However, I see no point in the future where a tablet is going to replace my workstation. I can see myself having a tablet to augment my workstation
No such future is being suggested by the Surface. If your work involves sitting in front of a powerful, stationary computer plugged into a wall, then stick with your workstation. The Surface is for people like me, who do not work in front of a desk and use a tablet for writing notes but also need an ultrabook to run desktop applications, and need a little more power than the average user.
They sell some but are not in it to dominate the market. MS wants to be like Apple because they see the money and control Apple has.
The way Microsoft is rolling out Surface, they're not in it to dominate either. Surface is available in Microsoft Stores, a couple retailers, and in a handful of countries. This isn't exactly a massive global roll-out of the device. Ballmer himself even said the hoped to sell just "a few million" in all of 2013.
they were able to bring together those disparate technologies by making them better - the MP3 player by providing a view of all your music plus album artwork, the GPS by providing a high-rez scrollable map, and the phone by providing things like visual voicemail.
The original iPhone was released in 4GB and 8GB, when iPods at the time went up to 120GB, and music streaming services and cloud storage were less popular, so you needed all your music on board. So the iPhone wasn't the best MP3 player. The scrollable map was nice, but it lacked turn by turn directions so it wasn't the best GPS. And the phone suffered reception problems and did not support 3G, MMS, or Video recording, so it wasn't the best cellphone. But it was the best combination device and that's what drove its success. Apple tweaked the formula over time and they ended up with a winner.
I see many parallels here. The most obvious complaints are low battery, size, and weight. These are probably the easiest to fix with newer processors. Other issues like the screen and interface will change as well. Nothing here is insurmountable. Surface Pro isn't the end-all-be-all hybrid device but it's a great start.
No, this is the template for all Windows products. OEMs must conform to the attached specifications, but otherwise have freedom in their designs. The fact that Microsoft has patented many aspects of the Surface such as the vents and type cover show it is not mean to be a "template" or hardware reference.
Surface Pro is just an example that shows Windows doesn't have to conform to stanard laptop/desktop form factors. Many other OEMs have taken the hint, and in some ways delivered better products like the Lenovo Yoga and Helix, Dell XPS 12, or the Samsung 700T. I don't think we would have ever seen innovative hardware like this if Microsoft never released the Surface.
All products fill a niche. Surface isn't the best table, and isn't the best laptop, but its a hell of a better laptop than a pure tablet, and vice vesa. Those looking for a pure tablet or a pure laptop will not find the Surface suitable. Those looking for a hybrid might. This is the niche Surface fills. You can tell us all you want how your Nexus 7 is a better tablet, and that's great. I'm happy for you. But you can keep it because it's useless to me.
Going from 1oz to 2oz is a 100% increase in weight. Doesn't mean it's significant. It's half a pound. It is not some sacred threshold between portable and not portable.
I currently use a LE1700 tablet PC that weighs 3 lbs. I also own an iPad. The iPad is lighter, for sure, but the 3lb tablet is still usable. I look forward to a 2lb replacement for the LE1700.
Metro apps follow strict sandboxing, backgrounding, multitasking, and power management rules, which allows Microsoft to make some performance guarantees about Windows RT systems. As soon as you start installing legacy applications which can sit in the background and suck up as much juice as they want, all battery life claims are compromised.
If you want full Windows in a long-battery package, there are Atom chips for that which last over 8 hours.
It multi-tasks great, In fact far better than the crippled Metro interface.
Sorry what? How exactly is the metro interface crippled at multitasking. Can you have two apps side x side on the Nexus 7? No. This also ignores the fact that Windows has a full desktop with support for any number of Windows.
In fact I have a large variety of photo editing programs suitable for quick editing on the move.
There are touch based photo editing programs for Windows as well, along with all the legacy editing programs like Photoshop which are more powerful.
I do design work on the 23" screen Desktop. With which I have networked to my Nexus, Which has available about 30GB and 100GB in the cloud,...again for about a sixth of the price, and has longer lasting battery, more portable, and has more mobile applications available for it, with a consistent popular (soon to be the most popular) OS.
Sounds like you have a typical mothership/shuttle situation going on with your desktop/tablet workflow. It's great that the Nexus 7 works for you in this setup. That's not how everyone works. Some of us need to do work when we're away from the Desktop, and the Surface is a device which fills that niche. You can talk about how light and cheap your Nexus 7 is all day long, but it doesn't fill the niche that the Surface is intended to fill, and that makes it useless for those in that niche. So yeah, perhaps for the price of a Surface I could have six Nexus 7 tablets, but for me I would just have six devices that are useless for my needs.
All you're doing is creating a nice little box with well-defined boundaries and saying the Surface doesn't fit in it. If we take the market leader, iPad, as a benchmark for portability, Surface is.1" and.5 lbs heavier than iPad. So you've constructed this nice little line that says 1.5lbs is light, 2 lbs is heavy. 0.4" is portable but 0.5" is not portable. Seems pretty arbitrary to me.
It propably is an amazing piece of kit and I honestly want something like that more than my next breath. But I would have preferred if they had gone the way Asus went with the Transformer line. Detachable clamshell keyboard with an extra battery.
Microsoft isn't the only one making these devices. There are other options available, and the Surface is just one of many. These hybrids sit on a continuum between tablet and laptop. Surface Pro is closer to the tablet side, while a device like the Samsung Ativ 700T is closer to the laptop side. If you want more laptop than tablet, go with one of them. If you're like me and want more tablet than laptop, the Surface is the better choice.
Yes, this goes back to the saying that ideas are dime a dozen.
I used to be involved with a group that offered free help for university startups to match them up with potential investors, help them with government and regulatory related nonsense, and overcome hurdles a startup commonly encounters. It was always so funny to me when some of these entrepreneurs seeking our help had the audacity to actually refuse to talk to us unless we signed an NDA.
Their thought is obviously "I have the best idea ever and I don't want anyone to steal it!" The thing is, if the only thing guaranteeing the success of your business is that no one else has the idea, you're doomed to fail because I can tell you a) someone else has already had the idea, you're not special; and b) once you start becoming successful it will be copied immediately. When I was working with my own startup, I freely shared what I was doing. My philosophy is if you want to copy my business idea, more power to you, I'll see you in the marketplace. But I've got the contacts, I've got the funding, I've got the patents, I've got the prototypes, I've put 3 years into my idea, and I've been through the actual development of the idea and worked out all the wrong ways to do it. Think all it takes to take me on is an idea? Have fun with that.
So before this seems to far off topic, let me bring it all back: what makes a successful company is the execution of a good idea, not just a good idea. In the interview room, if you think the major bargaining chip you're holding is that great idea, you're wrong. It's the execution and experience you will be able to provide on that idea, and they can't steal that from you in a 20 minute interview. They'll have to hire you for that.
Office has been available for mac since 1989, before it was even available for Windows. Office on mac wasn't something that happened in reaction to antitrust investigations.
Unfortunately, if there's money to be made, there's going to be someone there to make it. So shut down the current company doing it, and another one will step right in. The only real way to make it go away forever is to make it unprofitable.
Thanks for the obvious strawman and not addressing anything I wrote. Should I take this to mean you will not be parroting your bogus and unsubstantiated supplier report anymore?
But sure, I'll take this opportunity to add some more links. How about NPD's report on Holiday sales, showing that average selling price of PCs actually increased over the Holidays even though net total shipments were down. Further "Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent." So if people are buying fewer cheap Windows notebooks, how do you think that looks to a manufacturer who has a reputation for selling almost exclusively cheap Windows PCs? Acer's definition of Windows being a success is if it lifts the entire PC industry.... but Windows 8 was never designed to do that; Windows 8 is designed to sell more high end touch screens and tablets, and it looks to be doing exactly that. People are shifting away from cheap systems, and Acer, known for selling cheap systems, is hurting. Big surprise there.
Some manufacturers have embraced Windows 8 and have released some really innovative laptop designs that take advantage of its strengths, rather than releasing just another laptop with Windows 8 installed. Let's see what they have to say about it. Dell says Windows 8 demand is high. Lenovo is enthusiastic after huge tablet demand. Lenovo also says they didn't realize how big touch screen demand would be. Coincidentally, these are bigger manufacturers than Acer and especially Fujitsu, who are actually taking Windows 8 seriously. It's not surprising they're getting all the demand.
Or maybe you care to look at actual physical Windows 8 adoption instead of what CEOs have to say. According to Statcounter, Windows 7 was growing at a rate of.027 percentage points per day in the months leading up to Oct 26. Windows 7 hit a wall on Oct 26 and has been declining since. Today, Windows 8 is growing at a rate of... wait for it....025 percentage points per day, statistically the same rate. So to say Windows 8 is experiencing terrible growth is to say that Windows 7 was experiencing terrible growth.
So that "megabomb"? It sold 60m copies in 2 months and earned Microsoft 6 billion dollars. I'd love to have that kind of "megabomb".
Logic and information theory. If, and, or, xor, union, intersection, and other set theory are some topics at the very heart of computer science that could easily be boiled down to M&M demonstrations for kindergarteners. I see no reason why a basis for logic and argument should not be planted at a young age.
It shows the Surface Pro being used in a business environment, and gives an overview of the features in the context of a corporate workflow. This is in stark contrast to the introduction of the Surface RT which features a bunch of trendy hipsters using the Surface for "music, movies, games, and more!" *gag*
I'm not saying Microsoft won't sell these to consumers, because they obviously will, but I think the major purchasers will be businesses given the way they seem to be positioning it.
The price and feature set of the Surface Pro is targeted pretty squarely at corporations, who will probably re-image the devices out of the box or at least will have knowledgeable people handy to configure them. This is not a mass market consumer PC like iPad, but a pretty niche device.
The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half [bgr.com] should be a surprise to nobody
I've seen you post this at least a dozen times. Every time you start a rant about Surface, you invariably bring up this unsubstantiated claim from unnamed Eastern component suppliers. After this "rumor" hit the web, Microsoft actually increasedretaildistribution, said they're increasing production, are increasing availability to more countries, and said they're expanding the product lineup. Together, these point to a completely different direction than your stale, 3 month old rumor.
You're starting to sound like a broken record.
Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?
It's base 2.
all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop.
All the software they've accumulated over the years WILL run on the Surface Pro. That's the entire point of this device. It runs full Windows 8 on an Intel Core i5. You don't seem to know much about this product you constantly are blasting. Even 23GB is enough for any application I've come across, but this can be expanded to 30+ GB by removing the recovery partition. This is the same you'd get with a Macbook Air at 64GB. You can even expand storage easily with an SD card.
Yes it has both. Pagefile will probably by 3+ GB. This is probably overkill for some people, maybe not for others. Hibernation file will probably be 3GB (usually set to 75% of RAM). Typically on machines I would never hibernate, this file was the first thing to get blasted. Type powercfg –h off in an elevated command window and it should get deleted, and the hibernate options removed from shutdown dialogs. However, this has an additional consequence in Windows 8; hiberfil.sys is where Windows stores the kernel session to achieve the 8 second boot time. So if you turn off hibernation, you'll also lose this fast boot. This may be no problem on a tablet, since they mostly get put to sleep. So the tradeoff for gaining 3GB permanently might be better than gaining 10 seconds in boot time every so often. However, it's something to be aware of.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. This is Windows 8, not Windows RT. Windows RT shipped with a "Preview" version of Office RT before it was finished, and has already received the final version. Windows 8 on Surface Pro might (no confirmation as far as I'm aware) have an actual "trial" of Office 2013 installed. This will not be replaced by anything.
"User Friendly" has an implicit user in mind. While not for the absolute novice user (as it can be dangerous) the disk management utility is very user friendly for middle to advanced users. Just select the volume, delete it, and extend the current partition using a GUI. The novice user would never use this utility, but it's leagues more user friendly and accessible than a tool like fdisk. It's even available in the WinX menu, so it's not even a hidden or obscure utility.
So yeah, Microsoft may intend to leave this partition in place for most users. I say good. They're the people who need this recovery partition most, and the people who may think twice about deleting it when they remember the last time they had to bring their computer to the repair shop. For me and other middle to advanced (not to mention expert) users, we don't need it there, and we can remove it without consequence, freeing up 10-15GB in the process.
Radiumsoup has it right, but I'd just like to dig you a little deeper for being so blatantly wrong and trying to make a dig at me. You deserve it. Here is a list of tablets available currently which run Windows 8:
Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet 2
Lenovo ThinkPad Twist
Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13
Samsung ATIV Smart PC 500T
Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro 700T
ASUS Vivo Tab
ASUS Taichi
HP Envy X2
HP ElitePad 900
Sony Vaio Tap 20
Sony VAIO Duo 11
Acer Iconia Tab W510
Fujitsu Stylistic Q702
Toshiba Satellite U925T-S2300
Dell XPS 12
Dell Latitude 10
The root of your confusion is conflating Windows 8 and Windows RT. You can install any OS on any Windows 8 tablet. You cannot do this on any Windows RT tablet. The above tablets run Windows 8. They do not run Windows RT. The above tablets are x86, and are required by Microsoft to have mechanisms for disabling secure boot. This is not the case with Windows RT. The net effect is that on all the above Windows 8 tablets you can wipe and install Ubuntu, no jailbreaking required. So my statement is completely 100% correct.. Get your facts straight next time before you fly off the handle and make yourself look like a fucking idiot.
Slashdot Mirror
However, I see no point in the future where a tablet is going to replace my workstation. I can see myself having a tablet to augment my workstation
No such future is being suggested by the Surface. If your work involves sitting in front of a powerful, stationary computer plugged into a wall, then stick with your workstation. The Surface is for people like me, who do not work in front of a desk and use a tablet for writing notes but also need an ultrabook to run desktop applications, and need a little more power than the average user.
They sell some but are not in it to dominate the market. MS wants to be like Apple because they see the money and control Apple has.
The way Microsoft is rolling out Surface, they're not in it to dominate either. Surface is available in Microsoft Stores, a couple retailers, and in a handful of countries. This isn't exactly a massive global roll-out of the device. Ballmer himself even said the hoped to sell just "a few million" in all of 2013.
they were able to bring together those disparate technologies by making them better - the MP3 player by providing a view of all your music plus album artwork, the GPS by providing a high-rez scrollable map, and the phone by providing things like visual voicemail.
The original iPhone was released in 4GB and 8GB, when iPods at the time went up to 120GB, and music streaming services and cloud storage were less popular, so you needed all your music on board. So the iPhone wasn't the best MP3 player. The scrollable map was nice, but it lacked turn by turn directions so it wasn't the best GPS. And the phone suffered reception problems and did not support 3G, MMS, or Video recording, so it wasn't the best cellphone. But it was the best combination device and that's what drove its success. Apple tweaked the formula over time and they ended up with a winner.
I see many parallels here. The most obvious complaints are low battery, size, and weight. These are probably the easiest to fix with newer processors. Other issues like the screen and interface will change as well. Nothing here is insurmountable. Surface Pro isn't the end-all-be-all hybrid device but it's a great start.
No, this is the template for all Windows products. OEMs must conform to the attached specifications, but otherwise have freedom in their designs. The fact that Microsoft has patented many aspects of the Surface such as the vents and type cover show it is not mean to be a "template" or hardware reference.
Surface Pro is just an example that shows Windows doesn't have to conform to stanard laptop/desktop form factors. Many other OEMs have taken the hint, and in some ways delivered better products like the Lenovo Yoga and Helix, Dell XPS 12, or the Samsung 700T. I don't think we would have ever seen innovative hardware like this if Microsoft never released the Surface.
All products fill a niche. Surface isn't the best table, and isn't the best laptop, but its a hell of a better laptop than a pure tablet, and vice vesa. Those looking for a pure tablet or a pure laptop will not find the Surface suitable. Those looking for a hybrid might. This is the niche Surface fills. You can tell us all you want how your Nexus 7 is a better tablet, and that's great. I'm happy for you. But you can keep it because it's useless to me.
Going from 1oz to 2oz is a 100% increase in weight. Doesn't mean it's significant. It's half a pound. It is not some sacred threshold between portable and not portable.
I currently use a LE1700 tablet PC that weighs 3 lbs. I also own an iPad. The iPad is lighter, for sure, but the 3lb tablet is still usable. I look forward to a 2lb replacement for the LE1700.
Metro apps follow strict sandboxing, backgrounding, multitasking, and power management rules, which allows Microsoft to make some performance guarantees about Windows RT systems. As soon as you start installing legacy applications which can sit in the background and suck up as much juice as they want, all battery life claims are compromised.
If you want full Windows in a long-battery package, there are Atom chips for that which last over 8 hours.
It multi-tasks great, In fact far better than the crippled Metro interface.
Sorry what? How exactly is the metro interface crippled at multitasking. Can you have two apps side x side on the Nexus 7? No. This also ignores the fact that Windows has a full desktop with support for any number of Windows.
In fact I have a large variety of photo editing programs suitable for quick editing on the move.
There are touch based photo editing programs for Windows as well, along with all the legacy editing programs like Photoshop which are more powerful.
I do design work on the 23" screen Desktop. With which I have networked to my Nexus, Which has available about 30GB and 100GB in the cloud,...again for about a sixth of the price, and has longer lasting battery, more portable, and has more mobile applications available for it, with a consistent popular (soon to be the most popular) OS.
Sounds like you have a typical mothership/shuttle situation going on with your desktop/tablet workflow. It's great that the Nexus 7 works for you in this setup. That's not how everyone works. Some of us need to do work when we're away from the Desktop, and the Surface is a device which fills that niche. You can talk about how light and cheap your Nexus 7 is all day long, but it doesn't fill the niche that the Surface is intended to fill, and that makes it useless for those in that niche. So yeah, perhaps for the price of a Surface I could have six Nexus 7 tablets, but for me I would just have six devices that are useless for my needs.
All you're doing is creating a nice little box with well-defined boundaries and saying the Surface doesn't fit in it. If we take the market leader, iPad, as a benchmark for portability, Surface is .1" and .5 lbs heavier than iPad. So you've constructed this nice little line that says 1.5lbs is light, 2 lbs is heavy. 0.4" is portable but 0.5" is not portable. Seems pretty arbitrary to me.
It propably is an amazing piece of kit and I honestly want something like that more than my next breath. But I would have preferred if they had gone the way Asus went with the Transformer line. Detachable clamshell keyboard with an extra battery.
Microsoft isn't the only one making these devices. There are other options available, and the Surface is just one of many. These hybrids sit on a continuum between tablet and laptop. Surface Pro is closer to the tablet side, while a device like the Samsung Ativ 700T is closer to the laptop side. If you want more laptop than tablet, go with one of them. If you're like me and want more tablet than laptop, the Surface is the better choice.
Yes, this goes back to the saying that ideas are dime a dozen.
I used to be involved with a group that offered free help for university startups to match them up with potential investors, help them with government and regulatory related nonsense, and overcome hurdles a startup commonly encounters. It was always so funny to me when some of these entrepreneurs seeking our help had the audacity to actually refuse to talk to us unless we signed an NDA.
Their thought is obviously "I have the best idea ever and I don't want anyone to steal it!" The thing is, if the only thing guaranteeing the success of your business is that no one else has the idea, you're doomed to fail because I can tell you a) someone else has already had the idea, you're not special; and b) once you start becoming successful it will be copied immediately. When I was working with my own startup, I freely shared what I was doing. My philosophy is if you want to copy my business idea, more power to you, I'll see you in the marketplace. But I've got the contacts, I've got the funding, I've got the patents, I've got the prototypes, I've put 3 years into my idea, and I've been through the actual development of the idea and worked out all the wrong ways to do it. Think all it takes to take me on is an idea? Have fun with that.
So before this seems to far off topic, let me bring it all back: what makes a successful company is the execution of a good idea, not just a good idea. In the interview room, if you think the major bargaining chip you're holding is that great idea, you're wrong. It's the execution and experience you will be able to provide on that idea, and they can't steal that from you in a 20 minute interview. They'll have to hire you for that.
Office has been available for mac since 1989, before it was even available for Windows. Office on mac wasn't something that happened in reaction to antitrust investigations.
Unfortunately, if there's money to be made, there's going to be someone there to make it. So shut down the current company doing it, and another one will step right in. The only real way to make it go away forever is to make it unprofitable.
Thanks for the obvious strawman and not addressing anything I wrote. Should I take this to mean you will not be parroting your bogus and unsubstantiated supplier report anymore?
.027 percentage points per day in the months leading up to Oct 26. Windows 7 hit a wall on Oct 26 and has been declining since. Today, Windows 8 is growing at a rate of... wait for it... .025 percentage points per day, statistically the same rate. So to say Windows 8 is experiencing terrible growth is to say that Windows 7 was experiencing terrible growth.
But sure, I'll take this opportunity to add some more links. How about NPD's report on Holiday sales, showing that average selling price of PCs actually increased over the Holidays even though net total shipments were down. Further "Sales of Windows notebooks under $500 fell by 16 percent while notebooks priced above $500 increased 4 percent." So if people are buying fewer cheap Windows notebooks, how do you think that looks to a manufacturer who has a reputation for selling almost exclusively cheap Windows PCs? Acer's definition of Windows being a success is if it lifts the entire PC industry.... but Windows 8 was never designed to do that; Windows 8 is designed to sell more high end touch screens and tablets, and it looks to be doing exactly that. People are shifting away from cheap systems, and Acer, known for selling cheap systems, is hurting. Big surprise there.
Some manufacturers have embraced Windows 8 and have released some really innovative laptop designs that take advantage of its strengths, rather than releasing just another laptop with Windows 8 installed. Let's see what they have to say about it. Dell says Windows 8 demand is high. Lenovo is enthusiastic after huge tablet demand. Lenovo also says they didn't realize how big touch screen demand would be. Coincidentally, these are bigger manufacturers than Acer and especially Fujitsu, who are actually taking Windows 8 seriously. It's not surprising they're getting all the demand.
Or maybe you care to look at actual physical Windows 8 adoption instead of what CEOs have to say. According to Statcounter, Windows 7 was growing at a rate of
So that "megabomb"? It sold 60m copies in 2 months and earned Microsoft 6 billion dollars. I'd love to have that kind of "megabomb".
On x86 systems you can turn secure boot off and install any unsigned OS you like.
Logic and information theory. If, and, or, xor, union, intersection, and other set theory are some topics at the very heart of computer science that could easily be boiled down to M&M demonstrations for kindergarteners. I see no reason why a basis for logic and argument should not be planted at a young age.
This is the first video Microsoft put out about the Surface Pro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3btj8E6NKA
It shows the Surface Pro being used in a business environment, and gives an overview of the features in the context of a corporate workflow. This is in stark contrast to the introduction of the Surface RT which features a bunch of trendy hipsters using the Surface for "music, movies, games, and more!" *gag*
I'm not saying Microsoft won't sell these to consumers, because they obviously will, but I think the major purchasers will be businesses given the way they seem to be positioning it.
The price and feature set of the Surface Pro is targeted pretty squarely at corporations, who will probably re-image the devices out of the box or at least will have knowledgeable people handy to configure them. This is not a mass market consumer PC like iPad, but a pretty niche device.
The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half [bgr.com] should be a surprise to nobody
I've seen you post this at least a dozen times. Every time you start a rant about Surface, you invariably bring up this unsubstantiated claim from unnamed Eastern component suppliers. After this "rumor" hit the web, Microsoft actually increased retail distribution, said they're increasing production, are increasing availability to more countries, and said they're expanding the product lineup. Together, these point to a completely different direction than your stale, 3 month old rumor.
You're starting to sound like a broken record.
Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?
It's base 2.
all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop.
All the software they've accumulated over the years WILL run on the Surface Pro. That's the entire point of this device. It runs full Windows 8 on an Intel Core i5. You don't seem to know much about this product you constantly are blasting. Even 23GB is enough for any application I've come across, but this can be expanded to 30+ GB by removing the recovery partition. This is the same you'd get with a Macbook Air at 64GB. You can even expand storage easily with an SD card.
This is the article I believe you're referencing: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2012/07/25/simplifying-printing-in-windows-8.aspx
They claim printer driver storage was decreased by 60% in Windows 8, from 441MB to 184MB. This is also compared to 768MB in Vista.
Yes it has both. Pagefile will probably by 3+ GB. This is probably overkill for some people, maybe not for others. Hibernation file will probably be 3GB (usually set to 75% of RAM). Typically on machines I would never hibernate, this file was the first thing to get blasted. Type powercfg –h off in an elevated command window and it should get deleted, and the hibernate options removed from shutdown dialogs. However, this has an additional consequence in Windows 8; hiberfil.sys is where Windows stores the kernel session to achieve the 8 second boot time. So if you turn off hibernation, you'll also lose this fast boot. This may be no problem on a tablet, since they mostly get put to sleep. So the tradeoff for gaining 3GB permanently might be better than gaining 10 seconds in boot time every so often. However, it's something to be aware of.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. This is Windows 8, not Windows RT. Windows RT shipped with a "Preview" version of Office RT before it was finished, and has already received the final version. Windows 8 on Surface Pro might (no confirmation as far as I'm aware) have an actual "trial" of Office 2013 installed. This will not be replaced by anything.
"User Friendly" has an implicit user in mind. While not for the absolute novice user (as it can be dangerous) the disk management utility is very user friendly for middle to advanced users. Just select the volume, delete it, and extend the current partition using a GUI. The novice user would never use this utility, but it's leagues more user friendly and accessible than a tool like fdisk. It's even available in the WinX menu, so it's not even a hidden or obscure utility.
So yeah, Microsoft may intend to leave this partition in place for most users. I say good. They're the people who need this recovery partition most, and the people who may think twice about deleting it when they remember the last time they had to bring their computer to the repair shop. For me and other middle to advanced (not to mention expert) users, we don't need it there, and we can remove it without consequence, freeing up 10-15GB in the process.
The root of your confusion is conflating Windows 8 and Windows RT. You can install any OS on any Windows 8 tablet. You cannot do this on any Windows RT tablet. The above tablets run Windows 8. They do not run Windows RT. The above tablets are x86, and are required by Microsoft to have mechanisms for disabling secure boot. This is not the case with Windows RT. The net effect is that on all the above Windows 8 tablets you can wipe and install Ubuntu, no jailbreaking required. So my statement is completely 100% correct.. Get your facts straight next time before you fly off the handle and make yourself look like a fucking idiot.
It can be disabled. This is a requirement set by MS for all x86 hardware. This has been covered ad nauseam on Slashdot.
No the main thing with tablets is they have a touch screen. I want a tablet I can "tootle" with without having to resort to 3rd party exploits.