Has any tech writer/reviewer gotten their hands on this thing outside of a Microsoft controlled environment?
I'm seeing all these stories about the $499 32GB model being sold out but that's meaningless when we don't know how many MS have available for sale. It's a new product for them so they have no sales history to go off of in determining now many to have available at launch. I'll bet the people ordering this don't know that the 32GB is more like 20GB because Windows RT and Office take up ~12GB. All these stories about Surface providing twice the storage for the same price as the iPad are bunk.
Are you sure? Office 2010 Pro Plus (the most complete version) 64 bit, with included SP1, is sitting on 1.4GB ISO image.
Above mentioned MS Office folder in Program Files, once installed, is 0.99GB. Additional one in Common Files is additional 145MB. There might be some other smaller folders scattered around, but I wouldn't expect Office to take more than 2GB all together. RT Office is not going to have all the features of 2010 Pro Plus, and even those that it will have... I'd expect them to be a bit simplified and compacted version of desktop counterparts.
As of Windows 8 RT and is it going to be embedded in ROM or will it take part of user available storage (and what part), I haven't seen any info yet.
The fact that these things are for sale, but no reviews have been released, speaks volumes to the type of product we're discussing.
When Apple releases an iPad, it shows us wonderful, humanitarian videos of how their products are changing the world. We see musicians mixing, we see families keeping in touch using FaceTime, and those in the media are given the devices prior to release so that the reviews hit at the same time as the product. Add to all of this MS' silly display PR disaster, and you can quickly see that the Surface is going to go the way of the Zune. In terms of pricing, MS isn't thinking as clearly as its supposed ClearType display. $120 for a keyboard cover? That would be high for an Apple product, let alone one containing MS branding.
The product has some unique features and holds promise, but so far MS is not executing well on the marketing front.
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices. The beauty of the Surface (and related) products, I have one device for both work and play - meaning I save money. In this crummy economy, that's a plus. Look, I love Apple products as much as the next person, but I give MS credit where they deserve it.
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices. The beauty of the Surface (and related) products, I have one device for both work and play - meaning I save money. In this crummy economy, that's a plus. Look, I love Apple products as much as the next person, but I give MS credit where they deserve it.
What is your role at Microsoft? Your assumption is the Surface can do it all, I'd guess doing real "work" on it (or any tablet) is difficult. If an external keyboard is needed, and work / play are important with one device then the Macbook Air would likely be the best option. Even in today's economy most folks in the education and enterprise space are happily carrying 2 devices, and in some cases 3-4. I know if I had to pick one device to do everything then it would NOT be a tablet from any manufacturer. The answer is the Air.
Well, I've never used it... But here's an expert who has:
<h1 class="heading" style="list-style:none;margin-top:0px;margin-bottom:0px;font-family:NoticiaBold, 'Times New Roman', serif;color:rgb(38,48,52);font-size:30px;line-height:normal;">Why bother? The sad state of Office 2013 touch support</h1>
<h2 class="standalone-deck" style="list-style:none;padding-bottom:12px;margin-top:0px;color:rgb(101,123,131);font-size:16px;border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:solid;border-bottom-color:rgb(221,221,221);font-family:Arial, sans-serif;line-height:normal;">Office 2013 makes concessions to tablet users, but they're far too few.</h2>
That article is from July. Version included with RT tablets on release day will still be preview release. Update to final version will happen automatically, on undisclosed date... whenever that is.
Beside that, I have very little doubt that Office RT will be more cumbersome (or less elegant) than slimmer tablet/phone editions, but that's the thing; if one wants all the features of desktop Office on a tablet, well... you cannot have all those features while keeping only handful of buttons on screen.
What is your role at Microsoft? Your assumption is the Surface can do it all, I'd guess doing real "work" on it (or any tablet) is difficult. If an external keyboard is needed, and work / play are important with one device then the Macbook Air would likely be the best option. Even in today's economy most folks in the education and enterprise space are happily carrying 2 devices, and in some cases 3-4. I know if I had to pick one device to do everything then it would NOT be a tablet from any manufacturer. The answer is the Air.
I have no role at, or any emotional attachment to, or a fanboy of, any major tech company, be it MS, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name it. I love cool technology & doesn't matter to me who makes it. If it's MS then it's MS. If it's Apple then it's Apple. I realize there's folks out there carrying 2 or more devices. I wasn't born yesterday. If that's what floats their boat then great, more power to them. There are some of us that don't enjoy lugging around so many devices. And the Surface can potentially help solve that problem. Thank goodness for choice.
...There are some of us that don't enjoy lugging around so many devices. And the Surface can potentially help solve that problem.
It is somewhat ironic would you not agree that in the Surface ads, the device always emerged from a briefcase in two separate pieces. It never emerged as a single device with already attached cover which is in itself strange.
Cleartype meaning a certain boldness and shadow to the font. wow. Crazy.
I'd prefer a display that doesn't need nasty looking fonts, thank you.
And then talking about reflections? As if their display is better because of reflections?
Cleartype is sub-pixel rendering. It has nothing to do with "boldness" or "shadows." It is a technology that Apple already uses in OSX. And MS was saying that their product is superior because it has LESS reflections than the iPad.
I suggest you learn what the hell you're talking about before making statements like that.
So in what world does antialiasing (basically what cleartype does) provide a better image than the retina display on the iPad?
The retina display lets you easily read minute text as it is rendered incredibly clearly on the display. I find it hard to believe that the same is al all possible on surface. It will make an interesting experiment once I get my hands on one.
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices.
Or I could just clip a keyboard onto the iPad.
I have two concerns with the Surface:
I haven't seen any indication that it works well in portrait mode
The kickstand seems to be fixed at one position.
Again, it's hard to judge how good or bad it is because MS doesn't seem very keen on letting people review it.
ClearType = makes fonts appear smoother on lower resolution screens. iPad Display = pretty much everything including a respectable sRGB colour spectrum.
Maybe we should put padding on the walls at Microsoft and not allow the employees to use anything sharper than a crayon.
No need to be surprised about the Surface's lack of free space. I would bet money on finding plenty of legacy junk under the hood, from DLLs to ancient network stacks, and strings like 'A:\ not responding. Abort, Retry, Fail?'
"It's a wireless tablet! Why are there all these references to ethernet support?"
drblank
M$ always manages to do something cheap. It's their nature. M$ has...
$top doing that, or I'll rant about hockey puck mice. LOL no right click. What's the deal with airline food? etc.
Shameer Mulji
Considering the amount of people that use Office, I'm sure there are many people who want a device like this - enterprise users and college students being two groups of people.
I doubt too many people who have experienced iWork are itching to go backwards. Let's face it, usability is not one of Microsoft's core strengths. For all their posts lately about user testing, they still seem to miss the forest for the trees. "Which ribbon buttons get the most clicks?" doesn't solve the ribbon's fundamental flaws.
Suddenly Newton
There are a couple of ways to tweak a lower resolution display to appear to have a higher resolution: assuming the photos are exactly the same and contain sufficient resolution. I'm assuming that they didn't display the photos at 1:1 ratio between photo pixels and display pixels. They probably took a full sized photo (12-24MP for typical DSLR) and allowed the device's software to scale the photo down to fit the device's screens. Depending on the algorithm used, this downscaling can affect the perceived sharpness of the image. If Microsoft boosted the contrast, or even applied tricks such as unsharp masking to the image as part of the downscaler, it would create the perception of "more detail." People perceive "detail" when there's high frequency changes in the luminance channel, so it could be something as simple as Microsoft's downscaler subsampling (as opposed to averaging the luminance of neighboring) pixels.
That's a big if. In my experience, Microsoft software skews heavily toward the 'nearest neighbor' camp. Desktop office, file browser thumbnails; my own websites have html flags solely for telling IE to use bicubic instead of its default. Does Surface, Office Touch, or desktop IE10 improve on this?
No need to be surprised about the Surface's lack of free space. I would bet money on finding plenty of legacy junk under the hood, from DLLs to ancient network stacks, and strings like 'A:\ not responding. Abort, Retry, Fail?'
"It's a wireless tablet! Why are there all these references to ethernet support?"
Windows RT and Windows 8 preserved the ugly WinSXS (Windows Side-by-side) system. On Windows 7 this folder alone weight over 9GB and keeps growing out of control after services pack updates. I expect many slow down and disk saturation problems for early Surface's owners.
Comments
iOS is less than 2 GB. Add productivity software, you may be around 2 GB or so.
Are you sure? Office 2010 Pro Plus (the most complete version) 64 bit, with included SP1, is sitting on 1.4GB ISO image.
Above mentioned MS Office folder in Program Files, once installed, is 0.99GB. Additional one in Common Files is additional 145MB. There might be some other smaller folders scattered around, but I wouldn't expect Office to take more than 2GB all together. RT Office is not going to have all the features of 2010 Pro Plus, and even those that it will have... I'd expect them to be a bit simplified and compacted version of desktop counterparts.
As of Windows 8 RT and is it going to be embedded in ROM or will it take part of user available storage (and what part), I haven't seen any info yet.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolipsismX
I'm under the impression they'll be on sale in about 2 weeks.
They officially go on sale October 26th midnight through the MS online or MS Retail stores. So I take it you're lining up for one? /s
Quote:
Originally Posted by AZREOSpecialist
The fact that these things are for sale, but no reviews have been released, speaks volumes to the type of product we're discussing.
When Apple releases an iPad, it shows us wonderful, humanitarian videos of how their products are changing the world. We see musicians mixing, we see families keeping in touch using FaceTime, and those in the media are given the devices prior to release so that the reviews hit at the same time as the product. Add to all of this MS' silly display PR disaster, and you can quickly see that the Surface is going to go the way of the Zune. In terms of pricing, MS isn't thinking as clearly as its supposed ClearType display. $120 for a keyboard cover? That would be high for an Apple product, let alone one containing MS branding.
The product has some unique features and holds promise, but so far MS is not executing well on the marketing front.
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices. The beauty of the Surface (and related) products, I have one device for both work and play - meaning I save money. In this crummy economy, that's a plus. Look, I love Apple products as much as the next person, but I give MS credit where they deserve it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shameer Mulji
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices. The beauty of the Surface (and related) products, I have one device for both work and play - meaning I save money. In this crummy economy, that's a plus. Look, I love Apple products as much as the next person, but I give MS credit where they deserve it.
What is your role at Microsoft? Your assumption is the Surface can do it all, I'd guess doing real "work" on it (or any tablet) is difficult. If an external keyboard is needed, and work / play are important with one device then the Macbook Air would likely be the best option. Even in today's economy most folks in the education and enterprise space are happily carrying 2 devices, and in some cases 3-4. I know if I had to pick one device to do everything then it would NOT be a tablet from any manufacturer. The answer is the Air.
That article is from July. Version included with RT tablets on release day will still be preview release. Update to final version will happen automatically, on undisclosed date... whenever that is.
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-home-student-rt-preview-FX103210361.aspx
Beside that, I have very little doubt that Office RT will be more cumbersome (or less elegant) than slimmer tablet/phone editions, but that's the thing; if one wants all the features of desktop Office on a tablet, well... you cannot have all those features while keeping only handful of buttons on screen.
Quote:
Originally Posted by singlespeed
What is your role at Microsoft? Your assumption is the Surface can do it all, I'd guess doing real "work" on it (or any tablet) is difficult. If an external keyboard is needed, and work / play are important with one device then the Macbook Air would likely be the best option. Even in today's economy most folks in the education and enterprise space are happily carrying 2 devices, and in some cases 3-4. I know if I had to pick one device to do everything then it would NOT be a tablet from any manufacturer. The answer is the Air.
I have no role at, or any emotional attachment to, or a fanboy of, any major tech company, be it MS, Apple, Google, Facebook, you name it. I love cool technology & doesn't matter to me who makes it. If it's MS then it's MS. If it's Apple then it's Apple. I realize there's folks out there carrying 2 or more devices. I wasn't born yesterday. If that's what floats their boat then great, more power to them. There are some of us that don't enjoy lugging around so many devices. And the Surface can potentially help solve that problem. Thank goodness for choice.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shameer Mulji
... I give MS credit where they deserve it.
It has neither been released nor has it been tested and reviewed. Maybe MS will deserve credit maybe they won't. All will be revealed soonish.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shameer Mulji
...There are some of us that don't enjoy lugging around so many devices. And the Surface can potentially help solve that problem.
It is somewhat ironic would you not agree that in the Surface ads, the device always emerged from a briefcase in two separate pieces. It never emerged as a single device with already attached cover which is in itself strange.
Quote:
Cleartype meaning a certain boldness and shadow to the font. wow. Crazy.
I'd prefer a display that doesn't need nasty looking fonts, thank you.
And then talking about reflections? As if their display is better because of reflections?
Cleartype is sub-pixel rendering. It has nothing to do with "boldness" or "shadows." It is a technology that Apple already uses in OSX. And MS was saying that their product is superior because it has LESS reflections than the iPad.
I suggest you learn what the hell you're talking about before making statements like that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shameer Mulji
They officially go on sale October 26th midnight through the MS online or MS Retail stores. So I take it you're lining up for one? /s
You make it a bit too obvious.
J.
The retina display lets you easily read minute text as it is rendered incredibly clearly on the display. I find it hard to believe that the same is al all possible on surface. It will make an interesting experiment once I get my hands on one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Shameer Mulji
In the Apple world if I want a "work" device, at the very least I get a MB Air and then a separate device, like an iPad or iPod Touch, for more casual use. That's two devices.
Or I could just clip a keyboard onto the iPad.
I have two concerns with the Surface:
I haven't seen any indication that it works well in portrait mode
The kickstand seems to be fixed at one position.
Again, it's hard to judge how good or bad it is because MS doesn't seem very keen on letting people review it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordeagle
Hi-density displays like Retina Display on the other hand (mostly) voids the needs for such techniques and thus are orientation agnostic.
Ah. This might explain why I've only seen the Surface photographed in landscape mode.
iPad Display = pretty much everything including a respectable sRGB colour spectrum.
Maybe we should put padding on the walls at Microsoft and not allow the employees to use anything sharper than a crayon.
768p on a tablet is a fail. Microsoft should have gone 1080p - it's sharp enough, and a standard resolution is good for media consumption.
That's funny. My understanding is Apple invented Cleartype and MS paid them a licensing fee for every copy of Windows sold.
No need to be surprised about the Surface's lack of free space. I would bet money on finding plenty of legacy junk under the hood, from DLLs to ancient network stacks, and strings like 'A:\ not responding. Abort, Retry, Fail?'
"It's a wireless tablet! Why are there all these references to ethernet support?"
drblank
M$ always manages to do something cheap. It's their nature. M$ has...
$top doing that, or I'll rant about hockey puck mice. LOL no right click. What's the deal with airline food? etc.
Shameer Mulji
Considering the amount of people that use Office, I'm sure there are many people who want a device like this - enterprise users and college students being two groups of people.
I doubt too many people who have experienced iWork are itching to go backwards. Let's face it, usability is not one of Microsoft's core strengths. For all their posts lately about user testing, they still seem to miss the forest for the trees. "Which ribbon buttons get the most clicks?" doesn't solve the ribbon's fundamental flaws.
Suddenly Newton
There are a couple of ways to tweak a lower resolution display to appear to have a higher resolution: assuming the photos are exactly the same and contain sufficient resolution. I'm assuming that they didn't display the photos at 1:1 ratio between photo pixels and display pixels. They probably took a full sized photo (12-24MP for typical DSLR) and allowed the device's software to scale the photo down to fit the device's screens. Depending on the algorithm used, this downscaling can affect the perceived sharpness of the image. If Microsoft boosted the contrast, or even applied tricks such as unsharp masking to the image as part of the downscaler, it would create the perception of "more detail." People perceive "detail" when there's high frequency changes in the luminance channel, so it could be something as simple as Microsoft's downscaler subsampling (as opposed to averaging the luminance of neighboring) pixels.
That's a big if. In my experience, Microsoft software skews heavily toward the 'nearest neighbor' camp. Desktop office, file browser thumbnails; my own websites have html flags solely for telling IE to use bicubic instead of its default. Does Surface, Office Touch, or desktop IE10 improve on this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Vorsos
No need to be surprised about the Surface's lack of free space. I would bet money on finding plenty of legacy junk under the hood, from DLLs to ancient network stacks, and strings like 'A:\ not responding. Abort, Retry, Fail?'
"It's a wireless tablet! Why are there all these references to ethernet support?"
Windows RT and Windows 8 preserved the ugly WinSXS (Windows Side-by-side) system. On Windows 7 this folder alone weight over 9GB and keeps growing out of control after services pack updates. I expect many slow down and disk saturation problems for early Surface's owners.