Microsoft Wants You To Trade Your MacBook Air In For a Surface Pro 3

mpicpp writes with news about a new Microsoft trade-in program to encourage sales of the new Surface Pro 3. Microsoft is offering a limited time Surface Pro 3 promotion via which users can get up to $650 in store credit for trading in certain Apple MacBook Air models. The new promotion, running June 20 to July 31, 2014 -- "or while supplies last" -- requires users to bring MacBook Airs into select Microsoft retail stores in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. (The trade-in isn't valid online.)...To get the maximum ($650) value, users have to apply the store credit toward the purchase of a Surface Pro 3, the most recent model of the company's Intel-based Surface tablets.

Comments

Trade crap for crap

[fox171171]

So first Apple thinks its target customers are dumb enough to buy someone else's product by mistake, now MS too?

Re:Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Er really?

Maybe visit a sysadmin or software dev conference. Macbook Air's are pretty common and for a good reason.

Calm your nerd rage down a bit.

Re:Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an impressive leap in logic there. You must be practicing.

Re:Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Calm your nerd rage down a bit.

Corporate drones insist their companies to buy them overpriced toys so they can feel adequate in the company of other desperate status seekers. News at 11.

But really, how about you guys just continue with your fanboy bitch slap fight? That's what everybody involved with this article wants you to do, because there's no other reason to choose either of these gadgets over better specced and better priced alternatives.

MS and Apple marketing types love to pretend it's a two-horse race...

Re: Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Statistically and economically it is a two horse race.
How are you measuring the market? Hipster points?

Re:Trade crap for crap

[jcr]

overpriced toys so they can feel adequate in the company of other desperate status seekers.

You unemployed guys are so bitter.

-jcr

Re: Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

How are you measuring the market? Hipster points?

Utility.

Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba have the corporate market sewn up.

Re:Trade crap for crap

[ogdenk]

Calm your nerd rage down a bit.

Corporate drones insist their companies to buy them overpriced toys so they can feel adequate in the company of other desperate status seekers. News at 11.

That's funny, because no one else at my office wants a MacBook Air because they are too different from what they are used to. I have a MacBook Air and an iMac because I want a stable UNIX desktop with native MS Office without the constant hell of keeping a Linux box updated and dealing with apps that use a different UI toolkits. Like it or not, as far as commercial UNIX desktops go with a decent library of well supported common desktop applications, Apple is really the only game in town unless you just want to run Windows in VirtualBox.

And the Macbook Air isn't exactly poorly specced and it's QUITE well built. Sure you could probably find a cheaper PC laptop with a slightly zippier CPU but it still won't be quite the same machine. Apple does have some things going for it.

So, a quick, light, very thin dual-core mobile UNIX workstation with an SSD that I don't have to dick around with much to get a great productive system.... I'll pay an extra couple hundred for that. Some of us actually have work to do and don't want to have to jump through hoops to exchange data with others at work yet still want a UNIX box. We also want an OS that doesn't feel like a constant beta release with apps using a dozen different UI toolkits. Being able to run X11 apps if needed is nice too but that's usually not necessary.

Basically, Windows is ugly and inadequate for some of my needs, Linux/BSD kinda suck as desktop OS's, Sun is dead, SGI is dead, Oracle is evil..... doesn't leave you much choice if you want a ready-to-roll UNIX box these days that has the backing of any prominent commercial software vendors like MS or Adobe.

Re:Trade crap for crap

[Anonymous Coward]

You unemployed guys are so bitter.

How do you know he's an Apple user? Most of those guys like to shill, something which he is clearly against.

Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

The MBA and MBP are both fine machines. My wife get's a computer that works most of the time. I get a computer with a bash shell on which I can do my thing. Neither have shown any tendency to falls apart, unlike every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and HP we've had.

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

The MBA and MBP are both fine machines. My wife get's a computer that works most of the time. I get a computer with a bash shell on which I can do my thing. Neither have shown any tendency to falls apart, unlike every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and HP we've had.

Absolutely, And you have to give up the smooth and functional OSX interface for the freaked out Metro disaster, and the unintuitive controls.

Re: Not likely.

[Redbehrend]

My Asus machines have out lasted my ownership and the second owners are still using them.... Since when does everything fall apart because it's not apple? Lol Next time look at the Apple desks at the Apple store and realize that most of those people are receiving support or repairs. It's like that with every company... IMO Metro isn't horrible on a touch screen, I like the live tiles...

Re:Not likely.

[wile_e_wonka]

What he means, I think, is that most computer companies make "consumer grade" machines and "commercial grade" machines. I've not has an Asus or Lenovo, but I've had Toshiba, HP, and Dell. With respect to Dell, I've had both consumer and commercial grade machines, built to higher specifications. Most recently I purchased a Dell Latitude 5000 series laptop--in Dell's explanation of this computer in comparison to the 7000 series, it gave the 5000 series a build quality of 3 out of 4 stars, it gave the 3000 series 2 out of 4 stars (still Latitude--which implies the consumer grade stuff is 1 out of 4 stars for build quality). The consumer grade machines seem to be designed to last about 2 years or less. The commercial grade machines are designed to last more like 4 years.

The problem is, you have to pay a premium for the commercial grade machines.

With Apple, there is no "consumer grade" and "commercial grade"--they're all made to high specifications.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Way to take it out of context. Read the part where he says "we've had." Reading comprehension - FAILED.

Re:Not likely.

[Overzeetop]

If you think the controls on Metro are unintuitive, you're a certified idiot. It took me no longer to learn all of the swipe gestures and charm bar actions than it took to learn the iOS gestures. Win8 is easier than iOS for anyone with even half a brain. iOS seems determined to add gestures to every version and then completely ignore any information on how to use them. Half the functions seem to be "discovered" by autistic hipsters living on daddy's monthly trust fund check.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

The old folder system was hierarchical. That made sense. Things were organized into categories. It wasn't perfect, but once you associated the right categories everything could be found.

The metro system is no hierarchical. Want to format a disk? Good luck. Need to access an application? Enjoy clicking around your field of panels.

Honestly, I think you're a troll. Only a brand new user would think the metro inteface were better, and that's only because at the most shallow end of the kiddie pool, it is.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a touch interface that requires that you use a keyboard for things like search. That's like having an automatic transmission that still requires you to use the clutch.

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

The Macbooks run MacOS, not IOS.

Re:Not likely.

[Austerity Empowers]

So the magic mouse swipe gestures aren't obvious to people used to regular mice, I was very resistant, but I now love and miss them.

But I otherwise agree, I don't find anything about OSX to be "intuitive" to people used to using windows or linux. OSX is a fine windowing system, but it's a little rough around the hedges when it comes to usability for the portion of the world that simply cannot become Apple converts.

Hardware wise though, I have not found anything that comes close to an MBP. Windows or OSX, it beats the unholy snot out of its competition.

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

If "every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, and HP" simply fell apart, it would probably be nationwide news.

But it's not, because you're a liar.

Do you enjoy telling untruths that you can't possibly be sure about? You are of course wrong.

1) Asus: My daughter's chomebook. The power connector failed after 6 months.
2) Lenovo: One with the screen you can turn around. The keyboard failed. Half the keys don't work. The battery became unusable over the same time frame.
3) Toshiba: Generic laptop. It did literally fall apart. Things - panel covers, hole covers, keyboard buttons just gave up and fell off.
4) HP: A work laptop. Battery connection became unreliable, causing the machine to power off randomly.

5) Mac book air. Still working fine.
6) Mac book pro. Still working fine.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Plus, I don't think I can use docker containers on windows, but I can on my mb air.

Not sure if I can run anything I use daily on windows.

Re: Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

The thing that looks right about the construction of the current Mac books is that the monolithic aluminium case doesn't have any flappy bits to fall off. Why other manufacturers do not do something similar is beyond me.

I forgot to mention a Sony laptop. That also failed. The bottom panel came off, the disk failed and the CD drive failed. So I can't install linux on it because the CD isn't working and it won't boot linux from a flash drive, presumably because of something stupid Sony did. So it's dead and I'm not putting any more work into it..

To be fair, an older Mac book pro suffered badly when my wife dropped it. It was heavy and so crushed its own corner when it landed. The air just got a little dent in the corner when she dropped it. I don't drop my laptops, so it's not a fair comparison.

But since then I decided we would only get Mac books (since the Sandy Bridge/Ivy Bridge/Haswell genre) and screw the cost. The improvement in reliability is very apparent, and the TCO is probably lower because they last longer.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha anecdotal evidence, the go to for every fanboy around when they're put into a corner!

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

Not anecdotal at all. Direct experience. Actual data. Learn what anecdotal means.

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

The UI is just another UI. I couldn't give a crap about the UI.

But its unix underneath, the 2560x1600 resolution is excellent. The keyboard is acceptable.
I can type into bash shells as if it were Linux. I can ssh and scp as if it were linux. I can write and compile code on it as if it were linux.
The python Point of Sale front end that I wrote for my wife's store, that runs on Linux, also ran first time on the macbook.

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

5) Mac book air. Still working fine.

6) Mac book pro. Still working fine.

You're preachint ot the choir.

Having had a similar range of computers, I've had the same experience. Nothing is built like a Mac. Opening the case of a Mac Pro is like entering a little computerized cathedral.

But you won't ever convince people who have never owned a Mac. Or used one once, or still think they use one button mice. They think the foibles of the race to the bottom culture of Windows machines is just what computers do.

And to bring this right back to the topic, that is a big problem with the Surface Pro. After years of cheapness being one of the touchstones of Windows superiority, the damn thing is just too expensive.

It certainly isn't going to impress the folks that hace been cultured to look at rock bottom price as a major metric.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're an idiot. If it was actual data it would include the failure rate for a large number of laptops from every manufacturer. Instead we get one macfag's biased opinion.

Re:Not likely.

[narcc]

Anecdote: "an account regarded as unreliable or hearsay"

Seems to fit your tall-tale well.

Want me to make a list of all the consumer-grade non-Apple equipment that still work perfectly after years of use and punctuate it with the litany of Apple products that I've seen die or otherwise malfunction over a short span of time?

Would that fall under anecdote or data in your mind?

But who cares? Only an idiot would try to generalize from your tiny sample size.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I already sold my MacBookAir on Cragslist a few months ago. I already replaced it with a shiny new retina MacBookPro. Back to tablets... I just sold my 3rd gen iPad and picked up a new iPad Air.

When thinking about what I want next MS always loses. I identify MS with non-seamless/buggy/crashy/naggy/broken/inconsistent/annoying. Apple is far from perfect. I love linux but it hasn't been my main desktop in a long time. All I have to do is use my Dell work laptop for a while and I'll go running to the Apple store shouting "shut up and take my money!" I honestly haven't used Win8 much and I know a couple people who claim to like it. For me Apple is the safe bet. I have the best experience IMO there. If I need Windows I have PCs and VMs available but I shove them in a corner and use the Apple stuff as my primary UI.

I think later revs of XP, Win7 etc are very stable so no need for BSOD jokes. But they still lack the refinement/spit and polish of Apple. There more security threats AFAIK. IIRC after you spend all the money on the OS I had read some of the Win8 built-in apps will stream advertising. Fuck that. They have a huge perception problem of being cheap crap that sort of works okay most of the time. They need to do something about that. I thought XP was decent. Win7 I like less but it has the latest drivers. Win8 needs 3rd party tweaks to be usable and still sucks to use in a VM (though someone told me there are hot-keys for all the hot mouse regions).

I'm not seeing anything out of MS that makes me feel like fuck yeah this is awesome and I want it! Apple is the closest to that so I kind of grudgingly accept the things I don't like about them while wishing some how linux is going to win in the end.

Re: Not likely.

[narcc]

doesn't have any flappy bits to fall off.

What are you doing to your equipment? How did these "flappy bits" develop? How is it that every laptop you've claimed to own apparently crumbled at your touch?

You know what? I don't actually believe you. I think you're lying. Are you just trying really hard to justify your overpriced laptop? I have no idea why. Just take the knock to the pocket-book and move on. Everyone makes mistakes.

Perhaps you just like Apple products and are worried about their lack of marketshare? If that's the case, you may want to find a different approach. I've never had a laptop inexplicably disintegrate.

Re:Not likely.

[amiga3D]

I've got an old HP 8710W that works great. It runs Linux Mint where it used to run Vista so it's actually better than new!

Re:Not likely.

[amiga3D]

Every single person I know that has bought a new computer with Win 8 asks me if I can install 7 for them. That's pretty sad.

Re:Not likely.

[mjwx]

Hmmm, anecdotal data.

Lets see if I can counter it.

- My Asus U36F, 2 years and not a problem.
- My Lenovo R400, 5 years and not a problem.
- I've got a 8 yr old Benq with a celeron processor that still works fine... well it would if I hadn't trod on it and broke the screen (I can still plug it into an external monitor and/or SSH to it).
- Work Dell Latitude 3500, broken speaker, fixed within 24 hours.
- Work Dell Latitude 3500, broken HDMI port, mainboard replaced within 24 hours

Now the Mac's.
Work iMac - broken PSU, out of commission 10 days.
Work Macbook Pro - broken (probably the main board), out of commission 22 days.
Work Macbook Pro - Overheated, never properly fixed (Apple claimed there was no problems with it), junked and replaced after 28 days... 28 days from new.

So we still buy Dells, but not Macs.

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

If you think the controls on Metro are unintuitive, you're a certified idiot. It took me no longer to learn all of the swipe gestures and charm bar actions than it took to learn the iOS gestures.

Oh bullshit. There is a whole world of people who think Metro is a steaming pile of fanboi shit. It is responsible for tanking the PC market it is so awful.

And just like the last Japanese soldier who finally surrendered 30 years after WW2 ended, you are fighting that battle long after you lost the war.

Re:Not likely.

[Your.Master]

It's possible for a thing to be both intuitive and awful.

Re:Not likely.

[rtb61]

So would that be QUANTA or FOXCONN Macbook airs with parts by various other manufacturers. Not that I would trade in anything for M$ surface.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

anon to prevserve mods:

The UI is just another UI. I couldn't give a crap about the UI.

incorrect - I give a very big crap about the UI. The UI is what drove me away from windows, the 3.1, 95, w2k, xp, W7 changes finally became so annoying with W7 that I tried something different - OSX. (FWIW, I have tried multiple versions of Linux over the years, the UI was so terrible even windows overall was better for a desktop. I had also run OS/2, Solaris, Irix, and a few others over Windows, so that should tell you how much a UI matters for a desktop)

But its unix underneath, the 2560x1600 resolution is excellent. The keyboard is acceptable.
I can type into bash shells as if it were Linux. I can ssh and scp as if it were linux. I can write and compile code on it as if it were linux.
The python Point of Sale front end that I wrote for my wife's store, that runs on Linux, also ran first time on the macbook.

You can do all those things like they were unix.... Linux copied unix. Let's give credit where it's due. Honestly, I'm glad Linux is around, but it's a crappy monolithic pile under the unix trappings. We're starting to really see some of that pain. Having said that, it's still worlds better than MS in architecture.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they knew you know only 2 things about windows 8:
  Jack and shit.
There are several things that put windows 8 miles a head. It's time you little xp shits figure out there is more to system administration than msconfig startup programs.
Get dead.

Re: Not likely.

[saleenS281]

HP envy. Problem solved.

Re:Not likely.

[Pseudonym]

But its unix underneath, the 2560x1600 resolution is excellent. The keyboard is acceptable.

MBAs are also extremely light. They have the highest power-to-weight ratio of any laptop.

I can write and compile code on it as if it were linux.

Oooh, so close. Clang is very close to GCC, but lldb is so far away from gdb that it's not even close to "as if it were linux". Plus, some of the packages on macports or homebrew are behind Debian.

Re: Not likely.

[amiga3D]

Hey dickhead I don't know shit about win 8. Because I've never touched it. I've heard shit but that's just hearsay. I do know that everybody I personally know that bought it fucking hates it. That's a fact jack. I could give a shit how long you've been shilling for micro$hit you need to learn to read. Don't attack me because people that purchased computers with win8 hate it. Eat shit and die bitch.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

since all you care about is it running like linux, why not just use linux?

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple’s premium-priced line of MacBooks and iPads may not be as reliable as you think. Rescuecom’s 2013 Computer Reliability Report named Samsung as the most reliable laptop manufacturer, while Apple placed in second. In fact, the company claims that Samsung’s notebooks are twice as reliable as Apple’s"

The computer reliability report scores for 2013 Q1 are:

1. Samsung (1170)
2. Apple (237)
3. Lenovo/IBM (190)
4. ASUS (149)
5. Toshiba (68)
6. HP (57)
7. Dell (49)
9. Acer (15)

http://www.rescuecom.com/news-...

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

So today I tried installing a USB printer on Win 8 and all it did is play a 3-5 note tune every time I would disconnect and reconnect the printer... No dialog windows ever popped up, no questions ever asked, and NO, the printer never appeared in the printer menu. WTF! Has Win 8 gone audio?

Re:Not likely.

[kesuki]

"What he means, I think, is that most computer companies make "consumer grade" machines and "commercial grade" machines. I've not has an Asus or Lenovo, but I've had Toshiba, HP, and Dell. With respect to Dell, I've had both consumer and commercial grade machines, built to higher specifications."

i have owned and used packard bell, HP, dell, compaq(before hp bought em), and a lenovo. the first computer i bought with my own income was a packardbell 80486 dx2 75mhz. that was built like a tank, and was about as useful as a paperweight. it took the thing about 40 minutes to encode a 4 minute song to mp3. and yes i did that on that machine. anyways that was the most reliable piece of hardware i ever owned. it spent 4 years as a desktop and about 11 years as a server, though the hdds failed on it 3 times in the same timeframe. my laptop a compaq pentium 120, ran for 13 years until i hid it in a dumpster, but it had the F00F bug so was never reliable. from there on all my parts lasted less long, the quality went down. my first dell laptop lasted about 5 years less than the pentium120 and my recent alienware rig had a motherboard failure in 3 weeks and a psu issue another month later. that makes it qualify as my least reliable pc ever. alienware laptops aren't even designed by the main fab producers for dell, and still a bad MB. anyways consumer and commercial grade isn't real at dell, and i doubt it is real elsewhere. if you research parts you can build a desktop that is fast and will last a decade, and for only a little more than the 'fast enough for windows8/debianwheezy' laptop. seriously the default WM for debian wheezy is slower than windows 8 i timed them. on the same computer.

" Most recently I purchased a Dell Latitude 5000 series laptop--in Dell's explanation of this computer in comparison to the 7000 series, it gave the 5000 series a build quality of 3 out of 4 stars, it gave the 3000 series 2 out of 4 stars (still Latitude--which implies the consumer grade stuff is 1 out of 4 stars for build quality). The consumer grade machines seem to be designed to last about 2 years or less. The commercial grade machines are designed to last more like 4 years."

i have a laptop that was built like trash grade and it has been more reliable than alienware. of course its running linux with a lighter wm than the default one in wheezy... but it is going to last me another 6 years, as all it does is internet when main rig is in install/update/backup discs mode, and is used as a second layer of virus detection and removal for windows machines not all of which belong to me, and i have no say as to the os on those windows machines.

"The problem is, you have to pay a premium for the commercial grade machines."

there was a day when a computer was $5,000 and was a calculator at massive size. remember the dx2 75mhz? it was about 100 times faster than the $5000 machine i am thinking of and can't recall the specs or useful links right now.

"With Apple, there is no "consumer grade" and "commercial grade"--they're all made to high specifications."

apple products are all one grade of materials. however, they are not any more immune to faulty boards caps etc. their parts are notorious for being high profit, http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/24/iphone-5s-5c-teardowns-suggest-199-183-build-costs-for-apple they buy $183 worth of parts sell it for $1,000 $600 of which the cell phone has you pay over 12 months roughly. the mac lineup is in a similar situation and really if apple gets the chips for that price i doubt samsung pays higher ditto with dell. apple gets by on reputation. they wouldn't have that reputation if they hadn't been in schools or have numerous graphics stuff like photoshop, and the new ipad commercial where they make a whole symphony from one ipad. windows can't buy that reputation. they are the 'buggy, but just works and can game too even if the people you game with

Re:Not likely.

[pancake_lover]

I find the OSX GUI to not be particularly intuitive either, coming from a Windows/Linux background.

But after reading through the "missing manual" book for OSX, I started to understand the Apple GUI paradigm. After that, it made more sense.

The combo of a useful GUI, along with bash & a unix tool chain, makes OSX quite useful.

Re:Not likely.

[gstoddart]

It's possible for a thing to be both intuitive and awful.

Yeah, vomiting, for instance. That's both intuitive and awful. ;-)

Therefore, Surface is like vomiting. :-P

(Cheap humor only folks, I've never actually even seen one.)

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of users I speak to want 'something else' other than Windows 8. I've actually done a few Ubuntu/Xubuntu installs (depends on whether they are headstrong on an XP-ish layout) for a few users, as well as the obvious choice of Windows 7, and all have been happy.

I have however heard of a few users who are happy with Windows 8, but given they use it in desktop mode all the time, which is basically Windows 7, it's understandable why.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you ever have to utilize ASUS tech support for repairing a machine under warranty, I highly recommend you retain your sanity and just throw the thing out. ASUS has the worst customer service I've ever dealt with, which is somewhat disappointing given that they have a nice dead pixel guarantee on their monitors, and their motherboards are pretty bullet proof. For actual systems and devices though, oh lawdy...

Re: Not likely.

[tlhIngan]

My Asus machines have out lasted my ownership and the second owners are still using them.... Since when does everything fall apart because it's not apple? Lol Next time look at the Apple desks at the Apple store and realize that most of those people are receiving support or repairs

Work bough an Asus Zenbook Prime, one of the BEST Ultrabooks out there. Dollar for dollar, it beats the Macbook Air at its own game. Spec sheet wise, ditto - it simply outclassed it in every way we could measure - for the same price, you got a computer with a higher res screen, good construction, etc.

But you know what? The power cable broke off the adapter! We ended up with an interesting jury rigged thing involving a Kingston Traveller power supply and lots of pigtails until our hardware technician saw the mess, and redid it nicely with solder and heatshrink tubing making a nice cable.

Oh, and the keyboard cable works itself out every couple of weeks or so - you'll notice it when it starts misses letters when you type, or the power button goes flaky. Then it's undo the (what used to be what, 10-15 screws and is down to half that because you lose one every time you open it) re-seat the keyboard cable, then seal it up and it's good to go for another couple of weeks.

We made the mistake of sending it in once for that fault, took a couple of months to get back to us.

Other than a keyboard that doesn't type, and a power adapter that had to be replaced, it's a nice machine. The Macbook Airs we used inhouse died because the owners wanted to take it swimming or were a bit tipsy with their beer.

And why did we have the Asus around? It was issued to a manager who didn't want another Macbook Air. Ironically, in the end, he ended up with a Macbook Air to replace it.

Nice machine, but if Apple had keyboards that died that frequently, there would be a national scandal that would have Tim Cook keel hauled in front of Congress to explain himself.

As for the Apple store crowd? Most I've seen were shopping, there was a good chunk (at least a third) were actually in for some training or other courses, or were getting help setting up their new machine (including some brave ones who brought their PCs with them). Genius Bar is packed with people wanting to fix their iPhones and iPads it seems, or a simple software fault that they happily back up your data, reinstall, and restore. I'm sure Geek Squad and the like all over the place get their share of PCs brought in, and they're a helluva lot less friendly than Geniuses.

Re:Not likely.

[tsa]

Of course he doesn't know that. He never looked any further than windows 8 or he wouldn't like it so much.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Macbooks run OS X, not MacOS.

Re:Not likely.

[tsa]

It's remarkable how much capitalization and punctuation do for readability.

Re: Not likely.

[mwvdlee]

Newsflash; not every Windows 8 user is a system administrator.

Re:Not likely.

[mwvdlee]

Agreed.

Thinking "What would be the most retarded way to do this?" and finding the answer is exactly what they did, is very intuitive.

Re:Not likely.

[ayesnymous]

The MBA and MBP are both fine machines. My wife get's a computer that works most of the time. I get a computer with a bash shell on which I can do my thing. Neither have shown any tendency to falls apart, unlike every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba and HP we've had.

I guess you haven't heard about all the 2011 MacBook Pros with failing GPUs. I have one and I swear I will never buy another Mac laptop again.

Re:Not likely.

[Darinbob]

My current job uses OSX, and it was the first time I had ever used it after a long history of unix and some windows. I found it very easy to pick up. The touch pad stuff when I use it is great, and easy to learn (the configuration settings came with little videos of what the various settings did which made it easy to pick up). Though I usually use a normal mouse rather than use it as a laptop. But there is nothing in OSX day-to-day that is that unusual to a long time X windows or Windows user, except maybe for menu bar up top always, but that is easy to figure out and most people will have it down solid in a day. I can swap between windows at home and Mac at work (and linux in vm) without confusion.

Now to be fair, I don't use that many "default" OSX application, just the settings, finder, and terminal.

It's just another UI.

Re:Not likely.

[Darinbob]

I just purchased a new laptop for my mother, and had to pay a premium price to get Windows 7 instead of 8.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you prove than none of HIS laptops haven't fallen apart as he claimed?

No, but we can prove that NO formal, verifiable reliability studies put Apple at the top of the manufacturer reliability table. In fact, with the exception of the HP, all of the laptop brands he me mentioned were within a few percentage points of Apple, and some were significantly more reliable.

A 2012 study by SquareTrade, that looked at failure rates over the course of three years, found that Asus’s electronics broke the least often (followed very closely by Toshiba), and HP’s broke the most often. In fact, with HP, you had more than a one in four chance of getting a broken laptop in those three years. That may seem high, but even the best couldn’t achieve a failure rate below 15 per cent. Let’s take a look at the rankings, from best to worst:

Asus: 15.6%
Toshiba: 15.7%
Sony: 16.8%
Apple: 17.4%
Dell: 18.3%
Lenovo: 21.5%
Acer: 23.3%
Gateway: 23.5%
HP: 25.6%

Re:Not likely.

[ssimpson]

Amen brother. More info here for those interested.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

TL;DR
I think even with capitalisation and punctuation, his would post would still be incomprehensible drivel.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lies. ThinkPads never die, and they can be used as a weapon in case of an office riot. (Both as shield and as blunt weapon)

They are the perfect tool for a die hard developer.

I got 10 year old ThinkPads at home, still breathing with Linux (albeit the batteries are dead)

Re:Not likely.

[TheRaven64]

The old folder system was hierarchical. That made sense

It made sense for the 20% of the population who thinks of structure primarily in terms of hierarchy. This 20% has a very large overlap with programmers (not surprisingly, as most structured programming languages are innately hierarchical), but is still a small subset of the total computer-using population. This is one of the main reasons why programmers tend to be a lot worse at designing UIs for non-programmers to use than they think they are.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell has a place in a mall where I can get in line for repairs?

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the 80% of purple who don't invent statistics out of thin air?

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hell, most laptops I've had I can't pull them apart when I try!
Seriously! Trying to get at something other than the memory or HDD? You have to prize the thing apart with a crowbar!

Re: Not likely.

[Savage-Rabbit]

doesn't have any flappy bits to fall off.

What are you doing to your equipment? How did these "flappy bits" develop? How is it that every laptop you've claimed to own apparently crumbled at your touch?

It's called: "wear" and "poor engineering"

You know what? I don't actually believe you. I think you're lying. Are you just trying really hard to justify your overpriced laptop? I have no idea why. Just take the knock to the pocket-book and move on. Everyone makes mistakes.

Perhaps you just like Apple products and are worried about their lack of marketshare? If that's the case, you may want to find a different approach. I've never had a laptop inexplicably disintegrate.

You know what? I think you are one of those irrational individuals who hates computer equipment from certain manufacturers for no apparent reason and because you can then get yourself worked up by quoting other peoples internet posts out of context and accusing them of being liars. Some computers are simply badly designed, and the ones from Apple happen to be better designed than many other brands. That does not mean that Apple PCs are the only properly designed computers (my employer has for example had a quite good experience with a large fleet of Lenovo machines) but it does mean that they fall apart less often than for example the cheaper Dell and (as the GP pointed out) Sony laptops (which a former employer had poor experiences with).

Re:Not likely.

[Simon Brooke]

Absolutely. I thought long and hard about a MacBook Air before I bought the (superficially very similar, and nearly as expensive) Asus Zenbook which is my current laptop. My reason for not buying the Air was it seemed silly to buy a Mac when I was just going to strip MacOS off it to put Linux on... but I just stripped Windows off the Zenbook to put Linux on. About six months after I bought it, the Zenbook fell off the arm of a sofa onto its power connector, and although I've bodged a repair it's a bodge. If I'd bought a Macbook Air I wouldn't have the problem.

Macbooks are the best built laptop hardware available just now, whatever you may think of the software (and, if like me, you don't like Apple's software, you can just ditch it and put something of your preference on instead). Microsoft Surface? H'mmm, don't know, I've never actually seen one. But I very much doubt they're in the same league.

This is a very cheap offer for Microsoft to make, because my bet is they won't get a single taker.

Re: Not likely.

[Simon Brooke]

My Asus machines have out lasted my ownership and the second owners are still using them.... Since when does everything fall apart because it's not apple? Lol Next time look at the Apple desks at the Apple store and realize that most of those people are receiving support or repairs

Work bough an Asus Zenbook Prime, one of the BEST Ultrabooks out there. Dollar for dollar, it beats the Macbook Air at its own game. Spec sheet wise, ditto - it simply outclassed it in every way we could measure - for the same price, you got a computer with a higher res screen, good construction, etc.

Just like mine...

But you know what? The power cable broke off the adapter! We ended up with an interesting jury rigged thing involving a Kingston Traveller power supply and lots of pigtails until our hardware technician saw the mess, and redid it nicely with solder and heatshrink tubing making a nice cable.

...also just like mine (except on mine it broke the motherboard, so the tech had to do some exceedingly fine soldering and bodge on a new external socket). The Macbook power cable connector is a thing of enviable excellence and pure common sense. Damaged power connectors are a main cause of laptop failure, and Macbooks just don't have the problem. Whatever you think of Mac software, the hardware is the best around.

Re: Not likely.

[TheRaven64]

I can't be bothered to look up a citation, but check any HCI textbook.

Re:Not likely.

[kevingolding2001]

If you think the controls on Metro are unintuitive, you're a certified idiot.

I am a very experienced software developer, and I work with a bunch of very talented systems programmers who progam in things like Perl etc.
I have sat there in stunned disbelief about how bad an interface could possibly be when these very same people got stuck on the 'Seattle page' for about a half hour trying to figure out what to do with the mouse. Ummm. Etc....

Ahh. What's the point. You're obviously religious about this. Nobody can make you understand.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro that is still running fine today.

Re:Not likely.

[AmiMoJo]

NEC's LaVie line beats the pants of the MBP. The X and Z models are fantastic. Lighter, more ergonomic, easy to upgrade and replace the batteries, fast and well made. Cheaper too.

The MBP is good, but it's not somehow magically better than everything else.

Re:Not likely.

[AmiMoJo]

Apple don't seem to be any better than other quality manufacturers when you look at their history. There have been plenty of logic board failures, overheating CPUs, low quality 6 bit LCD panels, failing wifi, the nVidia GPU fault... In other words, about the same number of issues as everyone else in that price bracket.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Check out the latest NEC LaVie Z, 795g, 4th gen i7, 256GB Samsung SSD, etc. Retina quality SHARP Display.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife get's a computer that works

Grammatical error. You should've said: "My wife get's a computer that work's". Come on!

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Panasonic Let's Note are best in terms of reliability.

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

think of the software (and, if like me, you don't like Apple's software, you can just ditch it and put something of your preference on instead)

Although OSX might be thought of as a slick version of Linux. Both are Unix-like based OS's. Anyhow, we like what we like, and there are choices.

Microsoft Surface? H'mmm, don't know, I've never actually seen one. But I very much doubt they're in the same league.

I have seen them. I find them to be an answer in search of a problem. Bringing out an El Camino type solution, and trying to pit it against the top compact laptop is tilting at windmills to begin with. And then there is that operating system.

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll summarize for you: His personal experience from 20 years with certain MFRs was better than your experience in the present. They were using MP3 long before it was released as a CODEC on a 486 (haha, that one was funneh). Ramble Ramble, blah blah, he hates Apple and OSS so is possibly a MS Shill (they make no mention of that OS) ramble blah.

Re:Not likely.

[CimmerianX]

Hardware Wise, Windows will never compete with Apple. OSX only needs to support a very, very limit set of hardware components. The Devs know exactly what video, what memory, what board, etc are included in the Macs.

Windows needs to be able to support all the various different types of hardware out there, usually relying on crappy 3rd party drivers for functionality.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

I only use vista

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also important to note how warranty and after-sales service goes.
I had a MBA just die about a year and a half after buying it. Had AppleCare. Went to Apple Store and they swapped it out with brand new one, no questions asked. I was out of the store in about 20 minutes. Try that with an HP or Dell....

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see...
 
An actual Unix certified OS.
Single vendor hardware and software support.
Support from a store that I can find in any major US city.
Better 3rd party software support.
Better hardware in its class than any other laptop out there.
Better community support.
And....
 
[drum roll please!]
 
It CAN run Linux! [Tada!!!!]
 
Hate on Apple all you want but I can run Linux on a Mac just like I can run Windows on a Mac. It's expensive but it's a total package and not something ramshackled together in a garage where I'd have to ship my laptop to for service. It's not depending on internet forms and neckbeard attitudes for support. I'm not worried about an OS update that is going to take a crap because I'm running hardware it doesn't expect to find. The Apple store kicks the crap out of Best Buy in on every level. The hardware is excellent by all standards.
 
Granted, the hipsters suck but I can live with that because the neckbeards suck just as much (and smell worse).
 
I use to be anti-Apple but bought a MBP because I just wanted to try out something new and different after the whole Windows 8 ordeal and general burnout... I figured I'd use it to learn OS X support and have some fun tinkering around on it. Today's it's my main machine. I have yet to find anything I do on the day to day that I need to boot to my Win7 partition for aside from some games not being published in OS X. I'm a happy camper all around.
 
Part of the problem is you people who act like you have to make a choice. I run OSX, Linux and Windows at home. I work in a Windows and Unix environment at work. I've tinkered with all the little RaspPi/Arduino toys too... For just sitting down and doing what I got to do I prefer OS X but I touch Linux and Windows systems at least 3 times a week. None of them outright suck. Just get over the fanboy goosestepping and everything works out much better in the end. I choose not to only pick one and I'm much better off for it.

Re: Not likely.

[Bill_the_Engineer]

I travel to the middle of nowhere with my laptop on a regular basis. It either bounces around the trunk of my rental car, get knocked around at the airport, get compressed in overhead baggage on a airline flight, subjected to who knows what while bumping around the nose compartment of a Cessna 402 , bake in the sun while I'm on the tarmac working an issue, or being invaded by sand particles or dust. Despite the unrecommended environment, I never had an issue with my MacBook Pro. I'm still with my MacBook Pro issued to me in 2010 while my colleagues are on their 2nd or 3rd HP or Dell laptop. My first work laptop was a Sony Vaio and it only lasted me 1 year, afterwards I purchased a MacBook Pro and used it for 2 years until the new MacBook Pro was issued to me by my employer. My wife still uses my late 2006 MacBook Pro and it works like new.

The only other person on my team that has a long lasting laptop uses an IBM branded Thinkpad/X40 which works well enough for testing components during intergration otherwise he uses a desktop workstation that we ship to the field. The problems we had with laptops are bad batteries, dead backlight/display, and the problem that plagued our Dell Latitude series - clam shell breaking at the hinges. We hadn't had any noticeable problems with the current high end HP laptops other then being heavier and bulkier than my MacBook Pro and lower battery life.

Regardless of the brand (Apple, HP, Dell, Lenovo) we paid similar price for the equivalent laptop. I don't know how you would consider a MacBook Pro laptop overpriced except maybe when you compare it to a consumer grade laptop sold at your local Walmart. I know several people who are happy with their low priced laptop but they rarely travel with them. They use them at school, sometimes at work, but most of the time safely at home. If you have a similar experience with your purchase then congratulations.

Re: Not likely.

[Mister_Stoopid]

They usually get me laptops for work, and I've never had one last more than a year or so, usually with frequent heat related video card crashes for the last few months. Current one is an ASUS G73 series. It's generally pretty good but frequently has video corruption/bad rendering issues in certain CAD programs. I suspect that laptops in general just aren't up to doing much more than websurfing/email/MSWord.
 
BTW never had an apple computer and I never plan to.

Re:Not likely.

[steve_bryan]

"But who cares? Only an idiot would try to generalize from your tiny sample size."

I think a better conclusion would be that only and idiot would ignore his own experience.

Re:Not likely.

[mgcarley]

Why? Tigerdirect and the like has plenty of decent refurbs which come with Win7 Pro. If your mother is anything like mine, even the specs on a lower-end refurb should be more than sufficient.

Re:Not likely.

[wwphx]

I didn't retire my MBP until the video developed a problem and I didn't want to drop $500 to fix an old machine, so I got an Air. I'm going to go back to a Pro when it's time to upgrade my Air, I hate the 4 gig memory limit and lust after my wife's 16 gig limit.

My MBP served as my desktop, connected to an external monitor, until we had a lightning strike that actually scorched the chassis next to the power plug, it also popped the sound. Insurance bought me a 27" iMac, bumped the memory to 16 gig and I'm very happy. I just love the stability: my desktop has been up for 50 days (powered it down for an extended trip out of town), my laptop had been up for a month but I installed some new software that forced a reboot.

Re:Not likely.

[narcc]

I think a better conclusion would be that only and idiot would ignore his own experience.

That's why most people think the earth is flat, right?

People are bad observers.

Re:Not likely.

[steve_bryan]

Not a very good example. Most people do not think the earth is flat. From personal observation on a flight the curvature of the earth is visible. Also anyone living on a coast can see evidence of the curvature. Anyone viewing an eclipse of the sun or moon will see compelling evidence. The shared experience of the moon landing is not exactly a secret. And finally the ancient Greeks already had determined the earth was a sphere from their own personal experience and observation.

But seriously, do you know anyone who thinks the earth is flat?

Re:Not likely.

[david_thornley]

My son didn't. He just told me that, with increasing experience with Windows 8, he likes Linux more and more.

Re:Not likely.

[Zeio]

I'm not sure why they couldnt just natively EFI boot Surface Pro OS (Win 8.1) on the Macbooks. That seems like a sounder strategy to get converts than throwing away hardware. Apple hardware is the only reason to use Apple these days. (Nice touch pad, nice keyboard, relatively durable, good display).

Re:Not likely.

[Archimonde]

Or my MBP with retina display with a display burn in. I mean, "image persistence feature". And the same laptop had its mobo replaced twice as it was freezing when switching to discrete graphics board.

I still have late 2010 MBA which works great to this day. And I've used that one for countless hours of gaming.

My next laptop is probably going to be air again. I just love that portability.

Re:Not likely.

[narcc]

Not a very good example.

Looks good from here.

Most people do not think the earth is flat.

Which is why it's an excellent example.

Keep at it. You'll puzzle it out in no time.

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

I presume Apple holds the keys. I may be wrong.

Re:Not likely.

[TechyImmigrant]

I always insert random apostophe's in order to amuse the Slashdot apostronaughts.

Re: Not likely.

[steve_bryan]

In fact locally the earth is flat which is an important insight about geometry. So for a sufficiently small neighborhood a plane is a good approximation while globally it is spherical. On the other hand there is some reason why Apple is a far more profitable company than any of its competitors. Keep at it, eventually you may figure out why. (Of course, I don't have much hope for a breakthrough in the short run).

Re:Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

And...you can install linux on it, unless the Surface Pro 3 is that distinct from the 2.

I'd happily make this trade, but that won't happen, because I certainly wouldn't be in a predicament where I'd bought a Macbook Air...

Re:Not likely.

[Overzeetop]

*shrug* I don't use Metro 95% of the time - I use the desktop on my W8 laptop and it works pretty much like W7, but with some mice shortcuts. The tiles interface is nice when I switch into tablet mode and am watching a movie or surfing or reading. It's not useful for AutoCAD or Photoshop or Word, where a mouse is far more efficient a tool for navigation. Still, it was pitifully easy to learn.

Re:Not likely.

[Thumper_SVX]

And I have a 2011 Macbook Pro that crashes every time I use the discrete graphics card because the lead-free solder is shit. And yes, I'm one of MANY with that problem...

Re: Not likely.

[narcc]

Still confused, I see. Well, there's not much I can do about it.

Re: Not likely.

[amiga3D]

Goodie for you.

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

Still, it was pitifully easy to learn.

But you see, I really don't give a damn on how "pitifully easy" it is or was to learn. Or how you are some amazingly smart person forced to live among the Visigoths.

Because having used W8 and maintained W8 for nearly a year, and finally abandoned it, I can say that W8 remains, a steaming pile of shit..

Re:Not likely.

[Ol Olsoc]

OSX only needs to support a very, very limit set of hardware components. The Devs know exactly what video, what memory, what board, etc are included in the Macs.

Windows needs to be able to support all the various different types of hardware out there, usually relying on crappy 3rd party drivers for functionality.

The most ironic thing is that until a few years ago, we heard of the unbeatable and unquestionable superiority of the Windows OS Systems because we had all these choices. We had a choice of a bazillion of every card - every function could be fine tuned for the superior computing experience, something never to be achieved on the mac.

Now it's an excuse for lesser performance.

Re:Not likely.

[kesuki]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3
486 computers had 'mp3' codecs and they were around in 1991 and was standardized in 1994. standardized means many people had access to working code by then.

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that what the audio gingle translates to - not a sysadmin? In the old days one expected a written dialog box warning for a sysadmin privileges? NO?

Re: Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

So today I tried installing a USB printer on Win 8 and all it did is play a 3-5 note tune every time I would disconnect and reconnect the printer... No dialog windows ever popped up, no questions ever asked, and NO, the printer never appeared in the printer menu. WTF! Has Win 8 gone audio?

OMGODIFYOUDON'TKNOWTHATW8ISTHEBESTDAMMEDOSEVERINVENTEDYOURAGODDAMMEDIDIOT!

Re:Not likely.

[mick129]

OSX is a fine windowing system, but it's a little rough around the hedges when it comes to usability for the portion of the world that simply cannot become Apple converts.

I disagree. It's rough around the ledges.

Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trade in a real computer for a POS tablet no one wants...

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Derp. Surface Pros can do things that no other tablet can. Your jealousy is showing.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

the MacBook Air isn't a tablet though. It runs the full version of OS X (and Win 8, or whatever else you want to install for that matter).

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Derp. Surface Pros can do things that no other tablet can. Your jealousy is showing.

M$ has been trying to marketing tablets longer than apple has; nobody except M$ fanboyz wanted them back in the WinCE days; and nobody except the fanboyz want them now.

Re:Great deal!

[Samantha Wright]

It's more brilliant than you think—now the Microsoft employees who came up with this idea can get MacBooks without getting their boss's signature! In theory, anyway.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

the MacBook Air isn't a tablet though. It runs the full version of OS X (and Win 8, or whatever else you want to install for that matter).

And the Surface Pro 3 isn't just a tablet either. It comes with full Windows 8.1, not the RT version, so you can run whatever desktop apps you like.

Re:Great deal!

[MightyMartian]

It's an expensive piece of hardware whose performance doesn't justify the cost and whose size makes it a terrible fucking tablet. I could buy a Nexus 7 and a tolerable decent notebook for less than a Surface 3 and have the best of both worlds.

Re:Great deal!

[clarkn0va]

Wow, it seems even Microsoft would rather have Apple's product than their own.

Re:Great deal!

[Anubis IV]

Surface Pros can do things that no other tablet can. Your jealousy is showing.

That's nice and all, but your lack of useful and relevant examples is rather glaring.

I don't think anyone here is denying that the Surface line is trying to do something that's quite a bit different from what other tablets are doing. They're definitely targeting a different set of use cases than what the iPad, Fire, or Galaxy Tab lines are hitting, and I have no doubt that the Surface Pro can do stuff no other tablet can. But the important question isn't, "Does it do stuff no one else can?" The important question to ask is, "Are the things it can do of interest to people and executed well?" And based on sales numbers, professional reviews, and numerous firsthand accounts both here and elsewhere, the answer is a resounding, "No".

Really, when you get down to it, the Surface line is simply a fresh iteration of the same strategy Microsoft has been employing in the tablet space since the early 2000s: put Windows everywhere so that users can have the power of a "PC" in their hand. The only thing that's changed is the execution, and you don't need to look long and hard at Windows 8 reviews to know that they botched that as well. The strategy may actually work for them if it is executed properly, but the fact that the market stayed nascent for ten years until a competitor introduced a device employing an alternative strategy indicates that they didn't get it right then, and the fact that the Surface line hasn't seen any real uptake should be good indications that either the strategy is a losing one or else that they have yet to execute properly on it.

TL;DR: Just because a device can do stuff other devices can't doesn't mean it's a good idea. We don't want compact cars with truck beds, wedding cakes from Burger King, or tight-fitting exercise shorts made of designer denim. In trying to be both a tablet and laptop, the Surface ended up being good at neither.

Re:Great deal!

[Opportunist]

That is actually true. All the other tablets are too lighweight to kill a cat when you throw them at the feline.

Re:Great deal!

[Anubis IV]

Hold up: you're missing an important distinction.

The MacBook Air isn't just a laptop. It is a laptop. That's all it is, and it's a darn good laptop. It does laptop things really well.

By not just being a tablet, the Surface has failed to be good at being anything at all. If you pit it against laptops, it's under-specced for the price. For that sort of money, you can do a lot better elsewhere. And if you pit it against tablets, it's lacking apps and overpriced. It's in a weird space between the two that no one is interested in. I commend them for trying something different than everyone else and trying to carve out a unique niche (really, I do!), but I don't see how this particular execution of their strategy can be painted as anything other than an extended failure that has yet to turn the corner. I honestly hope it will, but it has yet to do so.

Re:Great deal!

[Ihunda]

Yeah, this was my first thought too, what is Micro$soft going to do with all those MBP???

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes if your primary concern is saving a few dollars you could have a clumsy solution where you have multiple devices that you have to carry and sync data between.

Re:Great deal!

[theskipper]

Heh. And for folks who have a Microsoft store nearby, stop in and ask if they have any used MBAs for sale ;)

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's an expensive piece of hardware whose performance doesn't justify the cost and whose size makes it a terrible fucking tablet. I could buy a Nexus 7 and a tolerable decent notebook for less than a Surface 3 and have the best of both worlds.

The Macbook Air is not a tablet, doorknob. And even Microsoft knows no fool would hand over their Air when the average Air gets over 800$ on Ebay and is a very different beast compared to the Surface. It's purely for attention and frankly just makes them look desperate for sales. M$ always did suck at marketing.

Re:Great deal!

[MightyMartian]

And a huge tablet like a Surface 3 isn't clumsy?

My Nexus 7 and 15" notebook both fit nicely in my case, and combined cost at least a couple of hundred bucks less than the Surface 3. If I was to spend that much on a laptop, I'd get a helluva better unit than this underpower device.

If it works for you, great. Myself, I consider it an appalling waste of money.

Re:Great deal!

[MightyYar]

"Syncing data between devices"? It's 2014 - this is a solved problem.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ok bro, Steve Jobs is not going to rise from the dead and let you slob on his knob if you keep shilling for him.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

And a huge tablet like a Surface 3 isn't clumsy?

No. In fact it's a lot less clumsy than juggling a 15" laptop and a 7" tablet. Why have 2 devices when you only need one? I don't want to have to deal with this "syncing to the cloud" crap when I'm travelling, it's much easier and convenient to have one device. If I needed a lot of computing power then maybe I would need something else but frankly there haven't been necessary gains in hardware for the last few years, my 3 year old MBA still works just fine, i don't see any reason to upgrade it.

My Nexus 7 and 15" notebook both fit nicely in my case, and combined cost at least a couple of hundred bucks less than the Surface 3. If I was to spend that much on a laptop, I'd get a helluva better unit than this underpower device.

The thing is I can't find a high resolution, touchscreen laptop with an active stylus and even if I did the lack of a detachable keyboard would make it horribly awkward to use (unless it was like that lenovo yoga one maybe, though being able to remove the keyboard makes it less cumbersome).

If it works for you, great. Myself, I consider it an appalling waste of money.

I consider anything that isn't appropriate for what I'm doing an appalling waste of money too, clearly this device doesn't fit your purpose so why are you so concerned about it? The overarching criticism here is that "it doesn't fit my workflow" or "it doesn't appeal to the broad consumer base" and that somehow that makes the product bad, well it doesn't have to do those things. You think desktop Linux or Nokia's N900 or Google Glass or Chromebooks or whatever are bad just because they don't fit some particular person's workflow or don't appeal to everybody?

Re:Great deal!

[cbhacking]

Compared to a comparably-specced 15" laptop, a 12" diagonal 0.5" thick laptop/tablet hybrid is certainly not clumsy, no. Compared to that plus a separate device (which is too big to put in a pocket)... are you high?

Oh, and where'd you get the idea that they're underpowered, anyhow? Aside from gaming due to the lack of a separate GPU and an 8GB limit on RAM, they have very good specs. The CPU is better than you'd get in most 15" laptops, and the display is better than all of them (yes, including Apple's). The SSD and battery life are also both excellent... and for anything even vaguely in the same weight class, the price is actually cheap. So yes, you could get a more powerful Lenovo or something for the cost of the higher-end Pro 3 models, but the power brick and battery would each weigh as much as the entire Surface does (and the battery probably wouldn't last as long), it wouldn't support stylus input, and you'd have to buy *several* of those laptops to get the same number of pixels.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Surface Pros can't write code in Swift. Deal breaker for me. Have fun with that cheap Java rip-off otherwise known as C#.

Re:Great deal!

[shutdown -p now]

Have you used one? I've got my hands on it a few days ago, and I have to say that I'm impressed with how well it handles - much better than I expected a 12" thing to be. Weight-wise, it's actually on par with early 10" Android 4.x tablets from 3 years ago.

I also have a Nexus 7, and a tolerable decent notebook (a Thinkpad). They're both fine devices, and for many people they would be quite sufficient, but it's not the same as having a usable laptop and a usable tablet combined in a single device that weights under a kilogram and can be carried around in a small sleeve.

Re: Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft has had a "tablet" OS out since XP days... But until the RT experiment they never Changed anything about how the tablet based programs worked in over 10 years. Office XP on tablet XP is basically the same GUI as Office on Win 8.1. Microsoft just "changes the paint" but hasn't fixed the usability issues of old programs on modern tablets.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

"It's in a weird space between the two that no one is interested in. "

People who don't want to own both a laptop AND a tablet aren't really that weird. Your basic complaint is that it's overpriced and that's pretty much it. I remember the days when everyone here considered Macs to be overpriced.... wonder how that worked out for Apple.

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

Google: "windows 8.1 reviews"
-techradar.com: 4.5/5
-pcmag.com: 4/5
-cnet.com: 4/5
-trustedreviews.com: 4/5

Google: "surface 3 reviews"
-techrader.com: 4.5/5
-engadget.com: 4/5 (user reviews aggregated by engadget have it at 8.8/10)
-cnet.com: 4/5

Note that these are the star ratings as shown by Google, so a 4/5 may actually be an 8/10 on the site.

I'm not sure this makes it clear that either product was "botched."

Re:Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you pit it against laptops, it's under-specced for the price. For that sort of money, you can do a lot better elsewhere.

Can you show me this "elsewhere?" I'm honestly intrigued because the Surface actually seems to be priced fairly (maybe I'm picky but the only devices that do it for me are Apple, MS and Lenovo right now--the build quality and long-term user reviews for other brands, esp. Asus, Acer and Dell, scare me).

For the MBA (13"), Yoga 2 Pro and Surface 3, you can get a very similar build: Core i5, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, etc. The Lenovo is $1199, the MBA and the Surface are $1299. With the Surface you get the cool pen, but you have to pay extra for the keyboard.

The key differences seem to be the physical dimensions and the display.

Display: Lenovo wins with with a ridiculous 3200x1800 display; Microsoft comes next with 2160x1440; Apple's stuck in 1998 with 1440x900.
Dimensions: the Surface is .36" thick and weighs 1.76 pounds; the Yoga is .61" thick and weighs 3.06 pounds; the MBA is .68" thick and weighs 2.96 pounds.

I'd guess that when you add the keyboard to the Surface, it probably comes out close to the same thickness as the Yoga but a bit lighter.

The 11" MBA may be a more reasonable comparison ... it's $100 less for a similar configuration and is significantly lighter, but the screen resolution drops as well.

Re:Great deal!

[Anubis IV]

"It's in a weird space between the two that no one is interested in. "

People who don't want to own both a laptop AND a tablet aren't really that weird.

You're putting words in my mouth. I never said those people were weird. I said the space between the two classes of device was weird. Big difference. And not wanting to own both a laptop and tablet is fine, but there are different ways to approach that objective besides trying to make a tablet that acts like a laptop or a laptop that acts like a tablet, both of which have been tried numerous times and failed to gain any traction.

Your basic complaint is that it's overpriced and that's pretty much it. I remember the days when everyone here considered Macs to be overpriced.... wonder how that worked out for Apple.

My basic "complaint" isn't a complaint at all, which is to say, I have no problems with the situation, I'm merely analyzing why it's not working out for them and why I don't expect that to change. Even so, your comparison to Apple doesn't work, since you're ignoring the fact that the value proposition for Macs changed dramatically over the years (from overpriced nonsense that nearly brought Apple to bankruptcy, to overpriced in terms of hardware but offering significant value in other regards, to (mostly) overpriced in no way), whereas that hasn't happened with the Surface.

And it's a mischaracterization of what I said to suggest that it's merely an issue with it being overpriced. It's not just that, though that is one side to the coin. The other side to the coin is that it's under-performing in the areas that matter. To keep the price down after adding the tablet features, they had to skimp on the hardware that would have made it a competitive laptop while also shackling it with a PC OS that is getting overwhelmingly negative reviews, which means that they skimped on the simplicity that would have made it a compelling tablet. That's on top of the fact that it's coming up incredibly short in comparisons between the various app stores.

People who don't want to own both a laptop and tablet are perfectly reasonable for wanting that, but what they want is a full-fledged laptop and a full-fledged tablet, not something that comes up short in both regards.

Re:Great deal!

[Anubis IV]

I'll keep that in mind next time someone makes a baseless ad hominem attack in response to something that has nothing at all to do with Apple or Steve Jobs.

Re:Great deal!

[Thumper_SVX]

Honestly your comment would be valid if you'd actually used one, I think.

I'm definitely NOT a Microsoft shill; I have a Macbook Pro I still use for photo editing that I do rather like even if the lead-free solder on the GPU is a problem (I plan to fix soon). But anyway, for years I've avoided most Microsoft products; I have had several Android tablets, my MBP is my fourth, I've had Macs since the 604 days (and had an original Mac before that)... I've put Linux on dozens of laptops and still manage Linux boxes at work as well as storage and Windows servers. I tell you this because I want you to understand where I come from with my next statements:

I got a Surface Pro... first gen, 128GB storage, 4GB RAM. I have the Type Keyboard 2 attached to it. And you know what? When I leave the house it's the computer I take with me most often. It's small enough that I can carry it anywhere, and resilient enough that I don't worry about throwing it in the pannier of my motorbike. It'll survive... damn thing's built like a tank. Most times if I'm at a coffee shop, I'll be reclining with the keyboard folded up the back... or just detached and left in my car or bike. This little laptop/tablet hybrid has become my go-to device every single day.

Is it as good at photo editing as my MBP? No... the screen's not set up for that and the storage is WAY too small to manage my significant library of 12MP RAW pictures from my Nikon. But you know what? When I did a wedding shoot a couple of weeks back I was able to pull the Micro SD card out of my camera (it's in an SD adapter for my camera, but I digress), I was able to slip it into the MicroSD slot on my SP and then the happy couple were able to swipe through the raw, unedited shots from the wedding before they'd even finished their first drink. Then I was able to download the pics to the local storage, clean off the card and repeat the whole process at the reception. When I got home two days later I moved the pics to my MBP for editing. No muss, no fuss.

Is it a games machine? No... but no laptop is. I have a dedicated machine for that.

But damned if it hasn't become the most useful laptop I have. It's supplanted an iPad and a Nexus 7 in terms of tablet functionality because it can do everything they can. It's supplanted most of what my MBP used to do (you know, being portable...) because it does ALMOST everything that thing does. The high-end stuff I need to do (photo editing is resource heavy) just isn't great on the SP, but it doesn't have to be. Chances are my gaming rig will get some new hard drives and start serving duty as my Photoshop machine, too and the MBP will go up on eBay.

That's the thing though; the SP might not be what you need and might not fill a niche in your life. That's cool, but personally I've found my SP to fill niches I didn't think of when I first got it. I take notes during meetings using the stylus (which by the way is freaking awesome!) and I find myself whipping out my SP at work and propping it up on my desk as a third "reference material monitor" or even a photo frame if I feel like it. It's amazingly adaptable because it's a computer. The fact that it runs Windows is actually irrelevant to me any more. There's very little that can be done on OSX or Linux that can't be done on Windows. Hell, if I want to run X applications from my Linux servers I can fire up MobaXTerm, SSH in and launch whatever I want and have it seamlessly on my desktop. You know, just like I used to do with OSX. It's also no more locked down and limited than OSX, and it might even become the more open of the "big two" commercial OS's the way Apple is going. So what do I lose?

And there's the rub. For people who are really OS-agnostic in what they do (which should be everyone in 2014... seriously), the SP is a great laptop and a great tablet. It's heavy, yes... that's probably the worst thing I can say about it, but it's seriously no heavier than the first gen iPad that I still have gathering dust somewhere. At least it feels that way when I hold bo

And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not likely...

Re:And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[ArcadeMan]

How about a taco that craps ice cream?

Re:And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[Krojack]

MMmMMm... dinner and dessert.

Re:And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean Mexican fried ice cream?

Re:And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[sudon't]

How about a taco that craps ice cream?

Yeah! They could call it the Choco Taco, or something. Eh, it would never work....

Re:And I want a unicorn that farts butterflies!

[BitZtream]

It's called a ChocoTaco, and it's been around since I was a kid 30 years ago at least.

Correction

[JoeCommodore]

Trade in a real computer for "store credit" towards an overpriced model of a POS tablet no one wants...

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand you're just being off-handed and flippant and all but this line about the Surface Pro being crap and no one wants one is getting really fucking annoying. It's solid hardware that loaded up with the ubiquitous office suite and Remote Desktop software becomes a great option in an enterprise environment - where they are making BIG inroads. The MS Pro is welcomed with open arms by IT depts that reluctantly tolerate iPads. MS have done lots of un appealing things over the years but the Surface Pro is an example of getting something right - and - in a space Apple has only ever half-heartedly played in and shows no signs of ever really 'getting'.

Re:Correction

[Anonymous Coward]

Surface Pro is crap and no one wants it. If you need more evidence than MS's latest blunder of a campaign, than just look at market share.

MS has failed in music players, phones, and tables, numerous times.

If MS had a clue, they would stick to their bread and butter, corporations and gamers.

It is why Azure is so mindboggling stupid. No company is going to trust their data to a third parties servers. MS should be sticking to workstation OS and producing a full stack "cloud" that corporations can buy and run in their server rooms.

But Linux rules the server rooms and Valve is quickly making Linux gaming viable.

MS is shit-deep in trouble.

Truth hurts fanboy, but you will survive it.

MicroCrap?

[Anonymous Coward]

That trade in is simple enough - Do Not Want. Not even free.

Can I buy a traded-in Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

I will take one of those used Airs off their hands.

Re:Can I buy a traded-in Air?

[Ol Olsoc]

I will take one of those used Airs off their hands.

Well, that means there will be one left.

Re:Can I buy a traded-in Air?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't it have Windows on it?

"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[Anonymous Coward]

In 'good' condition... they're worth more than that on Craigslist...

Re:"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[guruevi]

The funny thing is, MBA's even early models are still worth a pretty dime second hand (usually 50-80% of purchase price based on condition and age), Surface Pro's won't fetch more than 1/3 of their purchase price.

Re: "up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because people don't understand there's more than one model and if they do they don't understand how to tell them apart or what the benefits of a new model are.

Re: "up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[Parafilmus]

That's because people don't understand there's more than one model and if they do they don't understand how to tell them apart or what the benefits of a new model are.

That's just not correct. Look at the ebay listings. Every one features the model number and tech specs right up front.

Plenty of valid criticism can be leveled at Apple, but are you really suggesting that they aren't doing enough to announce their laptop hardware revisions?

They're not exactly shy when they update one of their laptop models. They tend to have a big media production where the CEO gets on a stage and explains the hardware and software changes in some detail. Convincing people to replace their 2009 macbooks with shiny 2014 models is a big part of their business. I'm not sure how much more they could do to spread the word that "this year's macbook has a better SSD/CPU/whatever."

Re:"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[fermion]

This is they same kind of promotion that MS ran before. Give us your Apple, we will give you FMV for the product, and you can have a Surface. If you have a Macbook Air that is still running and is three years old, then this is not a bad deal. Otherwise it is FMV.

So this is a gimmick. The surface pro 3 i7 appears to be a $1500 machine, which is $100 more than the similiar Macbook Air. The cost of the MS license? In any case if they would give 30% of a Surface for any Mac Book Air, that would be a serious promotion. That would also get them converts. I am sure that are a lot of people out there who paid good money for a Macbook Air that died in less than two years(it has happened to me, but I expect it and just replace it with a new one). But others may be less tied to the product.

The thing about the surface is that is still where was where the Macbook was when it first came out. Relatively underpowered for the price. A very light laptop that runs Windows 8 well is $400. A Macbook Air that is going to run windows well is $900, unlike the $1000 Surface.

Re:"up to" $650 for a macbook air trade in?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if this wasn't the case, the trade in value given by MS shores up the value of the MBA. Way to help your competitor!

This is telling

[roc97007]

What this tells me is that Microsoft has given up trying to promote the Surface as a tablet. It's a laptop that happens to have a detachable keyboard. Note that they didn't even try to offer a trade-in of ipads for the surface, which would be a more reasonable comparison if the surface was successful as a tablet. The ipad is a different use case, and Microsoft just doesn't play well in that space.

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

>It's a laptop that happens to have a detachable keyboard.

Well, duh. Every Windows tablet is a laptop with a detachable keyboard.

Re:This is telling

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Microsoft's advertising for the Surface has shown that they don't get what tablets are FOR, from day one.

"And you can get a keyboard for it, and OF COURSE, it runs Microsoft Office"

'Cause THAT'S what people do with tablets...

Re:This is telling

[hAckz0r]

Microsoft has given up trying to promote the Surface as a ...

... saleable machine. Rather than dumping their excess, in public view of shareholders, they are now even more willing to take a more substantial loss, so long as they can still claim X millions of units sold . Better than tossing them like with the Surface RT. Shareholders will likely complain if they try that one again.

Re:This is telling

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

>It's a laptop that happens to have a detachable keyboard.

Well, duh. Every Windows tablet is a laptop with a detachable keyboard.

Well, duh! Every observation is obvious when you're repeating it with the words "Well, duh!" in front of it. Let's face it, everybody knows that. Aren't you glad you contributed to the thread?

Re:This is telling

[MightyMartian]

No, the mere fact that Microsoft built the Surface tablets demonstrates they don't have the foggiest idea what tablets are used for.

Re:This is telling

[danomac]

Yeah, Microsoft is now going for portable business integration. You can manage them with Active Directory - I just added one.

We are looking to go more portable at work but we don't want to have a laptop and a tablet for every user. Picked up one of the new Surface 3 devices and while it looks like it will integrate nicely for our day-to-day use at work, I don't like it enough to have one at home for personal use. It's actually got some well thought out ideas in the device.

Given that an iPad can cost $1k now (256GB storage, same as this Surface Pro 3 I'm testing) It's not too far-fetched in price in my opinion, seeing as you can do more with it and aren't constrained to the App or Play store. Doesn't mean I'd buy one for personal use, though. Once the docks are released I can see potential for it replacing some of our old workstations.

Re:This is telling

[v1]

Note that they didn't even try to offer a trade-in of ipads for the surface, which would be a more reasonable comparison if the surface was successful as a tablet

if they tried to pull THAT, they would have a crapton of people with older ipads trading them in. They'd be buried alive. A lot of iPad2's are out of warranty, and that's about the time schools and others consider an upgrade.

They're MS... they're big, and could take the hit, but it definitely would sting.

The surface though is more of a laptop trying to also be a tablet, than a tablet trying to also be a laptop. (sort of the iPad's territory) So I don't agree that it'd be a trade within the same market. It makes more "sense" to go against the air, but not many are going to bite, because the air isn't trying to be a tablet, that's what the iPad is for. As someone else has said, Macintoshes have an amazing ability to retain their value for resale, and MS isn't offering as much as the machines could get you on craigslist. Trade-ins for the competition's gear are a "try to pull people off the fence onto your side" maneuver, but the problem is it's only going to attract people that have already decided they didn't like their new mac, so it won't really serve its intended purpose.

Looked at another way, they're trying to enter two different markets with one product, and neither is going to do a really good job as a result. The surface isnt' really a tablet, it's more of a laptop that has some of the features of one. They were wise to see they'd lost the straight-up tablet market before they'd started. Targeting the MBA is probably the smartest thing to do right now. (I just don't think this is a very smart approach they're taking)

They could have had a lot more fun with this, and generated an enormous amount of publicity by just taking it all the way. Don't "trade" it in. Bring in a WORKING air to their store, and you get to go into a box and smash it with a sledgehammer. And then collect your discount. That would be money well-spent on marketing, for less than the cost of a few commercial spots.

Re:This is telling

[Xenx]

The Surface Pro has always been marketed as a laptop replacement, not as just a tablet. This doesn't suddenly change anything.

Re:This is telling

[roc97007]

> and MS isn't offering as much as the machines could get you on craigslist.

I did not know that, not being an Apple user (except for a couple G4s for Adobe products back in the day). Microsoft is so screwed.

> Trade-ins for the competition's gear are a "try to pull people off the fence onto your side" maneuver, but the problem is it's only going to attract people that have already decided they didn't like their new mac, so it won't really serve its intended purpose.

*especially* since, the Apple consumer is not your average consumer. Apple consumers love Apple products because (at least in part) they are Apple products. Microsoft isn't going to deter too many people from that mindset.

Re:This is telling

[roc97007]

The Surface Pro has always been marketed as a laptop replacement, not as just a tablet. This doesn't suddenly change anything.

I think that might to a certain extent be rewriting history. How soon we forget, all of those commercials and all that marketing when the Surface first came out.

Re:This is telling

[Xenx]

They've pretty much always pushed the whole detachable keyboard and ability to do real work, for the Surface Pro. That right there shows what the goal of the Surface Pro was. That isn't to say they didn't want to see the Surface RT to take off, but the Pro was pretty much always a flexible laptop replacement

Re:This is telling

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Actually, that's a good point. The specs themselves gives their cluelessness away.

Re:This is telling

[vidnet]

"And you can get a keyboard for it, and OF COURSE, it runs Microsoft Office"

'Cause THAT'S what people do with tablets...

It's what they did with the MBAs they're trading in, and it's what people can do with a tablet that isn't just an electronic etch-a-sketch.

It's sad that people are carrying around devices with multicore CPUs, several GB ram and storage, wifi and HD screens, and they still have to say "sorry, I can't -- I didn't bring my computer"

Re:This is telling

[Yunzil]

That's OK, I don't know what tablets are for either.

Re:This is telling

[Ol Olsoc]

*especially* since, the Apple consumer is not your average consumer. Apple consumers love Apple products because (at least in part) they are Apple products. Microsoft isn't going to deter too many people from that mindset.

Another really huge part is that Apple at least so far has not tried to foist a tub of crap like Windows 8 on their customers, and had their shills call them stupid when they didn't like it. Even Mavericks, which had some birthing pains - at least people could use it coompetently from day one, and it's ended up being great.

Re:This is telling

[roc97007]

> Another really huge part is that Apple at least so far has not tried to foist a tub of crap like Windows 8 on their customers, and had their shills call them stupid when they didn't like it. Even Mavericks, which had some birthing pains - at least people could use it coompetently from day one, and it's ended up being great.

I'm not really qualified to talk about this, but it seems that Apple has made some missteps -- "you're holding it wrong" being the most recognizable, but there's nothing to the scale, in my opinion, of the gaffe that was Windows 8. Even IOS 7, (flat icons, parallax effect, etc) was only a mild irritation in comparison. So I don't think it's true that Apple has never tried to foist a tub (or small trendy brushed metal container) of crap on their customers, it is true that Apple so far has not tried to foist a tub of crap like Windows 8 on their customers.

> They Call Me.........Tater Salad

It took me a moment to remember the reference. That was a great story.

Re:This is telling

[Pseudonym]

Every Windows tablet is a laptop with a detachable keyboard.

Yes, but these ones are detachable on purpose.

Re:This is telling

[Pseudonym]

'Cause THAT'S what people do with tablets...

Kind of, yes. Say what you will about iPads, but for the typical adult, they don't even pretend to be anything more than a combined filofax/newspaper that you can also play Angry Birds on.

Surface Pro does almost deliver on the promise of the mobile office. (And yes, by "almost", I mean "not".)

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

Playing Angry Birds while taking a shit.

Re:This is telling

[cbhacking]

Um, no. "When the Surface first came out" was the Surface RT. The Pro didn't come out until several months later.

One could easily chalk this up to Microsoft (still, as always) being shit at branding their products, but the Surface Pro and Surface RT lines are and always were aimed at different demographics. The RT is an iPad/Galaxy Tab replacement that happens to have a full-size USB port and built-in file manager and Office suite. The Pro is a laptop with a touchscreen, a stylus, and a removable keyboard. The Pro is meant to be able to serve as your only machine, even if you actually use a computer as more than an email-and-Facebook machine. The RT isn't, really (although it gets a lot closer when you jailbreak it, which MS put an absurd amount of effort into trying to prevent).

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

Dunno why anyone would buy it. They'll just drop the product in 2 yrs

Re:This is telling

[hawk]

Tablets make it far easier to measure dose on over the counter medication than if supplied as powder. Thus the many brands of aspirin tablet, but it's hard to find analgesic headache powder.

hawk

Re:This is telling

[stooo]

>> The Surface Pro has always been marketed as a laptop replacement, not as just a tablet.
mmh, a Laptop you can't put on the lap. Let's rather call it a 'tabletop'.

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

What people do with tablets is buy them to "replace a laptop" (because that's what the ads sell them as), and then end up being used as a secondary device to a laptop that gets lugged around anyway, because iOS UI is just not up to it even if you throw a Bluetooth keyboard into the mix.

It's kinda ironic how Apple is trying to sell tablets as a laptop replacement for all these years, while Microsoft is the one actually working to make it happen.

Re:This is telling

[GNious]

From watching the TV show Arrow, I've learned that Microsoft tablets are used for hacking into various corporate and 3-letter agencies.

Re:This is telling

[gtall]

I don't think the "love Apple products" have that much to do with it if you thinking like a Prada executive. In my case, I've always been appalled at MS interfaces. I presume there are others who are appalled at Apple interfaces. If you get started on one style of doing things, it becomes almost like a religion, and you don't change ingrained behaviors very often.

Re:This is telling

[gtall]

I don't think the notion that Surface Pro and Surface RT were aimed at a different demographics. It isn't clear there are many people who would want a combined tablet/laptop. Rather, I think it is the usual MS notion that they won't feel happy owning a market segment if they do not get to destroy someone else's. They are so paranoid that to leave a market segment to someone else means they will let the camel's nose into the tent. So rather than compete in tablet-land, they are trying to convert tablet-land into laptop land. It appears to be the usual MS braindead take on Marketing 101.

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

I own a HP TC1100 and for about 3 years it was my everyday machine. I like the slate+keyboard form factor and wouldn't mind it on my iPad but there's no way I'm giving up my rMBP for a Surface. I'm sure it's a great machine and just as good as my HP TC so I wouldn't be fast to dismiss it. I think people are going to be more receptive to the idea than they were when HP was putting out their tablet. It'll find a market. It may never be a big one and it may never overtake the general tablet market using mobile OSs but it still has a place.

Re:This is telling

[roc97007]

I don't think the notion that Surface Pro and Surface RT were aimed at a different demographics. It isn't clear there are many people who would want a combined tablet/laptop. Rather, I think it is the usual MS notion that they won't feel happy owning a market segment if they do not get to destroy someone else's. They are so paranoid that to leave a market segment to someone else means they will let the camel's nose into the tent. So rather than compete in tablet-land, they are trying to convert tablet-land into laptop land. It appears to be the usual MS braindead take on Marketing 101.

One could argue that they did the same with Netbooks. Not willing to let the segment exist, they used their supply chain leverage to force Windows on the devices, which meant the devices needed to have more resources / shorter battery life, thus destroying any advantages that netbooks had.

Personally, I always felt that the Surface RT was meant to muddy and ultimately destroy the ARM segment. It was ultimately unsuccessful. At anything, really.

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that's the problem with Microsoft's strategy. They need to focus their efforts on mobilization in the enterprise space. Make the Surface as easy to manage as a laptop with AD and group policies and that's where there market is.

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a first gen surface pro for doing light programming and sketching. I have shown photoshop running on it to a couple of artist friends (although I wish that Adobe was faster in getting that tablet UI out) and they've been completely overawed.

I'm not saying that it's the right choice for everyone but for the people that have been waiting for a machine like this (like me), it's a Godsend.

Re:This is telling

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Yup. I've noticed every ultra-leet hacker on TV seems to favor the Surface. At whatever they're up to always seems to involve the Windows 8 start screen as well. Microsoft must spend a ton of money on product placement.

Re:This is telling

[david_thornley]

The marketing has shown that they don't get what customers are like. The incessant lack of differentiation between the Surface and the much different Surface Pro is a pile of dissatisfied customers waiting to happen, once they get enough customers to make a pile.

And, yes, some people are using Office on their tablets, now that it's available on popular tablets. You just need a keyboard - you know, the things that quietly existed for pretty much any tablet before Microsoft started talking them up and then selling them separately like every other detachable tablet keyboard ever?

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of iPad2's are out of warranty, and that's about the time schools and others consider an upgrade.

I wouldn't call the surface and upgrade. Also my out of warranty iPad2 is working quite well.

Re:This is telling

[v1]

I don't think it's so much the "style" aspect as it is the "comfort zone". Particularly with less-adept users, once they fight their way through the frustration of learning a technology, they feel a lot more comfortable with it "now that I have it figured out". These people aren't going to be able to make anywhere near as fluid of a transition to any different interface, on or off their platform. Even if the interface is "better", it won't look that way to them unless they're forced to use it for awhile.

It's very frustrating for them to go from having some (hard-fought) understanding of tech to getting reset back to "I don't know how to do anything". Can't really blame them for their apprehension.

That's how I try to explain it to prospective switchers. "For the first two weeks, you're going to hate it". It just can't be avoided no matter what you're going from/to.

Re:This is telling

[RyoShin]

Don't forget all the dancing!

Re:This is telling

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has failed 3 times pushing tablets. Like their turd Zune and Windows phone it has failed.

See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

They'll do anything to pick them up cheaply, even trade some unwanted Surface 3's for some!

Jokes aside (and please don't mod for flamebait, it's sarcasm above, downmod for a bad joke if anything) ...

I don't think will go much. You're assuming that someone values their $1000+ dollar MacBook Air at $650 and values the Surface at something worth the discount. Considering the amount of work you'd have to do to migrate (either Windows to Mac, or Mac to Windows) you have to think about 200-300 realistically for swapping costs. Makes good headlines (as we see here) but won't help much.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[guruevi]

You'll need $200/y for just an Office (Office365) and simple photo/music management suite (Adobe CC), which is included in every purchase of a Mac.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Ol Olsoc]

Considering the amount of work you'd have to do to migrate (either Windows to Mac, or Mac to Windows) you have to think about 200-300 realistically for swapping costs. Makes good headlines (as we see here) but won't help much.

I suspect they are targeting Mac users who have never seen the Metro interface, or whatever they are calling it these days. W8 got my wife to stop using her computer until I installed Mint on it.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[robbyb20]

While i agree that Macs do allow you to get their "Office" equivalent bundle for free, I would like to state that nothing that comes with Macs out of the box for photo editing compares to Adobe CC(photoshop and Lightroom). Those are better than any iLife app out there and Apreture is laughable compared to Lightroom and Photoshop is in a whole nother game.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[mythosaz]

You lost me where I somehow need an Adobe CC subscription...

Office 2013, non-cloud is $140-220 depending on version, and I'm pretty sure Office doesn't come with a Mac for free either.

Non-Office office suites are available for free.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

I'm a programmer. I've written GUI code, I've written a device driver that shipped in a commercial UNIX kernel. I've used Windows since 3.1 days (WindowsForWorkgroupsForTheWin!). I've even debugged and configured Windows Vista in Chinese even though I can't read it - I was able to get someone to translate the occasional dialog box.

I can not understand Win8. When my sister asks me to help configure something on her Win8 laptop, I struggle with the UI as if I'm some rookie coming from some stoneage tribe.

I hate hate hate hate Windows 8.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Radical Moderate]

Ditto. I've used Windows since 3.1, and my wife's Win8 tablet makes me insane. I'm on my second Macbook Air, absolutely love it, no way I'm trading it in.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Overzeetop]

Wait, Apple's come with a perpetual Office subscription and Adobe's CC application? Damn, that is a good deal. Unless, of course, you mean Apple's free knock-offs of Office and Adobe's photo group, in which case the only advantage is that they're bundled instead of having to download one of the half-dozen free alternatives available for Windows.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Opportunist]

Oh good. I am not alone. I've seen some of the most arcane interfaces on this planet, some of them not seen by more than a handful of people altogether, so arcane and mysterious that its name shall not be spoken. GUIs that made you beg for a CLI, for you knew that even if you had to memorize all the commands and had no -? to aid you, it could not possibly take more than a fraction of the time you'd need to get behind the twisted logic of the GUI in front of you. I cursed them, but I mastered them all, in little time.

Metro is a mystery. It simply has no rhyme or reason to it. It fucking makes no sense AT ALL. No matter what you want to do, applying sense and logic is the wrong way to do something. Usually you find your way around by pondering "Now, what would be the LEAST intuitive way to do something?", and usually you shall be rewarded with a solution.

If you offered me the choice "Metro or..." my answer, before you are done with the sentence, is "the other one". Even if you end in "or a stone tablet".

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Ol Olsoc]

I can not understand Win8. When my sister asks me to help configure something on her Win8 laptop, I struggle with the UI as if I'm some rookie coming from some stoneage tribe.

I hate hate hate hate Windows 8.

When the simplest functions require you to go to the internet to find out how to do them. My virgin W8 experience wasdoing a websearch on how to shutdown, and there were lots of hits. If we have problems trying to figure how to shut the computer down, there is something drastically wrong.

Already I have told all the groups I support now that I will not support W8. They go MetroSexual, and they have to get new free help.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[lpevey]

This is so true. And the feedback has been like this and has been so consistent for so long... I can't understand why Microsoft hasn't already reversed course on some of this madness. I mean, are they TRYING to give Apple market share? Because it's working. I still use a PC desktop much of the time, but my new laptop is a Mac, and I really like it. I never thought I would go Mac. And when Yosemite comes out this fall, it will integrate more fully with my phone and my tablet. Now, when it comes time for me to upgrade my desktop... will I build a new PC? or will I just get a Mac Pro? I really can't say at this point.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Greyfox]

You could install Linux on earlier versions of the surface. That might make a reasonably decent machine, assuming bluetooth could be made to work with it. Do you know if you can still install Linux on the new ones?

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[IronChef]

Windows 8 takes everything you thought you knew about Windows, kills it, rapes it, buries it, digs it up, rapes it again, sets it on fire, and props up the corpse with rusty coat-hangers in the form of a rude gesture.

Strangely, I still love my Surface Pro, but it is despite Windows 8, not because of it. I think for a certain niche it's a sensible machine, but admittedly that niche is awfully narrow.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you're taking this MS bashfest wayyyy too personally (an employee I presume). But the thing is...they deserve it for producing one shitty product after another for well over a decade.

Look on the bright side, even the dullest pig occasionally finds an acorn so you'll have your day in the sun...umm, hopefully!

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

shutting down a computer? how quaint. How are they supposed to watch and record you if it is turned off? Sheesh.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Ol Olsoc]

Wait, Apple's come with a perpetual Office subscription and Adobe's CC application? Damn, that is a good deal. Unless, of course, you mean Apple's free knock-offs of Office and Adobe's photo group, in which case the only advantage is that they're bundled instead of having to download one of the half-dozen free alternatives available for Windows.

Wait - you don't know that you can download ton=hse same free alternative Office programs for the Mac? I'm running those suites on all my computers, Mac and otherwise. And finally - Compatibility. Microsoft Office isn't even compatible between Mac and PC.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

Similar here. I've been a die hard MS fanboy since MS-DOS 3, I'm a long time MSFN and neowin member, I've done sysadmin work, and now I write C# for a living and I really love it. But Windows 8 sucks REAL hard, and Surface is absolutely worthless. MS is committing suicide.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe you are just fucking retarded.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[cbhacking]

You absolutely can - it's a standard x64 Intel CPU + UEFI, and although it comes with Secure Boot enabled you can disable it easily - but the driver support will probably take a little while (as always).

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

amen! even though I sort of get it now, it will still spastically flip through fullscreen apps or whatever the hell microsoft calls them often when I am trying to simply move the cursor. I have yet to figure out what I'm doing that Win8 interprets as "wildly switch between open tasks"

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought 3.11 was WFW?

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[bsdewhurst]

Metro or DEATH?

Death please, seriously.

Can someone please explain to me why you would want that interface on a server, the last company that I worked for "upgraded" the RDP server from 2K3 to 2012, it was the most painful experience of my life and I once had a root canal done with no pain killers.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never been waterboarded before, but if I had the choice between using win8 and a waterboarding session, I would seriously consider the latter.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[ShakaUVM]

>When the simplest functions require you to go to the internet to find out how to do them. My virgin W8 experience wasdoing a websearch on how to shutdown, and there were lots of hits. If we have problems trying to figure how to shut the computer down, there is something drastically wrong.

Yeah, that was my first experience as well. A waitress at a local Denny's had a brand new W8 laptop, and she was passing it around the Fresno Chess Club trying to get someone how to shut it down. Not one could do it. So she brought it over to me. I laughed at them a bit, and then realized I couldn't find the damn shutdown option either.

When you bury a very common operation under an invisible menu (the charms bar) under a nonsensical choice (Power Options) you have a contender for Worst UI of the Decade.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's more inexplicable is why Microsoft seems hell-bent on keeping Metro cryptic. When I bought a Vita, the first touch device I actually owned, I wasn't poking around randomly on the screen and bemoaning a missing start menu, because Sony actually put in a reasonable tutorial that EXPLAINED how to do things and put in visual cues like a dangling page corner for you to drag. Windows 8 seems to have been designed by a former adventure game designer, because you don't get much more than a cryptic "move your mouse into the corner" and are apparently supposed to figure out the more complex gestures like the left corner -> down/up swipe. The whole UI design philosophy looks deliberately obscure, and that doesn't help peoples' opinion of it.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

I have similar experience to you.

I can not understand Win8. When my sister asks me to help configure something on her Win8 laptop, I struggle with the UI as if I'm some rookie coming from some stoneage tribe.

I hate hate hate hate Windows 8.

I had this experience, but I also had it on OSX. They're different, spend some time and you get used to it. For Win 8, generally Win+X gives me everything I want.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

New paradigm confuses experts because previous expertise doesn't apply to new field! News at 11! Next, the man who spent more time online bitching about being unable to learn new stuff!

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

News at 11!
Old guy struggles with new technology.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

And why oh why did Microsoft make Server 2012 also have that same awful interface!?!?!?!?!?! It's a freakin' server. The less GUI the better.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Archimonde]

Had the same problem! I wanted to restart but couldn't find the damned button for it. After a few minutes of trying to find it (that is eternity!), I've typed the shutdown command.

I had this installed in boot camp so I've removed that partition immediately afterwards.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft is marketing to a group of people who got their MacBook Air as a gift possibly from their adult offspring who didn't want to be bothered fixing window problems.They don't understand the value of a MacBook Air and think they are getting a good deal.

Either that or they are selling to crackheads with stolen laptops that need fencing.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

I imagine the choice between building a new PC and buying a mac pro will come down to whether or not you have an extra $1000 laying around you just can't see anything better to do with.

Even if I LOVED OS X, I can't see getting closer to owning an Apple product than building a Hackintosh.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[brantondaveperson]

PC's don't come with Adobe CC out of the box either, so it's no comparison. iPhoto blows the socks off any photo editing / management app that you can get for free for Windows. By miles. Quite apart from the fact that normal people can use it, it actually manages to organise your photo library in a sensible way without requiring you to dick around with folders.

Whether or not Lightroom is better or worse than Aperture is a matter of opinion. I've used both, and rather prefer Aperture, but Lightroom does have more features. Aperture's organisation of photos is far superior - but it depends on how you like to look after your photo library.

And of course, Photoshop is available for both Mac and Windows, so there's no argument there either.

Re:See even Microsoft thinks MacBook Airs rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

What is new about Windows 8?

All they did was bring over the AOL Kids interface, circa 1996.

I guess it is true, everything old is new again.

Where do I sign up?

[Anonymous Coward]

To get one of the trade in Mac Book Air (s) ??

Bring in your junk, get a tablet

[iamacat]

I am sure ebay is full of cheap damaged Macbooks which power on and don't have screen cracks or water damage. Buy for less than $650, resell Surface, profit!

Re:Bring in your junk, get a tablet

[Opportunist]

Buy for less then $650, sell for 700 on eBay "as is, slightly used". Not only do you get cash, you also don't have to worry how to get rid of that Surface turd.

Re:Bring in your junk, get a tablet

[Anonymous Coward]

resell Surface, profit!

And there is the flaw in your otherwise perfect plan.

224 miles round trip

[tepples]

Trade in a real computer for a POS tablet no one wants...

...and drive hundreds of miles to do so.

If Microsoft wants any uptake on promotions like this, Microsoft needs to get more aggressive about opening retail stores. The closest Microsoft Store is 112 miles away from where I live according to Bing Maps. But then Apple isn't a lot better, with a 90 mile drive to its nearest corporate retail store (as opposed to a local franchised dealer in town).

Re:224 miles round trip

[hurfy]

lol, looks like that is one way for me. Good luck with that one MS.

Re:224 miles round trip

[MightyMartian]

If Microsoft wants any uptake on these promotions it needs to find religion and begin praying for a miracle, because the group of people you can almost guarantee are the least likely to switch to Microsoft products are Apple owners.

Re:224 miles round trip

[SJester]

MS has become more aggressive with opening stores. They're opening one in NY later this month, not sure why it took so long.

Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[jd2112]

"While supplies last." That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[rsborg]

"While supplies last." That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

That's not supplies of Surface Pro 3 which is likely infinite for all intents and purposes, but supplies of "goodwill" from the "benevolent corporate ruler" Microsoft. After all, it takes goodwill to buy a competitor's product - even if it is at a significant discount and even if it is only for credits towards purchase of your own product.

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[MightyMartian]

Look at it this way. Now that they've found the Atari 2600 ET cartridges in a New Mexico landfill, there's plenty of room for all the Surfaces (all variants) that Microsoft can't sell.

It's amusing watching the mighty Redmond Emperor with his clothes off; a whole product line and who knows how much R&D and marketing cash dumped into it, that almost no one actually fucking wants. It's so bad that they can't even get their OEM network to build the fucking things and they have to put them under their own brand name as they try the final futile stunt of acting like they're Apple.

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[v1]

"While supplies last." That's the funniest thing I've heard all day.

Aren't the Zunes still waving that flag?

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[Opportunist]

So I wasn't the only one who thought that sounds like one of those home order TV shows? "But call now, supplies are limited!"

(only a billion and a half left...)

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks Ballmer!

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[hawk]

>Now that they've found the Atari 2600 ET cartridges
>in a New Mexico landfill, there's plenty of room for
>all the Surfaces (all variants) that Microsoft can't sell.

wait a minute: they took those *out* of the landfill, rather than covering it i concrete, or calling in an air strike???

Re:Slashdot editors owe me a new keyboard.

[Anonymous Coward]

The worst thing is, they're acting like they're Apple as if it will somehow gain them market share. That's quite a joke if ever a joke there was. It hasn't worked for Apple yet, and it certainly won't work when Microsoft tries it either.

HA!

[Mephistophocles]

Man. What idiot marketing shill came up with that harebrained scheme? Talk about corporate desperation. So we'll trade in a perfectly good MBA for half what it's worth in credit toward a glorified tablet that M$ can't seem to give away? (yes, I know that's last year's news but no reason to believe anything will change with version 3 IMHO). No thanks. I'm not really a huge fan of the MBA either, but this is ridiculous.

Re:HA!

[Opportunist]

Not the only time that happened, it seems.

A local store had a "guess the product and win it" competition. They do this from time to time, with various promotions they get. It's a bit of an event every time and usually people flock to the store to stare at the blown up pics that hang out everywhere to guess the product. I sometimes go there for the kick to see what's going on and whether I can find out what it is, sometimes it's quite tricky. They usually take a pic of a corner that could be anything (ever tried to guess what brand of flatscreen you're dealing with by seeing a bit of the corner where NO brand name is visible?).

Sometimes, when they realize it's too hard and don't get any guesses (because one guess per person, can't enter twice since you need their member card to enter and one entry per card), they switch the pic for something a bit more revealing. Now, with the surface, it was the ONLY time I remember where they actually changed the pic four times, ending in one where the MS-Logo was bluntly visible right in the middle of the screen, with the Surface on display RIGHT below the huge poster showing the item to guess.

Seems that it took quite a bit of effort to convince people they want it at least for free...

Re:HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that it took quite a bit of effort to convince people they want it at least for free...

I'd imagine that's how things would seem to a Linux zealot, but what happens in your little ghetto does not reflect the rest of the world. It seems your kind always has trouble understanding that.

Re:HA!

[Opportunist]

Don't worry, we won't make fun of you just 'cause you were the one that actually bought a Surface.

Re:HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably nobody recognised it the first 2 pics, 'cos nobody had considered looking at one! For the last two pics, everyone recognised it, but had no desire to pay the electricity bill for charging it up.

Mike

Re:HA!

[fuzznutz]

I say again "HA!". I think I would rather use something with MacOS than Win8. MacOS was designed for idiots, Windows 8 was designed by idiots.

Oh my God! That is the best line ever. I'm going to use that so much, I may have to pay royalties.

Re:HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

So, that article from last year that you linked was for the Surface tablet, not the Surface Pro. The Surface line runs windows RT, which is a walled garden, and is a whole different can of worms than the Surface Pro line, which uses Intel chips rather than ARM, and can pretty happily have linux installed on it.

While I wouldn't buy one, I really wouldn't mind having a Surface Pro 2/3 hanging around. The Surface tablet, otoh, would be most likely used as a doorstop.

Re:HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

"your kind"???

You should be proud, you belong to the set "bought surface" Cardinality: 4

Not even M$ wants the Surface Pro 3!

[Anonymous Coward]

If all I had were a bunch of crappy Surface Pro 3 bricks running some terrible version of windows, I'd trade it *and* pay you for your MacBook Air, too!

(written on a satisfied-customer's MacBook Air)

Cue the crickets...

[Nexion]

If anyone did take them up on the offer I'd be amazed.

Re:Cue the crickets...

[clarkn0va]

Inexplicably, there will be a few. These are the same people who downvote every inspirational video on youtube.

Re:Cue the crickets...

[Wovel]

Awesome. Thanks for that.

Ha ha ha, replace State of Art for M$ crap

[Jorge666]

Who sponsored your crappy hardware? M$oft. NSA again?
Last thing we need is your calling home Pukeware Pro
Try again but this time during Bingo for senior citizens. This is your target demographic.

Re:Ha ha ha, replace State of Art for M$ crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful? Why not mod GP Informative while you're at it.

Oh, and it's Funny, too. Laugh.

Nope

[BButlerNWW9564]

Microsoft couldn't pay me to get a Surface, much less give up my Macbook

Re:Nope

[Opportunist]

Hey, hey, wait. All a matter of money. If they pay enough to buy a new Macbook...

Dear microsoft...

[Lumpy]

Make it 2 of your top of the line surface 3 pros and I will do it. Because you need to make it a sweet deal for me to jump to a platform known to have issues and very very low adoption rate.

Re:Dear microsoft...

[shutdown -p now]

People have actually got Ubuntu running on this thing already, though sans keyboard cover for now (but with wireless and graphics working - and, interestingly, touchpad on the cover). It'll probably be fully supported in a couple of months.

Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

If "every Asus, Lenovo, Toshiba, and HP" simply fell apart, it would probably be nationwide news.

But it's not, because you're a liar.

Psst.. Hey buddy!

[the_skywise]

I'll give you $5 for your $20 bill!

I think I'm going to like this new MS CEO...

Re:Psst.. Hey buddy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Right,

It's about the time to get some updated "Hi, I'm Mac & I'm Windows PC" adds and show how things stand today.

reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[globaljustin]

Microsoft is desperate.

How can you tell?

Let's reverse this...can you imagine if Apple gave a similar $$ discount on Macbook Air & iPads in trade for a Microsoft Surface?

bummed out x-mas gift recipients would line up around the corner!

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Microsoft is desperate. How can you tell?

I think the explanation is obvious: Microsoft employees want those nice shiny MBAs, but because they don't have the money anymore, they want to barter for them with those SPs lying in their warehouses. ;-)

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[Opportunist]

Actually, it would be an AWESOME PR stunt by Apple if they just went ahead and did that.

I dare say that it would be one of the bigger PR blunders for MS in the past decade.

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[Austerity Empowers]

Last time I was in their neighborhood, MS employees were hauling MBPs around as their primary laptops. I never understood how they could get away with that, but "research" was in their job title...

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[hodet]

fanboy slapfight in 3-2-1....

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[Darinbob]

Now many companies have an "eat your own dogfood" policy. But when your product is less desirable than actual dogfood then employees figure out a way around the policy.

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[shutdown -p now]

By far the most common laptop among MS FTEs is some kind of Thinkpad. As a dev, I was always partial to W-series; PMs usually run around with lighter ones, like T or X, and lately Carbon and Surface Pro. Seen a lot of Asus Zenbooks lately, too. MBPs, there are a few around (running Windows, naturally), but they're not the most common by far. A colleague of mine said that MBP is "the best Windows laptop ever made", though, and I think he was only half joking.

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[Anonymous Coward]

My MBP runs Windows7 fairly good.
 
And don't get me wrong, I don't use it often but just because someone is toting around a MacWhatever doesn't mean that they're using OS X. While they're on the pricey side, rMBPs are the best laptop going out there for within their specs. I've tossed a couple of $2000+ HP laptops out after numerous failures while my rMBP is still cranking it out after nearly 2 years without a single failure of any kind. I'm guessing it'll still be my day to day machine for the next 3-4 years at this rate. My last HP laptop (bought in 2007) that cost me 2300USD collects dust after owning it for 13 months because of a faulty power port on the system board. HP said the only solution was to buy a new system board at 800USD (plus another 300 if I wanted them to install it), all of this after they had to replace the system board in it after 4 months because of thermal issues. It makes my MBP look like a bargain at 2800USD.
 
If your budget doesn't allow for a MBP I'd say go ThinkPad but if you have to choice between the two MacBook is the way to go.

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[wwphx]

I switched to Macs maybe eight years ago or so, largely because of my wife: she's an astronomer and the observatory that she's at uses linux as their core with Macs as their workstations. I definitely agree with your colleague, I've found that Windows under Parallels is extremely stable, more stable than I've experienced on dedicated hardware, and I would imagine more so if you were running it under Bootcamp, which I haven't done yet.

I have two complaints about Parallels. First, they don't support fooling the OS in to perceiving different video cards so you can run old games under it, second they are very aggressive about planned obsolescence when a new Mac OS comes out, i.e. every year, or a new Windows OS comes out, every couple of years. As a result, I only upgrade when I absolutely must, and I expect Win 7 to have pretty long legs.

Re:reverse it & you'll see M$ is desperate

[ArmoredDragon]

I've found that Windows under Parallels is extremely stable

This isn't really a parallels thing...ever since about 8 years ago, AMD and later Intel added hardware virtualization support into their CPUs. The virtualization software doesn't do much other than maybe emulate e.g. a sound card, a nic, etc, because most of that work is done by the processor nowadays (notice how virtual machines were slow as hell before then.)

I have two complaints about Parallels. First, they don't support fooling the OS in to perceiving different video cards so you can run old games under it

If you want to run games in a VM, you'll want a CPU that supports direct IO passthrough. Intel calls theirs VT-d, I forget what AMD calls theirs. What it does is create a virtual instance of your hardware that the guest OS can interact with as if it were bare metal, only it isn't. This allows you to install your native video card driver in the VM. You can run OpenCL or CUDA apps in your VM, or if you were feeling really geeky you could run a direct3d game in your VM and an opengl game in your bare metal OS at the same time. Your GPU of course has to support this as well; IIRC (you'll want to double check) nearly all Radeon HD 6xxx and later cards to, however for nvidia only certain quadro cards support it as they consider it to be only a professional feature.

Now if you're talking about simulating really old hardware (e.g. 3dfx cards) you'll require an emulator of some sort, which is well beyond the scope of what a virtual machine would ever do. But should you find one (I think a few exist) there's nothing stopping you from installing that inside of the VM.

My 2 year old MBA still beats their Surfactant3

[spiritgreywolf]

Seriously. I love the MacBook Air I got a couple of years ago. The thing works very well, and even runs the occasional VMWare Fusion image of Windows 7 I need to run occasionally off of a portable thunderbolt drive. On a whim I got one of the earlier Surface tablets when the wife and I were in Vegas and they had a Kiosk where they were practically giving them away - but for the life of me still cannot use it for anything truly productive.

Trade in a MacBook Air for a surface?! Sorry Microsoft. You've been a day late and a dollar short ever since Ballmer pissed on the idea of tablets and smartphones and Apple smoked you and ate you for breakfast. Apple would have to skullf**k a small, disabled child onstage during their next keynote to even _think_ of falling behind enough for you to catch up to relevancy.

Microsoft - As long as I can virtualize your OS, take a snapshot and rollback when your OS takes a dive and run it all on a machine that, you know, _works_ I won't buy another piece of hardware branded by you. Ever.

And as another poster mentioned, "While supplies last." Really? Wow, even with Steve "Developers Developers Developers" Ballmer gone, you _still_ have a great sense of humor.

Re:My 2 year old MBA still beats their Surfactant3

[Overzeetop]

How's the stylus on your MBA working for you? I hear most stylus and screen input tends to be, um, unresponsive.

And nobody does it ....

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would do it? Nobody.

Not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

It really isn't. I bet all of 2 people take them up on this offer, and only then because they are dazed and confused.

ROFL

[Anonymous Coward]

Fortunately, I was not drinking any liquid at the time I read this article. I would have spoilt my carefully maintained MBA keyboard and screen.

Windows 8.X IS A F'ING MESS! I have a visceral dislike of it. And if one with geekish traits has trouble navigating the thing, you seriously expect novices to get to first base with it? The damn "charms" hidden bar, (which is where the important stuff hides) resists being found where the documentation says its supposed to be.

Microsoft would do better to port their enterprise software in such a way that it is platform agnostic because I'm not planning to recommend companies deploy windows 8 anytime soon.

They Multiply...

[imag0]

Here recently I run by the store on the way home to pick up some milk. Was in a rush and left my Surface Pro on the front seat, in plain view.

When I came out, I discovered someone had broken into my car and left three more Surface Pro's :(

Re:They Multiply...

[the_skywise]

Oooh... If I hadn't posted already you'd have had a mod point!

Re:They Multiply...

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be funny if your grammar wasn't so terrible.

Re:They Multiply...

[Opportunist]

That's consistent with the observation that people litter where they notice others have littered before.

Re:They Multiply...

[cbhacking]

Oooh, original! You not only replaced "Zune" with "Surface Pro", you added a completely incorrect comma to the last line!

You have a strong future in comedy (assuming Idiocracy ever comes to pass).

Re:They Multiply...

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir, owe me a new keyboard...

Re:They Multiply...

[hawk]

Just be happy it was a zune, err, surface, rather than Disco records . . .

hawk

Re:They Multiply...

[Anonymous Coward]

I kinda expected this to end with "the car had been stolen, but the Surface Pro was still there".

Micro.Slashvert ..

[lippydude]

And this deserves a whole article on slashdot ??

Re:Micro.Slashvert ..

[Opportunist]

Hey, every newspaper has its funnies section, why shouldn't /.?

Not likely.

[Anonymous Coward]

Learn to read Mr.Keyboard Commando, or did you purposefully snip the "we've had" of the end of his sentence for the sake of an arguement ?
Can you prove than none of HIS laptops haven't fallen apart as he claimed?

I see you "liar" insult, and raise you a "dumb twat"

Microsoft targeting Apple users?

[ArcadeMan]

Microsoft wants Apple users to trade their laptops for Microsoft tablets. How thick are they?

Next up: Microsoft wants you to trade your Playstation 4 in for an Xbox One and only offers you a 200$ rebate for for it, too.

My Dell

[future assassin]

Inspirion 1720 is going strong after 7 years of non stop usage and it runs flawlessly with Linux Mint 14/Mate. Only thing I replaced was to put in a SSD and I spilt a full glass of beer on the KB which eventually need to be replaced. So does that make Dell's as good as your Mac's?

Re:My Dell

[TechyImmigrant]

In terms of reliability, yes.

I'm saying that all the non apple laptops in my household failed in some way related to crappy construction.
It's entirely possible to build a reliable laptop outside of Apple. It just doesn't seem common.

Re:My Dell

[Shining Celebi]

Did you pay as much for them as you did your Apple laptops?

My experience is that sub-1k laptops are crap no matter who assembles them. I've got a similar story to GP - bought an Inspiron 1520 back in 2007 and it's still going strong. I replaced the harddrive with an SSD and it's now my primary work machine that I carry to the office and on travel.

Re:My Dell

[TechyImmigrant]

My experience is that $4K work laptops were a little better, but still crap out in the end. The days of the $4K laptop seem to be over. $2.5K seems to be tops.

The difference between $1K and $2.5K for something I'm going to use to make a living for 2-4 years is immaterial to me. I do want it to work though.

I've got an Apple 2e that's still going strong. I replaced the floppies with a CFFA3000 and I had to take the monitor to the TV repair guy when it let out the magic smoke. I don't carry it to the office at all.

Re:My Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dynamism.com/top-notebooks/panasonic-mx-series.shtml

Re:My Dell

[mjwx]

Did you pay as much for them as you did your Apple laptops?

My experience is that sub-1k laptops are crap no matter who assembles them. I've got a similar story to GP - bought an Inspiron 1520 back in 2007 and it's still going strong. I replaced the harddrive with an SSD and it's now my primary work machine that I carry to the office and on travel.

It's obvious he's making the whole thing up.

I've got an old Benq that I bought in 2007 thats still going, even after an encounter with my Might Boot(TM) that broke the screen. Runs Fedora Core and still works as a test server when I need it.

I paid $500 for that laptop in 2007.

Macs tend to have huge problems with overheating if you use them for anything processor intensive. In my experience, a Dell and Mac break at about the same rate having used both in the same environment. The difference is trying to get them fixed, Dell bend over backwards (especially if you're a corporate customer) and can get things fixed within 24 hours, on site. With Apple if anything breaks you need to take it to Apple and they take their sweet time in fixing it. We once had an iMac with a broken PSU, it took 10 days to replace.

Re:My Dell

[Anonymous Coward]

My laptop has only has 2 new screens, 3 new hard drives, anew power supply, a new keyboard and a case. It's as good as the day it was made!

um... no

[ScienceofSpock]

I don't even like Apple and I wouldn't trade a macbook for a surface pro. Hell, I'd be hard pressed to trade my first gen Nexus 7 for a surface pro.

I can see why this would work

[Groo Wanderer]

Gosh, why not? I can see someone looking at their MBA saying, "It works perfectly, has a great OS, awesome battery life, and does everything I could ask for and does it fast. I need to dump this for a barely functional device with an actively antagonistic OS sold by a company unable to secure a wet paper bag or make software that works acceptably. All this for far less battery life and far more money. I wish I had 2 MBAs to trade in!",

Back to the real world....

Did I mention that the day after the S3's release I was at a press event on a bus full of journalists. Anand has his S3 and in less than 24 hours it broke. The entire bus full of tech journos all concluded it was better that way.

That said, some people do like it. Microsoft traded in an absolute monopoly lock on the desktop to cater to 10% of their base. Clever that MS management, clever.

                                -Charlie

OK, MS... let's try this...

[jpellino]

I stand outside the MS store with a sign: "I'll pay $660 for the first working 2012 or later MBA 13 4/256" They get their cash, I get a very nice MBA for a song, and if the Surface3 is all that they'll still head into the store and buy it. MS store managers can't legally use a taser, right?

Desperate for sure

[markdavis]

Microsoft must be really desperate.

No thanks.... oh, and no thanks on that Air thing either... love my Nexus 10 tablet. :)

Great deal!

[Anonymous Coward]

It might be, every Macbook I've had has pretty much fallen apart, plus the OSX also has built in backdoors. Of course, I wouldn't use either of them anymore....... you'd have to be a fool.

HA!

[Anonymous Coward]

I say again "HA!". I think I would rather use something with MacOS than Win8. MacOS was designed for idiots, Windows 8 was designed by idiots.

HAHAHAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, okay. Good luck with that.

Love my Surface Pro2 with Ubuntu

[ad454]

I currently have a Surface Pro2 with Ubuntu running. It is my first non-Apple computer in more than 10 years. Which I bought reluctantly when my previous MacBook died and did not like any of the current out-dated models.

For the most part, everything in Ubuntu runs great on the Surface Pro2, except Wi-Fi which is flaky due to sucky proprietary Marvell drivers.

In any case, it is now my primary work computer, and I am very happy with it, although I do really like the newer Surface Pro3 with larger screen and better kickstand.

Apple MacBook Airs are horrible out of date compared to Surface Pro2 & Pro3. No retina display, no touch display, and no pen input. And I trust Linux much more that NSA backdoor'ed OSX and Windows.

The fact is that Microsoft is now making excellent laptop/tablet hardware, even though their OS has issues. I wish that people look at things objectively and stop giving praise to a company that use to innovate but now refuses to upgrade hardware to meet customer's needs. (I am still

you linux/mac fags should be worried.

[Anonymous Coward]

Surface Pro series just keeps getting better. Looks like apple is going to have its ass handed to it. As soon as Microsoft releases a file manager for wp8.
. ..
Oh. Nevermind, and you cheap linux morons can't afford it anyway.

The Surface design flaw

[codefungus]

I've recently started school and shopped around for a small device that would allow me to take notes in class. It came down to the Mac Book Air and the Surface Pro 2. Ultimately, I realized that there was no way the Surface would balance on those half desks in the lecture halls of my school. I decided I needed a keyboard that would support the screen. The Surface just can't do that. The designers assume you will be sitting a full desk.

Dear Microsoft

[geekoid]

You would need to give me an equivalent tables plus at least 100 dollar so I can rebuy apps.

The idiots are going after the wrong consumers...

[MikShapi]

The non-RT surface was never a tablet competitor.
Virtually all the software people run on x86 is primarily designed for desktop use, and the gap between it and tablet universe's UI and software base progress is widening, not shrinking.

Apple killed them for two reasons - Apple understood the fundamental difference between how consumers use tablets and computers and catered to each market appropriately (rather than a half-assed worst-of-both-worlds one-size-fits-all attempt at both)... and (with the relatively recent exception of the screen specs) Apple killed MS on ultrabook hardware - while microsoft was selling Ultrabook (x86, non-RT) surfare with i3, a single USB port, 64-128GB storage and 2-4GB RAM (poorly suited for both desktop use and tablet use), MBA's have been doing i7/8GB/512GB for 3 years now, fit in well with desktop use, with all above-baseline upgrades but the SSD coming at a relatively minor cost increase.

In short, Apple has been selling grown-up computers cleverly disguised as ultrabooks, which people already used for work. Microsoft has been selling not-quite-grown-up computers stupidly disguised as tablets.

More (either more specialised or more under-the-hood) reasons people feel MBA's win out by a landslide -
- Server-grade external I/O - I run an nVidia Geforce660Ti eGPU, on native Windows, on my MBA thunderbolt port. I can game, desktop-hardware-grade, driving a 30'' screen on my MBA. I outperform recent alienware laptops.
Others use that I/O for external storage.
- Internal I/O - An MBA2013 with a 256GB or higher SSD does sustained read/write of ~650-700MB/sec - due to the absence of a SATA controller (raw PCIe storage ftw).
- MBA adds OSX to the list of OS's you can easily run (I personally prefer it for everything but gaming as the native OS and run everything else (windows for work, linux) in VMs)
- If you're on an apple home environment (phones, audio/video-sinks, etc, macs do more).

So now Microsoft matched the CPU/RAM/disk specs of (the now nearly a year old) MBA. Okay.
Not quite so on the I/O, but that's a niche most non-techo consumers neither understand nor care about.
Until Apple release their update, Microsoft is ahead on screen capability (res and touch) and cost. On paper it looks "fair enough".

Sadly for them, it's not as simple as a specs comparison. This isn't a showoff between gaming motherboards on Toms Hardware.

They're still dead though - not having understood what Apple did.
Apple didn't justify producing the MBA in the millions (=MASSIVELY underpricing every ultrabook on the market) by raiding Lenovo's x-series or Sony Vaio ultrabook userbases (which were MUCH, MUCH smaller - tens of thousands rather than millions).
Apple justified it by raiding THEIR OWN MOMENTUM - their very own *existing install base* of cheap macs - the white plastic toilet-seat-cover macbooks.

Back in MS land, what MS's dumbshit marketers don't understand is that the only people who need Surface 3's today are not mac users with MBA's (who are very unlikely to touch a surface... particularly those with a brand new 2013 MBA), most mac users not leaning towards mac products for specs anyway, and those that do (like me..) Microsoft can't really sway because it loses out on those.

The people who need those surface 3's are the HUGE install-base of people with an old desktop PCs, Microsoft's equivalent of the toilet sear covers.
Sadly, Microsoft has NO CLUE how to go to market and reach that userbase with the surface... which is why they'll sell too few surfaces, lose money, not justify the supply chain, not be able to go to scale on their production, fail to woo their partners into making their own (like google did with android) with a credible reference platform, fail to drop prices sustainably... and have Apple eath their lunch for another year.

I would have liked to see better competition.

Analogies, Analogies, Analogies, Analogies...

[Snufu]

Think of it as trading your new hope for a phantom menace.

In other news...

[Macman408]

...Ford is offering a rebate on a new Fiesta (with power locks and windows!) for anybody willing to trade in their Tesla Model S.

The commercials say a lot.

[jpellino]

Apple commercials show people doing actual useful things with their gear. MS commercials show people magically dancing through time and space with their gear.

Re:The commercials say a lot.

[Darinbob]

From what I can tell from the commercials, Surface users repeatedly take the keyboard off and put it back on in order to make cool snapping sounds.

Ferrari for a ford

[Anonymous Coward]

Trade in my Ferrari for a ford? are they nutz?

Re:Ferrari for a ford

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple use the same hardware as everybody else, their "Ferrari" is just a Ford with a bodykit.

What about the macBook?

[manu0601]

I understand one have to abandon its MacBook to Microsoft to enjoy the deal, is that right?

What Microsoft will do with the MacBook? And the data it contains?

Re:What about the macBook?

[dhamaniasad]

Wow. You just went full retard. Even the worst idiot on slashdot might at least have the sense to wipe their MBA before they trade it in for a Surface, don't you think?

Re:What about the macBook?

[manu0601]

Are you sure you know how to really wipe it?

And moreover that does not tell us what MS will do with the hardware? Trash it?

Re:What about the macBook?

[dhamaniasad]

-_-.

Pretty much the same experience

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

I have had about the same experience, with one exception. In 2006 at a new job, my employer bought me a 17" HP that was built like a tank and worked flawlessly for six years. Of course it cost more than a comparable Macbook at the time. Battery life was awfule, as in I had to buy new batteries every 18 months, but it worked great. It also weighed as much as a tank. I currently use a 13" Retina Macbook Pro that is better in every way.

Re:Pretty much the same experience

[tsa]

My mum has an HP from that time which still works like it is new. And indeed, its battery is utter rubbish. You have to recharge it after 45 minutes, and that is when the battery is new.

Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Hahahahahahah yeah fucking right I'll trade my laptop in for a shitty Windows-based ipad knockoff, sure why not.

Sad fact . . .

[cashman73]

I used to be a die-hard Windows user throughout the 90s and early 21st century. Until 2011 when I bought my MacBook Pro. I've now come to the sad realization that, in the post Windows XP world, Windows sucks. My employer even gave me a Lenovo ThinkPad to use last year and it sits on my desk collecting dust while my own personal MacBook Pro does most of the work. Apple just makes a good, solid machine that just works. Most of the "clone" manufacturers make cheap crap systems for $300 a pop that you'll replace every year because they'll fall apart. And don't even get me started on "Windows 8".

I thought this was an onion article at first

[Anonymous Coward]

I first thought this was a joke but apparently they really think people will turn in a Macbook Air and then pay almost $500 on top of losing their Macbook Air. This reminds me somewhat of the HP tablet discount fail.

Your sig is... ironic.

[cbhacking]

Nice try at sounding like you have a valid argument, but even your own link doesn't support your claims. I don't know if you're just a fanboy or display this glorious level of intelligence in general, but either way your should have been modded "troll" or just ignored. Let's break down this BS and obvious bias of yours, shall we?

The "M$" was a pretty good clue that you were incapable of giving a rational argument. However, the giveaway was the fact that you used a story that talks about how the first generation of product line X (Surface RT tablets) sold poorly. Specifically, you use that story to claim that the manufacturer "can't seem to give away" the third version of product line Y (Surface Pro), which has sold fairly well and sometimes had trouble meeting demand. I mean, seriously, the entire content of that article aside from the second paragraph doesn't even mention the Pro, and when the article was written the Pro had only just gone on sale in a few markets... and sold out in many of them just as fast (as the comments are quick to point out). Notice how there wasn't even a third version of the RT announced? The RT line is crap, mostly due to Microsoft intentionally making it crap, but the Pro line has done quite well.

Re:Your sig is... ironic.

[Mephistophocles]

Hilarious! Ah, the irony of ad hominem attacks made while parading some imaginary skill in rationality. I love how people take this kind of thing so personally. You are entertaining, friend.

Re:Your sig is... ironic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hilarious! Ah, the irony of of a dipshit trying to act smart by writing "ad hominem attacks".

It only shows how fucking stupid you are.

1 It is a not an attack.
2. It is a fallacy
3. It is not calling someone names. What you are reacting to is someone calling a dipshit names. That is not a fallacy.

Got it you fucking retard mouth-breathing piece of redneck shit?

See, that wasn't an ad hominem, it was an insult.

"I know!!!!

[mr_shifty]

..... I'll trade my Macbook Air in for a Surface Pro 3!" .... said no one, ever.

Another idiot bought RT, decries Pro

[cbhacking]

You don't even know the difference between the Surface RT and the Surface Pro, do you? I'll grant you the branding is idiotic, but I can tell you're an idiot even though you didn't specify which Surface you bought. The RT line is the one that they've had trouble selling; the Pro has never been available anywhere near so cheap as you suggest, even when dumping the old inventory after a new version came out.

You're like somebody claiming they'll never buy an iMac because they once bought an iPad and couldn't figure out how to run Photoshop on it or hook a mouse up to it. Seriously. You're being *exactly* that stupid.

Re: Another idiot bought RT, decries Pro

[spiritgreywolf]

Really? I'm that stupid in that the reason I bought the PRO was because I work with medical integration software where RT wasn't what I was looking for? Maybe I should be a little more clear to armchair quarter back name-calling assholes such as yourself who are quick to leap out and judge others? As I have just now joined the armchair name calling assholes to fire a shot back at you?

So Peaches, my original post still stands. I don't compare tablets to laptops as a general rule ass-hat, so get over yourself. It's always nice to wake up to smarmy little posts like yours knowing there are plenty of dipshits like you out there to contend with before I've had my first coffee. Get a clue whack-tard then feel free to come back. Sorry I wasn't clear enough for your righteous "always jumping to conclusions" self.

Always a pleasure meeting fine dolts like yourself... :-)

Re: Another idiot bought RT, decries Pro

[spiritgreywolf]

Oh and not buy an iMac because I once bought an iPad and couldn't figure out how to connect a mouse? You're too precious... And I happened to do just that for grins and giggles on a old iPad by modding the Bluetooth stack to work with it. So I guess YOU are too stupid to see some things are actually possible.

And yeah, "Mr. I Love Helping Sheep Over Fences While Naked", I bought the Pro in Vegas where it was a one-time super deal - which was only a couple hundred off and was still about the same price as my MacBook Air - but I wanted to see it and Geek out a bit with it to see how well it the IDE and compilers I work with on a daily basis.

So let me be clear. Please read slowly so you get it this time - I bought the Surface Pro NOT the Surface RT. Did you get that or should I post it in all caps for you?

(Geeze. Why I let dicks like you rile me up in the morning is beyond me. Ah well. Score one for you, tard...)

LOL

[krray]

...from my cold dead hands...

Irrational consumerism

[seoras]

One of the most intriguing areas of marketing is irrational consumerism.
It flies in the face of economics and common sense.

I've tried, several times in different businesses, giving products & services away for free to cultivate a customer base.
People love free stuff and value it right?
Actually, no.
What I've learned from doing this is that people only value things that you make them pay for.
If you drop the price of something, or make it free, the consumer perceives the value of what you gave them as low or valueless.
You discover this later when you turn off the freebies, or raise the price.
Charge a premium for your product, or service, and your consumer will, in most cases, believe it's worth it and treat it with reverence.

Apple's been clever at never dropping the perception of value in what they make, thus maintaining the value of their brand.
You'd think those well educated, experienced, business types at Microsoft would know better.
They really need to address the already dreadful consumer perception of the MS brand value and this is doing the opposite.

Maybe this is Microsoft's way of saying....

[Drakonblayde]

they can't afford Apple products either. After all, if I had a Surface Pro 3, and I could sucker someone into giving me a Macbook Air for it, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

I'm going to do it!

[hawk]

I'm going to do this with the Airs I bought for my kids to use at school.

Right after I trade in my Cadillac and some cash for a Kia. Then I'll pay more to trade in this Retina Pro for a Samsung tablet.

hawk

Re:I'm going to do it!

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

As for the Cadillac: that may actually be a good idea ;-)

It's not the worst idea

[Gumbercules!!]

I actually did switch from a 2011 Macbook Air (the dual core 2GB RAM, 13" model) to a Surface Pro 1, a little while before the Surface Pro 2 came out. Why? Because, through gradual changes in my client base and their worlds, I found myself spending more and more time in powershell, Hyper-V management and other purely Microsoft centric tasks. So I ended up Bootcamping my MBA to Windows 8 (required for Hyper-V 2012+ management), so it was now basically a PC, anyway. Then, once a guy next to me got a DynaDock with his Surface Pro, I realised I could dock it to a couple of nice, big monitors and keyboard and mouse and it's frankly more powerful than my 2011 MBA was.

So I sold my MBA on eBay (at almost as much as I paid for it, amazingly - incredible resale value) and switched to the SP1, which I am still using. I have pre-ordered a SP3, in fact, because I have been so happy with it (we don't get the Surface Pro 3 in Australia until September). It's smaller, lighter, faster and better suited to my current working life. I also love the pen, as I now spend about 40% of my week in meetings.

So overall, I don't think this is a bad thing - I just don't expect it to get heavily taken up. I think most MBA and MBP users will prefer to stick with what they have. The trust is, I use my Surface Pro like a desktop or a notepad (a literal, paper notepad, not a laptop notepad). I basically never use it as an actual laptop unless I have no alternative but then again, I pretty much hate all laptops, compared to the desktop experience.

WTF? A Macbook Air is 2,000 USD

[loufoque]

I just purchased a Macbook Air with max options, cost me 2,000 USD. Why would I swap it for 650 dollars?
It makes no sense.

Linux ?

[stooo]

Can it run Linux ?

Just out of interest

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of the people calling this a stupid idea and furiously defending their macbooks have actually tried the Pro3?

Why just the MB Air?

[dhaen]

If MS were serious they'd say ANY Apple laptop. After all, what are they going to do with the trade-ins, open a store? No, they'll destroy them.

This is almost a good summary.

[Static]

I had to change from a Linux desktop to a MacBookPro for work. It really only confirmed why I had never been interested in buying one for myself.

There are UI features in OS X which are clearly "Apple has always done things this way and we don't understand how you could want things different". The Unix-underneath is pretty good, but the BSD-ish toolchain is annoyingly out-of-date. The hardware support is (of course) excellent, but the keyboard is sadly a triumph of form over function - I use an external keyboard whenever I can.

I still wish I had my Linux desktop back.

Why not iPad Air?

[gunner_von_diamond]

I would consider trading in my iPad Air for a Surface Pro3.

MS$ Can shut up

[Anonymous Coward]

Way of the dodo bitches

impressive device

[Anonymous Coward]

That new Surface 3 device does seem nice. I wonder if I can put Mac OS on it

Just wipe them!

[Grindalf]

I'm sure you can just install 8.1 directly onto the Mac (and Linux / BSD), it works no problem. You don't need the surface pad. On the subject of which, I wonder what happened to the original MS "Surface" that used to live on a coffee table. I thought that was a fun idea. How about a Linux coffee table touch display?

Wrong trade

[Cro Magnon]

I can't see trading a MBA or MBP for this. I might replace an iPad or Android tablet, though that's still iffy. More likely, I'd replace a W8 laptop, but of course that wouldn't help MS.

MBA worth more aftermarket

[Zaphon]

If you're really desperate to dump your MBA for a Surface Pro 3, do yourself a favor and sell it in the aftermarket. It's worth way more than the crappy $650 that MS is willing to give you (unless your MBA is destroyed). This is one of the reasons I've always bought Mac they hold their value better (I can typically sell them 2 years later for 60-80% of what I paid for them (try that with a Dell)).

Good Luck Microsoft!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're going to need it. Getting a Mac user to switch to windows is like get a Muslim to convert to Christianity... it may happen... but it isn't going to be often. Who's going to give up 72 virgins or baby angels?

Air hardware falling behind...

[davids-world.com]

If it wasn't for the operating system, the Air would be losing quickly this year against its competitors. It's about time that Apple released a Retina version, or an "Air" style version of the MBP.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. For the same reason BMW's are so lovely. They only make a significant change to the body every 6 to 10 years. This means most people can't tell the difference between a 2006 and 2014 3 series. Heck, most people have to look at the badge to tell the series apart.

Thanks for the pollution Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

These promotions should be illegal nowadays. Even if recycled, this generates a lot more pollution than keeping your crappy but functionnal MacBook.

From my cold, dead hands

[jonjavajones]

I love Microsoft, I'm windows server number 1 fan boy, and have made millions programming .net enterprise applications, but my Mac book air is the second greatest technological invention of my lifetime after my iPhone. I wouldn't take 3000$ cash to use a surface over my sexy perfect MacBook Air.

Re: From my cold, dead hands

[jonjavajones]

Not to mention, as other users have said, my air cost 2500$, plus the 1000$ for the 30 inch monitor. I use VMware fusion to run server 2012 for M$ visual studio, quick books etc, but you can't beat the battery life and stability of OSX for every day tasks, the sleek, solid design, and the power of some of my servers in a form factor the size of an iPad. I can't wait for the next generation.

Re:can not understand Win8

[Anonymous Coward]

Why on ever earth not? It's just Win7 with an ugly 2-d wrapper GUI. Don't let yourself become a dinosaur!

Mike
(background: Am DB Developer/DBA. Have programmed in about 20 languages from Assembler to SQL on everything from IBM 360 to PC! Current machine: Maxed-out System-76 Bonobo running Mint, and a small army of VMs running other OSs - Windows for work, etc.
When I came to the US I got an H1B despite all the Fortran programmers (like me), 'cos they wouldn't learn new things.)

No, I MEANT iOS

[Overzeetop]

I meant iOS - the "easy, intuitive" interface from Apple. I've tried OSX and it's every bit as confusing as Linux GUIs and Windows to the first-time user, but that's a desktop OS, and the Metro side of W8 is a tablet GUI.

Re:No, I MEANT iOS

[TechyImmigrant]

OK, But the GGGPA was talking about Macbooks, not phones or tablets.

Not that bitching about phone and tablet interfaces isn't totally legitimate, it just doesn't seem to flow from the earlier post.

Hah!

[Anonymous Coward]

I use a MacBook Air daily and it sees very heavy use - never have any issues with it like I've experienced with my Windows machines. Good luck with this deal Microshaft, anyone who's currently using a Mac probably won't want to give it up...you'd have to pry mine from my cold dead hands.

you can peel my MAC

[teknosapien]

From My dead cold hands Microsoft

Not in this lifetime

[Anonymous Coward]

They can have my MacBook air when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.

Re:

[toddestan]

That was true until BMW decided to Bangle them all up, of course. Now, it's just... ugh.

Not really good comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

So unless Microsoft is planning to throw in a keyboard for free. This is not that great of a deal. I would not trade a Macbook Air for a Surface Pro. Not because I think the Surface Pro is bad, but why is Microsoft trying to convert Mac users again? How about going after users who already use Windows? Maybe offer a good deal to trade in a Windows 7 PC? I never understood going after a non loyal user group? Like with car makers, which usually offer the best deals to repeat buyers. I still do not get the Microsoft marketing plan of going after a buyer who obviously is not a Windows fan.

Re:Not really good comparison

[Anonymous Coward]

Because very few people, including "windows users", want a Surface Pro.

They have already hit their sales ceiling with MS fanboys and it was a very low ceiling.