back to article One two three... Go: Long Pig Microsoft avoids cannibalising Surface

Microsoft has avoided cannibalising its boutique, premium Surface line by making one that's a lot less boutique and premium – at around half the price. Steven Sinofsky at Surface launch event Microsoft returns to Valley of Death? Cheap Surface threatens the hardware show READ MORE In May, when word of the initiative first …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Really?

    >>If it tarnished the <Microsoft> brand<< Perhaps they could use the polish that BoJo mentioned last week.

    For left pondians BoJo is our recently resigned Foreign Sec.

  2. James 51

    It's at least £80 too expensive for what it is and £100 for the keyboard and £90 for the pen is an expensive joke.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      At £80, it's too expensive for what it is.

    2. Ken 16 Silver badge

      I'd be OK with the price

      if the typecover was included.

      You can get a generic pen for about €25 if you really want to (I had a Surface Pro 3 in a previous job, never used anything but the keyboard)

  3. hammarbtyp

    I don't get the market this is aimed at

    It looks good, but basically for £379 you get a sub-standard iPad with a non-existent app store. To do anything useful you need to spend £100 to get a keyboard and mouse, which is optimised for travel not work.

    The killer app would be the touch interface, but a pen is another £100! for a device which is certain to go missing at some point in its life.

    You can get a pretty decent laptop for £500. The only advantage being a slightly improved iportability. Basically you either the combination of tablet with limited functionality combined with less than optimal laptop. Ok its less than say a iPad and a laptop, but most people in this market will go for that option

    I'm sure it fits some people need, but I'm not sure there is a big market out there

    1. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
      Trollface

      "certain to go missing at some point in its life"

      That should make up for lost revenue from their lack of store items

    2. Joe Werner Silver badge

      A laptop is not an alternative - at least not if portability (i.e. size and battery life) is the key.

      Use case 1: work on a plane (or a train). Good luck with opening that laptop (though the weird surface-stand-thingy means it will be inconvenient at least!) - ok, so you need a netbook-sized machine.

      Use case 2: a conference. Look at all of the geeks running around looking for a free power outlet to charge their mobile workstations.

  4. Captain Scarlet Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Surface 3's

    As this had a sim card it was perfect for what management wanted and exactly what a bit of CRM software required.

    Bloody charging the thing is a pain (Has to be a charger at least 2.5 Amp, has to be a specific quality cable or it doesn't charge (Amazon basics usb cables oddly we found worked perfect)), building the thing with standard MS SCCM tools is a bloody pain.

    They don't want a more epensive version and with the sim card removed from most models means once people drop them they are impossible to replace with the same thing.

    I feel they will just do the same thing for their student grade surface and fear someone will go Aha thats what we need.

  5. Robigus
    WTF?

    "It's an office runtime for students"

    I think I would have killed myself when I was student if I thought my life was going to orbit around Office.

    1. stephanh

      Re: "It's an office runtime for students"

      I imagine students care more if it runs Fortnite. Which it doesn't.

      (Apparently you need at least a core i3 @ 2.4GHz to scrape by at the lowest settings.)

    2. tony2heads

      Re: "It's an office runtime for students"

      Serious documentation should be in Tex or LaTex

      1. TheGreatCabbage

        Re: "It's an office runtime for students"

        I'm a student and we never use Microsoft Office, it really has to be LaTeX.

  6. Charlie Clark Silver badge

    £380 will get you the 4GB RAM / 64 GB Flash machine

    Need to cough up £510 for a 8GB / 128 GB combo.

    Obviously, swapping to Flash should still make it a zippy little device but from what I've seen of Windows 10 or whatever they're pushing 4GB really seems like the lower limit.

    1. Sonic531

      I bought a used surface pro 3 i7 8gb with keyboard and pen for £450 of eBay. Granted it's used but the condition was very good and it's probably more capable than the surface go. Larger screen with higher resolution too.

  7. Steve Knox
    Stop

    No

    "The 10-inch 800 x 1200 (217 PPI) resolution is impressive."

    No, it most definitely is not. I have a 5 year old tablet with 4x that resolution that cost under $200 back then. Anything under FHD is unacceptable on any device with a screen over 3" in size.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Re: No

      It"s missing a 1 - now fixed. Don't forget to email corrections@theregister.com if you spot anything you think is odd or wrong.

      C.

      1. Steve Knox

        Re: No

        Didn't know it was a typo -- this was the first article I read on the device, and 800x1200, though in portrait mode, is a much more common resolution than 1800x1200.

        However, my point still stands -- and is perhaps reinforced:

        1. my 5-year old 8-inch tablet still has a higher resolution, and cost significantly less.

        2. 1800x1200 is still not FHD, as a minimum horizontal resolution of 1920 is required for that.

        This second point makes me think someone at Microsoft wanted to keep this product on-point and didn't want people looking to use it as a budget FHD media player, as it's suspiciously close to FHD.

        1. Sonic531

          Re: No

          1920 X 1080 = 2073600

          1800 X 1200 = 2160000

          The surface go has a slightly higher resolution and is going for the 3:2 aspect ratio which I find really works on the other surface devices for reading and annotating scientific journals. However, that's my personal usage scenario and the resolution probably isn't great for content consumption.

        2. Tronied

          Re: No

          What is this device which costs under $200 5 years ago which offers a better resolution than 1800x1200?

  8. Jason Hindle

    It’s an expensive way to run Office

    When you factor in the cost of the pretty much mandatory keyboard.

  9. nematoad
    Happy

    Right.

    Yes, yes, yes, that's all very well but will it run Linux?

    Didn't I see that MS "loves" Linux or is that pushing things too far?

  10. Kernel

    Long Pig

    I seem to recall reading somewhere that you had to be cautious with long pig - the white skinned ones tended to be excessively salty and would give you the shits if you weren't used to it.

    At least nobody ever seems to have claimed it tastes like chicken.

    1. Dagg Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: Long Pig

      white skinned ones tended to be excessively salty

      Nah, from what I've been told you treat them like corned beef and just soak them for a while changing the water every so often and perfect.

      Nice hungi bit of puha and thats it.

  11. Brett Weaver

    Does not run Fortnite?

    Well, that stops it being sold to any students...

    Microsoft never seems to "get it"...

    If you are going to direct a try to compete with an incumbent (Apple Ipad Pro) then you need to be cheaper, faster better. Not this.

    1. Franco

      Re: Does not run Fortnite?

      I take your point, but Apple continually flout the accepted wisdom of cheaper, faster, better, usually in favour of shiner, more expensive, less features and get away with it.

      I accept that Microsoft do not have the consumer brand awareness that allows Apple to get away with this however.

      1. stephanh

        Re: Does not run Fortnite?

        Fortnite runs on the ipad. So do tons of other games. Ipad has much more GPU oomph than the Intel HD 615 in the Go.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It doesn't have a sim-card?

    Then how can it consistently upload all the slurped data?

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