First Reviews of Microsoft Surface Pro: Good Display, Full Windows 8, Compromised Experience

[Renzatic]

Perhaps because the past doesn't equal the future and the market has changed/adopted the tablet concept more widely?

Plus the Surface Pro is both thinner, lighter, much less expensive, and will probably be much more widely available than the old PC tablets of the past. If you compare a machine that weighs around 2 pounds, and isn't even a 3rd of an inch thick for $999 and compare it to an inch and a half 5 pound machine starting out at $1699, you'll see the Pro is a considerably more attractive buy.

The biggest problem with the PC tablets back then were that they weren't a bad idea, but the technology wasn't quite there to provide the best experience. We're closer to that now than we've ever been. Ultrabook hardware is thin and light, multitouch and digitizer technology is cheaper and more mature, and battery life is much, much improved in comparison. We've still got a little ways to go before I'd consider them all around perfect, but we're a helluva lot closer now than we were in 2000.

 

[StoneJack]

Plus the Surface Pro is both thinner, lighter, much less expensive, and will probably be much more widely available than the old PC tablets of the past. If you compare a machine that weighs around 2 pounds, and isn't even a 3rd of an inch thick for $999 and compare it to an inch and a half 5 pound machine starting out at $1699, you'll see the Pro is a considerably more attractive buy.

The biggest problem with the PC tablets back then were that they weren't a bad idea, but the technology wasn't quite there to provide the best experience. We're closer to that now than we've ever been. Ultrabook hardware is thin and light, multitouch and digitizer technology is cheaper and more mature, and battery life is much, much improved in comparison. We've still got a little ways to go before I'd consider them all around perfect, but we're a helluva lot closer now than we were in 2000.

I think you are mixing concepts of mobile tablets and ultrabooks. No ultrabook, including Surfaces, can reach tablets in mobility, battery life and ease of use.

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Perhaps because the past doesn't equal the future and the market has changed/adopted the tablet concept more widely?

I don't think that market adoption of anything Windows has widened, if anything, it actually has fallen. Windows Mobile, Windows 7 tablets, Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8 and Windows RT all have bombed. I see no advantage in Windows 8 that it can run some obscure application, published 10 years ago, which is not even touch-optimized. And that it will run for 3 hours before battery dies. Actually, Surface Pro won't be able to house too much of old Windows crap apps anyway because its full of Windows OS legacy crap.

 

[samcraig]

Exactly. I did forget that technology itself has changed as well. Very important.

I had a touch based computer (tablet) by Compaq back in the early 90s. LOVED it. It was perfect for my use case as I traveled constantly - and also had a job where it was handy to have a pen based input as a keyboard wasn't always optimal.

That's why I have to laugh (or correct) people when they say that tablets didn't exist or were failures before the iPad. True - Windows Pen Computing wasn't AMAZING - but it was great for what it was back then.

Plus the Surface Pro is both thinner, lighter, much less expensive, and will probably be much more widely available than the old PC tablets of the past. If you compare a machine that weighs around 2 pounds, and isn't even a 3rd of an inch thick for $999 and compare it to an inch and a half 5 pound machine starting out at $1699, you'll see the Pro is a considerably more attractive buy.

The biggest problem with the PC tablets back then were that they weren't a bad idea, but the technology wasn't quite there to provide the best experience. We're closer to that now than we've ever been. Ultrabook hardware is thin and light, multitouch and digitizer technology is cheaper and more mature, and battery life is much, much improved in comparison. We've still got a little ways to go before I'd consider them all around perfect, but we're a helluva lot closer now than we were in 2000.

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I think you are mixing concepts of mobile tablets and ultrabooks. No ultrabook, including Surfaces, can reach tablets in mobility, battery life and ease of use.

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I don't think that market adoption of anything Windows has widened, if anything, its actually has fallen.

Who said I was talking about windows

I was talking about tablet computing.

 

[StoneJack]

Who said I was talking about windows

I was talking about tablet computing.

Windows on the Surface has been mentioned as a kind of selling point because of its large number of legacy software titles.

As we see, Windows 7 and XP and Vista on tablets all bombed. So thousands of old Windows non-optimized touch applications for Windows 8 will not change anything because they all were available for Windows 7 and so on and still Windows tablets tanked.

Successful adoption of tablets has nothing to do with Windows on them, rather opposite, with creation of iPad and later Android. Anything but Windows on tablets, iOS and Android, has been successful.

And Windows on a tablet is recipe for disaster. Witness Surface RT.

 

[samcraig]

Windows on the Surface has been mentioned as a kind of selling point because of its large number of legacy software titles.

As we see, Windows 7 and XP and Vista on tablets all bombed. So thousands of old Windows non-optimized touch applications for Windows 8 will not change anything.

Successful adoption of tablets has nothing to do with Windows on them, rather opposite. Anything which is not Windows on tablets, iOS and Android, have been growing.

Again - the past doesn't equal the future. No matter how you try an force it. You can't predict this any more than you can predict how much snow fall I'm going to have in my back yard by 5pm. Oh you can try. But ultimately - it's just conjecture.

 

[StoneJack]

Again - the past doesn't equal the future. No matter how you try an force it. You can't predict this any more than you can predict how much snow fall I'm going to have in my back yard by 5pm. Oh you can try. But ultimately - it's just conjecture.

Well, if you can't point out things which make Windows 8 tablet different from Windows 7 tablets (which fate we all know). then your projections of Windows success are just groundless conjectures.

 

[samcraig]

Well, if you could point at things which makes Windows 8 tablet different from Windows 7 tablets (which fate we all know) then your projections of Windows success are just baseless conjectures.

I never said they would be successful. You're the one that said they wouldn't. I don't have anything to prove. Do you understand how an argument works?

 

[StoneJack]

Plus the Surface Pro is both thinner, lighter, much less expensive, and will probably be much more widely available than the old PC tablets of the past. If you compare a machine that weighs around 2 pounds, and isn't even a 3rd of an inch thick for $999 and compare it to an inch and a half 5 pound machine starting out at $1699, you'll see the Pro is a considerably more attractive buy.

The biggest problem with the PC tablets back then were that they weren't a bad idea, but the technology wasn't quite there to provide the best experience. We're closer to that now than we've ever been. Ultrabook hardware is thin and light, multitouch and digitizer technology is cheaper and more mature, and battery life is much, much improved in comparison. We've still got a little ways to go before I'd consider them all around perfect, but we're a helluva lot closer now than we were in 2000.

Perhaps, you failed to notice that current adoption of tablets has nothing to do with improvements in ultrabook digitizers but is a result of iPad, iOS and Android.

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I never said they would be successful. You're the one that said they wouldn't. I don't have anything to prove. Do you understand how an argument works?

Yes, and I am telling that since all Windows tablets failed, this one is also destined to fail. There is nothing that makes Windows 8 ultrabooks different from Windows 7 touch computers.

Lighter Windows ultrabooks didn't spur tablet adoption. It was iOS and iPad success that led to wider tablet adotion.

 

[Renzatic]

I think you are mixing concepts of mobile tablets and ultrabooks. No ultrabook, including Surfaces, can reach tablets in mobility, battery life and ease of use.

Not yet, but give it time. The big push in the tech industry isn't about pure power anymore. It's all about mobility and efficiency these days. Intel has Haswell just around the corner, and ARM gets more and more powerful every day that passes. Eventually, we're going to see a point where you'll have a machine the size of an iPad sporting 8-10 hours worth of battery life, but has the power of (at least) a current gen Macbook Air.

And when that day comes, what'll be the difference between an ultrabook and a tablet?

edit: it'd be the UI, which is one of the things I where I think the Surface falls short and stuff. If I didn't have to head out like...right this second, I'd get more into this.

I had a touch based computer (tablet) by Compaq back in the early 90s. LOVED it. It was perfect for my use case as I traveled constantly - and also had a job where it was handy to have a pen based input as a keyboard wasn't always optimal.

That's why I have to laugh (or correct) people when they say that tablets didn't exist or were failures before the iPad. True - Windows Pen Computing wasn't AMAZING - but it was great for what it was back then.

I don't know many people who had a PC tablet back when, but from what I've seen, the people who had them seemed to love them. Hell, I had a friend hit me up to fix his professor's 8 year old XP tablet because he didn't want to part with it. The thing was had all the aesthetic appeal of an old bag of bricks, but the guy loved it the thing.

So the question is, did they fail because people didn't want them, or because they were a little too expensive niche item barely anyone had heard of? I mean I never personally saw one at a Best Buy or Circuit City back in the early 2000's. Rarely even saw mention of them on tech sites.

Personally, I don't think they were advertised enough, and even when they were, they were too expensive for the average customer to just go out and grab one.

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And Windows on a tablet is recipe for disaster. Witness Surface RT.

...which isn't actually Windows on a tablet as you're defining it. RT doesn't run any legacy applications, and uses an entirely different interface from the old standard desktop.

 

[samcraig]

Perhaps, you failed to notice that current adoption of tablets has nothing to do with improvements in ultrabook digitizers but is a result of iPad, iOS and Android.

Lighter Windows ultrabooks didn't spur tablet adoption. It was iOS and iPad success that led to wider tablet adotion.

You keep missing the actual point. I'm not sure I/we can make that clearer for you. So I'll just stop.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Wait, what? Where did Apple lie about anything?

You don't have 128GB of storage on the MBA. The available storage is almost identical for that of the Surface Pro. But it's a big deal because it's Microsoft and the tech sites are giving them bad press because of it, yet it isn't mentioned concerning Apple.

 

[aristotle]

You don't have 128GB of storage on the MBA. The available storage is almost identical for that of the Surface Pro. But it's a big deal because it's Microsoft and the tech sites are giving them bad press because of it, yet it isn't mentioned concerning Apple.

The differences are that the Macbook Air never claims to be a "tablet" and it comes with Garageband, iMovie and iPhoto whereas the Surface just comes with Windows 8 and is trying to compete with tablets like the iPad.

I have a bunch of Apple products in my sig but guess what OS I use the most each week? Windows 7. I use windows at work. I would guess that I probably use windows more each week than you do.

 

[Liquorpuki]

There was a decade of touch computers with x86 and Windows, all failed. Any reason this one will not?

Some of the differences:

• Back then there was no 80+ million unit tablet market to compete in, only a niche market of users
• Back then touch was expensive, not sub $1000
• A tablet was a bulky touch based convertible laptop, not a slate form factor (the iPad changed this).
• Touch technology was utter crap back then. A $1500 tablet PC would still have a resistive touchscreen with 1 sec input latency
• XP Touch (and whatever Samsung did with Win7) was a desktop UI with touch input tacked on, not an OS built from the ground up with touch in mind like Win8.
• The OEM's never wrapped their head around the problem that the Type Cover solves, which is how to make a slate form factor usable with software that requires a conventional form factor. Apple never wrapped their head around it too since their solution is to have you lug around a bluetooth keyboard and poke the screen a million times in absence of a mouse. And you wonder why tablets haven't been used for productivity.
• There was no mobile app ecosystem back then, only a desktop software ecosystem that was touch enabled for the hell of it. So gestures and software that took advantage of gestures did not exist and touch was pretty much only useful for handwriting recognition and drawing directly into MS Office. With those old Tablet PC's, you were basically paying a premium for these 2 things, which are marginal

Basically the market and tech are different now

 

[AppleScruff1]

The differences are that the Macbook Air never claims to be a "tablet" and it comes with Garageband, iMovie and iPhoto whereas the Surface just comes with Windows 8 and is trying to compete with tablets like the iPad.

I have a bunch of Apple products in my sig but guess what OS I use the most each week? Windows 7. I use windows at work. I would guess that I probably use windows more each week than you do.

I didn't realize that the Surface Pro had zero apps included besides Windows. I guess somehow I should have figured that there would be an excuse, I mean there has to be a reason why it was ok that the MBA had less than the stated storage.

 

[Renzatic]

I didn't realize that the Surface Pro had zero apps included besides Windows. I guess somehow I should have figured that there would be an excuse, I mean there has to be a reason why it was ok that the MBA had less than the stated storage.

Plus Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto eat up...what? 600 meg, give or take?

 

[AppleScruff1]

Plus Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto eat up...what? 600 meg, give or take?

It's ok if you don't have much additional storage on a MBA. What would you possibly want to add of your own when everything you need is already included? I have pictures of Steve and his family instead of my own.

 

[Renzatic]

It's ok if you don't have much additional storage on a MBA. What would you possibly want to add of your own when everything you need is already included? I have pictures of Steve and his family instead of my own.

I keep all my pictures of Steve and his family locked in my hope chest.

 

[uknowimright]

why do you guys have pics of the Ballmer family???

oh wait

 

[aristobrat]

Plus Garageband, iMovie, and iPhoto eat up...what? 600 meg, give or take?

According to the App Store, the compressed download sizes are:

iMovie '11 = 1.36 GB
iPhoto '11 = 1.15 GB
GarageBand '11 = 191 MB

However, when you run GarageBand for the full time, you're greeted with the following, making

GarageBand '11 = 1.7 GB

Total = 4.21GB?

 

[aristobrat]

Lie? More like spin. Did you read how Apple now reports disk size/usage?

Why would you say 'how Apple now reports disk/size usage'?

Apple's been reporting it like that since 2009.

2009 = iPhone 3Gs
2009 = a year BEFORE the iPad was launched.

Does that really qualify as now?

 

[Abazigal]

Exactly. I did forget that technology itself has changed as well. Very important.

I had a touch based computer (tablet) by Compaq back in the early 90s. LOVED it. It was perfect for my use case as I traveled constantly - and also had a job where it was handy to have a pen based input as a keyboard wasn't always optimal.

That's why I have to laugh (or correct) people when they say that tablets didn't exist or were failures before the iPad. True - Windows Pen Computing wasn't AMAZING - but it was great for what it was back then.

My experience is the exact opposite. I was issued a fujitsu tablet laptop for work (teacher in a school), and while the stylus may have been useful for a few tasks (like adding signatures to a digital document, or annotating on word documents), I felt that it sucked for most part.

The screen would constantly sway back and forth when I wrote on it, the software didn't support Word in tablet mode, the trackpad was crappy (cursor kept jumping all over the screen when I was typing), and they were bulky, heavy and had short battery life for a laptop of that size (but to be fair, they were pretty durable). The pen was pitifully slow when it came to interacting with the windows OS, and the unresponsive touch-screen didn't make my fingers any more useful.

If they had been the only tablet option, I would have nothing to say. But Apple introduced multi-touch in 2007 with their iphone and debuted the ipad in 2010, and this gulf makes you wonder - how did other companies screw up such an integral piece of technology so much?

Apple got this right, in the sense that it is not always about impressive paper specs that makes a device enjoyable to use, but the little things like how responsive your trackpad is, that define user experience.

I gave up, and am now using a ipad+macbook+airserver combination (paid for with my own money) in my class.

 

[samcraig]

Why would you say 'how Apple now reports disk/size usage'?

Apple's been reporting it like that since 2009.

2009 = iPhone 3Gs
2009 = a year BEFORE the iPad was launched.

Does that really qualify as now?

You really want to start a semantic debate over this bullet point? When they started is completely irrelevant. And semantically speaking - my statement is correct. They now report it thusly. Previously they did not.

 

[Renzatic]

According to the App Store, the compressed download sizes are:

iMovie '11 = 1.36 GB
iPhoto '11 = 1.15 GB
GarageBand '11 = 191 MB

However, when you run GarageBand for the full time, you're greeted with the following, making

GarageBand '11 = 1.7 GB

Total = 4.21GB?

Comeon. That's only a 700% larger than what I said. Why even bring it up?

Though I do wonder why iPhoto is 1.15GB. I can understand Garageband and iMovie being pretty big due to the instrument and stock effects, but iPhotos is just a color tweaker and organizer. You think it'd be the smallest of the bunch.

 

[samcraig]

Maybe your device and/or software you had? Word on my Compaq utilized pen computing. Mine didn't have a track pad. The battery life on mine was equal to any laptop at the time. Weight was about the same as well.

Technology always gets better. Back in 1993 or thereabouts - that's what touchscreen technology on a consumer level was capable of now. You can't compare tablets from then to 2007. It's completely unfair.

My experience is the exact opposite. I was issued a fujitsu tablet laptop for work (teacher in a school), and while the stylus may have been useful for a few tasks (like adding signatures to a digital document, or annotating on word documents), I felt that it sucked for most part.

The screen would constantly sway back and forth when I wrote on it, the software didn't support Word in tablet mode, the trackpad was crappy (cursor kept jumping all over the screen when I was typing), and they were bulky, heavy and had short battery life for a laptop of that size (but to be fair, they were pretty durable). The pen was pitifully slow when it came to interacting with the windows OS, and the unresponsive touch-screen didn't make my fingers any more useful.

If they had been the only tablet option, I would have nothing to say. But Apple introduced multi-touch in 2007 with their iphone and debuted the ipad in 2010, and this gulf makes you wonder - how did other companies screw up such an integral piece of technology so much?

Apple got this right, in the sense that it is not always about impressive paper specs that makes a device enjoyable to use, but the little things like how responsive your trackpad is, that define user experience.

I gave up, and am now using a ipad+macbook+airserver combination (paid for with my own money) in my class.

 

[DeathChill]

You don't have 128GB of storage on the MBA. The available storage is almost identical for that of the Surface Pro. But it's a big deal because it's Microsoft and the tech sites are giving them bad press because of it, yet it isn't mentioned concerning Apple.

The MBA has 10 GB extra over the Surface Pro, which I would consider a bit large (though not gigantically so). The whole discussion has been based off the old numbers that Microsoft originally gave (83 GB and 23 GB) rather than the correct updated numbers.

Lie? More like spin. Did you read how Apple now reports disk size/usage?

http://www.zdnet.com/surface-pro-ve...eing-dishonest-with-storage-space-7000011009/

Please do and then come back and ask that question if you still have it.

I'm not sure I understand where the spinning is. Apple chose, in 2009, to report disk space in the same manner that hard drive manufacturers do. I think it's a valid way as it makes little sense to use two different standards when talking about the same thing. However, the best way would have been for disk hard drive manufacturers to switch, but that'd never happen.


Here's an updated chart showing the difference between the Surface Pro and the MBA, both with 128 GB disks:

EDIT: I also don't think 10 GB is a crazy huge deal and is just a sacrifice you have to make at this point if you want to get the Surface Pro. All new technology products have some minor drawback and I'd say this one is pretty minor, in my opinion.