Microsoft Australia slashes price of Surface Pro 128GB by $AUD400

I'd put my money on a Toshiba Encore

I bought one at the end of last year (boxing day sales naturally). Fantastic little unit that runs full Win8.1 for around $300 + another $80 for an extra 32Gb SD Card. $120 cheaper than either of your options. It's my preferred portable option now.

My 17" laptop (also new - thanks JB HiFi for screwing up your pricing so spectacularly well, I REALLY appreciated that) is also portable, but at just under 3kg it normally lives on my desk.

Where would you put your money?

> Where would you put your money?

Not something with an A6 and a low-res 15-inch panel. It's only got a 4-cell battery too, my T410 kills a 6-cell in 2 hours.

What's your main usage going to be, do you need a touch-screen? Does it need to live forever, or get replaced 1-2 years down the line?

If tablet use is going to be the main usage, I'd look at a Lenovo Miix 2 10, or a Nokia 2520 if RT will get the job done, or the Surface Pro mentioned (it'll be heavier than the rest though). Anything bigger than 10-inch is going to be tricky to hold as a tablet.

If it's going to spend most of it's life hooked up to a monitor churning spreadsheets, go for a proper laptop. At least an i5, but not a cheap-as-possible entry-level job. A nearly-new T520/T540 will be much better built and last longer, or maybe a Dell XPS, Inspiron or Latitude?

The Surface 2 is still a stupid compromise

The Surface 2 has horrible thick edges, so that the keyboard cover can be attached to turn it into a laptop.

The surface should have been designed as a tablet first, with thin edges like the iPad and google/Samsung Nexus 10, instead we have something blocky and ugly. Microsoft should have done what google did and cloned the shape of the iPad (as much as their lawyers thought they could get away with) then tried to add extra features to win users away from Apple's camp. For google the value add was a 300 pixel per inch screen beating that on the iPad 4 and iPad mini.

Having a keyboard is a value add for the customer. But the extra thick square edges and weight more than detract for it.

I'd buy the Surface Pro....and immediately put Linux on it after getting a Type Cover 2 for said unit.

But that's me.

bigger screen size and hdd space? wtf?

Seriously?

Yes the screen size is bigger. It is also worse. tft 1366X768 VS 1080P IPS IIRC. hmm... grainy and crap or clear and detailed. Bigger is not always better. GOH!

And yes. a 500gb hdd can have all the random sh!% on it you want. With ridiculously slow latency and horrible read speeds of a 5400rpm throw away hdd.

OR.... OR!!!!!

You could have 128GB of 10x faster SSD that will boot in 10 secs not 30 and a USB port to plug in an external hdd if you wanna be lame.

seriously.. speed == better than space on a lappy, I have replaced the hdd with ssd in my house for both my girlfriend and myself and the random swearing has decreased immensely.

also btw. the equivalency to an iPAD is plain wrong. This an ultrabook with tablet features. more of a Macbook Air competitor than anything else.

I don't have one.. but seriously... seriously you guys.

Where would you put your money?

Right now a new set of false teeth, some to the tax department, some off the credit cards, some to the two insurance companies I owe money to for a prang last year, a little to the bank for the mortgage, a tad into a savings account and if there is any left over, food for the kids.