It's not a tablet replacement. It's an ultrabook replacement that can act as a tablet on weekends.
And as a work laptop/tablet combo the stylus is awesome for engineers or artists that need to draw or any folks that prefer to take notes long hand vs typing.
The surface is poor at being a tablet ( heavy bulky and loves to work near 100 V outlets) It's a poor ultrabook with its "welcome mat" floppy keyboard and a prop-up display... try using that on your lap. Finally, it's an expensive desktop PC.
This leaves the "Awesome" stylus which you can use on an iPad or Android tablet just as easily... and for a lot less hardware costs.
What's left to make the Surface Pro stand out? Oh, it can run legacy software that may NEVER be rewritten to take touch screen input... yeah, stick with your old PC and supplement it with a truly portable, light weight, iDevice that has a greater likelihood of having legacy PC programs ported to it than to a Surface tablet.
Realistically, the iPad competes against the Surface RT.
Since MS advertises the separate keyboard as being an integral part of the Surface Pro experience (have you seen a single ad or commercial which doesn't highlight that silly click?), the Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air.
I totally agree with you, the Surface Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air... UNTIL you try to set the Surface Pro up on your lap to type up an involved document. The welcome mat keyboard wants to droop off the sides of your thighs and the propped up display wants to slide off the ends of your knees. Welcome to the worst of ANY world.
Interestingly enough, just last night I had my graphics card crash in Windows 8.
Yep, you heard me. JUST the graphics card. My display went blank, I heard my GPU's fan spin up to jet engine intake speeds, and I thought Windows had just completely crashed my computer all the way down to a shutdown, but the fan slowed down and my display came back on.
Mac OS X Lion does that to my Mac Book Air. It's extremely irritating. Good thing OS X boots fast, but still should never happen!
It's not a tablet replacement. It's an ultrabook replacement that can act as a tablet on weekends.
And as a work laptop/tablet combo the stylus is awesome for engineers or artists that need to draw or any folks that prefer to take notes long hand vs typing.
Artists use Wacom hardware... if they need a stylus. Nexus or iPad if they don't.
Realistically, the iPad competes against the Surface RT.
Since MS advertises the separate keyboard as being an integral part of the Surface Pro experience (have you seen a single ad or commercial which doesn't highlight that silly click?), the Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air.
I actually wanted this product to succeed, but Microsoft doesn't cease to disappoint. Their vision of a unified OS is quickly turning out to be a huge mistake. I'm still hoping for a Windows gaming tablet with decent specs to use as a Steam Box, though. Razer is launching one, but there are certain things that I don't like about it; perhaps either Logitech or Valve could save the day. A Windows gaming tablet that could be hooked to any TV and have any PC peripherals plugged into would be amazing; for once it would completely eliminate the need to have Windows on my Macs, as I only use it to play games, and beyond that it would provide me with a very portable PC that I could either interact with through the touchscreen or plug desktop peripherals into.
I have been wanting a decent tablet PC for a very long time; since 2006 that I've been trying and giving away HP tablets hoping to find the one, but it's never materialized because Windows tablet makers don't understand that specs and quality are important. I'd be willing to play up to $2.5k for a decent Windows tablet.
I was thinking the same thing but the ADMIN. had already determined that the things I want a tablet to do were silly and I should only talk when my expectations of a tablet met their's.
Thanks.
Don't be discouraged, it is only this specific admin - others are much more reasonable. Realistically, I cannot fault his endless support for fruit company, but result is more in line of Apple fan who just happened to have Admin title, than actual Administrator.
What an amazing tale, brother Grimm! I actually like the part where you own Windows-based PC /clap
TS did previously mention problem with Intel graphics in his PC, so I don't think he is making this up. At least there is consistency in his story. Especially that I have also came across crappy Intel drivers for their integrated graphics, albeit different problem from what he is describing.
Only problem is the way he is spinning his problem. Crappy manufacturer drivers are manufacturer problem, hardly something to blame OS. Every dedicated graphics I have seen so far on Win 8, be it Nvidia or ATI, performed well.
Interestingly enough, just last night I had my graphics card crash in Windows 8.
Yep, you heard me. JUST the graphics card. My display went blank, I heard my GPU's fan spin up to jet engine intake speeds, and I thought Windows had just completely crashed my computer all the way down to a shutdown, but the fan slowed down and my display came back on.
It might need to be cleaned. Dust buildup on the heat sync acts like a mat of insulation, preventing the fan from properly cooling it, and thus the card. The card will shut down when it overheats and (sometimes) come back on when it cools off.
The surface is poor at being a tablet ( heavy bulky and loves to work near 100 V outlets) It's a poor ultrabook with its "welcome mat" floppy keyboard and a prop-up display... try using that on your lap. Finally, it's an expensive desktop PC.
This leaves the "Awesome" stylus which you can use on an iPad or Android tablet just as easily... and for a lot less hardware costs.
What's left to make the Surface Pro stand out? Oh, it can run legacy software that may NEVER be rewritten to take touch screen input... yeah, stick with your old PC and supplement it with a truly portable, light weight, iDevice that has a greater likelihood of having legacy PC programs ported to it than to a Surface tablet.
1) Surface Pro will get 4-5 hours. That's short of my 10 hour ideal for air travel but not bad for a laptop. For use at work I have a lot of outlets available. This is on par with an 11' MBA running windows. A 4-5 hour battery life gets me from DC to LA. For a longer flight I would do the same for the Surface Pro that I would for the MBA...carry an external battery.
2) You can use the surface on your lap with the type cover. It's not optimal but you can use the kickstand to prop it up.
3) It's no more an expensive desktop PC than a MBA is an expensive desktop PC.
4) The stylus is a pressure sensitive stylus and except on the Samsung Note and other tablets with a digitizer there's nothing like it on Android or iOS.
It has a 600 dpi resolution and a 0.7mm distance between stylus and the LCD...which is better than on the Cintiq 12x that has a thicker glass surface.
5) I'm rewriting our legacy java app for touchscreen use on Win8 because it's easier than an Android or iOS port and we require more horsepower than ARM provides. Even a low power i5 is much better than what you can do on a high end Transformer.
I expect to hear anti-MS stuff here.....I just wish it was more intelligent.
You don't "need" a keyboard. It comes with several virtual ones that can just be minimized and called up at will.
Seriously people......get it together.
Sent from my iPad.
Surface Pro is a laptop in tablet's clothing (touchscreen). It's designed to be used in landscape mode the majority of the time, has a short battery life, and runs on Intel processor. It runs legacy apps. Since it's designed more for content creation than consumption you need a dedicated keyboard, just like a laptop.
3) It's no more an expensive desktop PC than a MBA is an expensive desktop PC.
I would disagree with this one. Even though the Surface Pro at 64 and 128GB with a TypeCover is about* the same price as a MBA there is a very small market for $1000+ Windows-based PCs. All reports have Apple owning almost all of that market. I recall the average sale price for WinPCs being around $600-700 and Macs being around $1,200-1,400. Because of the disparity I would say that the MBA is an inexpensive Mac and the Surface Pro is an expensive WinPC.
* The MBA is actually $30 less expensive than the Surface Pro plus TypeCover for a given capacity with the MBA having about 20GB more space free for the user due to the OS size differences. On top of that the MBA starts off with a 1.7GHz Core-i7 while the Surface Pro only has a 1.7GHz Core-i5 for that price. Finally, the MBA has the options for an event faster processor and 8GB RAM, and up to 512GB of storage on the 11" model.
The Surface Pro includes every version of Windows, which will delight professional collectors. Don't worry, you can still run AutoCAD 1998 and that internally-developed accounting software last updated for Windows 3.1 no problem! And the Surface Pro is an ideal replacement for text-based POS systems; it runs them natively, without going through a messy VPN.
We've included drivers for every printer, keyboard, and graphics card made in the last 30 years! Contact your Microsoft Store representative about purchasing our USB 3.0 to Serial Printer adapter, or for you hardcore gamers, USB 3.0 to Radeon 7800 Desktop Edition card.
Finally, don't forget about updates! Having the full power of a desktop means needing the full virus protection of a desktop. Check in with us every Patch Tuesday and throughout the week for various critical updates to sections of legacy code that have been exploitable for years. It's a small price to pay for wall-to-wall backwards compatibility.
nikon133
Windows is undeniably on the chubby side here, but still... not that chubby; clean install of Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit is in vicinity of 20GB, or just a bit below. Win 8 Pro should take a bit less. Office 2013 Pro 64-bit full install is about 1.2GB on my PC. On Surface, those two should take between 20 - 22GB. Where is missing storage and how much of it can be recovered by uninstalling junk and deleting recovery partition, that remains to be seen.
Having to wipe and reload after purchase completely defeats one of the ideal tenents of tablets.
SolipsismX
I've seen the Surface RT and even that had you going into the Classic UI for stupid settings so this has to be worse so you'll need a mouse, too, I'd imagine. It all just seems like a huge kludge to me except for a very, very narrow market where it will be the best thing ever.
Corporate accounts. And they say Apple users are blindly brand-loyal...
Artists use Wacom hardware... if they need a stylus. Nexus or iPad if they don't.
No place for Microsoft here.
Many artists are excited about the Surface Pro. Wacom has removed references to Surface Pro from their website but some folks report it was mentioned on their Bamboo pen page. 600 dpi might be low or it might be okay depending on what you do and how that translates into usable sensitivity.
Edit: My conjecture based on the rumors is that there's a Wacom digitizer built into the Surface Pro that's been tweaked with the technology acquired from Perspective Pixel. It's not going to the the pro-cap digitizer that PP had been working on but a Wacom EMR digitizer probably with some software heuristics taken from PP.
If the PP acquisition and the recent patents gives MS tradable IP with Wacom then you can expect better than average cooperation between the two and why both are playing things close to the chest and being IMHO unnecessarily secretive...
I would disagree with this one. Even though the Surface Pro at 64 and 128GB with a TypeCover is about* the same price as a MBA there is a very small market for $1000+ Windows-based PCs. All reports have Apple owning almost all of that market. I recall the average sale price for WinPCs being around $600-700 and Macs being around $1,200-1,400. Because of the disparity I would say that the MBA is an inexpensive Mac and the Surface Pro is an expensive WinPC.
* The MBA is actually $30 less expensive than the Surface Pro plus TypeCover for a given capacity with the MBA having about 20GB more space free for the user due to the OS size differences. On top of that the MBA starts off with a 1.7GHz Core-i7 while the Surface Pro only has a 1.7GHz Core-i5 for that price. Finally, the MBA has the options for an event faster processor and 8GB RAM, and up to 512GB of storage on the 11" model.
The point is that neither is a desktop PC. $30 more or less doesn't matter. i7 vs i5 doesn't matter.
From a bang for the performance buck perspective the Mac Mini and iMac destroys both of them and both of those are (relative to cheap win pcs) expensive desktops.
The Surface Pro includes every version of Windows, which will delight professional collectors. Don't worry, you can still run AutoCAD 1998 and that internally-developed accounting software last updated for Windows 3.1 no problem! And the Surface Pro is an ideal replacement for text-based POS systems; it runs them natively, without going through a messy VPN.
I haven't done a lot of Win8 yet but I thought this ad cute:
I still doesn't understand what the Surface Pro got any better than others failed Tablet PC from the past 15 years...
The issue here is not the hardware, but with legacy Windows software unfit for tablet screen size and touch input. BTW I wonder how anybody can considering a 10in Windows device for Pro working...
TS did previously mention problem with Intel graphics in his PC, so I don't think he is making this up. At least there is consistency in his story. Especially that I have also came across crappy Intel drivers for their integrated graphics, albeit different problem from what he is describing.
Only problem is the way he is spinning his problem. Crappy manufacturer drivers are manufacturer problem, hardly something to blame OS. Every dedicated graphics I have seen so far on Win 8, be it Nvidia or ATI, performed well.
He definitely had overheat issue but blamed Windows. That's why I lol'd. If it's a desktop I'll recommend to get better case and to add couple of silent fans on a front and a back.
The real hell of it is, a truly fresh start for Surface OS would have likely been even smaller than iOS. The UI alone would be a huge difference, since retina-ready textures are several times larger than the dozens of bytes required for SVG icons and code that says "make a box this big and this color."
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
It's not a tablet replacement. It's an ultrabook replacement that can act as a tablet on weekends.
And as a work laptop/tablet combo the stylus is awesome for engineers or artists that need to draw or any folks that prefer to take notes long hand vs typing.
The surface is poor at being a tablet ( heavy bulky and loves to work near 100 V outlets) It's a poor ultrabook with its "welcome mat" floppy keyboard and a prop-up display... try using that on your lap. Finally, it's an expensive desktop PC.
This leaves the "Awesome" stylus which you can use on an iPad or Android tablet just as easily... and for a lot less hardware costs.
What's left to make the Surface Pro stand out? Oh, it can run legacy software that may NEVER be rewritten to take touch screen input... yeah, stick with your old PC and supplement it with a truly portable, light weight, iDevice that has a greater likelihood of having legacy PC programs ported to it than to a Surface tablet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
I think that misses the point.
Realistically, the iPad competes against the Surface RT.
Since MS advertises the separate keyboard as being an integral part of the Surface Pro experience (have you seen a single ad or commercial which doesn't highlight that silly click?), the Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air.
I totally agree with you, the Surface Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air... UNTIL you try to set the Surface Pro up on your lap to type up an involved document. The welcome mat keyboard wants to droop off the sides of your thighs and the propped up display wants to slide off the ends of your knees. Welcome to the worst of ANY world.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Interestingly enough, just last night I had my graphics card crash in Windows 8.
Yep, you heard me. JUST the graphics card. My display went blank, I heard my GPU's fan spin up to jet engine intake speeds, and I thought Windows had just completely crashed my computer all the way down to a shutdown, but the fan slowed down and my display came back on.
Mac OS X Lion does that to my Mac Book Air. It's extremely irritating. Good thing OS X boots fast, but still should never happen!
Quote:
Originally Posted by nht
It's not a tablet replacement. It's an ultrabook replacement that can act as a tablet on weekends.
And as a work laptop/tablet combo the stylus is awesome for engineers or artists that need to draw or any folks that prefer to take notes long hand vs typing.
Artists use Wacom hardware... if they need a stylus. Nexus or iPad if they don't.
No place for Microsoft here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jragosta
I think that misses the point.
Realistically, the iPad competes against the Surface RT.
Since MS advertises the separate keyboard as being an integral part of the Surface Pro experience (have you seen a single ad or commercial which doesn't highlight that silly click?), the Pro is most comparable to the MacBook Air.
And it gets kicked in the ass something bad.
I have been wanting a decent tablet PC for a very long time; since 2006 that I've been trying and giving away HP tablets hoping to find the one, but it's never materialized because Windows tablet makers don't understand that specs and quality are important. I'd be willing to play up to $2.5k for a decent Windows tablet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by handquake
<...>
I am still loyal to Mac, but any who says this thing doesn't beat the crap out of an iPad simply have their eyes closed.
Ballmer, I command you to come out of this body !
Don't be discouraged, it is only this specific admin - others are much more reasonable. Realistically, I cannot fault his endless support for fruit company, but result is more in line of Apple fan who just happened to have Admin title, than actual Administrator.
TS did previously mention problem with Intel graphics in his PC, so I don't think he is making this up. At least there is consistency in his story. Especially that I have also came across crappy Intel drivers for their integrated graphics, albeit different problem from what he is describing.
Only problem is the way he is spinning his problem. Crappy manufacturer drivers are manufacturer problem, hardly something to blame OS. Every dedicated graphics I have seen so far on Win 8, be it Nvidia or ATI, performed well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tallest Skil
Interestingly enough, just last night I had my graphics card crash in Windows 8.
Yep, you heard me. JUST the graphics card. My display went blank, I heard my GPU's fan spin up to jet engine intake speeds, and I thought Windows had just completely crashed my computer all the way down to a shutdown, but the fan slowed down and my display came back on.
It might need to be cleaned. Dust buildup on the heat sync acts like a mat of insulation, preventing the fan from properly cooling it, and thus the card. The card will shut down when it overheats and (sometimes) come back on when it cools off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Macky the Macky
The surface is poor at being a tablet ( heavy bulky and loves to work near 100 V outlets) It's a poor ultrabook with its "welcome mat" floppy keyboard and a prop-up display... try using that on your lap. Finally, it's an expensive desktop PC.
This leaves the "Awesome" stylus which you can use on an iPad or Android tablet just as easily... and for a lot less hardware costs.
What's left to make the Surface Pro stand out? Oh, it can run legacy software that may NEVER be rewritten to take touch screen input... yeah, stick with your old PC and supplement it with a truly portable, light weight, iDevice that has a greater likelihood of having legacy PC programs ported to it than to a Surface tablet.
1) Surface Pro will get 4-5 hours. That's short of my 10 hour ideal for air travel but not bad for a laptop. For use at work I have a lot of outlets available. This is on par with an 11' MBA running windows. A 4-5 hour battery life gets me from DC to LA. For a longer flight I would do the same for the Surface Pro that I would for the MBA...carry an external battery.
2) You can use the surface on your lap with the type cover. It's not optimal but you can use the kickstand to prop it up.
3) It's no more an expensive desktop PC than a MBA is an expensive desktop PC.
4) The stylus is a pressure sensitive stylus and except on the Samsung Note and other tablets with a digitizer there's nothing like it on Android or iOS.
It has a 600 dpi resolution and a 0.7mm distance between stylus and the LCD...which is better than on the Cintiq 12x that has a thicker glass surface.
http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/pc-mac/tablets/microsoft-surface-pro-1123800/review
5) I'm rewriting our legacy java app for touchscreen use on Win8 because it's easier than an Android or iOS port and we require more horsepower than ARM provides. Even a low power i5 is much better than what you can do on a high end Transformer.
So essentially none of your points are true.
Quote:
Originally Posted by handquake
I expect to hear anti-MS stuff here.....I just wish it was more intelligent.
You don't "need" a keyboard. It comes with several virtual ones that can just be minimized and called up at will.
Seriously people......get it together.
Sent from my iPad.
Surface Pro is a laptop in tablet's clothing (touchscreen). It's designed to be used in landscape mode the majority of the time, has a short battery life, and runs on Intel processor. It runs legacy apps. Since it's designed more for content creation than consumption you need a dedicated keyboard, just like a laptop.
I would disagree with this one. Even though the Surface Pro at 64 and 128GB with a TypeCover is about* the same price as a MBA there is a very small market for $1000+ Windows-based PCs. All reports have Apple owning almost all of that market. I recall the average sale price for WinPCs being around $600-700 and Macs being around $1,200-1,400. Because of the disparity I would say that the MBA is an inexpensive Mac and the Surface Pro is an expensive WinPC.
* The MBA is actually $30 less expensive than the Surface Pro plus TypeCover for a given capacity with the MBA having about 20GB more space free for the user due to the OS size differences. On top of that the MBA starts off with a 1.7GHz Core-i7 while the Surface Pro only has a 1.7GHz Core-i5 for that price. Finally, the MBA has the options for an event faster processor and 8GB RAM, and up to 512GB of storage on the 11" model.
Windows Everywhere!
The Surface Pro includes every version of Windows, which will delight professional collectors. Don't worry, you can still run AutoCAD 1998 and that internally-developed accounting software last updated for Windows 3.1 no problem! And the Surface Pro is an ideal replacement for text-based POS systems; it runs them natively, without going through a messy VPN.
We've included drivers for every printer, keyboard, and graphics card made in the last 30 years! Contact your Microsoft Store representative about purchasing our USB 3.0 to Serial Printer adapter, or for you hardcore gamers, USB 3.0 to Radeon 7800 Desktop Edition card.
Finally, don't forget about updates! Having the full power of a desktop means needing the full virus protection of a desktop. Check in with us every Patch Tuesday and throughout the week for various critical updates to sections of legacy code that have been exploitable for years. It's a small price to pay for wall-to-wall backwards compatibility.
nikon133
Windows is undeniably on the chubby side here, but still... not that chubby; clean install of Windows 8 Enterprise 64-bit is in vicinity of 20GB, or just a bit below. Win 8 Pro should take a bit less. Office 2013 Pro 64-bit full install is about 1.2GB on my PC. On Surface, those two should take between 20 - 22GB. Where is missing storage and how much of it can be recovered by uninstalling junk and deleting recovery partition, that remains to be seen.
Having to wipe and reload after purchase completely defeats one of the ideal tenents of tablets.
SolipsismX
I've seen the Surface RT and even that had you going into the Classic UI for stupid settings so this has to be worse so you'll need a mouse, too, I'd imagine. It all just seems like a huge kludge to me except for a very, very narrow market where it will be the best thing ever.
Corporate accounts. And they say Apple users are blindly brand-loyal...
Quote:
Originally Posted by lightknight
Artists use Wacom hardware... if they need a stylus. Nexus or iPad if they don't.
No place for Microsoft here.
Many artists are excited about the Surface Pro. Wacom has removed references to Surface Pro from their website but some folks report it was mentioned on their Bamboo pen page. 600 dpi might be low or it might be okay depending on what you do and how that translates into usable sensitivity.
Edit: My conjecture based on the rumors is that there's a Wacom digitizer built into the Surface Pro that's been tweaked with the technology acquired from Perspective Pixel. It's not going to the the pro-cap digitizer that PP had been working on but a Wacom EMR digitizer probably with some software heuristics taken from PP.
If the PP acquisition and the recent patents gives MS tradable IP with Wacom then you can expect better than average cooperation between the two and why both are playing things close to the chest and being IMHO unnecessarily secretive...
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I would disagree with this one. Even though the Surface Pro at 64 and 128GB with a TypeCover is about* the same price as a MBA there is a very small market for $1000+ Windows-based PCs. All reports have Apple owning almost all of that market. I recall the average sale price for WinPCs being around $600-700 and Macs being around $1,200-1,400. Because of the disparity I would say that the MBA is an inexpensive Mac and the Surface Pro is an expensive WinPC.
* The MBA is actually $30 less expensive than the Surface Pro plus TypeCover for a given capacity with the MBA having about 20GB more space free for the user due to the OS size differences. On top of that the MBA starts off with a 1.7GHz Core-i7 while the Surface Pro only has a 1.7GHz Core-i5 for that price. Finally, the MBA has the options for an event faster processor and 8GB RAM, and up to 512GB of storage on the 11" model.
The point is that neither is a desktop PC. $30 more or less doesn't matter. i7 vs i5 doesn't matter.
From a bang for the performance buck perspective the Mac Mini and iMac destroys both of them and both of those are (relative to cheap win pcs) expensive desktops.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorsos
Windows Everywhere!
The Surface Pro includes every version of Windows, which will delight professional collectors. Don't worry, you can still run AutoCAD 1998 and that internally-developed accounting software last updated for Windows 3.1 no problem! And the Surface Pro is an ideal replacement for text-based POS systems; it runs them natively, without going through a messy VPN.
I haven't done a lot of Win8 yet but I thought this ad cute:
I still doesn't understand what the Surface Pro got any better than others failed Tablet PC from the past 15 years...
The issue here is not the hardware, but with legacy Windows software unfit for tablet screen size and touch input. BTW I wonder how anybody can considering a 10in Windows device for Pro working...
He definitely had overheat issue but blamed Windows. That's why I lol'd. If it's a desktop I'll recommend to get better case and to add couple of silent fans on a front and a back.
The real hell of it is, a truly fresh start for Surface OS would have likely been even smaller than iOS. The UI alone would be a huge difference, since retina-ready textures are several times larger than the dozens of bytes required for SVG icons and code that says "make a box this big and this color."