Microsoft Details Surface Pro Pricing Amidst Reports of Poor Sales of RT Version

Despite that it's not for me, I really hope it does well enough to make Apple and Google nervous. I'm happy with Apple right now, but the reason Microsoft sucks today is because it became too big and didn't need to try. The company forgot how to try and compete, and I don't want that happening to Apple.

Yamcha said:

Sad that Windows 8 has flopped, the sales of the OS and Surface aren't doing as well as they expected.. Not entirely surprised though, I've been seeing constant complaints by advanced and basic users all over the internet..

Click to expand...

I'm laughing my ass off... pc sales dropped 28% from this time last year when there wasn't even a new os to push sales.

Great concept.... what apple should have done with Lion and missed out on... but a concept headed by microsoft, who has no clue what people want. Of course the implementation if flawed, but they can say they did it first. Biggest complaint for the past year was confusion in the interface and how to use it.... that's a big issue

Well

At the very same price, Surface or Macbook Air...
Well, hello!!??

I'm actually really interested in the surface pro. The stylus and mini DisplayPort make it very compelling to me.

knemonic said:

Anyone think these could go the way of the touchpad?

And as always, too little, too late, Microsoft.

Another bites the dust.

Click to expand...

this is the wave of the future.... i mean it took microsoft till windows 7 to put out a quality os (copied the hell out of everyone else to do so, but they did put out something almost viable). I don't think this is going to die, but its going to be a painful path of upgrades before they get it right.

Mr. Gates said:

Not sure how its a fail.

It's not even for sale yet. Lets see how people respond to it before we start up with the usual partisan bashing.

For a touch, 1080p like this, I would say it ain't bad.

And I can guarantee you 90% of people who want this were waiting for the Pro.

I admit, RT is a joke, but this might be pretty sweet

Click to expand...

Four hour battery life means it's a fail no matter how you look at it.

does the surface have native palm rejection?

Wow. Marketing trainwreck here. I am not a marketing person, but anyone could see surface RT and its crippled win 8--sort of--os were doomed, and that that their release would sabotage surface pro and win 8 generally. I guess a production problem prevented a Holiday release of Surface Pro; no one would do this on purpose, right? If this doesn't force Balmer out, nothing will.

4 hour battery life? DOA.

ConCat said:

Four hour battery life means it's a fail no matter how you look at it.

Click to expand...

CrAkD said:

4 hour battery life? DOA.

Click to expand...

I will admit , that's not optimal. Lets see if that's a deal killer to the MS crowd

CrAkD said:

4 hour battery life? DOA.

Click to expand...

this is indeed concerning

I think the Touch Pad should be included at those price points, or price points should be -$100. The Type Pad could still be extra, but when I saw the price the only hesitation I had was missing a Touch/Type Pad.

I would love, love, love to buy one of these. A full blown laptop in tablet form? Perfect idea. I tend to avoid Rev.A products though. Bet Rev.B comes out by mid-2013 with 20-50% battery life. Or is Haswell going to be delayed since Ivy was? Would be a great chip in something like that.

Yamcha said:

Sad that Windows 8 has flopped, the sales of the OS and Surface aren't doing as well as they expected.. Not entirely surprised though, I've been seeing constant complaints by advanced and basic users all over the internet..

Click to expand...

Windows 8 is the worst piece of garbage I have seen. And yes I suffered through Windows Me.

knemonic said:

Anyone think these could go the way of the touchpad?

Click to expand...

That would be great: I would definitely pick one of these up if there was a fire sale!

Niche Application?

My first reaction on reading this story was that the Surface Pro is a trainwreck, and it may well be. That's pretty expensive for what you get.

However, as I read this thread, I thought of a couple of very niche uses where this might be useful. I work in a human factors lab, and we do a good bit of mockup and prototyping where being able to deploy a real Windows application (custom development) to a real computer with a tablet form factor (so it can be slipped into a tight space, like a car dash mockup) is really useful.

We've used some really bad "convertible" tablets with detachable keyboards from the early 2000s for that purpose in the past, so I could maybe see this device being useful for the kind of work that we do. Otherwise, it seems like a tablet would be more cost effective and a laptop would be more useful.

JRjr

If it wasn't for my hands-on experience at a MSFT booth the other day, I would probably making the same comments as a lot of the rest of you.

It was a 32GB version, so I guess it was running WinRT, but you would never know or care. It worked just like my friend's Windows 8 laptop she just bought. After using touch, mouse, and gestures all on one device (both on the laptop and Surface) I was surprised to come back to my Macbook Air feeling like I used to feel coming back to my old Dell after going to the Apple store to check out their latest machines - like something was missing from my machine. And I would consider myself more of an Apple fanboi than MSFT.

The only things that really keep me on the fence are Airplay, my questions about build quality, and my fear that Windows 8 will be like every other version of Windows in that it will be a little slow and not be quite as reliable as OSX. And I guess I'll add to that a little worry that Microsoft will just abandon it like they did the Zune (which could have been more competitive).

My impressions with it were very favorable, though. The little type pad took a little getting used to but it was better than touch typing on an iPad or Android device. It even had an touch pad where you point with a mouse and two-finger scroll. I found myself thinking of it as a full laptop a lot of time.

I also liked that it had a USB, HDMI, and expandable memory.

MacAddict1978 said:

Great concept.... what apple should have done with Lion and missed out on... but a concept headed by microsoft, who has no clue what people want. Of course the implementation if flawed, but they can say they did it first. Biggest complaint for the past year was confusion in the interface and how to use it.... that's a big issue

Click to expand...

No, I think the concept itself is flawed. It's the forced marriage of two mostly incompatible partners—touchscreen interface and pointing device interface. The only thing Apple has missed out on by keeping the Mac and the iPad as separate devices is falling on their arse in spectacular fashion. They left it to Microsoft to do that.

when the pro fails surface will die like zuun

Microsoft Reportedly Slashing Surface Tablet Production Due to Poor Sales...I've been reading this headline more often than not. It's obvious that android and apple are the true competitors of this day & age. Still my 1st computer was a god awful win/95 emachine. So I have a soft spot for the underdog. MS my how the mighty have fallen.

Pro? I think the words "Pro" and "Premium" are the most overused words in marketing today. Obviously, many companies are guilty of this, not just Microsoft. Apple's subjective and ambiguous "good, better, best" drives me crazy too.

I just don't see why they used a Core i5 over the newest Atoms.

What real work besides watching videos, typing up documents, browsing the web, listening to music would the Surface Pro tablet do? The Atom accomplishes all these tasks.

An Atom would do all those tasks just fine, and increase the battery life, and lower the cost. Fail on Microsoft on that part.

Besides that, I like Windows 8 and I can't wait for next year's better models. I'll consider a thinkpad convertible if the price is right.

Mr. Gates said:

I will admit , that's not optimal. Lets see if that's a deal killer to the MS crowd

Click to expand...

Even with the better battery life RT version Microsoft still have to cut down on making them! This thing is not selling as well as we all thought!

So..

Laptop with touch (crappy, expensive optional keyboard required to run the legacy apps which are the big attraction of this particular device) that can't actually be used on your lap due to the retarded keyboard/kickstand design.

Half the battery life of an MBA13" or iPad.

No native apps to speak of.


Colour me uninmpressed.

We're planning to run windows on our iPads via remote desktop / VMware view (VDI) deployment.

For us, i see a future of dumb terminals in the office, iPads (or other lightweight tablet) and a few laptops that can check out VMs for users who will have poor or no comms back to HQ - all running desktop OS via VDI.

Surface Pro will feature a battery life of roughly four-and-a-half hours, less than most laptops

Click to expand...

Rubbish.

Mr. Gates said:

Install a torrent client on your iPad, I dare you. Or any other Mac program.

You can't do it, I'll tell you why because everyone is confused :That's a big iPod touch !

This is a full OS WITH ...( W I T H ) touch

Click to expand...

Why would you want to run a torrent client on your iPad? You obviously do not understand