Microsoft Wants You To Care For Your Surface Like a 'Luxury' Handbag (theverge.com)

sqorbit writes: Microsoft has some fancy Alcantara fabric on its Surface keyboard. How well does it hold up to the use and sometimes abuse that portal devices go through? Well, Microsoft wants you to care for it like a "luxury" handbag. Pete Kyriacou, Microsoft's general manager of Surface Engineering, said in a statement provided to The Verge: "Just like anything luxury that you buy, like great handbags or a pair of shoes or even expensive cars, there is a care that's needed for the device. And so from the materials perspective, we will ask customers -- specifically customers who might stain it or drop something on it -- to go ahead and wipe that right away. There's a simple way of doing that with a microfiber with a soap and water solution on it. You don't need any special chemical and you can wipe it off. Then just care [for it in the same way] that would go into anything that luxurious. That's more of a periodical thing, not super frequent, something you might look at doing every six months or something. And so if you think of the livelihood of this laptop, somewhere between four and five years, it's not that often you have to do it in terms of taking care of it." Would you walk around with a device requiring that much care?

Comments

No wonder

[Trogre]

I hope the fabric keyboards are made of better material than the surface cases themselves.

Go to any high school where Surfaces have been forced upon the classrooms (generally the more gullible schools with too much money), and notice the kids have, as kids will do, covered the backs of them with stickers. Then note the ugly gaps where stickers clearly used to be but have fallen off, taking the top coating of the case with them.

This shoddy design is typical of Microsoft engineering - looks (arguably) nice in a store and falls apart shortly thereafter.

Re:No wonder

[thegarbz]

I'm going to guess that you've only ever seen a Surface in a school.

I've seen em all (wife's a teacher). I've yet to see any device stand up to the abuse of students. In the mean time I try and mistreat my Surface as much as possible. It's scratch, scathed, the alu case is showing through, and that super fragile keyboard? Well that's a $100 replaceable part.

I plan to do exactly what they want.

[waspleg]

I don't want or own a luxury hand bag either.

Re:The much care?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The annoying bit isn't the absolute amount of maintenance required, which is fairly low; but the fact that it's required more or less entirely because somebody thought that coating the parts of the laptop that you touch with fabric(among the more efficient materials for removing crud from your hands, which is why we make washclothes and towels out of it) would be cooler than boring old plastic or metal.

Even small inconveniences are galling when they are for stupid, pointless, reasons. When the person in charge of defending those reasons tries to insist that the inconvenience is just part of the product being 'luxurious' that doesn't help at all.

Re:The much care?

[BronsCon]

Bingo. Hell, my wife manages to keep her entire collection of handbags safe from our two cats, which is a feat in and of itself. The average life of one of her handbags far outlives the amount of time her and I have known each other which, itself, exceeds the expected lifetime of the Surface as explained by Microsoft. She's not exactly the type to fanatically care for her things, either, if you know what I mean.

That is to say, she's lazy and she'll admit it. If she can take care of her things, so can everyone else. I don't see what the big deal is with "if you spill something on it, wipe it off" and "maybe think about cleaning it a couple times a year" but, then, we do live in a world where people complain when the engine in their car blows after 20k miles on factory oil.

Re:The much care?

[BronsCon]

The feel of that fabric is much nicer than that of plastic or metal, which may well be why they used it. I don't own the device myself, but I have played with one for a bit; I prefer the physical keyboard cover, rather than the touch cover (which is the one with the fabric) because I prefer physical keys, but if I could get a keyboard for my Dell 7275 covered in that fabric, I probably would. It really does feel nice.

Re:The much care?

[MightyYar]

We really and truly have become a throw-away society, haven't we?

I've never thrown away a laptop because it stopped being pretty. Hell, I've never thrown away a car because it stopped being pretty. Then again, I've never purchased a laptop with fur on it.

Substitute "luxury handbag" for "Apple product"

[Anonymous Coward]

Substitute "luxury handbag" for "Apple product" if you want to understand what Microsoft are really saying. Of course, Microsoft can't come out and say that.

I treat my devices better than I treat myself

[acoustix]

I don't use screen protectors or cases on my smartphones because I don't treat them like shit. I can count on one hand the number of times I have dropped them in the last 10 years. My 3 year old Dell Latitude E7440 doesn't have any scratches. It's in mint condition and I use it 5-6 days a week or more.

I don't care if it's my device or my companies device. It is going to last for it's designed lifespan and then some.

Re:we have different definitions of "simple"

[BronsCon]

I'm almost certain a damp paper towel would do the trick just the same. The benefit of microfiber is that it's lint-free, so you don't have to go back and pick up little bits of towel afterward.

Almost every piece of equipment you buy recommends cleaning with soap and water, right down to the last 5 laptops I've owned. Now, if I could just figure out why they stopped working after I ran them through the dishwasher...