Microsoft Surface priced up for Blighty
Advanced orders for Microsoft's Surface tablet are now being taken in the UK. Prices starting at £399. That'll get you a 32GB version of the ARM-based slate without the touch-to-type keyboard-equipped Touch Cover, which comes bundled for an additional £80. Buy the cover on its own and you'll pay £100. Alternatively, those after …
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Re: An HP Touch rerun
Well if it went the way of the HP TouchPad, that would be more like 7 weeks. Disastrous for HP, but brilliant for consumers. I have one, recently put Android on it and it runs like a dream - fantastic hardware once you get past its somewhat incomplete onboard software. If Microsoft did something similar, they'd do a lot of people a big favour!
My hunch is that they won't though, and that the Surface will do well, at the least with the corporate sector who are extremely committed to Microsoft. The iPad's sold well in that market (all the senior managers at my work have one), but I can see the lure of MS and especially of full-blown Office to be pretty tempting for corporate IT depts.
Re: An HP Touch rerun
Before the launch of Surface 2? Yes probably....
Not surprising
Microsoft have seen the money Apple make, not just off the tablet but the peripherals and have decided to copy them. £100 for a keyboard is taking the piss by any measure. Probably costs £10 tops to make.
What I'd be interested is how many of these "Windows" tablets get returned when it transpires that it's not actually Windows but Windows RT and is therefore incompatible with pretty much everything.
Re: Not surprising
So did HP and RIM
Bad price points. Apple products still have a sense of awe about them to most, If you are going to spend £399 on a tablet which would you go for an Apple or a Microsoft?????
Re: Not surprising
I seem to recall some amusing stories when people happily bought Windows CE "HPC" devices, only to discover that not only it wouldn't run their favorite x86 .EXE files, the much lauded Pocket Office was mostly useless and had less features than say, Wordpad.
Re: Not surprising
Microsoft, I have my Xbox live account and Hotmail account and don't want to be setting up yet another account, plus, it's not Apple, which to me is a big plus point.
Re: Not surprising
Actually, edit that, looking through the specs. I thought this had HDMi out? instead I need to spend another £35 on a proprietary cable?? Come on Microsoft, you are following the Apple lead a little too closely for my liking.
Re: Not surprising
I would go for the one that had Office, all other things being equal.
Re: Not surprising
What I'd be interested is how many of these "Windows" tablets get returned when it transpires that it's not actually Windows but Windows RT and is therefore incompatible with pretty much everything.
That's a real issue, I think, and something not all that often postulated these days in the blogosphere. I mean, we're all nerds here -- kind of a precondition to our being here -- and thus, we know this (if you don't, hang your head in shame, then go read up on the fact that Windows RT is Windows only because "Windows" is Microsoft's brand name for any OS they create, and it implies nothing about compatibility).
So some people will buy these entirely based on the Windows/Microsoft branding. And they'll be flooding Microsoft and the support blogs about "How do I install X" on my shiny new Windows RT tablet. Can I hook up a CD drive? Just wait. Sure, this won't be everyone, but I'll bet it's more than just a fringe. This may be epic confusion. All hail Discordia!
The real issue here is why anyone would own a "satchel"
"The real issue here is why anyone would own a "satchel""
To put things in, while hitch-hiking the galaxy, dummy. Needs enough space for a tablet and a towel, at minimum.
The real issue is Internet Explorer
Let us assume some people like the look of it, like the 32 Gig for the price of the iPad3, and don't realise or not about iPad2 resolution for the price of iPad3 or the total lack of application on the RT platform, then there is still one massive elephant in this room left.
Internet Explorer.
The main use of a tablet is web surfing and I can't think of any reason besides torture who can lead to someone using that abomination of a web browser.
At least let us have Chrome or Firefox on the thing.
Mr
I believe the firefox app is almost ready to be released - good luck getting that on iPad
Re: The real issue is Internet Explorer
Not really, it's IE10 which is comparable to Chrome or Firefox in terms of standards compliance and speed. The age-old "Internet Explorer is rubbish" argument has been pretty meaningless since IE9, no matter how crappy IE6 may have been.
Re: The real issue is Internet Explorer
You can get Chrome (it's actually in some of the Microsoft promo shots) and maybe Firefox eventually.
What they're not telling you is that these are not going to be full implementations. WinRT will not, for example, allow data to turn into code. Thus, a browser can't implement a modern Javascript, because they all use JITs (Just-in-time compilers) that mandate data becoming code in an application. So you'll either have very poor Javascript performance, or they'll be using Microsoft's Javascript engine. Maybe not a big deal, but this is very much like Apple... Microsoft has special powers in Windows RT machines (eg, the power to use the Win32 APIs) that everyone else lacks.
early adopters
The problem is microsoft has burned their early adopters with windows phone. Apple has slowly upgraded ipad and iphone, so that consumers are not stuffed when the newer version comes out.
There are a few people who are keen to jump in, but I think a lot more people will happily sit with their popcorn and wait to see if another disaster movie like palm / HP is going to unfold.
If developers are waiting too, then microsoft has a big problem.
Re: early adopters
Microsoft didnt burn early adoptors at all. I have had my Samsung Omnia for 2 years and its still a great phone that's faster to use than the latest iPhone or Android handset.
I will be upgrading the the Lumia 920 as soon as I can, but If I wasnt then i would still be getting the Windows Phone 7.8 update. Thats more than most old Android handsets get...
Does that keyboard/cover
Come in a colour other than radioactive eye-gouging blue?
Re: Does that keyboard/cover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vasc8UNl_0
Features a black model. Demonstrates in a Q&A the keyboard attachment.
I recently bought a 64Gig Asus Transformer Pad Infinity
No regrets yet. The Asus has a better screen, the keyboard dock is more worthwhile because it adds battery life and ports, and it currently has a better app ecosystem. My phone is Android too, which is convenient for sharing apps and their data. I do find Android 4.1 a bit limited on a device of this calibre, and I'd like the WinRT Snap-2-apps feature. (Hopefully Android will get it, in due course.) I'm not bothered about Office.
I'd rather have had a full desktop Windows 8, without giving up battery life, but the former won't be available for several more months and the latter could be years. With it just being Windows RT, and at that price, it's not very attractive to me. Maybe in a year or two's time, when/if the app store is more mature. I might have changed my phone by then too.
Looks like the rumours of a $199 launch price were woefully inaccurate then. Can see this dying on it's arse. Android- a lot cheaper, iPad, the same price.
Name me anyone who's competed with Apple on features with tablets, not price, and has won?
Oh
I don't know anyone familiar with the industry who expected Microsoft to sell at or below cost, why spend a fortune to destroy oem business, aggravate Intel, and put the core windows business in jeopardy. 199 was one of those daft figures for the gullible or conspiracy minded types on a slow news day.
"Compares well with rivals"
So where is the Surface with a 2048×1536 pixel 264ppi display?
Re: "Compares well with rivals"
And the 3G/4G cellular modem. That £659 price point that El Reg quotes is for the WiFi + Cellular version. It's £100 quid cheaper if you don't need that.
Re: "Compares well with rivals"
Could it be that my eyes are no longer what they used to be or is it just that on a 10" tablet screen the final screen resolution simply isn't that important one you get into the regions of 720p widescreen?
I could easily imagine that better colour gamut would be noticeable, but not sure if Apples screen would be that much better that the MS screen based purely on resolution.
Disclaimer: I've not used either (or any) tablets and am genuinely curious if the difference in screen res is that dramatic such as to make it a selling point for normal day to day use, ie would you know just by using it or do you need to place them side by side to be able to spot the difference?
Re: "Compares well with rivals"
It's the difference between FAX quality and Laser printer quality. Yes, it's really noticeable, especially with small text on a web page.
Re: "Compares well with rivals"
I have a 24" monitor positioned about 30" away from me and it's 1920x1200 resolution (actually, I have two). 1366x768 at 10.6" That's 80 pixels per inch wide on the monitor and 128 pixels per inch wide on the tablet. Need to allow a little leeway because I'll be holding a tablet about half the distance to my face that I will a monitor, but if I sit that distance from my monitor it still looks fine. So I don't know if the screen on the SurfaceRT is good, bad or brilliant (there's a lot more to screen quality than resolution) but it's certainly possible that the screen is fine at 10.6" without being 720p.
There are also downsides to massive resolutions as well. The battery in the iPad3 is massively larger than the iPad2, but operating time is roughly the same. That's because the screen eats a lot more power. Apple could have had a really long battery life for the iPad3 but they chose screen resolution as their selling point instead (rightly so). Also, it takes considerably more processor power to run a much higher resolution. Take a mid-range graphics card and run a modern game at a low resolution - fine. Now whack it up to the highest resolution, say 2560x1440 and watch frame rates drop, or have to lower other settings to compensate. Low-power mobile devices don't normally have a lot of processing power to waste. What would you rather have for example? A fast refresh rate or a higher resolution? You want both of course which brings us back to the only realistic answer - there are a lot of factors in a screen and what you really need to do is try a screen out and see how it looks. But in answer to your question there's no reason why a 10" screen at lower than 720p can't be a very good screen.
Re: "Compares well with rivals"
You would need to be closer to Surface than 43cm with 20/20 vision to be able to distinguish a higher resolution screen than the one it has. Microsoft's Clear Type and the lower reflectivity of the Surface screen compared to he iPad give a sharper image anyway: http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57534066-75/microsoft-surface-beats-the-ipad-in-display-quality/
Office - USP? Really?
There are several decent Android office suites for less than a tenner that allow full editing of MS Office formats, so why blow your money on this overpriced crap with no ecosystem?
Re: Office - USP? Really?
Clearly you've never tried to do any *real* work with Android Office suites, because if you had you'd know that they are all incapable of anything other than fairly rudimentary document creation and editing.
Yes, they work to a fashion, but real world spreadsheets are usually more complicated than these suites can deal with.
Asus
Don't think you can compare this to the expensive Transformer Infinity, that has a much higher res screen.
Instead compare it to the Transformer TF300, which has a similar res to the surface and comes with keyboard dock for £379 from Amazon.
Less RAM but Android doesn't particularly need it. Yet.
why?
I don't understand this, one can get a great laptop for for these prices.
I only use MS where I have to, so would never want one. But is hard to justify the costs of *pads generally.
I also consider FreeRTOS a full blown OS.
No Outlook - no thanks
£80 for a keyboard (quality unknown), £19 for a colour - koolaid paradise
Who wants MS Word & Excel (and maybe MS Onenote) that overpriced desperately?
And of course, this means the x86 versions are gonna come in at over a thousand sterling. This pisses me off mightily as I would have wanted one.
Asus Transformer is looking better...
Tony, have the Surface Pro prices been announced at £1000+ or is your comment just FUD?
no they havnt, but its a bloody good guess. The rumours were £200 for the RT ones. But thats way off. So clearly the real windows tabs are going to be even dearer.
That would be because
Core i series processors are about 10 times the cost of an ARM, plus require bigger batteries and an active fan.
"The rumours were £200 for the RT ones."
The stupid rumour from an "anonymous source" that had no support or evidence and was followed by a legion of people everywhere the rumour appeared saying that it was a stupid rumour. No-one who knew anything thought that anything other than wild and unfeasible speculation.
Do the math...
Why would throwing in an x86 chip cost an extra £400?
They're using an i5, plus the chipset that does with an i5, since that's not an SOC. Versus a $15 nVidia Tegra T30. It's a laptop version, which isn't usually for sale and usually does cost more. I can buy a desktop version of the i5 Ivy Bridge for about $215 here. Some difference.
They're also going to need about twice the battery. The display is better on the Pro, 1920x1080 or so. The minimum flash memory is 64GB, they also have a 128GB version. And I'm sure other issues... not to mention markups.
Developer watching and waiting
Well, I'm a developer and I have already released a (free) Windows Store app, but I'm not going to bite. I was burned on WIndows Phone 7. I fear that MS will quickly lose interest in Windows RT and the ARM Surface will quickly become obsolete like my phone. Now if it was £200, that would be a much smaller risk and I might just be tempted.
Too expensive for what you get.
I'm in the market for a fondleslab. I won't pay Apple prices, and the Galaxy slab has a horrible plastic chassis (and is too expensive).
I was looking at the Toshiba AT300 but need to see one instore to check if its flimsy like the Galaxy or not.
Any other suggestions?
Wait for other companies to release Windows tablets? This isn't like Apple, other companies can create their own WinRT tablets. That includes the companies who are creating Android tablets... they can make Android/MS versions of the same basic spec if they want.
Will the RT version support multiple user profiles?
That is my #1 bug-bear with tablets. If I bought one then I'd expect anyone in the family to be able to log onto their own profile - meaning they have access to their photos, their emails, their apps. I wouldn't expect to have to buy one for each person given they replace much of the functionality of a typical home PC.
Re: Will the RT version support multiple user profiles?
Yes, multiple profiles work on Windows RT just as they do in Windows 8, they'll even synchronise between RT and 8 machines if you log into them with a Microsoft ID.
I suggest that the usual suspects do try and contain themselves.
When almost anyone who says they have ordered the device or suggests that they are about to purchase it gets hosed with thumbs it does rather reveal your real agenda, hmm? Especially here at RegHardware where we normally, thankfully, are spared that kind of behaviour. You suddenly pile onto a thread here and start voting in much larger numbers than we normally get on threads here? Who's your publicity/negative-astroturfing advisor, Baldrick?
So Microsoft learned their lessons from the Windows Phone 7 debacle then?
Lets make a [phone/tablet]. Lets make a nice restrictive hardware list, so there are less configurations to code for. Lets make it a halo product, like the i[phone/pad]. Those screens are expensive. Lets use a cheaper one. Lets RRP it at the same price as an Apple product. They sell. We're in Apples league, we're definitely more appealing than Android.
Hey, whys our slightly gimped, new ecosystem [phone/tablet] not doing as well as the mature platforms?!
By the way guys, Windows 9 won't work with your tablet. LOVE US!
My heart wants Microsoft to give Apple a good kicking. My head reminds me that this is unlikely and that the Surface would not exist were it not for Apple's guerilla innovation. Though unrelated, both my hear and my head however are more enthusiastic about the Rasberry pi being a success.
Ive just bought myself an Asus Transformer WITH keyboard for 380 GBP, with the ability to connect up an external HDD it has REPLACED my laptop, Ive spent my first whole week in 20 years being completely Microsoft free, its quite a liberating experience!
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