Microsoft Prices Pro Version Of Surface At $899

Ur_Mom said:
Calling this a tablet would be like calling an iPad just an eReader...
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"Tablet" refers to the form factor. The Surface is a tablet form factor device, which is why Microsoft refers to it as a "tablet".
 
wonderfield said:
"Tablet" refers to the form factor. The Surface is a tablet form factor device, which is why Microsoft refers to it as a "tablet".
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maybe we need a new classification to differentiate this tablet from its inferior brethren ... maybe an UltraTablet since this is essentially an Ultrabook without a keyboard :cool:
 
Ur_Mom said:
What about an ultrabook+tablet for $1000?

This is NOT just a tablet. It's a full Windows x86 compatible tablet/ultrabook.

Calling this a tablet would be like calling an iPad just an eReader...
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It IS a tablet. You can't just slap on an external keypad and magically alter it's designated form factor. It doesn't have structural uniformity of the chassis itself and keyboard, the battery life is abysmal, the actual hardware itself is built behind the screen, completely disregarding the ability to have it in a hinged/stationary position (without the kickstand), thus you aren't able to utilize the product on your lap FREELY. Do you know what an ultrabook is? it's a sub-LAPtop. With conventional ultrabooks, the hardware is built underneath keyboard with a structurally jointed and hinged screen, remember? sub-LAPtop.

With that logic, you might as well call the iPad with an attachable keyboard an "ultrabook".

So, is it NOT a "ultrabook", it's a "tablet with an accessory". Hell, even Microsoft refers to their own product as a tablet, yet you still beg to differ.
 
I had assumed the Pro would be around $1k...which was at the limit of my "ok" price range.

However I still want to know what the battery life is like on this thing before deciding on one.
 
Xrave said:
I had assumed the Pro would be around $1k...which was at the limit of my "ok" price range.

However I still want to know what the battery life is like on this thing before deciding on one.
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Microsoft claims it will have approximately half the battery life of their Surface RT (~8 hours), so... about 4 hours. Yeah, pretty compelling for a 900 dollar tablet isn't it?
 
rhouck said:
I include "turn it on and wait for it to connect" as the same as plugging it in (the device I used was wireless as well). I found it to be inconvenient and annoying (and canceled the service when I got my iPad).
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Once it's turned on you don't have to wait for anything, it's always on. It can be setup to power down after so many minutes of activity or that can be disabled altogether. At any rate, I never said that integrated broadband wasn't cool, but if you use a lot of different devices then a MiFi has advantages and can be cool as well. One being that I'll never pay $100 extra for something that I can use with any device I want or having to tether that device with something the size on any tablet.

rhouck said:
Sitting on a laptop doing work (i.e., email, online research, writing, etc.) is extremely low bandwidth. But it needs to be always-on during that time. So I disagree with that point. You can't watch Netflix or YouTube all day, but that's not "work" either.
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A MiFi can always be on for any device paired to it. An external battery is best for this that does add about 2 ounce and an .5" of thickness but it will add runtime to the attached devices. Not trying to make this a big deal, I'll say it again, the integrated broadband is nice, but it doesn't have an advantage of always on over MiFi.

rhouck said:
And I am saying that for me in the business world I operate in, not having LTE is the one deal breaker. I certainly acknowledge that not everyone has the same requirements. :)
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Fair enough. It doesn't have integrated LTE and if you need it, you need it, but I don't see that as a problem for most that would be interested in this device. LTE is an option if needed other ways, digital pens not so much.

rhouck said:
And I disagree that they are not weak in the phone/tablet market -- I have been shocked at how big iOS device rollout has been recently, when it is a highly limited and (should be) an inferior product. Yet Microsoft has bungled releasing quality products to capture this market. They certainly are not going bankrupt, but they are missing market share.
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Microsoft is weak in the tablet/phone space in terms of market share. That said there are some very interesting Windows 8 devices that are starting to come out with interesting capabilities.

rhouck said:
I use $50 for 5GB/mo (though I don't come anywhere near using it all each month). Last I checked, Verizon went as low as 1GB for $20 and 2GB for $30. IIRC the overage charge is $20/1GB (so worth it to pay for more if you'll always use it, but not the end of the world to go lower).
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Depends on what I'm doing, if I'm out of town. Sure if you're only doing light things it's 5GB is plenty. But heck, I'm paying Verzion $80 a month for this stuff and I use it. The MiFi goes everywhere with me and a laptop or tablet or both and it beings to become easy to hit the cap if one constantly is using with lots of devices.

rhouck said:
Again, with my personal experience using my iPad, both on its own and as a hotspot, I can get a significant amount of work done with 5GB of data. I don't consider $50/mo to be expensive when it allows me to bill out at $400/hr (and business eats the cost regardless), especially when the bulk of it is low bandwidth (e.g., emails with .doc attachments, maybe some .ppt, etc.).
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Sure, I get that. The main reason I have mine is because I do get a subsidy from work for half the bill and if it's paying for itself then of course. But this an expensive connection and that turns consumers and businesses off. But for some it's well worth it.

rhouck said:
So once more, I recognize that everyone has different data usage requirements and that many people do not care about LTE. My personal opinion is that there are people (like myself) for whom it is an important issue, and (based on my personal experience) there are a lot of people who would be shocked at how beneficial it is, but just don't realize it yet. :) Hopefully they roll out an LTE option soon!
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On thing that you have to consider is that this is already a power hungry device. If you truly need what ot can do and need LTE a MiFi will save an lot of battery on the device. Turn it on, put it in belt clip or pocket and forget it and save battery life on a device that needs it.
 
nOrVow said:
Microsoft claims it will have approximately half the battery life of their Surface RT (~8 hours), so... about 4 hours. Yeah, pretty compelling for a 900 dollar tablet isn't it?
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Well, since the surface should run Heroes of Might and Magic ... Civilization 5 ... Full Office 2003/2007/2010 ... and maybe even Crysis (with some settings turned off) ... which the iPad, Kindles, and Androids cannot do, then I still give it the compelling grade ;)
 
kbrickley said:
Well, since the surface should run Heroes of Might and Magic ... Civilization 5 ... Full Office 2003/2007/2010 ... and maybe even Crysis (with some settings turned off) ... which the iPad, Kindles, and Androids cannot do, then I still give it the compelling grade ;)
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I'm sure that's more than practical, good luck with that.
 
I think $899 is about right myself. Laptops with Core i5 and 1080p screen cost about the same or more too.
 
nOrVow said:
I'm sure that's more than practical, good luck with that.
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Why wouldn't it be ... the Surface actually has a REAL processor in it (an i5) ... not the bastardized substandard ARM pretenders ... the graphics are probably weak but who knows ... I don't think anyone has been able to test the Surface Pro yet ... they might also be able to put more powerful chipsets in it eventually ... having a fully backwards compatible x86 tablet is a good thing in my book :cool:
 
nOrVow said:
It IS a tablet. You can't just slap on an external keypad and magically alter it's designated form factor. It doesn't have structural uniformity of the chassis itself and keyboard, the battery life is abysmal, the actual hardware itself is built behind the screen, completely disregarding the ability to have it in a hinged/stationary position (without the kickstand), thus you aren't able to utilize the product on your lap FREELY. Do you know what an ultrabook is? it's a sub-LAPtop. With conventional ultrabooks, the hardware is built underneath keyboard with a structurally jointed and hinged screen, remember? sub-LAPtop.

With that logic, you might as well call the iPad with an attachable keyboard an "ultrabook".

So, is it NOT a "ultrabook", it's a "tablet with an accessory". Hell, even Microsoft refers to their own product as a tablet, yet you still beg to differ.
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Fine, dude, you win. It's 'just' a tablet. Ultrabooks are 'just' laptops, by definition. There can be no crossing boundaries. Those convertible laptop/tablet's that Lenovo made, those are 'just' laptops, really. You can't use a tablet as a laptop/ultrabook, either. That'd be too confusing.
 
kbrickley said:
maybe we need a new classification to differentiate this tablet from its inferior brethren ... maybe an UltraTablet since this is essentially an Ultrabook without a keyboard :cool:
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Great point. The term tablet is fairly meaningless these days as it has had a lot of different meanings to different people over the years, from form factor to input method to iPads, etc. I think it is starting to become more aligned with form factor classification but many people refer to mobile OS devices still though Tablet PCs actually predate these devices.

Indeed what's so fascinating about Windows 8 and devices like the Surface are that are indeed Tablet PC 2.0. Everything in Tablet PCs from 2002 is there in many Windows 8 tablet and hybrid devices. Digital pens having a big presence in Windows still almost shocks me. I'm a huge proponent of pens with tablets as they are such a natural way to do natural things on tablet devices like writing and drawing and these forms of input are always going to be with us, they are the cornerstones of human expression.

But inking always seemed to face a lot of resistance, particularly from certain technical crowds that believed in the inherent superiority of keyboard and mouse input, though pens were really never meant to replace keyboards and mice.

I guess one reason why I never thought that Windows 8 was that big of a deal in some ways because I've seen a lot of it before in the original Tablet PC. In the back of my mind, if Windows 8 doesn't prove to be successful, I would tend to think that it would have something to do with being derived directly from the Tablet PC concept that was technically a failure, though for some reason never died even having failed.
 
nOrVow said:
Microsoft claims it will have approximately half the battery life of their Surface RT (~8 hours), so... about 4 hours. Yeah, pretty compelling for a 900 dollar tablet isn't it?
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That might be a video loop test. I can get better battery life than that out of my year old Samsung Series 7 Slate with general use. Battery life an Achilles' heel of these kinds of devices, no doubt about it.
 
Awesome, I figured it would start at $999. It is pretty neat. I'd like one. With the pen and all this is perfect for class and using around the house when I'm not in my office. I don't get where people are getting upset with this price, it's a fucking i5 w/ a 1080p IPS panel in a form factor barely bigger than a children's picture book. Sounds awesome to me.
 
Also I agree, I'd love to msft take RIMs lunch w/ their phone and tablet. They need to market more toward businesses imho, consumer market will follow.

Domain joined phones that IT can lock down not much different than their work laptops they already manage all without ever having to use anything but the msft software they already use? Yes please.
 
Who cares about categories. At the end of the day they're all computers and they all do the same thing: compute.
 
Azhar said:
Who cares about categories. At the end of the day they're all computers and they all do the same thing: compute.
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One of the recent Maximum PC issues had a rather pointed editorial on why a PC category can't include certain products like ipads and Android tablets ... I think we can overdo the category classifications but we definitely need something that differentiates a real computing tablet (like the Surface and other x86 tablets) from the primarily entertainment oriented tablets using Android and iOS and the inferior and non-compatible ARM processors ;)
 
kbrickley said:
maybe we need a new classification to differentiate this tablet from its inferior brethren ... maybe an UltraTablet since this is essentially an Ultrabook without a keyboard :cool:
Click to expand...

I like this name... ultratablet.
 
kbrickley said:
Why wouldn't it be ... the Surface actually has a REAL processor in it (an i5) ... not the bastardized substandard ARM pretenders ... the graphics are probably weak but who knows ... I don't think anyone has been able to test the Surface Pro yet ... they might also be able to put more powerful chipsets in it eventually ... having a fully backwards compatible x86 tablet is a good thing in my book :cool:
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ARM SoCs - pseudo-x86 processors everybody!! What a well informed insight on those discrepancies.

k.
 
Fair price for the formfactor and specs.

Now if only they offered a keyboard with a battery built in to make the device bottom heavy and double the battery life when needed for work.
 
ClearM4 said:
Fair price for the formfactor and specs.

Now if only they offered a keyboard with a battery built in to make the device bottom heavy and double the battery life when needed for work.
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You mean like this?

http://transformerbook.asus.com/

IMO, the Surface Pro needs a keyboard dock with an extra battery and a backlit keyboard. Or the Transformer Book needs to be a tad smaller and come with a Wacom pen. Either one would suit me.

If neither of these devices knocks my socks off I may just wait for Haswell.
 
I like that a pen is being standardized by MS (wacom?), so hopefully developers would build features around the strength of a active digitizer (high precision, precision, hoovering, and tilting for advanced pens).

However, all laptops, tablet, portables are going to be "yawn" with Haswell coming out so soon. The new and much faster iGPU of Haswell itself will be a huge selling point for me.
 
kbrickley said:
Why wouldn't it be ... the Surface actually has a REAL processor in it (an i5) ... not the bastardized substandard ARM pretenders ... the graphics are probably weak but who knows ... I don't think anyone has been able to test the Surface Pro yet ... they might also be able to put more powerful chipsets in it eventually ... having a fully backwards compatible x86 tablet is a good thing in my book :cool:
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I would love to see what speed they have that processor clocked at, I am willing to bet it is down clocked pretty far.

Then you have the little problem called heat dissipation, should be interesting to see how well it handles, especially if it doesn't have a fan.

I also want to point out that it is still an i5 w/hd4000 graphics, so no, you probably not going to be doing much gaming on it.
 
the price isn't terrible for what you get, but I'm not really sure who they're targeting with this.

tablets just don't work very good as a content creation device. They're a little cumbersome... much better for content consumption. So outside of microsoft fans and maybe some niche work environments, I really can't see why anyone would get one of these over an Android or iOS (or even RT) tablet.
 
darkstarcow said:
I would love to see what speed they have that processor clocked at, I am willing to bet it is down clocked pretty far.

Then you have the little problem called heat dissipation, should be interesting to see how well it handles, especially if it doesn't have a fan.

I also want to point out that it is still an i5 w/hd4000 graphics, so no, you probably not going to be doing much gaming on it.
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I am not looking at it to replace a gaming desktop ... I have one of those ... but if it will game as well as my iPad I could switch my mobile gaming from iPad to a Surface ... I could never switch to an Android tablet due to iOS app lock-in and their limited number of really good games ... but since I have an extensive number of legacy games and programs for Windows that might offset the app losses I would face if I switched ;)

My work laptop is a rather bulky i5 Dell with no special features (and I suspect that is similar to most people in the corporate world) ... I suspect that the surface might be as good or close enough to that type of a system to replace them (and it is a lot more convenient for travel if you are the road warrior type) ... the battery life wouldn't be that big an issue either since most laptops don't pull in high battery life without underpowered processors to very big batteries :cool:
 
nOrVow said:
Microsoft claims it will have approximately half the battery life of their Surface RT (~8 hours), so... about 4 hours. Yeah, pretty compelling for a 900 dollar tablet isn't it?
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Well, Anandtech Surface RT testing got 10.5 hours of video playback. So, more probable to 5.25 hours of battery life, which is closer to the 42.5W battery that comes with it, considering that a Lenovo T530 with a 6600mAh battery (or 73.3Wh) is said to last around 10 hours of use (and the Surface Pro battery is 58% the size of that battery, which should last for around 5.5 hours).
 
kbrickley said:
One of the recent Maximum PC issues had a rather pointed editorial on why a PC category can't include certain products like ipads and Android tablets ... I think we can overdo the category classifications but we definitely need something that differentiates a real computing tablet (like the Surface and other x86 tablets) from the primarily entertainment oriented tablets using Android and iOS and the inferior and non-compatible ARM processors ;)
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Tablet PC (vs just a tablet) is the traditional term used to refer to x86-based tablets.

That being said, I'd hardly call the ARM architecture inferior. For starters, it doesn't rely on a power-hungry decoder to translate x86 instructions into RISC ops. In addition, programming in x86 assembler is like banging your head into a wall repeatedly; ARM assembler is a dream by comparison.

Yes, the Core i5 is faster than the Tegra 3 and the other ARM chips. This is because the Core i5 is not focused on power usage, it is focused on performance. That doesn't make the ARM chip inferior, it simply means the design has different priorities; the Core i5 will drink juice from the battery like an alcoholic chugging down beer at a bar.

Also, QEMU allows for the running of x86 code on ARM chips. In fact, people have successfully managed to get WINE (Runs Windows programs) running on ARM/Android using QEMU.
 
I just hope that MS has the patience to stick with this form factor to give it a shot at traction ... if they bail on the form factor too quickly like HP did with their own tablet form factor then it might make for some nice bargains but MS will essentially be locked out of the tablet market ... hopefully they give it a couple of years at least and a couple of design iterations to let business get their feet wet with this one ... I still think this could be a compelling alternative to businesses wanting to go tablet form factor but not losing the security and legacy software support they get with Windows ... besides it is nice to have a tablet that has usb 3.0, micro SD, and a display out ... I will eagerly watch for folks to get their hands on this in January :D
 
damicatz said:
Tablet PC (vs just a tablet) is the traditional term used to refer to x86-based tablets.

That being said, I'd hardly call the ARM architecture inferior. For starters, it doesn't rely on a power-hungry decoder to translate x86 instructions into RISC ops. In addition, programming in x86 assembler is like banging your head into a wall repeatedly; ARM assembler is a dream by comparison.

Yes, the Core i5 is faster than the Tegra 3 and the other ARM chips. This is because the Core i5 is not focused on power usage, it is focused on performance. That doesn't make the ARM chip inferior, it simply means the design has different priorities; the Core i5 will drink juice from the battery like an alcoholic chugging down beer at a bar.

Also, QEMU allows for the running of x86 code on ARM chips. In fact, people have successfully managed to get WINE (Runs Windows programs) running on ARM/Android using QEMU.
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I am not in IT so I look at computers as a tool for work and a toy for home ... in those two capacities x86 is more compatible with what I need ... my employer isn't extremely large (200,000 or so employees) but we don't use Linux anywhere in the mainstream areas (if it is in the server side it is hidden from the normal workers) so Windows desktop/laptop applications are most compatible with my needs ... at home I don't like having to jump through hoops to get my games to run so Windows suits my needs there also (especially since I have the full MS Office at home as well as work) ...

I do have an iOS tablet but I use it as an entertainment device primarily ... all the Android tablets I have seen are in the same bucket (as far as I can tell) ... this is the first tablet that seems to bring the convenience of the smaller form factors with the full potential to be a workhorse as well ... hard to tell until it hits the market but that is why I perceive ARM as a weaker contender than ARM ... most of the people who seem to sing the praises of ARM are IT types and not typical business users and they are almost never gamers :cool:
 
kbrickley said:
I am not in IT so I look at computers as a tool for work and a toy for home ... in those two capacities x86 is more compatible with what I need ... my employer isn't extremely large (200,000 or so employees) but we don't use Linux anywhere in the mainstream areas (if it is in the server side it is hidden from the normal workers) so Windows desktop/laptop applications are most compatible with my needs ... at home I don't like having to jump through hoops to get my games to run so Windows suits my needs there also (especially since I have the full MS Office at home as well as work) ...

I do have an iOS tablet but I use it as an entertainment device primarily ... all the Android tablets I have seen are in the same bucket (as far as I can tell) ... this is the first tablet that seems to bring the convenience of the smaller form factors with the full potential to be a workhorse as well ... hard to tell until it hits the market but that is why I perceive ARM as a weaker contender than ARM ... most of the people who seem to sing the praises of ARM are IT types and not typical business users and they are almost never gamers :cool:
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200,000 employees is huge. I'd hate to see what your definition of extremely large is if that isn't what you consider it to be.

ARM is definitely gaining on the server end of things; most of the ARM processors you have encountered are for low-power mobile devices but we are starting to see scaled up ARM chips inside servers now that are designed for performance. Even with the changed focus, they still use less power and that means more money in the bank for the businesses that use them.
 
damicatz said:
200,000 employees is huge. I'd hate to see what your definition of extremely large is if that isn't what you consider it to be.

ARM is definitely gaining on the server end of things; most of the ARM processors you have encountered are for low-power mobile devices but we are starting to see scaled up ARM chips inside servers now that are designed for performance. Even with the changed focus, they still use less power and that means more money in the bank for the businesses that use them.
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But only about 30,000-40,000 people probably have computers ... most are just line workers in China or Eastern Europe ... so we still aren't that big ... I am sure companies like GE, GM, Ford, and the like are much bigger than us ... we are also only about a third the size of our chief competitor ;)
 
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