Microsoft Marks Down Surface Pro Tablet by $100

[Azhar]

You said this when surface launched, and you say it now but as I said it failed miserably. I am sorry its just not true enough. We already know now that RT was a flop and MS sure isn't running out to tell people what a slam dunk pro is. I have seen less pros than RT in the wild. I think in time we will see that pro was a flop too.

No one can do any writing like a pen and paper if its dead. Its obviously not important enough to be light if it sacrifices the usability of the device.

RT doesn't support digitizer pen to begin with. This is about the Pro.

 

[webdev511]

Nothing odd going on here, just clearing the channel for Haswell powered versions. Battery life should be improved and MS should pull their head out and include the keyboard. It also wouldn't hurt to include a fully functional dock so people could use it as a desktop as well.

 

[siliconnerd]

My biggest problem with the surface is it really doesn't work very well as a laptop on anything but a table. When I demoed one, it was very hard to use on my lap without feeling like the tablet was going to fall off the keyboard and onto the ground.

 

[Azhar]

My biggest problem with the surface is it really doesn't work very well as a laptop on anything but a table. When I demoed one, it was very hard to use on my lap without feeling like the tablet was going to fall off the keyboard and onto the ground.

well it's not a laptop, hence it doesn't work well on laps.

 

[BBA]

well it's not a laptop, hence it doesn't work well on laps.

To me, it's a tablet I can use in a car to program the PCM and data log performance. Don't need a keyboard. The Surface Pro is currently the best one at being able to do that.

 

[BBA]

At that price you're better off getting a real notebook.
.

Find one that compares, that has a 1080p screen, that can be used as a tablet, for the same or lower cost. I'll let you know ahead of time: It's not an easy task.

 

[BladeVenom]

The pro is doing great. The article says that almost every analyst believes the pro is doing great. They interview the lone analyst at a no one cares website who thinks the pro didnt do great.

The Pro is not doing great. It might be doing better than RT, but RT is a complete failure. Almost no one thinks the pro is doing great.

Surface Pro and Surface RT earned only $853 million combined, yet there was a $898 million increase in Microsoft's advertising, and a $900 million write down.

 

[Ponder]

x86 CPUs have simply never been geared for tablets, it is a longstanding problem that is just now beginning to make significant strides to solution. The Surface Pro for what it is is a very nice piece of hardware but of course is it expensive and the battery life isn't there.

This is exactly the problem. If they make an x86 chip with exceptional battery life people will complain about performance. If they make one with snappy performance they will complain about battery life. Physics/manufacturing limits what they can do so in the end they are in a rough spot, combine the above with desire to protect existing revenue streams... and you have firms in a bad place with little desire to Osbourne themselves. Both firms are accustom to very high profit margins and have little desire to make an exceptional lowend x86 processor. Eventually they will or leave the market.

In the end they knew what to do and decided they could force the market. Why go the long slow way when you can force the market to skip ahead. It was a mistake and hopefully they have learned from their lesson. The other problem woth mentioning is that for the surface to have gone well it required Intel and Microsoft to execute. Both fell a little short.

 

[Adidas4275]

they just needed to make fewer, keep demand up (like the Wii from a while back) and then refresh the hardware with Haswell rather than keeping it with IB for a long time.

Haswell has the battery life we want in a tablet.

from all accounts the hardware build it top notch and the price is reasonable for the hardware.

3rd party vendors just need to keep being innovative and push the market.


Currently there are no W8 tablets that have USB3, full size SD card slot, fanless, non-atom based, with a high res screen.

I know there are hardware limitations, but it is time one of the 3rd party vendors put the time and effort in to develop new and innovative hardware rather than just putting out the intel speced designs.

The Samsung ATIV 700 pro and the Acer W700 and then Asus model.... none have USB 3.0 and SD card slot on the tablet.... USB 2.0 or micro SD.

I want a Windows tablet so i can plug in my camera SD card and a flash drive or HDD without adapters and get fast transfer speeds.

with USB 2.0 and microSD is it no better than an android tablet

 

[heatlesssun]

In the end they knew what to do and decided they could force the market. Why go the long slow way when you can force the market to skip ahead. It was a mistake and hopefully they have learned from their lesson. The other problem woth mentioning is that for the surface to have gone well it required Intel and Microsoft to execute. Both fell a little short.

I'm not exactly sure how Microsoft forced the market with the Surface Pro hardware at least as x86 tablets have been around long before the iPad and Android tablets. Microsoft certainly was asleep at the switch with tablets but the same could be said of Intel and x86 tablet hardware that's just starting to get good enough for tablets. The next six months should be interesting with Haswell and Bay Trail designs on the way.

 

[heatlesssun]

with USB 2.0 and microSD is it no better than an android tablet

Actually the Surface Pro does have USB 3.0. Full sized SD slots would be nice but space is an issue, SD cards with adapters takes care of most of the problem here.

 

[DPI]

I know there are hardware limitations, but it is time one of the 3rd party vendors put the time and effort in to develop new and innovative hardware rather than just putting out the intel speced designs.

Just curious, why is it incumbent upon third parties to "put in time and effort to develop new and innovative hardware" when MS hasn't met them halfway by delivering a new and innovative operating system?

In other words why should they invest further millions into producing products that consumers won't buy, aren't buying?

I see no turnaround anytime soon. If you think Intel is going to be the great hope you're in for some heartache, because they've been gearing up and retooling for an Android future.

 

[Wrench00]

Just curious, why is it incumbent upon third parties to "put in time and effort to develop new and innovative hardware" when MS hasn't met them halfway by delivering a new and innovative operating system?

In other words why should they invest further millions into producing products that consumers won't buy, aren't buying?

I see no turnaround anytime soon. If you think Intel is going to be the great hope you're in for some heartache, because they've been gearing up and retooling for an Android future.

+1. Yep I agree. So MS great experiment is now OEM's responsibility? MS is now finding the hard lesson that every OEM has known for a long time. Maybe MS should have done some R&D before releasing their "vision" and trying to force everyone to change. WTF. MS has always been evolutionary not revolutionary and this is why they have been so succesfull.

 

[nekrosoft13]

if they mark it down to $100 then maybe i would buy one

 

[heatlesssun]

if they mark it down to $100 then maybe i would buy one

You might be thinking of the Surface RT, the CPU in the Pro costs over twice $100.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

You might be thinking of the Surface RT, the CPU in the Pro costs over twice $100.

I think Neko meant $100 for the Pro and I agree. I'd consider a Surface Pro at $100 and the RT at about $50-70. I'd be willing to pay a little more for either, but not much when I can get a cheapo laptop with a lot more hard drive space for a lot less and not have to get a keyboard and touchpad because a laptop includes them already.

 

[Objekt]

I think Neko meant $100 for the Pro and I agree. I'd consider a Surface Pro at $100 and the RT at about $50-70. I'd be willing to pay a little more for either, but not much when I can get a cheapo laptop with a lot more hard drive space for a lot less and not have to get a keyboard and touchpad because a laptop includes them already.

Thanks for articulating what I was trying to think of how to write earlier. Basically the price point on the Surface Pro is such that I'm just not very motivated.

It's super-expensive for a tablet, and also overpriced for a notebook that is, well, crippled, frankly, because you have to buy the keyboard/cover to the tune of another $100.

Then there's the storage. On the 64 GB version, as I understand it you get around half that in usable space because of the OS and default app installs.

So you either pay a hell of a buttload for a more-capable tablet (has keyboard, USB port, uSD slot, and stylus, unlike comparably-priced iPad) which is short on storage.

Or you are paying too much for a slightly less-capable notebook.

Maybe I'm just too fussy/cheap. But if the Pro - *with keyboard/cover thankyouverymuch* - went for more like $599 (for the 64 GB version maybe) I'd have to give it a serious look.

The RT Surface is little more than a fancy paperweight. The app store will be dead before long probably, lots of functionality is dumbed-down or removed, and you can't even put your own OS on it. Even for $50 what are you going to do with it? Glorified digital picture frame?

 

[Objekt]

people would rather pay $800 for a crippled ipad than a full featured surface

MS fails again at the tablet just like the first time a decade ago.

It's worse than that, even. An $800 MSRP iPad (if you can do without the cellular data bits) has 128 GB storage. An $800 Surface Pro has half that, and doesn't come with the keyboard/cover (that's another $129).

 

[heatlesssun]

I think Neko meant $100 for the Pro and I agree. I'd consider a Surface Pro at $100 and the RT at about $50-70. I'd be willing to pay a little more for either, but not much when I can get a cheapo laptop with a lot more hard drive space for a lot less and not have to get a keyboard and touchpad because a laptop includes them already.

You can't get anything close to the Surface Pro for a $100. At that price Microsoft couldn't make even enough and they'd be writing down a lot more than that $900 million on the RT.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

You can't get anything close to the Surface Pro for a $100. At that price Microsoft couldn't make even enough and they'd be writing down a lot more than that $900 million on the RT.

Actually, it'd be more like $200 because you still have to get the keyboard and mouse attachment. So let's use that price as a point to compare.

I could buy this:

http://www.cedarpc.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=26271

It's a Dell Latitude E6400 which has a bigger screen that stands up by itself because it's supported by the system and more storage space. I'd say a much better deal for only $200 and if you look at the actual retail price of a Surface Pro with a keyboard thingey, you can easily buy four so you have fun for the whole family.

Or I could buy these:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mead-Composition-Book-Wide-Rule-9-3-4-x-7-1-2-100-Sheets-4-Pack/21089943

At $7.88 you can totally freeform anything you want in not one, but four notebooks that not only have larger amounts of working space on each page, but can be totally run over by a car in a parking lot and still work, though you do need to steal a pen from your coworker's desk. Also, if you buy $200 worth of them, you can afford 100 composition books (rounding down of course) and you could buy well over 400 composition books for the price of a Surface Pro with each one being more durable and more flexible (literally and figuratively). Plus you don't have to be burdened with stupid stuff like buying applications to design a tower or Office to get OneNote. You're only limited by the power of your mind to imagine and the power of your hand to draw.

 

[SGTGimpy]

RT doesn't support digitizer pen to begin with. This is about the Pro.

Wrong, the same pen the comes with the Pro works on the RT. I know because it is working on my Surface RT no problem.

 

[BBA]

with USB 2.0 and microSD is it no better than an android tablet

Except that you can run real software on the Pro...I'd almost agree.

 

[heatlesssun]

I could buy this:

http://www.cedarpc.com/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=26271

That's a piece of junk compared to the Surface Pro.

Or I could buy these:

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Mead-Composition-Book-Wide-Rule-9-3-4-x-7-1-2-100-Sheets-4-Pack/21089943

At $7.88 you can totally freeform anything you want in not one, but four notebooks that not only have larger amounts of working space on each page, but can be totally run over by a car in a parking lot and still work, though you do need to steal a pen from your coworker's desk. Also, if you buy $200 worth of them, you can afford 100 composition books (rounding down of course) and you could buy well over 400 composition books for the price of a Surface Pro with each one being more durable and more flexible (literally and figuratively). Plus you don't have to be burdened with stupid stuff like buying applications to design a tower or Office to get OneNote. You're only limited by the power of your mind to imagine and the power of your hand to draw.

I'll never get these comparisons between physical notebooks and something like a pen enabled Tablet PC running something like OneNote and all of the other pen capable applications out there. There's just no comparison, digital note taking is far more powerful. Trying scanning paper into a paper note book, converting handwriting to text, searching on keywords, even handwritten words or words in images, pasting contents of a web page, inserting a photograph, changing ink color and thickness on the fly or emailing the content of a page. OneNote books can automatically sync up over the cloud or personal network, I have multiple copies of my OneNote note books and having lost a single page in the ten years I've been using OneNote.

 

[heatlesssun]

Wrong, the same pen the comes with the Pro works on the RT. I know because it is working on my Surface RT no problem.

I don't see how that's possible, the Surface RT doesn't have a Wacom digitizer.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

That's a piece of junk compared to the Surface Pro.

For being pieces of junk, a lot more of them were purchased than Surface tablets. Dell sold bajillions of them. The industry thinks much less of the Surface Pro given sales numbers so I'd say your opinion is different than that of the industry as a whole which thinks the Surface Pro is junk.

I'll never get these comparisons between physical notebooks and something like a pen enabled Tablet PC running something like OneNote and all of the other pen capable applications out there. There's just no comparison, digital note taking is far more powerful. Trying scanning paper into a paper note book, converting handwriting to text, searching on keywords, even handwritten words or words in images, pasting contents of a web page, inserting a photograph, changing ink color and thickness on the fly or emailing the content of a page. OneNote books can automatically sync up over the cloud or personal network, I have multiple copies of my OneNote note books and having lost a single page in the ten years I've been using OneNote.

You're right that there's no compairson. Paper is more powerful and more flexible and has a proven track record of that spans recorded human history. Despite so-called advancements like the Surface Pro, paper still exists in every business enterprise across the planet and is clearly a superior product. Going back to sales numbers, it's made more sales over its lifespan. It's stored far more critical data over a longer period of time and requires no additional equipment to utilize many years later. Office file format changes have no impact and you can't infect it with a computer virus. It's more tolerant to exposure to water and the elements and can handle much more shock. You can even crumple it into a ball and then uncrumple it to recover the information stored on it which not a single Surface device can manage. Superior and cheaper in many, many ways and sales figures plus countless thousands of years of human history support my assertion over yours.

(Also, all those arguments you've been making in this forum about how predictions of market failure for the Surface were unfounded...yeah, you were wrong. It's okay to admit it to me. You'll be a much bigger and better person if you say, "CreepyUncleGoogle, all those people who said it wouldn't sell and was an unwanted product...they were right and I was wrong. I was a fanatic and didn't want it to happen, but now I've grown as a person and can admit my mistake. Thanks for helping me see the error in my nefarious ways.")

 

[heatlesssun]

For being pieces of junk, a lot more of them were purchased than Surface tablets. Dell sold bajillions of them. The industry thinks much less of the Surface Pro given sales numbers so I'd say your opinion is different than that of the industry as a whole which thinks the Surface Pro is junk.

High volume products like aren't necessarily all that great, though when new the E6400 was a decent machine, I had one as work laptop.

Paper is more powerful and more flexible and has a proven track record of that spans recorded human history.

I just listed a half dozen things that paper can't do, yet paper is far more powerful and flexible? Paper was great, but historically it has had its share of problems. Before the printing press, it was extremely difficult to replicate paper based information. Paper is far from indescribable and still isn't nearly as easy to duplicate as digital info. That's not to say that paper doesn't have a place still but as things become more and more digital, paper's use in the world is slowly but surely declining. Just look at the newspaper and brick and mortar book store businesses.

It's stored far more critical data over a longer period of time and requires no additional equipment to utilize many years later.

While paper has obviously been in use my guess is that the amount of information stored digitally exceeds that of paper today, probably by a large about. What's the volume on data stored in the Internet these days? Then take every databases of every company and government and the even the fact that much of the paper in use is imaged digitally and that the bulk of all information contained in books is now digital.

Office file format changes have no impact and you can't infect it with a computer virus.
It's more tolerant to exposure to water and the elements and can handle much more shock. You can even crumple it into a ball and then uncrumple it to recover the information stored on it which not a single Surface device can manage. Superior and cheaper in many, many ways and sales figures plus countless thousands of years of human history support my assertion over yours.

Individual devices and storage can be damaged but digital information is so much easier to replicate and transmit that that does make it more resilient than paper.

(Also, all those arguments you've been making in this forum about how predictions of market failure for the Surface were unfounded...yeah, you were wrong. It's okay to admit it to me. You'll be a much bigger and better person if you say, "CreepyUncleGoogle, all those people who said it wouldn't sell and was an unwanted product...they were right and I was wrong. I was a fanatic and didn't want it to happen, but now I've grown as a person and can admit my mistake. Thanks for helping me see the error in my nefarious ways.")

I never really made any market predictions for the Surface. I said the moment that the Surface RT was announced that it would have a uphill battle because of it's pricing and lack of x86 compatibility. I supposedly the Microsoft fanboy and the first Windows 8 device I bought was a Clover Trail because they have great battery like and more utility than Windows RT devices, and yes, a digital pen. As for the Surface Pro, I saw it as nothing more than a very nice Tablet PC, nothing all that revolutionary and these devices have never sold in large quantity because of price and battery life issues, as the Surface Pro has though the price isn't bad for what it is compared historically to Tablet PCs. For what it is, the Pro probably sold well, and again, those numbers have always been low.

 

[CreepyUncleGoogle]

High volume products like aren't necessarily all that great, though when new the E6400 was a decent machine, I had one as work laptop.

Why call it junk then? Production is production is production. Volumes scale past a few units and it's pretty much the same across the board at the old assembly line regardless of whether or not it's a Surface Pro or a Dell business laptop. Except that the laptop features a lot more storage space, is easier to upgrade, has a larger screen, optical drive, wired network connectivity, more USB ports, the ability to plug into an external screen, support multiple large capacity batteries, comes standard with a larger hard drive, and ships with a keyboard, touchpad, and pointing stick included at no extra cost. It has huge numbers of advantages over the Surface Pro despite being a lot older.

I just listed a half dozen things that paper can't do, yet paper is far more powerful and flexible? Paper was great, but historically it has had its share of problems. Before the printing press, it was extremely difficult to replicate paper based information. Paper is far from indescribable and still isn't nearly as easy to duplicate as digital info. That's not to say that paper doesn't have a place still but as things become more and more digital, paper's use in the world is slowly but surely declining. Just look at the newspaper and brick and mortar book store businesses.

While paper has obviously been in use my guess is that the amount of information stored digitally exceeds that of paper today, probably by a large about. What's the volume on data stored in the Internet these days? Then take every databases of every company and government and the even the fact that much of the paper in use is imaged digitally and that the bulk of all information contained in books is now digital.

Most of the additional information only becomes necessary because you're not using paper to begin with. I don't need an operating system or programs and applications when I have a sheet of paper and a pen so my storage and data processing requirements decline dramatically so that they fit neatly into the storage limits of the paper medium. Plus, if I want to double my data density, I can turn over the page which is awesomesauce in so many ways. Also, paper is naturally already a retina-quality display because you can't see the individual pixels on it and never need to worry about whether or not you have competitive specifications or if your paper meets the minimum system requirements for a particular software package.

Individual devices and storage can be damaged but digital information is so much easier to replicate and transmit that that does make it more resilient than paper.

Which has nothing at all to do with dropping a Surface Pro into a puddle when it slips out of your purse while you're in a hurry to get to a meeting. Not only did you lose all your data, but you also lost an expensive device. On the other hand, paper usually survives that kinda thing and doesn't cost as much to replace.

I never really made any market predictions for the Surface. I said the moment that the Surface RT was announced that it would have a uphill battle because of it's pricing and lack of x86 compatibility. I supposedly the Microsoft fanboy and the first Windows 8 device I bought was a Clover Trail because they have great battery like and more utility than Windows RT devices, and yes, a digital pen. As for the Surface Pro, I saw it as nothing more than a very nice Tablet PC, nothing all that revolutionary and these devices have never sold in large quantity because of price and battery life issues, as the Surface Pro has though the price isn't bad for what it is compared historically to Tablet PCs. For what it is, the Pro probably sold well, and again, those numbers have always been low.

Microsoft is competing with Apple and other tablet device manufacturers. In order to do that effectively, they have to sell in equal or better volume. That means outselling the iPad and those spyware devices Google sells under the name Android. They didn't manage to get close. In fact, they didn't manage to compete at all and lost a lot of money doing it. I'm surprised you didn't see this whole thing where you'd have to admit you weren't right kinda coming a year ago.

Don't get me wrong, I don't really mind the Win8 or tablet thing. Even the Surface RT would be interesting if it had a 4 inch screen and sold for about $50 so I could actually carry one the way I wanna. Even the UI is totally not a big deal to me except that Modern UI's browser is sorta annoying to use with all the dumb gestures and finding stuff without typing and having a keyboard is frustrating too. Also, the colors are kinda flat and not at all pretty. I also prefer rounded corners or something other than plain squares or rectangles. I didn't really find live tiles useful either since I prefer just going to a website to get stuff that I'm interested in and I did end up using a Start menu replacer thing. I also have a clicky tile that gets me to the desktop so I don't have to look at the UI and I think the app store isn't very helpful either. It was really slow on an AMD E-350 but worked fine on a Pentium M and a Sempron 3000+ so that was weirdly silly too. It doesn't really boot any faster than Windows 7 unless you give it a SSD so the thing with it being faster seems sort of not true. I also didn't get any extra battery life that I noticed. So yeah, despite all those little things, Windows 8 is pretty much okay and the Surface Pro would be great at $100. I'd buy one and then get a little stand for it so I could put it on my desk in my bedroom to use as an alarm clock and maybe plug it into external speakers so it could be an MP3 player, but it'd be not very useful to me otherwise since I'd rather carry a laptop so I can have a keyboard and mouse and a screen that stands up on its own more easily.

 

[BladeVenom]

The next six months should be interesting with Haswell and Bay Trail designs on the way.

More powerful Chromebooks to look forward to. Sure they are already a success, but some of them could use an update.

 

[rudy]

More powerful Chromebooks to look forward to. Sure they are already a success, but some of them could use an update.

lol the trolling here is remarkable. the only thing I have seen less of than surface is chromebooks.

 

[heatlesssun]

Why call it junk then? Production is production is production. Volumes scale past a few units and it's pretty much the same across the board at the old assembly line regardless of whether or not it's a Surface Pro or a Dell business laptop. Except that the laptop features a lot more storage space, is easier to upgrade, has a larger screen, optical drive, wired network connectivity, more USB ports, the ability to plug into an external screen, support multiple large capacity batteries, comes standard with a larger hard drive, and ships with a keyboard, touchpad, and pointing stick included at no extra cost. It has huge numbers of advantages over the Surface Pro despite being a lot older.

The particular E6400 link you provided is a piece of junk compared to a Surface Pro. The Surface Pro is going be significantly faster than that E6400 and has a much better screen in terms of brightness and viewing angles, is significantly lighter and it can connect to external monitors and drive them better the its Ivy Bridge HD 4000 GPU. If one needs or wants the traditional options of a laptop like more storage, optical drive, etc. then by all means get a laptop. But that's not what a Surface Pro or any Windows 8 x86 pure tablet capable tablet is. They are lighter and are meant to be used with touch and/or pens at least some of the time and that's not something conventional laptops do. People bemoan the supposed lack of choice in the Windows 8 UI because of the lack of the Start Menu and other old UI conventions but for some reason think that a heavy non-touch or pen capable x86 laptop is always a superior option to an x86 tablet. Maybe for some or even most but certainly not for people that will actually use the device as a tablet.

Most of the additional information only becomes necessary because you're not using paper to begin with. I don't need an operating system or programs and applications when I have a sheet of paper and a pen so my storage and data processing requirements decline dramatically so that they fit neatly into the storage limits of the paper medium.

Because paper is far more limited in its ability to store data that makes it better?

Plus, if I want to double my data density, I can turn over the page which is awesomesauce in so many ways. Also, paper is naturally already a retina-quality display because you can't see the individual pixels on it and never need to worry about whether or not you have competitive specifications or if your paper meets the minimum system requirements for a particular software package.

A page in OneNote has limitless dimensions, it can continue on for a long horizontally or vertically as needed so quaint notion of flipping it over for more space is meaningless. Of course, it you want another page, just add one, if pages need to be reordered, just drag them into position. If you need to copy an existing, copy and paste.

Paper and pen is simply a recording mechanism. It's has no inherent management, replication, transmission, editing or search capabilities. These five properties are at the core of why digital information has revolutionized the world well beyond paper or other analog and non-digital recoding mechanisms. If find it interesting that a person speaking of the superior digital storage capabilities of a laptop over a tablet would somehow not think about the point of that storage.

Which has nothing at all to do with dropping a Surface Pro into a puddle when it slips out of your purse while you're in a hurry to get to a meeting. Not only did you lose all your data, but you also lost an expensive device. On the other hand, paper usually survives that kinda thing and doesn't cost as much to replace.

I've dropped a number of devices before and never catastrophically broke one like you've described. Sure it can happen but that's what backups and accidental protection are for. But even if you cracked the screen the device could still function.

Microsoft is competing with Apple and other tablet device manufacturers. In order to do that effectively, they have to sell in equal or better volume. That means outselling the iPad and those spyware devices Google sells under the name Android. They didn't manage to get close. In fact, they didn't manage to compete at all and lost a lot of money doing it. I'm surprised you didn't see this whole thing where you'd have to admit you weren't right kinda coming a year ago.

Compete doesn't necessarily mean outsell, just look at Macs. And I don't know how one looks at less than a year in a competition that will go one for many, many years and look it as a failure. Windows took 4 years to develop into something that competed with the Mac and that ended up turning out well. Be it Windows 8.x, 9 or 10 tablet capabilities are going to be core to Windows, at this point with the way the market is working there's not any choice in that. Maybe the Start Menu will come back, maybe something else. But it's simply a different computing world than with Windows 7 came out and the world isn't going to go back.

Even the UI is totally not a big deal to me except that Modern UI's browser is sorta annoying to use with all the dumb gestures and finding stuff without typing and having a keyboard is frustrating too.

Do you mean the web browser? IE 11 makes a number of improvements to the UI, one being a an option for a persistent address and tab bar if wanted. It stays at the bottom, no option to put it at the top in the preview though I know that option has been highly suggested.

Also, the colors are kinda flat and not at all pretty. I also prefer rounded corners or something other than plain squares or rectangles. I didn't really find live tiles useful either since I prefer just going to a website to get stuff that I'm interested in and I did end up using a Start menu replacer thing. I also have a clicky tile that gets me to the desktop so I don't have to look at the UI and I think the app store isn't very helpful either. It was really slow on an AMD E-350 but worked fine on a Pentium M and a Sempron 3000+ so that was weirdly silly too.

People will debate the aesthetics all day long, I think that's very good to minimize them as everyone has different opinions about them and they don't typically add anything to a functional experience.

It doesn't really boot any faster than Windows 7 unless you give it a SSD so the thing with it being faster seems sort of not true. I also didn't get any extra battery life that I noticed. So yeah, despite all those little things, Windows 8 is pretty much okay and the Surface Pro would be great at $100. I'd buy one and then get a little stand for it so I could put it on my desk in my bedroom to use as an alarm clock and maybe plug it into external speakers so it could be an MP3 player, but it'd be not very useful to me otherwise since I'd rather carry a laptop so I can have a keyboard and mouse and a screen that stands up on its own more easily.

Depends on the hardware and typically the faster the hardware the less the difference but I know all of my tablet devices run better with 8 than 7, even with clean installs on both. 8.1 seems to add even a little more performance in places. I wouldn't say in general performance is a reason to move from 7 to 8 but I will be interested to know how 8.1 stacks up, the performance gap between 7 and 8.1 will probably grow.

 

[Azhar]

Wrong, the same pen the comes with the Pro works on the RT. I know because it is working on my Surface RT no problem.

Uh, wrong. I've purchased Surface Pro and RT for my company and we sent back the RT because we didn't know it doesn't support digitizer pens. I'm not sure how you got yours working or if you're confusing digitizer pens with stylus pens.

 

[Cbshahji]

microsoft is too late to the game. but if they do keep it up and upgrade few times it will make it great choice over ipad and android devices.

 

[Ponder]

I'm not exactly sure how Microsoft forced the market with the Surface Pro hardware at least as x86 tablets have been around long before the iPad and Android tablets. Microsoft certainly was asleep at the switch with tablets but the same could be said of Intel and x86 tablet hardware that's just starting to get good enough for tablets. The next six months should be interesting with Haswell and Bay Trail designs on the way.

I did refer to Intel as well. IMHO Surface is an Intel and Microsoft Blunder. The problem is I doubt Intel really cares, even if they should. I was mainly talking Windows 8, as to me Windows 8, Surface pro and RT should be a united front. Still they tried to force an unsuitable tablet as battery life was bellow original targets. This is likely due to Intel missing key dates, but in the end it is Microsoft which decided to go ahead.

 

[heatlesssun]

More powerful Chromebooks to look forward to. Sure they are already a success, but some of them could use an update.

So after how many years have Chromebooks been on the market and just how much market share to they have? They still only show up as factions of a percent on the major web trackers. Plus capturing just a quarter of the lowest end of the market isn't exactly a reason for OEMs to crack up the bubbly just yet.

 

[Ponder]

microsoft is too late to the game. but if they do keep it up and upgrade few times it will make it great choice over ipad and android devices.

I think Microsoft is in the best position to make a serious platform, but the problem is stockholders only like so many billion dollar write downs. There really is very little reason to execute so poorly even if you have more money than sense

 

[Ponder]

So after how many years have Chromebooks been on the market and just how much market share to they have? They still only show up as factions of a percent on the major web trackers. Plus capturing just a quarter of the lowest end of the market isn't exactly a reason for OEMs to crack up the bubbly just yet.

I am also not a fan of Chromebooks. Then again they are not risking quite as much as Microsoft.

 

[rudy]

It is not just intel, first of all lets get something out of the way. MS and intel are not on the best of terms. And that is a big problem, they need each other. Intel is the one for years that kept trying to screw MS by pushing Linux for this or that. And MS snubbed intel when they said they were going ahead with ARM versions of windows 8. To say the least the relationship is uncomfortable at best. Now how ironic is it that both are slipping in market share and only have each other as strong points. At some point both will need to come to terms with this.

Second lets not blame things directly on the windows 8 interface as that is a matter of opinion. But what is not an opinion is the fact that a mac book air, which has a smaller battery can get nearly double the battery life of surface pro. If MS knew that surface was going to fall short then why the heck were they not pushing hard to make windows 8 as efficient as possible? This is just one of many blunders MS made that are separate from anyones opinions of windows 8. There is no opinion here, competitors are doing more with less.

 

[heatlesssun]

I did refer to Intel as well. IMHO Surface is an Intel and Microsoft Blunder. The problem is I doubt Intel really cares, even if they should. I was mainly talking Windows 8, as to me Windows 8, Surface pro and RT should be a united front. Still they tried to force an unsuitable tablet as battery life was bellow original targets. This is likely due to Intel missing key dates, but in the end it is Microsoft which decided to go ahead.

Intel cares very much about x86 tablets, they've spent a lot of time talking about Bay Trail and Haswell and there's a ton of power configurations in Haswell explicating for thinner and lighter designs for tablets, hybrids and ultrabooks. Like Microsoft hedged it's bets on tablets with ARM and Windows RT, Intel is doing likewise with x86 Android. But I don't see x86 Android pushing a lot a devices, like all of the super cheap and small ARM devices. Intel has almost as much riding on Windows x86 tablets, hybrids and ultrabooks as Microsoft.

 

[heatlesssun]

Second lets not blame things directly on the windows 8 interface as that is a matter of opinion. But what is not an opinion is the fact that a mac book air, which has a smaller battery can get nearly double the battery life of surface pro.

New MacBook Airs have Haswell now.

If MS knew that surface was going to fall short then why the heck were they not pushing hard to make windows 8 as efficient as possible? This is just one of many blunders MS made that are separate from anyones opinions of windows 8. There is no opinion here, competitors are doing more with less.

There was a lot of effort put into Windows 8 around battery efficiency, Windows RT is very focused on battery life, 8.1 even goes a little further. The battery life of the Surface Pro isn't a Windows 8 problem. Clover Trails, for their lack of performance get amazing battery life. I've said it a lot, but the success of Windows 8.x+ tablets is going to hinge on Bay Trail and the progression of the Atom. If that platform can deliver the performance and a bit better battery life like Intel is promising, then given good hardware are good prices Windows 8 can do well on tablets.

 

[rudy]

But apple can do almost double the battery life with a smaller battery.