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Microsoft Details Surface Pro Pricing Amidst Reports of Poor Sales of RT Version
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A mobile OS? How do you mean? iOS is a BSD based OS, that pretty much shares a lot in common with Mac OS X. The only really big difference is in the user interface. It's designed for mobile computing on devices with smaller screens. You seem to be mistaking a mobile-centric OS for an embedded OS used in some mobile devices.
Furthermore, they never told anyone that tablets were content consumption only. In fact they released a page layout program, a presentation program, and a spreadsheet program at the same time the original iPad was introduced.
I find all the people on this board to be a bit disingenuous for having conveniently forgotten Windows Tablets have been on the market for the passed decade, running full blown Windows. If all you same people are so damned excited by the Surface Pro why in the hell didn't you ever buy one of the original Windows tablets or even one of the current tablets that already run full blown Windows; off the top off my head, Archos. If people were actually excited about having a tablet form factor running a full blown desktop OS, all those tablets wouldn't have failed so miserably.
The fact is, and history has shown, THAT VERY FEW PEOPLE NEED OR WANT A "TABLET" DEVICE RUNNING THE SAME CRAPPY OS AS THEIR DESKTOP COMPUTER.
It is little more than a gimmick. In the end you're still using a desktop OS, so why not have a device that IT WAS DESIGNED TO RUN ON?
I still think Microsoft is going at it in the wrong way. This thing is too thick, heavy and has a poor battery life if you use it as a tablet. I doubt it'd work as well as regular laptop either. I'd rather get a macbook air or one of those windows ultrabooks than this laptop/tablet hybrid
Gotta remember, its got almost the same specs as a Macbook Air, the type cover is almost as good as a real keyboard, and it turns into a tablet.
Microsoft MAY have a winner.
Man, do I miss my cellular data from my iPad to my surface... I now have to use my phone as a hotspot which is not bad. I actually stopped my 3g service on my iPad to use my phone before getting my surface.
Yeah, using both windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard and then using a touch device really displays the genius in they way they work.
Good luck!
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Or who want real work done
So true!!!!!
When Microsoft tells you it's 4-hour, it will be 2-hour in real life usage.
Likely true. Gaming time? 1 hour. If you're lucky. Games eat up massive juice, and you never get advertised battery life when doing it, and if the company is fudging "average" battery life, gaming battery life is going to be... dreadful, to say the least. I really don't see how anyone can be stupid enough to try to sell their customers such a product. This thing will pretty much have to move from wall to wall because the battery wont be enough to support it away from one... I thought the days of four hour (or two LOL) battery life was gone. Microsoft has proved me wrong!
Man, do I miss my cellular data from my iPad to my surface... I now have to use my phone as a hotspot which is not bad. I actually stopped my 3g service on my iPad to use my phone before getting my surface.
Yeah, using both windows 8 with a mouse and keyboard and then using a touch device really displays the genius in they way they work.
Good luck!
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So true!!!!!
I can tell you if the iPad wasn't LTE, I would most likely still be deciding. Also with Verizon allowing you to add tablets on for $10 a month the cost is minimal so there is little reason not to use the onboard cellular service.
Add to that 4 hour battery life? What are they using in that thing...Old tech for sure...Why didn't they put a half decent Lithium Polymer cell in the thing? My Ipad 4 with Retina screen gets < 9 hours on a charge.
Microsoft hardware, apart from the Xbox has never really been that dramatic or good. It's when the software sales continue to decline that the real warning signals will light up Redmond.
It's not even iOS that's really the problem. It's the fact Apple and Google use a commoditized App Store as a distribution model for mobile and as the only way to get stuff on your tablet (short of jailbreaking of course). It's a bad business model - it encourages a race to the bottom and discourages more complicated and more useful software from being developed for tablets because that software is not profitable at lower price points. Basically mobile has become a budget market because the only way to get stuff on your phone is through a single store that has hundreds of thousands of developers undercutting each other to compete for your attention. The Pro avoids all this.
10 years ago a tablet was a laptop with a stylus input resistive touchscreen LCD that rotated and collapsed. It wasn't a slate form factor device with a multitouch capacitive screen. OS was XP with some small UI modifications added on, not an OS built from the ground up with touch in mind. And there was no 80 million + unit tablet market back then either. Totally different devices, totally different environment. I owned a Fujitsu P1510 tablet back then and if the Surface Pro was anything like that I wouldn't be buying it
Ding ding ding. Same specs as MBA, but thinner and lighter, and has touch. And runs Windows 8, which, like it or not - means it runs a lot of the applications that a lot of people (myself included) want to run. Intel's next rev will improve battery life, or if you're dying for more battery life asap get one of the many atom-based options coming from the other OEMs.
MS big mistake is to make the operating system one OS, 16gb taken up just on the OS, battery also admited to be half of RT so this equals 4.5 hrs come on this wasn't thought out thoroughly. I want MS to succeed but bad mistakes has been made same which we could say for apple maps.
Or who want real work done
I do different types of work on my iPad as compared to my Macs, but I still call reading articles, replying emails, and drafting articles real work. And I get it done on my iPad.
Fine, mobile centric OS. Happy now bro?
I bought all 3 of those. They all sucked and were basically pretty looking featureless clones of their desktop counterparts. Pages, AKA Ten Dollar Wordpad, was the worse. Here's your gold standard for content creation software on iOS devices right now, which is no wonder people would rather consume it than create it
I did buy one. I owned a P1510 tablet back in the day and the Surface Pro is not the same thing. Not to mention the whole identity of what makes a tablet a tablet was redefined by the iPad blowing up the market. I'm guessing all you guys parroting about how it's already been done have never even seen a pre iPad Windows Tablet.
This is the first generation. When Haswell comes to market, battery life will be better, just as battery technology slowly moves forward. This is the beginning of the changing laptop/tablet era.
I do different types of work on my iPad as compared to my Macs, but I still call reading articles, replying emails, and drafting articles real work. And I get it done on my iPad.
Maybe to you it is, but if I did my " real work " on an iPad, it would probably melt
Being a blind fanboy isn't a good thing.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/windows-8-sales-are-good-if-not-great-at-40-million-copies-in-the-first-month/
But guess what buddy, just like Windows 7 and 8 Phone, and Android, its still a limited crappy mobile OS, you can't even multi task on iOS.
Sure, they never told anyone it was for consumption.
However, as of right now it lacks Microsoft, Office which is the standard.
Pages....lol
Becaust most people were still getting their 2nd or 1st computer at that time, and many people literally couldn't afford a tablet, they ran up to 4000 dollars for a high end model, and 2000 for a low end model.
Compared to Apples numbers maybe.
But if they are still produced, and produced for years, and sold. They made a profit, and did not fail.
So if you Mean Windows 8, the OS that blows away iOS?
In the case of the surface pro, some people will want real hardware, running real programs, doing REAL work, on a REAL OPERATING SYSTEM.
I love my macs for sure, but the iPad to me, is nothing than for people to watch youtube and play Angry birds on.
Microsoft is not targeting consumers with the Surface pro, its targeting power users, business. And people who do real work.
I'm writing this from my surface, I decided to try it as a complete laptop replacement for a week. It will be going back to the store this weekend. There's a lot of things I liked about it but it's just too impractical to use.
The UI was nice and fresh, but the lack of vital apps like facebook, dropbox, youtube etc. really kill it. And IE10 lacks a lot of functionality on some main sites I use that use Flash. It also can't run regular apps so that's a negative of course. It is almost impossible to use on your lap or without a hard surface when using the kickstand and/or keyboard. I have the type cover, its not bad but the trackpad sucks, scrolling is difficult and nowhere close as on a MacBook (and its tiny).
It's got Office which is a major plus but not enough. I do feel very high tech using the touchscreen, and the live tiles are pretty cool. I wish Apple would make their app icon show real time data in some way like this. I didn't notice any extraordinary battery life. And it is pretty slow.
Overall its not the worst tablet, but it's just too little too late.
Now to decide if I should get a 13" MBA or Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
The UI was nice and fresh, but the lack of vital apps like facebook, dropbox, youtube etc. really kill it. And IE10 lacks a lot of functionality on some main sites I use that use Flash. It also can't run regular apps so that's a negative of course. It is almost impossible to use on your lap or without a hard surface when using the kickstand and/or keyboard. I have the type cover, its not bad but the trackpad sucks, scrolling is difficult and nowhere close as on a MacBook (and its tiny).
It's got Office which is a major plus but not enough. I do feel very high tech using the touchscreen, and the live tiles are pretty cool. I wish Apple would make their app icon show real time data in some way like this. I didn't notice any extraordinary battery life. And it is pretty slow.
Overall its not the worst tablet, but it's just too little too late.
Now to decide if I should get a 13" MBA or Thinkpad X1 Carbon.
Good read. So there are 66 million OSX users, Apple sold 40 million iPads in a year and Windows 8 is a flop because it sold 40 million licenses in 5 weeks. Gotta love the logic.
Ivy Bridge almost feels like a stopgap. It is better off as a testbed for the 22nm process than power improvements over Sandy Bridge. Haswell is where the real improvements show up with 10W ULV and SoC-like single chip builds show up. It is just months away too.
The only important thing here is that battery life. It's kinda hard to sell something that is geared towards portability, releasing people from their desks etc if it's less usable on the go than the laptops most roamers already have...
My prediction - this first generation pro goes the same way as the RT. Not a total flop, but not overly successful. But if MS can get the second generation of both out in the next 6-10 months, with higher resolution screens, better batteries and other small things, then it could end up being a long term success.
But knowing MS, I'm not holding my breath.
My prediction - this first generation pro goes the same way as the RT. Not a total flop, but not overly successful. But if MS can get the second generation of both out in the next 6-10 months, with higher resolution screens, better batteries and other small things, then it could end up being a long term success.
But knowing MS, I'm not holding my breath.