PC makers hint at feelings of 'betrayal' over Microsoft's Surface tablet - Page 5

It was made to appear that it was:

1) starting at 26:44 where Mike is copying and, quote "....copying a Gigabyte worth of photos to the desktop and then editing them in Lightroom"... I have a problem with

2) because opening up LR never finishes, (which to be fair... it doesn't here either, so that can be discarded) and supposedly loading those photos finishes at 26:59... exactly when the screen flickers, zooms in...and the first photo is ready to adjust (15 seconds for a gigabyte of photos...impressive if to be believed?!)

3) he apparently zoomed into the picture at 27:13... the mouse moved to the right over exposure adjustment in Develop mode... he's talking about editing the picture... but never does.

Whatever. The opening of LR could have been real... but he did nothing to edit the photo, and it had already been previously imported, and NOT from the photos he had just copied to the desktop. I can almost state that as fact. Not 1gb worth.

Also interesting is that they never showed Office running on either of these things.  I mean they never showed *anything* really, but the chief draw of the RT tablet is the (supposedly) built-in ARM versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint that come with the thing and are (presumably, supposedly), optimised for touch input.  

I mean if your selling something as an Office tool, the least you could do is show how it works with a simple document.  

Personally, I don't believe "Office for ARM" even exists or ever will.  

I watched the keynote video. It was incredibly sad, and pathetic. There were constant veiled references to the iPad, I laughed when Ballmer talked about the innovation Microsloth has done in the past few years. There was virtually no actual demonstrations of the surface itself. They spent almost all the time talking about the physical characteristics of the unit. "It is only _____ mm wide!" "It has a professionally designed kick stand that goes away." "Look at this venting." 

They just don't get it. They still think in terms of a desktop unit. The thing (according to M$),  is a small PC with a keyboard. And what a keyboard! Holy copy of the Apple smart cover! I couldn't believe it. If I want a tablet, I don't want to type on a stupid pliable keyboard. Why the hell would I want a trackpad, when the entire glass surface is  trackpad! 

The video about how they built it. "Wow, this is really hard!" It seemed to convey the image that they had never designed any hardware before.

The entire setting seemed contrived too. How many people were there, 20, 30? It didn't appear to be that many more than that, and it was obvious there were ringers in the audience. The name of the case, vapourware! Too funny!  

No release date, no real details. It was just so sad.  

The PC platform, as we know it, is dead.

The thing is, one OEM gets a $85 discount on the OS.  That amounts to about a 10-20% discount on a $500-$1000 device, which is a huge amount of money.  That's money Microsoft can use to give it a better case, and a nicer screen, maybe a larger battery.

So, just to match Microsoft's offering, other OEMs have to really squeeze the supply chain or sell for no profit [while MS makes a profit both on their own tablets AND all the OEMs]. And then, as icing on the cake, Microsoft makes extra money selling apps and content for the tablets.  And their tablets can have no-charge updates, so match what Apple does, while other OEMs can't afford to update older models...because they made no money on them...

Never mind that it also gives the MS hardware group a huge advantage over other OEMs for getting all the bugs fixed.

Has anybody done this kind of thing successfully in the past [as in both created their own software/hardware and licensed the software to others to make competing products].  It was a train wreck when Apple did it with PowerPC clones, and PalmOS licensing really went nowhere...and that's all I can think of off the top of my head.

I am surprised Microsoft could actually discuss this for over 46 minutes. If I were in the audience, I would probably have to be ushered out from laughing too loudly.  Ballmer is so full of #*$&.  Their whole company is based on leaving the hardware design left to their OEM partners, yet they are NOW realizing that better products are made better if the OS company designed the entire product themselves.   I actually envision OEM partners suing Microsoft for selling a competing when Microsoft doesn't pay for the OS.   WOW, a 22 degree bevel and less than 1 inch thick! HAHAHA.

LIquid metal magnesium case?  Um, ALL metal becomes liquid when you heat to the melting temperature so that it can be casted into a mold.  PVD coating has been around for YEARS and it a coating process not a case mfg process.  I was cracking up when the presenter couldn't get the first one to work. HAHA.  THIS HAS TO BE A JOKE.

Mate, what are you talking about? How can you copy something that doesn't exist? iPad hasn't even got keyboard on their smart cover. Plus, MS cover doesn't fold like Apple's - Surface depends on built-in stand, compared to iPad's foldable cover. Then look at layers of Surface's keyboard cover, compared to simple piece of plastic iPad's cover is. Even material doesn't look the same.

Technology used to create finish on the case is called VapourMg - do yourself a bit of favour and get your fact right before posting. While case manufacturing process is related to liquid metal technology in general, it is not Apple's LiquidMetal technology - as described here:

Re vents, when you are running i5 in handheld device, smart venting is very important as, depending on how you hold tablet, different sides of tablet might be blocked with one's hand/lap.

Re keyboard, some people don't like on-screen keyboard to block more than 50% of screen, especially if what you are typing/editing/reviewing has more complex structure (with graphics, tables, formulas...). Plus - having screen and keyboard on the same plane is probably one of the most uncomfortable typing experiences one can think of. Apple is remedying that with 3rd party case/keyboard solutions; MS simply went a step further.

More than 1 billion Windows machines around the world seem to disagree with you.

That surface has fail written all over it. The well paid reviewers giving that non-demonstrate product high praise are pathetic.

Steve Ballmer can wipe his butt after a number two, show the pro MS trolls his doo doo and they'd write about how goddamn innovative and game changing  that blood and feces soaked piece of toilet paper is.

They actually said at the event that it will be priced in the same range as "other" ultra book class PC's.  

So you're analysis is correct at least for the Pro version which will be probably 900-1000 dollars or so.  Since they copied pretty much everything else from Apple, I would be this will be announced at the exact same price point as the Air.  The RT model (the one the idiots will buy), is almost certainly cheaper, but likely can't approach the 500 dollars of the iPad, so I would say $699.00 or $649.00 or thereabouts.  This will force everyone in the market to eat margins for breakfast and accelerate the whole "the rest of the industry except for Apple is failing" syndrome.

Your user name makes this statement ironic... actually it would have been more ironic if it was kodak133.

You figure it out.