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mouser45

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 27, 2013
33
0
Over 3x as fast.


Not too surprising considering what's inside. Still no battery benchmarks out yet.


Anyone planning on getting one? Seems like an intriguing concept--will probably wait for 2nd gen, but very tempting.
 

Zaft

macrumors 601
Jun 16, 2009
4,552
4,031
Brooklyn, NY
Over 3x as fast.


Not too surprising considering what's inside. Still no battery benchmarks out yet.


Anyone planning on getting one? Seems like an intriguing concept--will probably wait for 2nd gen, but very tempting.

What's the screen res of the surface?
 

MuffCabbage

macrumors regular
Nov 11, 2012
197
23
surface pro is 1920x1080

This is true. The RT is 1366x768 and Pro is 1080p.

I think what is most intriguing is the perimeter venting that sends two fans shooting air out radially all along the top half or so and all the early previewers at CES said it runs silently and no air can be felt.

Now if only they could squeak out a bit more battery life than just over 5 hours that would be great. 5 hours is good but not amazing. The MBA 11" gets 5 hours as well.
 

Dr McKay

macrumors 68040
Aug 11, 2010
3,430
57
Kirkland
It has an SD Card slot right? You'll need one because the Windows installation takes up over 40GB of the 64GB space.
 

irDigital0l

Guest
Dec 7, 2010
2,901
0
Wait your comparing Windows 8 (desktop OS) vs iOS (mobile OS)?

Because Microsoft Surface Pro runs W8.

Better comparison would be Surface RT.
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,374
5,222
It has an SD Card slot right? You'll need one because the Windows installation takes up over 40GB of the 64GB space.

Nah, you can remove the recovery partition and the office trial and get most of that space back. I'm not sure exact figures but I'll bet the windows install will be 12-15gb.

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Over 3x as fast.


Not too surprising considering what's inside. Still no battery benchmarks out yet.


Anyone planning on getting one? Seems like an intriguing concept--will probably wait for 2nd gen, but very tempting.

I'm grabbing one on release date, I figure worst case scenario it's a replacement for the macbook air I just sold, but only much better features and hardware for about the same price.

I'm curious if there are benchmarks of the Atom/Clovertrail CPU windows tablets versus the ipad, they probably perform badly on those tests but in my experience the Atom powered tablets ran Windows quite nicely including any programs I threw at it such as photoshop and office, with the advantage of all day battery life. I'm still teetering about getting the Pro, or going back to an Atom tablet though, the Pro will have to give me an awesome experience for me not to go back to the Atom ones.
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,374
5,222
Comparing a mobile ARM chip to an i5 is pretty pointless.

Absolutely, but unfortunately the media and many others are dead set on comparing the ipad to the surface pro, even though they are not meant to be compared.
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Why? It is still a tablet. But i can see why it isnt a good comparison. How much will a Windows 8 Pro cost?

It's an Ultrabook in a tablet form factor.

If your going to geek bench it would be more appropriate to bench it with the MBA.



It's like trying to compare horsepower of a Lamborghini with that of a Fiat 500. Yes they are both essentially cars, but are very different and intended for different audience.





And if we're going to make ridiculous threads may as well point out, that if you buy an iPad 4 64Gb and you get 57.6gb free. Buy an Surface Pro 64gb and you have 24Gb free after OS and restore partition....

Does that make the iPad4 twice as better because it as more than twice as much free storage? No because its a frickin stupid comparison where other things have to be taken into equation, and that's exactly the same when comparing the surface pro to the iPad when comparing a i5 processor to an Arm processor.
 
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MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Why do you think apple just bumped up the iPad to 128gb?

Sigh! :rolleyes:



Conspiracy theories..


Maybe the fella hiding behind the grassy knoll who was crashed his spaceship in the Nevada desert and then helped Elvis Presley stage his death and move to a Caribbean island under a new identity, is actually Tim Cook...
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,374
5,222
And if we're going to make ridiculous threads may as well point out, that if you buy an iPad 4 64Gb and you get 57.6gb free. Buy an Surface Pro 64gb and you have 24Gb free after OS and restore partition....

Does that make the iPad4 twice as better because it as more than twice as much free storage? No because its a frickin stupid comparison where other things have to be taken into equation, and that's exactly the same when comparing the surface pro to the iPad when comparing a i5 processor to an Arm processor.

You guys have to stop with this bit of misinformation. You will probably have closer to 45+ gb free after you factor in the recovery partition and office trial. On the surface (no pun intended) it is true this is what the surface pro ships with, but once again only because they include the recovery partition and office trial. You get EXACTLY the free space you do on any other desktop or laptop, including the macbook air for example.

I know the point you are trying to make, ipad storage versus a full computer storage, no offense intended but it is just starting to grate on my nerves how the media has jumped all over this when it's just distorting something into a catchy headline.
 

appletoandroid

macrumors member
Jan 25, 2013
64
0
Over 3x as fast.


Not too surprising considering what's inside. Still no battery benchmarks out yet.


Anyone planning on getting one? Seems like an intriguing concept--will probably wait for 2nd gen, but very tempting.

This is why Apple's tablet marketshare continues to plummet. Their competitors continue to innovate and provide us with cutting edge products while Apple stays in the past continually trying to resell the original iPad and iPhone. Wouldn't be shocked to see them take a loss this year.
 

SlCKB0Y

macrumors 68040
Feb 25, 2012
3,426
555
Sydney, Australia
You guys have to stop with this bit of misinformation. You will probably have closer to 45+ gb free after you factor in the recovery partition and office trial.

How many average users will know how to remove a recovery partition or even know of its existence. Very few.

You get EXACTLY the free space you do on any other desktop or laptop, including the macbook air for example.

No, you don't. The 64GB MBA Air I bought was using not even close to the 40GB used on the Pro. (think less than half this).

If you're talking about starting fresh - A clean install of Mountain Lion (6-7GB) consumes less than half the diskspace of Windows 8, so how is your scenario possible?

but it is just starting to grate on my nerves how the media has jumped all over this when it's just distorting something into a catchy headline.

And so they should. Releasing a product like this to the masses with that amount of diskspace is symptomatic of something seriously wrong at Microsoft if they (like you) think it was Ok for them to do this.
 
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MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
You guys have to stop with this bit of misinformation. You will probably have closer to 45+ gb free after you factor in the recovery partition and office trial. On the surface (no pun intended) it is true this is what the surface pro ships with, but once again only because they include the recovery partition and office trial. You get EXACTLY the free space you do on any other desktop or laptop, including the macbook air for example.

I know the point you are trying to make, ipad storage versus a full computer storage, no offense intended but it is just starting to grate on my nerves how the media has jumped all over this when it's just distorting something into a catchy headline.

Err That was exactly my point though.. The argument over free space is just as stupid and inane as this geek-benching an iPad with arm architecture to that of intel i5.


Hence I ended
No because its a frickin stupid comparison where other things have to be taken into equation, and that's exactly the same when comparing the surface pro to the iPad when comparing a i5 processor to an Arm processor.
 

chris2k5

macrumors 6502a
Jun 30, 2010
687
0
Lol the Surface Pro is a fail. It is $300-$400 too expensive compared to tablets.

Why would anyone buy a Surface Pro for the same price as a MBA?!?!
 

MRU

macrumors Penryn
Aug 23, 2005
25,368
8,948
a better place
Lol the Surface Pro is a fail. It is $300-$400 too expensive compared to tablets.

Why would anyone buy a Surface Pro for the same price as a MBA?!?!


For the same audience that would buy this...
Feature_main_1.jpg

http://www.modbook.com/modbookpro


Because its a ultrabook hardware you can do everything on it that you can a MBA but with ability to use it as a tablet form factor as well.

It's just choice, some folks actually like choice.


And it's much cheaper thn a modbook pro by a considerable margin. $899-999 versus $2500
 

spinedoc77

macrumors G4
Jun 11, 2009
11,374
5,222
How many average users will know how to remove a recovery partition or even know of its existence. Very few.



No, you don't. The 64GB MBA Air I bought was using not even close to the 40GB used on the Pro. (think less than half this).

If you're talking about starting fresh - A clean install of Mountain Lion (6-7GB) consumes less than half the diskspace of Windows 8, so how is your scenario possible?



And so they should. Releasing a product like this to the masses with that amount of diskspace is symptomatic of something seriously wrong at Microsoft if they (like you) think it was Ok for them to do this.

First of all that consumers know to remove the recovery partition isn't the point I'm making, it's still a distortion by the media to get mouse clicks. I understand Microsoft has crappy marketing and they should make this more obvious, or include the recovery on a usb drive, etc etc, but that still doesn't change the fact of how overblown this is. The media (and others) strongly allude that Windows 8 itself takes up 41gb of space and the user has NO choice whatsoever when they receive their surface pro but to ONLY have 23gb of free space, this is blatantly not true and will only perpetuate the issue you yourself have illustrated, that consumers don't know this fact.

As for storage space on a macbook air, a) installing windows on the macbook air, which is what I usually do (not thru bootcamp) we start with 59gb, with windows I'm down to around 48gb. M Lion is specced to take 8 gb (http://www.apple.com/uk/osx/specs/), so right off the bat you are at 51gb. Windows 8 takes up around 11gb for x64. It's more realistic to assume 45-47gb free. It's easy to see how the media and other users who are espousing this are being quite disingenuous.

I'm not saying Windows is efficient, or that it shouldn't be smaller, I am simply saying we should be more honest about the free hard drive space.

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Lol the Surface Pro is a fail. It is $300-$400 too expensive compared to tablets.

Why would anyone buy a Surface Pro for the same price as a MBA?!?!

I sold my MBA to buy a surface Pro. A 11" 128GB MBA is $1099, versus a 128GB surface Pro with a touch cover is $1099. I'm getting the ability to detach it and use it as a tablet, I'm getting a Wacom digitizer and pen, etc etc. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but it just doesn't seem like much rocket science to see why it's priced the way it is. It's not meant to be compared to other tablets, just as much as you wouldn't compare the macbook Air to the ipad, or would you?
 
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