'll pay more for 16GB RAM! I guarantee other people are out there waiting for the 16GB model. Please MSFT, manufacture a 16GB RAM model.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
Posted the wrong link.
Spec file here.
If the Government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law;
Depends what you're doing. Despite what the internets would have you believe, intel HD is fine for 4k display if you don't plan on running 3d applications.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
I already own an Acer Iconia 11.3 in tablet with Core I5 chip, which I bought to view Google Play magazines that didn't display well on my Nexus 7. The Iconia tablet turned out to be a fantastic tablet that I'm very happy with. The new Surface Pro 3 seems very appealing to me as well, and has great specs. My only problem is that when you go from the 64GB model to the 128GB model they charge an extra 200 dollars. A 128GB SSD drive goes for about 100 dollars, so we are talking about a 50 dollar increase in parts that they are charging 200 dollars for. I'd want the 128GB version of the tablet, but I won't buy it when they are gaming the prices like that. I just hope the competition starts putting out more large form windows 8 tablets that are reasonably priced.
A tablet may not be the best place to run virtual machines or servers, and nothing else really requires more than 8GB of RAM. Win 8 will run very well with 8GB.
Don't forget this thing is all locked down at the BIOS (UEFI) level
How so? As I understand it, the rule with Windows 8 is that on ARM, the manufacturer MUST NOT allow the end user to modify Secure Boot, but on x86, it MUST. This product is x86 according to the summary
Copypasta:
Technical specs
Operating system
- Windows 8.1 Pro
Exterior: Dimensions
- 7.93 in x 11.5 in x 0.36 in
- Weight: 1.76 lbs
- Casing: Magnesium
- Color: Silver
- Physical buttons: Volume, Power, Home
Storage
- 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB
Display
- Screen: 12-inch ClearType Full HD display
- Resolution: 2160 x 1440
- Aspect Ratio: 3:2
- Touch: Multitouch input
Pen input
- Pen input and pen (included with purchase)
- Pen features 256 levels of pressure sensitivity
CPU
- 4th-generation Intel® Core i5-4300U (1.6 GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost up to 2.90 GHz) with Intel® HD Graphics 4400
- 4 GB or 8 GB of RAM — dual-channel LPDDR3
- TPM 2.0 (Trusted Platform Module — for BitLocker encryption)
-
- 4th-generation Intel® Core i3/i5/i7 Processor
- System memory: 4GB or 8GB memory options
- TPM 2.0 chip for enterprise security
Wireless
- Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11ac/802.11 a/b/g/n
- Bluetooth 4.0 low energy technology
Battery
- Up to nine hours of Web-browsing battery life
Cameras and A/V
- 5MP and 1080p HD front- and rear-facing cameras
- Built-in front- and rear-facing microphones
- Stereo speakers with Dolby® Audio-enhanced sound
Ports
- Full-size USB 3.0
- microSD card reader
- Headset jack
- Mini DisplayPort
- Cover port
- Charging port
Sensors
- Ambient light sensor
- Accelerometer
- Gyroscope
- Magnetometer
Power supply
- 36W power supply (including 5W USB for accessory charging)
Warranty
- One-year limited hardware warranty
Pricing
Intel® Core i3, 64 GB and 4 GB of RAM $799
Intel® Core i5, 128 GB and 4 GB of RAM $999
Intel® Core i5, 256 GB and 8 GB of RAM $1,299
Intel® Core i7, 256 GB and 8 GB of RAM $1,549
Intel® Core i7, 512 GB and 8 GB of RAM $1,949
Surface Pro Type Cover $129.99
Additional Surface Pen $49.99
Additional 36W Power Supply $79.99
Additional Pen Loop $4.99
Docking Station for Surface Pro 3 $199.99
Surface Ethernet Adapter $39.99
With VPN and RDP/SSH, I can carry around entire effing servers wherever I want when I'm traveling, and access them from my smartphone if I wanted to - so even that one argument of yours is rather moot.
Can you get service on that smartphone for $84? That's how much I pay per year (not month) for my current phone because it doesn't have a data plan attached to it. A separate laptop lets me do work while riding transit without having to pay a huge data bill for VPN and RDP/SSH. For the price of a two-year data plan in this country, I could almost buy a Surface Pro 3.
This is x86, not ARM, so it's actually as open as any other PC and for example less locked down than most ChromeBooks.
Is a tablet that's got a chance in hell of taking on Android or iOS.
Same experience here.
Can't speak about the mobile/ultramobile parts, but the HD4400 in a low-end desktop i3 is plenty fast enough for basic desktop compositing/video playback/... at 4k.
Now, if you don't want a slideshow in 3D games, easiest option is to just run them at 1920x1080 or 1280x720 fullscreen.
Those resolutions also happen to be HD and FullHD, and can be cleanly pixel-doubled/tripled to 3840x2160.
There's plenty benchmarks on the net for various games and haswell IGPs at HD and FullHD res.
This seems like it's comparably priced with the X1 Carbon Touch... a good system will run you around $1700 for either option. The main difference is display... the bigger X1 sacrifices resolution. It just seems really expensive for a tablet, and really tiny for a laptop for serious work, it's like it's in an anti-Goldilocks zone.
I'd use this only if I had an awesome docking rig, and really needed a tablet, *and* I needed to be able to swap between the two seamlessly.
The Surface Pro, like any other x86 PC that comes preinstalled with an OEM version of Windows 8/8.1, is locked down with Secure Boot UEFI. However, Microsoft follows its own rules--the Surface Pro also meets their own requirement that the BIOS allows you to disable Secure Boot given physical access.
Also, I believe that the Surface Pro's preconfigured UEFI Secure Boot NVRAM contains the Microsoft "Third Party Marketplace" UEFI certificate, which if true would mean that the Surface Pro would out-of-the-box recognize, as an example, the Secure Boot-compatible GRUB2 on the 14.x x86-64 Ubuntu disks as legitimate. I don't have a Surface Pro to check this, however.
"Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language." - Visual J++ Product Manager
Can you get service on that smartphone for $84? That's how much I pay per year
I do it for $45/mo
Or $540 per year, which is $456 per year more than the voice-only service that I mentioned.
receiving email, playing games on it. Oh, and the company pays for that anyway because I receive corporate email on it too.
If your employer happens to be willing to pay the cell bill, a terminal that mostly gets web, mail, phone, and RDP might be ideal. But not everybody's employer is. Despite this, too many pundits have deluded themselves into thinking that such terminals are ideal for so many people that manufacturers should stop making affordable general-purpose computing devices with a robust offline mode. Besides, what happens to your personal mail and games when your employer decides to remotely wipe and reprovision your device?
that was an example in extremis to prove the point that size doesn't really matter too much nowadays when it comes to mobile computing.
Size matters for input. You can't type very fast or click very accurately on an RDP client running on your smartphone's 4 to 5 inch touch screen. And size also matters indirectly to the extent that device makers have traditionally been heavier-handed at enforcing lockdown on smaller devices.
Pretty much that. 8 GB is enough to run a couple of VMs anyway - but if you want to run much more than that you'll likely run out of storage, kill your battery, etc. Get a server, and just use the tablet for what it is good at - displaying content processed elsewhere on the network.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And comes with OS X instead of Windows 8.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
A tablet may not be the best place to run virtual machines or servers, and nothing else really requires more than 8GB of RAM. Win 8 will run very well with 8GB.
Really? Virtualization and servers are the only applications you can think of that could possibly benefit from more than 8GB of memory?
Perhaps the difference is that "the internets" understand how many tasks are related to "running 3d applications", leading to the pejorative "Graphics My Ass" for Intel's pre-Sandy Bridge IGP. This includes not only gaming but also things like Blender and your employer's favorite CAD program, as well as cryptocurrrency miners and other apps that use your GPU as a general-purpose vector processor.
and inferior resolution and weight.
depends what you want.
Microsoft: if you are listening - ADD THE ABILITY TO ZOOM INTO THE CLASSIC DESKTOP
Consider it done. Win-+ to open Magnifier, Win-Esc to close.
" The device has a larger 12" screen with a 2160x1440 display resolution and a novel 3:2 aspect ratio."
and yet a typical 15" laptop can only squeeze in 1366 x 768 resolution
Get a server, and just use the tablet for what it is good at - displaying content processed elsewhere on the network.
Then the question becomes how much you want to pay a cellular carrier per month to move data between where you process it and where you view it. I explain further in my other comment.
"equivalent" Surface 3. Surface 3 has a touch screen, active digitizer, and is lighter and thinner with a larger display and more resolution. Hard to really enjoy that 1366 × 768 display compared to 2160 x 1440 on the Surface 3. I'll take all of the above $100 more, thanks.
But can I make a phone call on it?
I imagine that Microsoft would make an effort to make Skype work well on a Microsoft tablet.
They still sell those: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us...
This is almost certainly wrong. The Surface Pro line is x86 and x86 PCs that carry the Windows 8 logo are required to support Secure Boot and allow the user to disable secure boot if desired.
The Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 made this really easy - the option to disable Secure Boot was clearly labeled on the first page of settings.
So anyone have ubuntu running on these pro's smoothly yet? last I heard there was a couple of driver issues.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually, you are right. Having more than 8GB in fact makes your dick bigger
But lacks basic features like touch and nicer features like a pen. Plus the Air comes with an outdated OS.
Touch and pen both work fine in the classic desktop. Been using both there for years. Also, it is going to be really funny if "1366X768 is good enough for standard use position" becomes the official Apple marketing line.
I think you're wrong. Table top computers are not new. They have been around for years and you can get one from several different vendors (including Microsoft). When is the last time you saw someone really using one in a consumer space? If there was such a market as you suggest we would see them more.
Stop with this tablet crap, nobody wants it.
What do we want? the REAL surface.
Give us a 40" desk surface like you guys demonstrated over 5 years ago.
Stop trying to compete where you already lost before you even started, grab onto the market that you own most of the patents for and there is NO competition in right now and run with it.
and yes, there IS a market for $2500 price point for a 37 - 42" coffee table size real surface device. If people are buying $800 ipads in droves, then something like a real surface table will sell for a higher price point.
Perhaps they have calculated that the first to go into that market will be the loser. Microsoft isn't really good at introducing new products anymore (were they ever?).
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Does anyone make one?
I still haven't found a replacement for my Fujitsu Stylistic ST-4121 (I use it as a map-reader when travelling, and to control my Shapeoko (hobby-level CNC mill) when I'm using it on my back porch) --- the transflective display seems the best option, but no one seems to be making units w/ it outside of ruggedized units for the police and military (which are heavier than I'd prefer).
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
What do people generally buy tablets for? In my view tablets are best for consuming content
Sigh. I thought we were over this years ago. That's not even the majority use of tablets anymore...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You see if you can actually notice a difference in resolution from a standard use position.
Are you half-blind? This isn't even difficult to see. The Macbook Air had a low resolution even by last decade's standards.
"1366 x 768 ought to be enough for anybody" (for a 13" device held at a little less than arm's length, as necessitated by the keyboard). Wow. Any product that markets that as the peak of human vision is one I don't want to buy.
A tablet may not be the best place to run virtual machines or servers, and nothing else really requires more than 8GB of RAM.
Running Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom on less than 16GB can be painful.
So you've never done ANY graphic/video/audio work have you?
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Not everybody is as blind as you are!
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Way to disappoint all the graphic artists out there. Finally thought there was something to compete with Cintiq's.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
That's not the sad part. It's not like Wacom doesn't have its problems with pressure curves. The real problem is only 256 levels of pressure. Though a well calibrated 256 can outperform some wacoms with 1024 due to pressure response, it's still a disappointment.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
I'm disappointed that there's still such a huge price jump between the 256 and 512 GB models. +256 GB of space should not cost $400. I'm sure some of that must be a "best option" premium. A lot of people want that 512 GB and are willing to pay for it.
Also, 36W power supply? Is that due to the number of cells in the battery limiting the wattage or is it to reduce total weight? The high-end MBPs have 85W connections. While a MBP obviously sucks more power and has a larger battery, I'd be curious to know if there's a technical reason preventing the SP3 from charging faster with a higher wattage.
That moron (shill? Probably just Apple fanboy) has posted the same thing multiple times in this discussion. The lightest MBA is about 1080 grams, vs. 800 grams for the Surface Pro 3 (not counting keyboard, though). That's a 35% increase in weight, which is very significant. They keyboard cover narrows the gap, but you're still getting a significantly heavier computer if you go with the MBA, despite one of the key selling points being how light it is!
As for the resolution, that's a huge deal. Once again, it's amusing to see that early adopter (and heavy pusher) of high resolution, Apple, being beat at their own game... and the fanboys coming out to defend them. Whether or not you can see the pixels individually isn't important. Many aspects of image quality degrade long, long before then. A key example is text; high resolution displays can produce readable text at smaller sizes (and therefore fit far more text on the screen usably) than mid-resolution displays. xda-developers.com, a site I'm very active on, is much more usable on a 1920x1080 display than on my tablet's 1366x768 display. I wish the tablet had higher resolution, and it's less than 11" instead of nearly 12" like the cheapest MBA.
The stylus-and-touchscreen stuff is just BS.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
Sure, the hardware specs look good. Nice processor, screen, etc. Light weight. Promises of great battery life.
But here's the problem...it's still running Windows 8 which nearly everyone seems to hate. Same thing with the phone. Nice Nokia hardware but shitty OS.
MS continues to make the mistake of comparing their hardware to the Mac hardware by only examining the hardware specs. They fail to look at it holistically. What's cool about Macs is that they run so smoothly. It's not about horsepower, it's about design. Something that is sorely lacking in Windows 8.
I predict that MS will sell quite a few of these in the enterprise market and almost none in the consumer space (well, almost none compared to the number of android and iPads that get sold).
What everyone seemed to want was a 7 inch Surface not a 12 inch Surface. Once again, MS fails to give consumers what they are asking for. Even Apple swallowed it's pride and came out with a 7 inch iPad. Why? Because it was obvious that consumers wanted it and tons of android tables with that form factor were flying off the shelves. So Apple was late to that market but at least they had enough sense to realize that they had made a mistake.
MS still has that monopolistic mindset. They don't seem to want to listen to what people want. They send out product after product to the marketplace only to lose millions of dollars on it and abandon it shortly thereafter.
What MS desperately wants to stop is the notion that you can get everything done without using any MS software or hardware. And that day is rapidly approaching if it's not already here. This new Surface will do nothing to slow that down.
At $10,000.00 They are not selling them, they are selling prototypes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
it runs some microsoft operating system
And replacing the operating system on a computer is just not possible is it?
Don't forget this thing is all locked down at the BIOS (UEFI) level preventing bootloaders that microsoft does not like from working. So it is pretty hard to make it a linux tablet.
No it isn't, just switch off secure boot and you're good to go.
Yes you can, you have always been able to with the Surface Pro line, it's a PC.
Its a standard Intel Core CPU and chip set with Intel GPU, all of which are things that have very good Linux support thanks to Intel and their Linux teams.
I see nothing in the specs that Linux doesn't support (and if there is hardware it doesn't e.g. the memory card slots, someone will no doubt write a driver for it)
"a novel 3:2 aspect ratio"
Yeah, it's so invigorating to see what novelties this new age of innovation in computing produces.
Next they will present the novel larger version of it, that you can put on your desk for viewing stuff.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Went to see about pre-ordering a Surface Pro 3 today and started by scouring the net, then contact the local Microsoft Store, then contacted online support who then referred me to another Microsoft phone number. The consensus is that none of them know which particular i7 processor the Surface Pro 3 with the i7 option will have, and apparently they are all powerless to use their intelligence to solve problems and find the people who do know the information. I guess Microsoft thinks all i7 processors are created equal when many have a different number of cores, clock speeds, cache, extensions, etc. I think I will hold on to my $2,000 for now.
Java software development, running a few weblogic or other JEE appservers for testing etc?
At work we get slightly underpowered laptops, but with 16GB RAM.