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Microsoft Finally Ships $8,999 Surface Hub (eweek.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from eWeek: Surface Hub, originally slated to ship last September and later missing its January 2016 release deadline, is finally being delivered to Microsoft's business customers, announced Brian Hall, general manager of Microsoft Devices Marketing, on Friday. The touch-enabled Windows 10-powered device, available in a 55-inch and a massive 84-inch model, features built-in cameras, a microphone array, Bluetooth, WiFi, motion sensors and near-field communications (NFC). It runs Skype for Business, Office and OneNote, providing an integrated collaboration experience, and at least with the 84-inch model, an expansive canvas for interactive presentations and virtual meetings. With the Surface Hub, Microsoft is making an aggressive push into the conferencing and collaboration market currently dominated by Cisco, Citrix and Polycom. "I couldn't be more proud to announce this milestone for our team, customers, and partners. We can't wait to see what people, teams and businesses will do with Surface Hub," said Hall in a March 25 announcement.
The low end model has a crappy i5, and the high end only gets you an i7, and the video resolutions are barely adequate for displays half (or a quarter) their size. You can get a 4k monitor (aka a TV) for a tenth the price, and better computers for half the price. The software better kick some royal ass or these things are going to find their way to the dumpster damn quick.
just a ghost in the machine.
How is that not rendered obsolete by one of those thingies you stick to the side of a standard 80" TV to make it tactile-like?
I don't see what this gargantuan iPad adds to a system built on:
- a very large cheap tv.
- one of those side-sensor thingies.
- simple software to coalesce the image and sensor output.
I don't know what those sensor thingies cost (we have them lying around in drawers and I just pick one up when needed), but they can't fall remotely close to $8K.
My first question for Microsoft is "why restrict what software I can use"? For example, maybe we'd prefer to use Zoom, Webex, or GotoMeeting? Perhaps we'd like to use the device for teaching and thus I need to run any number of software packages from Adobe CC, SPSS, or even Auto-CAD. Perhaps we need to browse the web with something besides Internet Explorer? Microsoft constantly jabs devices like the Chromebook/Chromebox for being limited in software options and then they run off and do exactly the same thing. Et tu Brute? I was hoping this device would end up being a nice competitor to products like the InFocus MondoPad or the Sharp Aquos but instead they've built a low-end Microsoft-only consumer device and slapped a business price tag on it.
I don't totally agree. Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers. You can see how many articles a user has submitted and how often their submissions are accepted. Here goes, for the past week or so:
SomeoneFromBelgium (2/2 -- 100%)
Wave723 (2/2 -- 100%)
A_Mang (1/1 -- 100%)
FourG (1/1 -- 100%)
prisoninmate (33/49 -- 67.35%)
HughPickens.com (421/626 -- 67.25%)
skywire (2/3 -- 66.67%)
JasonKoebler (70/106 -- 66.04%)
mrspoonsi (99/183 -- 54.10%)
v3rgEz (70/131 -- 53.44%)
jones_supa (383/735 -- 52.11%)
dcblogs (149/286 -- 52.10%)
aarondubrow (33/64 -- 51.56%)
BVBigelow (2/4 -- 50.00%)
Mickeycaskill (33/70 -- 47.14%)
tlhIngan (32/68 -- 47.06%)
itwbennett (897/2074 -- 43.25%)
insitus (3/7 -- 42.86%)
msm1267 (99/234 -- 42.31%)
Freshly Exhumed (68/162 -- 41.98%)
theodp (1504/3633 -- 41.40%)
angry tapir (476/1152 -- 41.32%)
mspohr (22/55 -- 40.00%)
pacopico (30/78 -- 38.46%)
----- MEAN OF LISTED SUBMITTERS ----- (6582/17232 -- 38.20%)
schwit1 (443/1199 -- 36.95%)
eggboard (41/113 -- 36.28%)
MojoKid (684/1902 -- 35.96%)
Bruce66423 (41/131 -- 31.30%)
MikeChino (49/163 -- 30.06%)
Penguinisto (8/32 -- 25.00%)
coondoggie (670/2837 -- 23.62%)
mdsolar (156/693 -- 22.51%)
mmoorebz (6/28 -- 21.43%)
tripleevenfall (13/63 -- 20.63%)
Thelasko (9/52 -- 17.31%)
anderzole (4/24 -- 16.67%)
Lauren Weinstein (24/145 -- 16.55%)
twickline (2/124 -- 1.61%)
It's interesting because there's a huge variability in how often people have their articles posted. I'd say there's several users who flood the submission queue, but some of the users doing so aren't the ones you guys suspect of it. Also of interest is that there aren't any articles from StartsWithABang; it seems like the editors won't consider posting stories that link to Forbes. As for twickline, he seemed to submit a bunch of articles back in 2010 about new releases of open source software, but they were tagged as spam and the links were removed.
Not many posters seem to realize what this device is actually for, and what its competition is. It's not meant to replace your living room TV or your monitor. Surface Hub is meant to replace 4 major devices: a computer, a projector, a conference phone, and an interactive whiteboard. Its big competitors are SMART, Promethean, Mimio, Infocus, and Sharp Aquos. Depending on size and features, their interactive displays tend to start around $3000, and are usually only replace the projector and whiteboard. Sharp's 80 inch board is $11k on Newegg, and Promethean's 84" lists at $15k.
Sure, you can hack together a cheap solution--big $1000 TV, a cheap digitizer from China for $300, a used conference phone, and a computer, but I can definitely see the allure of an all-in-one system at a moderate price premium. It's too expensive for my classrooms, but we're already planning on replacing our SMART Boards and projectors with an interactive TV in the next year or two. If MS offered one designed (and priced) for classrooms, I'd definitely be considering it.