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

[gnasher729]

I really wouldn't say OSX is successful though. All of Apple's money comes from IOS not OSX. I would wager the reason why PC sales have dropped is because of the iPad and hardly because of any macs. I love my macbook pro because it just does what I need it to do very well. Windows is also a great OS. I built my own PC for my office and love it, but I will admit that windows 8 is terrible.

Where Macs really hurt the PC market is the high end. As a percentage of unit sales, Macs are not hurting PC sales much. If you look at percentage of laptop / desktop sales over $1000, Macs hurt PC sales a lot. Nobody pays $1000 for a computer if it isn't a Mac. And that market is where profits are made.

 

[MacDav]

You forgot the monopoly is ok, as long as it's Apple.

What exactly does Apple have a monopoly on again?

 

[Chlloret]

Really? When did this happen? I thought everyone and their grandma has a Windows machine these days.

MS has sold 40 million copies of Windows 8 by this point. That's how many iPads Apple has sold in the last year. Not to mention the nearly half billion copies of Windows 7 that have been sold up to this point. Calling them irrelevant is pretty short sighted and ignorant.

Sorry, bad comparison. Apple might have sold 40 Million iPads, but they got money for it, people actually paid for it.

Windows 8 can be downloaded for free to test and is for free on any new machine you buy. That is not "selling" anything.
That is on how many computers it is running atm. For how long it is running will be a complete other matter.

Btw, same for Win7, a OS that actually works, is or was on any computer sold. That is not meaning, MS sold the system, it is included for the customer without him making the choice to buy it.

More interesting would be the number of downgrades performed or if windows7 sales are now off because everybody wants Windows8. What about the majority of Windows machines that still run Win xp?

----------

So, you are saying that iOS - castrated version of BSD - is better than BSD (a desktop OS). Something is perverted here.

Much better, because it is usable on a tablet. The reason, why you buy it in the first place.

 

[jca666us]

I hope you're right otherwise this is very unimpressive. The iPad lasts close to 10 hours, and the new laptops typically go 7 hours or more. If the best the Surface Pro can do is 4 hours, that would seem to indicate Apple was right that this hybrid is neither as good as laptop nor as good as a tablet. 4 hours was ok back in 2007, not anymore. I'd find that unacceptable.

As far as the ASUS thing getting 5 hours, you would need to say much more to convince us. The biggest power draw, more often than not, is the screen. Perhaps having a touch screen at the resolution the Surface Pro does means that it will inherently have a much larger power draw than whatever the ASUS is offering. After all, the higher the resolution for a smaller screen, the more light needs to be pushed through in order to make it work. That's why the Apple Retina screens tend to be a little dimmer than other laptops, all those dam pixels block a lot of the light from coming through.

Surface pro is 1/2" thick - if that doesn't have a huge battery in it, it's probably bc of the heat vents.

 

[gecis]

The TV commercials does not make me wanna buy them, they do not show functionality, Apple commercials SHOW functionality.

I mean, in every Surface commercial you see people dancing or a keyboard attached to the tablet... ok... but you do not even see Microsoft Office running on them... NOTHING! So... "how does surfing the web looks like in a Surface?" who knows. That is why people are not buying it.

I completely agree with you. Microsoft surface has one the most horrible and cheesiest commercial I have seen in a long time! What the heck were they thinking? Well it beats me.

 

[steveza]

Why would I buy this, instead of buying a regular PC ultrabook which will have a better keyboard, better battery life and run the same OS?

Or hell, one of the other convertible touch enabled laptop machines on the market that will actually work when used on your lap.

This is actually Microsoft's problem - I've used some of these "partner products" running RT and 8 Pro and I think they are substantially better. Have a look at the Acer S7 for example.

Also, i run Windows 7, Windows 8, iOS and OS X 10.5 through 10.8.

Windows 8 is the worst of the lot.

I also run/have run all of these and I do disagree, Windows 8 is a really good OS with a few poor UI choices, but I actually use computers to do real stuff where the UI is quite far down on the list of things that need to work

 

[Michael CM1]

So let me get this straight. You can't sell a tablet by just running a commercial with dubstep music and clicking sounds? What do you mean it needs software???

 

[Chlloret]

I also run/have run all of these and I do disagree, Windows 8 is a really good OS with a few poor UI choices, but I actually use computers to do real stuff where the UI is quite far down on the list of things that need to work

But then you are not the target group. The average consumer sees the UI first, its what he interacts with. If that is not usable (metro with a mouse is horrible) and all the nice and used elements are gone (no start button, no aero) then the regular Joe (or Jane) is going to say....crap

 

[RobertMartens]

It's unfortunate MS Surface seems to be struggling. Healthy competition is good for all consumers, including Apple fans.

Apple doesn't forge ahead because it has competition. It does whatever it wants. And now with so much money and influence why shouldn't it keep on doing whatever it feels like. It certainly has worked for them (and me) so far.

 

[Mike MA]

What do all the Apple haters stating the iPad was way to expensive say now?

 

[baryon]

Who's surprised by this? A thick, laptop-like computer that can't even sit on your lap, but can't use it properly while holding it in your hand, advertised with a keyboard that doesn't even come with it as standard, running an OS that isn't compatible with anything and has an alpha-state interface full of bugs and crashes… I don't get what MS was thinking?

This isn't a tablet or a laptop, it's a desktop! But then why doesn't it run Windows 7 so that people can actually use it?

 

[everything-i]

Can't help thinking that the Surface Pro is kind of pointless when you can get an ultra-portable laptop for the same money which has a proper keyboard and better battery life. I think the RT could have been a good product but M$ took too long to come to market after the device was announced and the low res screen made it look old tech. Also the advertising campaign for the thing was just pointless and did them no favours.

 

[everything-i]

What do all the Apple haters stating the iPad was way to expensive say now?

Yes, remember when the iPad came out everyone thought it was going to be around $999 but couldn't believe the actual price was half that. It took the competition over a year to figure out how to build one that cheap.

 

[SgtPepper12]

The more I think about it, the more I see that the concept of "Surface" is just horrible. This "device class1 x device class 2 = potential new device class 3"-principle that many manufacturers are trying (more or less successfully) to do is terrible. In some cases you can see the potential customers (the galaxy note as a brilliant example) but here you can smell that nobody at microsoft really thought about this decision.

What I see is the following problem:
A) A tablet is a portable device that requires no special environment to use. It isn't capable of every task you use computers for, but for those it is, it is highly optimized, so you can use it everywhere.

B) A notebook is a semi-portable device (you can carry it with you easily, but you usually need a special environment for it to use it). It can generally do whatever a computer can.

So the Surface tries to be both. Problem is: I just don't see something in between "portable" and "semi-portable". Microsoft doesn't either. So they literally tried it to be both, but it's clearly impossible without doing both of those things poorly. I can see how microsoft did the best bad tablet+bad notebook-in-one device, but I can't see how anybody is willing to go with that compromise that is just unnecessary (It's a classic case of a solution for a problem that just doesn't exist).

 

[mw360]

Microsoft is not targeting consumers with the Surface pro, its targeting power users, business. And people who do real work.

With a tiny computer that needs to be used at a desk, near a power supply and has a flimsy keyboard that detaches for no reason other than to allow you to forget to bring it along?

Deskbound workers were already well catered for. Microsoft aren't targeting any users at all, they are targeting the iPad by competing on features instead of any real world usage scenarios.

"it's got a keyboard, it's got a stand, it's got a pen and a 'real os' AND a tablet OS!" Who on earth wants to use all those things together?

 

[throAU]

I also run/have run all of these and I do disagree, Windows 8 is a really good OS with a few poor UI choices, but I actually use computers to do real stuff where the UI is quite far down on the list of things that need to work

Oh i use computers for real work. And the metro UI gets in the way. And i'm not just talking about the lack of start menu - there are far more serious problems.

"a few poor UI choices" is putting it mildly.

For the average end user, the UI clash between desktop and metro requires constantly switching between which way things work.

The business desktop will not be free of desktop apps for a decade or more - so forcing users to deal with a touch UI on the desktop platform is going to be pain for a long time.

In metro itself, there are severe regressions when it comes to getting actual work done. Try, for example to perform a search across all document types for a particular search term. E.g., i want to find mention of "wireless project" across e-mails, visio files, word documents, pdfs, etc in a single search.

Windows 7 can do this. Windows Vista can do this. OS X (spotlight) can do this. iOS can do this. Windows 8 can not do this. Oh sure, you can drop to the desktop open an explorer window and type a win7 style search query in, except that it can't find content in metro apps. Or you can search each and every metro file type individually with multiple searches, from within metro. But that doesn't know about desktop apps, and you need to do the searches individually for every document type. It also doesn't seem to know about date ranges.

There is no option to run multiple Metro apps in Windows, only full screen or a sliver of the screen in split screen mode. This is not good enough.

To do multiple windows at the same time (say, to read a PDF document to follow instructions, or compare to another document) you need to drop to the classic desktop. Which means doing such tasks will never be moved to metro until this is fixed.

Which means the desktop is not going to go away, so we're going to be stuck switching from one UI to the other for the foreseeable future, unless microsoft make extreme changes to the metro UI design.

If we're having to drop to the desktop constantly, why bother with the metro UI on the desktop at all?


The only thing Windows 8 really has going for it that anyone cares about is updated powershell cmdlets, improved boot time (i reboot once a month, and it takes Win7 11 seconds including BIOS post to boot from SSD) and supposedly increased security (remains to be seen).

The trade-off is addition of a useless-for-the-desktop UI (seriously, i can't even have 2 terminal windows side by side in the new UI?), and a large amount of compatibility testing and application compatibility remediation before any corp wants to roll it out. It's not worth it.

----------

Deskbound workers were already well catered for. Microsoft aren't targeting any users at all, they are targeting the iPad by competing on features instead of any real world usage scenarios.

"it's got a keyboard, it's got a stand, it's got a pen and a 'real os' AND a tablet OS!" Who on earth wants to use all those things together?

So much this.

The surface is a feature tick box, designed by committee device.

It has no focus, and excels at NOTHING, because it tries to be everything and spreads itself too thin.

 

[throAU]

How is Win 8 the worst? Was there a feature that was in 7 no longer in 8 that made it worse? Did you work in Vista? That was way worse mate.

See my above post. Yes there have been massive regressions compared to prior versions. I don't deny that Windows 8 also has improvements, but they're simply not enough to outweigh the regressions.

I've used every Windows version since 3.1, and had to support them professionally since 1996. My job currently involves AD administration and design, operating system deployment, building SOE, etc for a 600 seat Windows domain (amongst other things) so you could say i have an above average working knowledge of the Windows OS.

Vista wasn't actually that bad. I ran it for 2 years. Yes, driver support was patchy in the early days and system requirements were steeper than XP. That's usually been the same for every new major windows release (95, 2k, NT, Vista). But if you had appropriate hardware from a vendor who cared and provided signed drivers, and actually cared about security yourself (i.e., left UAC on) it was much more secure, more stable (user mode drivers - display driver can crash and not take out the machine - something OS X still doesn't have), etc.

I dislike microsoft as much as many people, but Vista truly got a much worse reputation than it deserved. 7 is essentially a tweaked vista with slightly lower resource usage because they moved a lot of the framebuffer stuff out of main memory and purely into the video card (amongst other things). Vista stored 2 copies - in RAM and Video RAM.

On a modern machine with multiple GB of memory, resource usage difference between 7 and vista is "meh". 7 also has a better scheduler, but its nothing major.

The big changes were UI related, vendors had actually sorted out the driver situation during Vista (7 has the same driver model but hw people caught up 12 months or so into vista) and the media didn't latch onto teething problems and run with them because Vista had sorted them all out previously.

 

[pposthoorn]

Either you are joking or you have little to no understanding of what a torrent client is and what it does.

If I am wrong, go ahead and tell me what App does what U-Torrent does, go ahead , I'm waiting.

I think most people use torrent clients to download movies/tv-series/music, in Holland you can watch the latest stuff with apps from the TV companies for free. Even live TV is possible. If you want to watch/listen to other stuff you cn download it from iTunes with little to no effort.
For books wehave iBooks, and Downloading software trough torrents is unnecessary because all software comes from the App Store.

If by torrents you mean illegal downloading then you probably have no problem with jail breaking either and you can get your illegal free stuff there...

 

[hamkor04]

Microsoft Surface: The Tablet for people who have never heard of an iPad.

THE tablet for people who wants file management on tablet (which ipad doesn't )

 

[everything-i]

The TV commercials does not make me wanna buy them, they do not show functionality, Apple commercials SHOW functionality.


I mean, in every Surface commercial you see people dancing or a keyboard attached to the tablet... ok... but you do not even see Microsoft Office running on them... NOTHING! So... "how does surfing the web looks like in a Surface?" who knows. That is why people are not buying it.

Spot on the adverts are an epic marketing fail.

 

[throAU]

Lol. torrents on a tablet.

Yeah sure, i'd love to run peer to peer software on my battery powered device with a mobile data plan and minimal local storage

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

Windows 8 can be downloaded for free to test and is for free on any new machine you buy. That is not "selling" anything.

Wrong. The hardware manufacturer has to pay a license for the Windows OEM; that is how Microsoft makes a lot of their profit.

 

[haravikk]

The Surface RT is okay, but for all the effort they've put in the kickstand and keyboard connection, there are a bunch of glaring omissions. The power connector for example gets in the way of tablet use and isn't much good for laptop use either, and the connector just doesn't attach very easily which seems strange considering how nicely the keyboard one goes on.
As a hybrid laptop it's also not desperately good on your lap as you either have to have it flat as a tablet, since the kickstand is useless if all you want to do is tilt it slightly, and it's no good standing up with the kickstand on your knees. With the rigid keyboard attached it's a bit more like a proper laptop, though the fit isn't quite solid enough to abate my paranoia that the tablet section might just drop off if I type too briskly, even with the kickstand out. The touch keyboard isn't solid enough for comfortable use on the lap.


Windows 8 is actually quite nice to use on devices like the Surface since they're more tablet oriented rather than being proper laptops, though RT's selection of software is disappointing; hopefully this will change in the future.


So the RT surfaces are definitely rough around the edges, but a second generation could be pretty good if MS puts the same attention to detail into the areas they've skimped on with the first model. The kickstand needs a bit of a rethink to make the device more lap-friendly; it's great on solid surfaces, but the tablet otherwise only really works well when held or used at a table/desk, at least in my experience. And whoever was in charge of the power connector needs a good kicking.

As for the new surfaces; I have mixed feelings as I really don't like Windows 8 on the desktop and I can only see Windows 8 laptops being similar. I know the mix of desktop and metro apps will hopefully improve over time, but it's still unpleasant to use. If you only need to do stuff that can be done in metro apps then it should make a great high-end tablet, but I'm not sure of the value you get for the money compared to the RT version, which should hopefully have most metro apps become available to it over time.

Spot on the adverts are an epic marketing fail.

Agreed; they don't show you anything about the device other than the keyboard and kickstand. While those certainly distinguish the Surface from other tablets, it's hardly a main selling point. All you see anyone do is "walk" their fingers along the start-screen; if one of the surfaces had been showing someone watching a video online then it could have gone a long way toward showing that the device is usable at the very least.

I should point out that I don't actually own one, I just borrowed one for a few days to try; I'm not planning to buy one unless the next generation improves the various issues with this first one.

 

[NumberNine]

$1,000 for a keyboardless laptop? 100 dollar keyboard addons? I think I'll pass.

as opposed to a $800 iPad?

 

[AgRacer]

CLIFF NOTES Below:

I had been looking for a replacement for my wife's 7yr old Dell laptop. It was slow, took forever to boot, and she was complaining about how it takes forever to do simple tasks (like browse the internet).

I started looking at tablets (Andriod and iPad). About then MS announced the Surface so I told her we were going to see what the pricing was b/c it looked like it might be a good option (MS office built in, outlook e-mail, nice display, etc.). The cover keyboard esp. appealed to us.

So MS announces it's $499 + $100 for the cover keyboard and they lost me. They lost a customer who was on the verge of committing to the MS universe (Sky Drive, Outlook.com e-mails for both of us, W8 Phones, full committement to the MS universe). Why would I pay $600 for a tablet when I can get a laptop that is more powerful and can do more productivity wise?

I picked her up a refurb iPad2 from Apple (ordered Friday, picked up at store the following Tuesday) and a $50 logitech keyboard, and $15 Belkin case. For Christmas I'm giving her some blue-tooth speakers so she can listen to her music anywhere in the house.

So for less than the Surface all alone, we have a complete replacement that does more than her old laptop ever would.

CLIFF NOTES: MS Priced the Surface to high.