Surface 2 Starting At $500?

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According to the rumor mill, Microsoft's next generation Surface will have the same $500 price tag as the original Surface RT.

But the well-connected Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet hears that Microsoft is apparently sticking with its original game plan and will price the Windows RT-based Surface 2 starting at the same $500 price that it gave to the original Surface RT. More amazingly, Foley says that Microsoft still plans to sell the Touch Cover and Type Cover click-in keyboards separately and won’t include them as part of the $500 Surface 2 package.
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And the first couple lines of the article, sum it up just perfectly!!! : "If doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results is the definition of insanity, then Microsoft may have completely lost its mind....."
 
I find it hard to believe they would do this after the huge loss they were left with on the original RT model. Someone else looking to get an early retirement? Lol.
 
Insanity. I wish I got paid a lot of money to make a company lose millions. Doesn't sound hard to do. :)
 
That would seem to be a price point for success. Clearly there's nothing else available with a first class selection of apps and games, screen quality, weight and battery life at that price point.
 
It's not really that hard to believe if MS cuts the price on RT too much they will royally piss off all their partners. It s tough spot to be in. MS is defined by its conflict of interest that hand cuffs it to certain business practices. They cannot bust into the market with an ultra low priced device unless they are going into a market not occupied by their hardware partners.
 
Why is this a surprise? It's not like the new version will have the exact same hardware as the first.
 
We have a huge Microsoft store here in Kansas City at Oak Park Mall.

It was sad going in there and walking around. Windows 8 looks like shit, the tablets are boring, the rubber plastic keyboard is cheap, the design of the store, the general attitude / vibe of the employees was blah. You could tell they all were wishing they were at working for Apple lol. Seriously.

The Microsoft store was pretty big but they had the same shit on all the tables spread out. The coolest thing was an Xboned display.

Waste of space, time and money
 
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.

The few people who have the RT really seem to like it. If MS would allow WP apps, RT would have a shot. Sadly the RT team and WP team (like many departments in MS) are at war with each other for development funding, and wont help each other out. This is the root of whats wrong as MS, and thats coming from someone who spend 6 years there.
 
Grammar fail above ... lol. Anyways, yeah. To the guy talking about hardware on the inside, it's been proven time and time again consumers do not care about what's on the inside. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They look at price first and how the device performs. End of stor

Poor Microsoft, Nokia, Xboned, etc etc. I would hate to be in their boat. Sucks being 3rd best
 
While on the surface (pun intended) this doesn't make a lot of sense and I would certainly agree that the price is too high to sell many of these things, it was a write down, not a true physical loss. In other words, had Microsoft not made as many Surface RTs to begin with there would have been no write down. They simply aren't going to stock pile the things this time. No, it won't help sales one bit, but they aren't going to have to write anything done this time either.

But there is supposedly a smaller 8" version coming, and I bet that one will have a much more interesting price point.
 
I have a Surface Pro. It does exactly what I need it to do. I never had any desire to get the RT and still don't.
 
SixFootDuo said:
We have a huge Apple store here in Oklahoma City at Penn Square Mall.

It was sad going in there and walking around. Mac OS looks like shit, the tablets with rows of icons are boring, the accessories section is ridiculously expensive, the design of the store, the general attitude / vibe of the employees and hipsters was blah. You could tell they all were wishing they were at working for MS lol. Seriously.

The Apple store was pretty big but they had the same shit on all the tables spread out with a gazillion iPads and iPhones spread out. The coolest thing was the store exit.

Waste of space, time and money
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FTFY. See, I can do it too. :D
 
Gibbage said:
The few people who have the RT really seem to like it. If MS would allow WP apps, RT would have a shot. Sadly the RT team and WP team (like many departments in MS) are at war with each other for development funding, and wont help each other out. This is the root of whats wrong as MS, and thats coming from someone who spend 6 years there.
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I've heard the same thing about different departments fighting over funding and support. Some even say that it happens in the same department. Or, when you get good at something, they move you to a different team... Microsoft needs to work on building it's internal teams a lot more.... That should lead to better, stronger products in the long run.

I was thinking of grabbing an RT, but trading in some old phones as part of the trade in program. I'll pay a couple hundred $$ for it, no problem. Just as a simple iPad replacement with Office, simple apps, and a solid build.

$500 is too much. $300 I would snap it up. If they dropped the price for a while, they could get Windows RT into more hands and developers would have more of an interest in creating apps for it.
 
Ur_Mom said:
$500 is too much. $300 I would snap it up. If they dropped the price for a while, they could get Windows RT into more hands and developers would have more of an interest in creating apps for it.
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The thing is that you will be able to get Bay Trail tablets around the $300. If the $500 price holds up I do think that's partly in deference to OEMs, at least at launch to give them more opportunity to sell their devices. Indeed, Microsoft still doesn't look to be making a Bay Trail device and I think at least for now they intentionally making space for them. Looking at the prices that some of these Bay Trail devices are coming in at, if Microsoft were to do that I don't think they'd have any problems moving a lot of Surfaces but it would be a huge hit on their OEMs at this point.
 
The reason these RT tablets fail so badly is because Microsoft can't compete with itself. The amount of x86 Windows apps is just good enough reason to never touch one of these ARM based tablets. It's the same reason why Linux can't penetrate the desktop market, because Windows apps don't work on Linux.

Microsoft needed to force developers to make their apps ARM friendly as well, years ago.
 
My wife has a Surface Pro and it's honestly a pretty cool device. However the RT model is missing all of the good things about the Pro. The Windows App Store is a total joke and the RT model is stuck having to use it for everything. The quality control for those apps is nonexistent.
I don't care what kind of hardware functionality advantages it might have over the iPad and Android if the applications are total trash.
 
This strategy has to be deliberate, in order to please their oems, they can't honestly be that stupid.
 
avddreamr said:
This strategy has to be deliberate, in order to please their oems, they can't honestly be that stupid.
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If this pricing is correct it pretty much has to be. Microsoft is fully aware of the pricing that many of it's OEMs are hitting with Bay Trail devices and many are significantly below $500. I don't think Microsoft really ever had a lot of interest in the PC hardware market but I do think it had to wake up OEMs and if these Bay Trail devices are as good as many look on paper, losing $900 million on paper to get it's OEMs to make stuff at the low end beyond junk was a great investment.

I think Microsoft's real interest in new devices is more along phones, which is why it bought a phone maker and where it won't kill any OEM relationships.
 
ONLY reason i could figure they even try the RT market again is if they produce just enough to sell so that people realize how terrible they're and then be interested in the real product. Surface Pro 2.
 
is the keyboard cover made of rubber?

rubberized products usually get sticky after a few years.
 
At least make it a penabled tablet. If it isn't penabled with a MS office suite the whole point is lost imo.
 
In response to sinking traditional PC shipments, Acer will begin producing fewer Windows devices and more Google Chromebooks and Google Android-based devices, CEO and Chairman J.T. Wang told The Wall Street Journal.
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Inu said:
ONLY reason i could figure they even try the RT market again is if they produce just enough to sell so that people realize how terrible they're and then be interested in the real product. Surface Pro 2.
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I dont think its a terrible product. It does what you need it to do, if all you want is Office and web browsing. For what it does through, its out of price due too its eco-system (or lack of). If they could bring the WP8 app catalog into RT, it would be a lot more desirable. Sadly, like I said, the two departments were fighting hard and dont cooperate. Unless someone at the top mashed some heads and cracked some whips, I dont see this happening.
 
am i the only one that thought the headline meant..

surface pro 2 at 500...

i was getting excited until i clicked the link :(
 
No apps, slower hardware than an iPad 4 (the new one should be faster than Bay Trail based on the A7 in the iPhone 5S), in what universe does RT make sense?
 
I love my Surface RT and even I agree Windows RT needs to go away. It just feels too restricted when I know everything the Pro version can do, but at least it's still more useful to me than any iPad or Android tablet I've used.
 
I picked up a 32GB Surface RT (refurb) with a touch keyboard and I really like it. For $200 bucks it was an awesome deal. I don't really care about the app store since I exclusively use it for Office and internet browsing.

Maybe if I had paid full price I'd feel different, but I don't get where the hate for the Surface comes from.
 
jolli said:
I picked up a 32GB Surface RT (refurb) with a touch keyboard and I really like it. For $200 bucks it was an awesome deal. I don't really care about the app store since I exclusively use it for Office and internet browsing.

Maybe if I had paid full price I'd feel different, but I don't get where the hate for the Surface comes from.
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You got it for $200 in a special circumstance when other people paid or saw it advertised for $500+, and you only need it for office and web browsing whereas most other people have become accustomed to a mobile device having a handful of popular apps that all their friends are using but don't exist in the RT app store.

See the problem? If you want to steal marketshare and mindshare you have to offer something compelling that the competition doesn't. Microsoft's Surface RT is so poor its not even an also-ran.
 
rudy said:
It's not really that hard to believe if MS cuts the price on RT too much they will royally piss off all their partners.
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Right now it looks like Microsoft has no partners for RT. All the original OEMs that did RT the first time, seem to have abandoned that sinking ship. So they can price it how they want. But Microsoft does seem intent on trying to make a profit on it's HW business, which better explains the high prices of Surface (RT) 2.

Microsoft also seems to be doubling down on the confusion they created with Windows RT, by eliminating the RT name from the second generation RT device.

To me it looks like they have learned nothing.
 
SixFootDuo said:
Grammar fail above ... lol. Anyways, yeah. To the guy talking about hardware on the inside, it's been proven time and time again consumers do not care about what's on the inside. Microsoft knows this better than anyone. They look at price first and how the device performs. End of stor

Poor Microsoft, Nokia, Xboned, etc etc. I would hate to be in their boat. Sucks being 3rd best
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You know, the "insanity quote" that some people throw around is really very lame...;) I mean, are people who work in retail storefronts, who come to work today hoping that today will be a better day than yesterday--are those people insane? Are sales people insane because each day they do the same things but always hope for a better commission than they made yesterday? I really don't think so...;) The "insane" comment is rarely understood by those who think they understand it--which is pretty funny in itself. Are they insane because they keep endlessly repeating it? Maybe so...maybe so...

You make a good point about Microsoft, though. The company should stick to software where it is unquestionably #1 in many areas. Microsoft will, I predict, have as much success as a hardware company as Apple would have trying to become a software company. The obvious difference between the two companies is that Apple knows its place but Microsoft doesn't. And yeah, that is sad to see.
 
The price isn't out of line in the 10" tablet market. Even Google (which prices quality products low) sells their 32GB Nexus 10 for $500.

Still, I just got a Nexus 7 with LTE for $350 and I'd rather have it over any RT or IOS product; it's awesome.
 
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