Very excited about Surface Pro 2

ND40oz said:
Why? It's not needed, any decent phone has hotspot capabilities.
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I disagree that is not needed. Reasons include battery consumption and not being able to take calls on Verizon (with iPhone).

But really, it's just significantly more convenient to have it included, and I don't see how they haven't offered it as an option yet. I have a Windows tablet without it, and it's significantly less convenient than my iPad.

I'll take another look at the Surface Pro 2 next year I guess.
 
rhouck said:
I disagree that is not needed. Reasons include battery consumption and not being able to take calls on Verizon (with iPhone).

But really, it's just significantly more convenient to have it included, and I don't see how they haven't offered it as an option yet. I have a Windows tablet without it, and it's significantly less convenient than my iPad.
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That's the iPhone's problem though, not Verizon's. You used to be able to blame it on Verizon and CDMA but now that they have LTE, it's up to the phone to support it, which Apple decided not to do.

For me, I don't want to have to pay for an extra device on my wireless plan, might as well use the phone I already have. My iPad is wireless only for that exact reason.
 
ND40oz said:
That's the iPhone's problem though, not Verizon's. You used to be able to blame it on Verizon and CDMA but now that they have LTE, it's up to the phone to support it, which Apple decided not to do.

For me, I don't want to have to pay for an extra device on my wireless plan, might as well use the phone I already have. My iPad is wireless only for that exact reason.
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I am certainly aware that it is the iPhone and it pisses me off they still didn't fix it with the 5S. Unfortunately, for work, my only options are iPhone or Blackberry.... so I'm stuck.

And in a similar vein, my work pays for my iPad data plan so not an issue for me. If Verizon made the "share everything" data plans more cost-effective for a smaller number of devices I'd consider a pooled data plan, but that's a completely different topic.

At the end of the day, I have tethered with my phone and owned wi-fi-only tablets... and have found (for me) that a tablet with LTE built-in is significantly more convenient. Plus, I can use the iPad as a hotspot for my laptop when needed and it lasts for probably 10 hours as-such -- no way my iPhone could ever do that! :D
 
While it's great to have the option for LTE, it's one of those options that can get complicated. If one has a number of mobile devices that want to use with LTE, there a lot of additional cost for the LTE radios in each device. And if one has multiple phones with LTE or a MiFi and uses a lot of LTE bandwidth regularly, it's advantageous to be able to spread the bandwidth around if you have to deal with caps.
 
LTE should be an option, it isn't needed but it seems a lot of people like it. Seems like a waste of money to me but as said for some apparently it is worth it.
That said because this has USB ports there really isn't any reason that you cannot put a USB LTE modem on it however it seems most of the carriers make bulky horrible ones that would stick out and probably be thicker than the surface pro itself.
 
Andyk5 said:
you are so wrong, you have no idea. Apple has been winning the Laptop and Tablet sales for years now with almost Linux like game support lol, you think you being able to run GTAV on medium setting on a burning hot 10inch tablet is going to stop millions of women and men want to check their facebook and farmville on the latest coolest apple product?
Think again...
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Apple's laptop sales are a fraction of PC laptop sales. iPads from a processing perspective are low-end. You might be right about women checking their facebook page on an iPad but I'm a man and I place a higher priority on power than style.

Maybe you should review your PC history. Apple released the first Mac with a brilliant interface and than stagnated. Microsoft created an infrastructure that allowed you to do more and more and left Apple in the dust.

Apple created the iPhone and iPad with a brilliant interface and are stagnating. Each year they are more stylish and pretty but function more or less the same. Microsoft is expanding the boundaries of what a tablet can do. They are tablets, (with a docking station) they are workstations, and can run games while traveling. Broadwell will improve power and heat issues next year and lower prices on 3rd and 4th generation systems. Microsoft is looking and planning for the future while Apple rests on it's laurels and yesterdays technology.

In a couple years people will back on "today" as the moment when Apple lost the tablet war.
 
thejokker said:
Apple's laptop sales are a fraction of PC laptop sales. iPads from a processing perspective are low-end. You might be right about women checking their facebook page on an iPad but I'm a man and I place a higher priority on power than style.

Maybe you should review your PC history. Apple released the first Mac with a brilliant interface and than stagnated. Microsoft created an infrastructure that allowed you to do more and more and left Apple in the dust.

Apple created the iPhone and iPad with a brilliant interface and are stagnating. Each year they are more stylish and pretty but function more or less the same. Microsoft is expanding the boundaries of what a tablet can do. They are tablets, (with a docking station) they are workstations, and can run games while traveling. Broadwell will improve power and heat issues next year and lower prices on 3rd and 4th generation systems. Microsoft is looking and planning for the future while Apple rests on it's laurels and yesterdays technology.

In a couple years people will back on "today" as the moment when Apple lost the tablet war.
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how does more pc laptops being sold correlates to apple losing tablet war? I am sending this from a win 8 tablet with atom cpu. it can run all native windows programs so it is more useful than an ipad. it does everything else like shit. On board keyboard is shit, everything is slow, multi tasks like crap, randomly crashes here and there, storage is shit, screen resolution is shit and most of the time I use this tablet, it is for email, browsing, youtube and pdf's which an ipad does tremendously better. surface pro??? You think a$1500 niche product is going to win you the tablet war? look at where all your numbers are coming from. The pc sales that are beating apple are coming from the cheap $500 market. Go look how the laptop sales at 2k+ market shape.
 
You're using an atom based laptop/netbook.

Your argument is invalid: Atoms suck beyond measure.
 
Modred189 said:
You're using an atom based laptop/netbook.

Your argument is invalid: Atoms suck beyond measure.
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Atom based Tablets are the only tablets that are somewhat relevant to an Ipad's size, battery life and price. My argument is exceptionally valid. If we go by your rules then we are comparing a $500 machine that gets 10 hours of battery life to a $1200 Surface Pro that gets 10 times as hot, 3 times as thick, more than twice as expensive and has less than half the battery life... Yeah, I don't see any Ipad users running in to trade their Ipad's for Windows based tablets anytime soon unless Windows tablets are designed significantly better ( never gonna happen) or about half the price of Ipads ( can happen you never know), even in which case people will still throw in the extra $200 and get an Ipad.
 
Andyk5 said:
Atom based Tablets are the only tablets that are somewhat relevant to an Ipad's size, battery life and price. My argument is exceptionally valid. If we go by your rules then we are comparing a $500 machine that gets 10 hours of battery life to a $1200 Surface Pro that gets 10 times as hot, 3 times as thick, more than twice as expensive and has less than half the battery life... Yeah, I don't see any Ipad users running in to trade their Ipad's for Windows based tablets anytime soon unless Windows tablets are designed significantly better ( never gonna happen) or about half the price of Ipads ( can happen you never know), even in which case people will still throw in the extra $200 and get an Ipad.
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I think you might be underestimating just how valuable Word, Excel, Powerpoint and the accompanying macros for all three are in a business setting. Or access to IE for older software. Or not being limited by Apple's app store silliness.
 
Andyk5 said:
Atom based Tablets are the only tablets that are somewhat relevant to an Ipad's size, battery life and price. My argument is exceptionally valid. If we go by your rules then we are comparing a $500 machine that gets 10 hours of battery life to a $1200 Surface Pro that gets 10 times as hot, 3 times as thick, more than twice as expensive and has less than half the battery life... Yeah, I don't see any Ipad users running in to trade their Ipad's for Windows based tablets anytime soon unless Windows tablets are designed significantly better ( never gonna happen) or about half the price of Ipads ( can happen you never know), even in which case people will still throw in the extra $200 and get an Ipad.
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Have you not seen any of the Bay Trail tablet announcements?

Ex: http://www.anandtech.com/show/7391/dell-updates-venue-line-of-tablets
 
Bay Trail may be the ticket, but how much more performance can it actually realistically bring?

The Surface Pro, while getting 10 times as hot, is also 10 times more useful while targeting a completely different market segment. I don't think those looking at iPads are those that are looking at the Surface Pro. The Surface RT and Surface 2, maybe (well, they are advertising the Surface RT as a competitor, so yes then).
 
Kai said:
Bay Trail may be the ticket, but how much more performance can it actually realistically bring?
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If Bay Trail can be twice as fast as Clover Trail, with a smoother I/O subsystem it should be a very good bump in performance. Certainly nothing for gaming but for reasonably fast experience for mainstream desktop apps along with modern apps. Clover Trail was almost there but just not quite as smooth in performance for a solid experience. Plus 8.1 should be a bit of a boost as well. I do think that Bay Trail can finally get the cost and performance and battery life of Windows tablets where they have needed to be for the last decade.
 
I guess I haven't read up on the specific architecture changes, but now that I've taken a look Anands preview, it looks like it'll actually be a good competitor to the ipad and similar devices while offering great battery life and a vastly superior productivity experience. Boom!
 
If they made a Surface Pro with a baytrail and included OneNote I would gladly pay $599 for that. If they made such a thing and advertised it to college students they would make a killing.
 
Even a Surface 2 with pen support would be a good student tool.
 
newster said:
If they made a Surface Pro with a baytrail and included OneNote I would gladly pay $599 for that. If they made such a thing and advertised it to college students they would make a killing.
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The Dell Venue Pro 11 has a digital pen and option for Bay Trail at that price.
 
Oh yeah! I almost forgot about that! Whether you like Dell or not, they seem to be on a roll lately.
 
It even looks the same.
tablet-coming-soon-11-pro-module-1.jpg
<---DELL
 
ND40oz said:
I believe they're supposed to have "Mobile Keyboard" which is the keyboard/battery combo available at release as well.
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The Venue Pro 11 looks to be about the most configurable tablet hydrid ever with all of the different options and accessories.
 
Is the Surface Pro as good as a PC for peripherals? Will anything worked on the desktop also work on Surface Pro?
 
heatlesssun said:
The Venue Pro 11 looks to be about the most configurable tablet hydrid ever with all of the different options and accessories.
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The Dell was exactly what I was looking for until I found out that it didn't use a Wacom digitizer, and that it is a Dell. I think I am going to hold out for a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 3 if there is such a thing, or a Sony Vaio Duo 13 price drop.
 
newster said:
The Dell was exactly what I was looking for until I found out that it didn't use a Wacom digitizer, and that it is a Dell. I think I am going to hold out for a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 3 if there is such a thing, or a Sony Vaio Duo 13 price drop.
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Are you sure the Venue Pro doesn't use a Wacom? I've been trying to find out but I've not seen anything definite.
 
Saw this for the Pro 8, but it's not clear to me that this also the Pro 11. Dell does use Wacom digitizers in other products but it could be that the Synaptics digitizer is being used there, whatever Synaptics digitizer is.
 
I think dell is stupid, lol I honestly think they have a home run with the flip design if they just start putting an active digitizer and decent specs on those things. The keyboard picture for the dell venue doesn't even make sense, is their any way to attach it? Seems like dell is going backwards or not taking advantage of what they have.

Last gen Sony had the worst setup a stupid sliding mechanism but their new viao flip seems to be addressing a lot of the issues and might be good.
 
newster said:
The Dell was exactly what I was looking for until I found out that it didn't use a Wacom digitizer, and that it is a Dell. I think I am going to hold out for a Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 3 if there is such a thing, or a Sony Vaio Duo 13 price drop.
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Take a look at the Vaio Flip coming soon if you like the Vaio Duo 13. I bought the 13 to try out as a replacement for my 11 and I like the upgrade but it wasnt good enough. I hope the Vaio Flip is what I have been waiting for.
 
newster said:
Anyone know how a Synaptics digitizer compares to a Wacom?
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heatlesssun said:
Good question, this seems to be something brand new, I've not seen anyone mention any experience with it and many asking what the heck it is.
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I think if they're using Synaptics, they have to be using the Clearpad Series 7, but it's hard to find any reviews on it. Here's a review on the Series 3, which is for smaller devices: http://blog.gsmarena.com/synaptics-...ia-920-and-820-amazing-super-sensitive-touch/
 
The synaptics name doesn't make me feel very confident. I mean, synaptics has made the touchpads for most OEMs for some time now, and we know how bad windows touchpads suck.
 
rhouck said:
...

At the end of the day, I have tethered with my phone and owned wi-fi-only tablets... and have found (for me) that a tablet with LTE built-in is significantly more convenient. Plus, I can use the iPad as a hotspot for my laptop when needed and it lasts for probably 10 hours as-such -- no way my iPhone could ever do that! :D
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Agreed. I have a Verizon 4620LE mobile hotspot, and battery life on the thing is so poor that I just end up using my iPad as a hotspot. But having LTE integrated into the device is best.

Years ago, I had a Thinkpad laptop, with built in WIFI, that allowed for access to be purchased in blocks of 24 hours. I'd like to see that option offered again. Or better yet, affordable shared plans.
 
And having a separate device to take out, turn on then conncect to is sometimes inconvenient. It was part of the reason I sold ky MacBook Air 11, that and battery life was piss poor.
 
Andyk5 said:
how does more pc laptops being sold correlates to apple losing tablet war? I am sending this from a win 8 tablet with atom cpu. it can run all native windows programs so it is more useful than an ipad. it does everything else like shit. On board keyboard is shit, everything is slow, multi tasks like crap, randomly crashes here and there, storage is shit, screen resolution is shit and most of the time I use this tablet, it is for email, browsing, youtube and pdf's which an ipad does tremendously better. surface pro??? You think a$1500 niche product is going to win you the tablet war? look at where all your numbers are coming from. The pc sales that are beating apple are coming from the cheap $500 market. Go look how the laptop sales at 2k+ market shape.
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64 bit Bay Trail tablets which are much more powerful than your atom will be out early next year for under $500 and will run circles around an iPad. How will Apple compete with that? How far will the price on a first generation Surface Pro fall in the next couple of months? How far will the price of Surface Pro 2's fall when Broadwell Tablets are available next year?

Prices are going to keep falling on Windows/Intel tablets that are far more powerful than anything Apple has going. Apple is a couple of years behind Intel in Processor manufacturing technology and they are a couple years behind Microsoft in bringing a 64 bit touch oriented O/S to market. When their price advantage disappears what will they do?
 
thejokker said:
64 bit Bay Trail tablets which are much more powerful than your atom will be out early next year for under $500 and will run circles around an iPad. How will Apple compete with that? How far will the price on a first generation Surface Pro fall in the next couple of months? How far will the price of Surface Pro 2's fall when Broadwell Tablets are available next year?

Prices are going to keep falling on Windows/Intel tablets that are far more powerful than anything Apple has going. Apple is a couple of years behind Intel in Processor manufacturing technology and they are a couple years behind Microsoft in bringing a 64 bit touch oriented O/S to market. When their price advantage disappears what will they do?
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Apple doesn't compete on specs with other tablets. Even right now, they have nothing remarkable spec-wise. Retina display has been surpassed by Google and Samsung, and there are many options that are faster, have more RAM and have better GPUs. As long as people can still get the best quality apps, they don't actually care what CPU powers their device. Android and Windows 8 have quite a ways to go before they have an app library as solid as Apple has on offer for their tablets. If Apple loses their app store advantage, they'll need to pivot, since specs won't be able to save them.

x86 tablets are a completely different beast than ARM tablets right now. Microsoft needs to push the advantages of being able to use your legacy desktop software on a very portable platform if they want to try to use them to unseat Apple, otherwise they'll mainly end up in the hands of people who already realize that advantage without having it marketed to them.
 
Apple has no need to compete. They have never been competitive. iOS 7 is the first real update to the OS (forget all the '500 new features' nonsense every time they do a minor update) since launch, and its slow and buggy.

Apple will continue to sell because they have a captive audience of Sheeple who believe the marketing about how Apple invented everything. Apple's strength is they never actually change much and they are very very good at updates, so app developers always build an app for iOS first.
 
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