7 ms·

Everyone seems really blown away by the pricing and I'm not sure why. This isn't an iPad, it houses a fully functional operating system that lets you run existi

by Permit 14y ago

Everyone seems really blown away by the pricing and I'm not sure why. This isn't an iPad, it houses a fully functional operating system that lets you run existing Windows 7 desktop applications. In a use-case scenario I see it being more similar to a laptop than to the iPad. If I can run Visual Studio on it and it handles all my existing Windows 7 applications correctly, I'd consider purchasing it. I don't look at it like it's a tablet I'm going to be installing a Scrabble App on, though.

SG- 14y ago
Oh right, scabble is the only thing tablets or iPads are good for. The rest of your thoughts were spot on, but you sort of went the troll route at the end.
rmrfrmrf 14y ago
I don't get it, really. They designed a tablet whose primary use-case is in laptop mode? Why not just buy a better-spec'd laptop for the same price? And why does Surface have a mission-critical piece of hardware (the keyboard) missing from it? Sorry, but at a whopping $1050 after purchasing this critical component, I'd rather just buy a 11in Macbook air for cheaper.
- hosay123 14y ago
  Windows has supported gestures and handwriting recognition for years, and the Pro comes with a stylus. To say a keyboard is critical seems a gross overstatement. As for use cases, how about: it's a tablet, without the regular complexities of 'tablet mode'. It runs the same stuff as your desktop, acts, smells, barks and looks just like your desktop, and if you want to use it like a crippled toy in the style of an iPad, you're free to use the metro apps. Let us also not be too quick to forget that Microsoft were the first to seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience. They're the only company (out of two runners, really) with a serious story in this department. Waiting with bated breath to see if Apple wholesale copies the Microsoft approach, toy-apps-as-start-button works wonderfully.
  - rimantas 14y ago
    You put a lot of effort to get it backwards. > it's a tablet, without the regular complexities > of 'tablet mode' No, it is a table with added complexities of desktop mode. > It runs the same stuff as your desktop, acts, smells, barks and looks just like your desktop Except your desktop expects you to interact with keyboard and pointer device not with you touch. And there it all fails apart. > if you want to use it like a crippled toy in the style of an iPad The words you were looking for are "use it optimised for touch, as iPad". > Microsoft were the first to seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience And were seriously unsuccessful at it. > Waiting with bated breath to see if Apple wholesale copies the Microsoft approach, > toy-apps-as-start-button works wonderfully. What's the logic behind that? Microsoft "seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience" and it fails. Apple launches iPad with "crippled toy style" and it is wildly successful. No somehow Apple should copy Microsoft's approach which failed?
    - hosay123 14y ago
      A desktop expects input devices, yes, but also there has been a wonderful need to accommodate disabled people for decades prior to the whole tablet thing, and so all modern desktops have great support for auxiliary input devices, and in the case of business software some of it is even legally mandated in order to sell to government. Microsoft has had a great built-in framework for touch/stylus driven input since Windows XP (2001). The end result is that an on-screen keyboard or gesture input is just as capable of driving desktop software, and it's been that way for a very long time. If any aspect of the experience is suboptimal, it would be tiny widget sizes that are unaccommodating to thumb-sized input. But that's covered by inclusion of a stylus.
- debacle 14y ago
  I think a better question might be "Why buy a tablet that is also a laptop when laptops that are also tablets have been around for years?" Asus has touchscreen laptops for less than half of the price, and convertible laptops have been around for at least a decade.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Try using a Surface - it really is nothing like the old tablets of yesteryears. Convertible laptops were 5lb monstrosities that were nearly impossible to hand hold, emitted tremendous amounts of heat, had incredibly poor battery life, and infamous reliability issues that came from a mechanically complex transformation mechanism. They also used resistive touch screens that were easy to damage, required frequent recalibration when heavily used, and were difficult to use with fingers (making the devices almost exclusively stylus-based devices). So no, the modern incarnation of the tablet (in the way that iPad has defined it) is nothing like the tablet of old. In fact, if you look at the new convertible tablets coming out of OEMs, they've come pretty far too: capacitive screens, solid construction, hugely reduced weight, unbelievably lower heat output, and battery life that actually matters. We're also seeing novel new ways of building convertibles (e.g., separating keyboard from screen entirely) that make the devices far more realistic for handheld use. The big secret to tablets that Apple realized, and other companies are slowly picking up on is the importance of the screen. Old convertible laptops used the absolute worst screens that had limited viewing angles, demonstrated ugly moire and discoloration on taps/presses, along with a slew of heat output and power consumption problems. Compare with the calibrated, accurate, brilliant IPS panels that now inhabit tablets (both Surface and iPad have IPS panels), they are worlds apart. When you're putting together a mobile device that is going to be oriented this way and that in someone's hands, a shitty LCD panel really doesn't cut it. And the problem with Asus and their "half price" touchscreen laptops is all in the screen.
    - debacle 14y ago
      I guess I should state that I plan on buying a Surface when it comes out (not RT). I'm pointing out more from the business standpoint that people are going to be comparing these devices to other devices that look the same, not other devices that are equally as powerful or as well-made. MS is going to have to work really hard to convince people that the surface is worth $900, at least in my opinion.
- facorreia 14y ago
  I see it as an answer to this question: when I leave home, should I bring my MacBook Air, my iPad, or both? None, take the Surface.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    So you have something that's not good at any of the use cases involved?
    - WrkInProgress 14y ago
      I'm curious as to how this isn't as good (on paper) as something like a Macbook Air or a PC Ultrabook ?
      - seunosewa 14y ago
        - A crappier keyboard. - A rigid display whose viewing angles can't be adjusted. - The keyboard doesn't work very well when you use it on your lap. You have to place it on a table. - It's more fragile, especially in tablet mode.
        JuDue 14y ago
        And portrait mode that has a bad aspect ratio. It's a fundamental mistake for a tablet. People thought the RT was slightly heavy to hold as a tablet. Will be interested to see their opinions of this.
eykanal 14y ago
Everyone's blown away because they priced themselves out of their target market. Whether they agree or not, this is going to be compared to the other tablets (i.e., the iPad) out there, and for the base models, the cost is almost double. For a company attempting to play catch-up, their giving themselves such a tremendous handicap is pretty unexpected.
- moconnor 14y ago
  I don't think their target market for the Pro is the hobbyist, or Mom and Pa, it's the enterprise business market, where the iPad has seen little penetration. This market doesn't care if the kickstand works on your knee. Or about a few hundred dollars here or there. Exchange integration, legacy internal applications, these things matter. Note taking in meetings.
  - steverb 14y ago
    Active Directory integration is huge for the enterprises I deal with.
  - taylodl 14y ago
    I work in the enterprise business market, for a 100 year old blue chip firm - and the iPads have come in like a tsunami thanks to our BYOD policy. They have Exchange integration. Legacy internal applications? These have all been web-enabled over the past 10 years. And the adoption has been top-down: it's the C-level execs that are driving this change. This has been going on for two years now. Microsoft seriously missed the boat and more and more is considered to be an old-school technology company like IBM.
  - absconditus 14y ago
    Enterprise users are still stuck on IE 6, 7, and 8. How are they going to use tablets with IE 10?
- wvenable 14y ago
  The 64GB iPad is $699 vs. $899 for the Surface Pro. That's not double. I'd say that's entirely in the same market. In my opinion the Surface Pro is better value since it is a full PC.
bunderbunder 14y ago
Ditto. As it is, I'm seeing it as something that's price-competitive with my Macbook Air, but which can handily double as a tablet for when I want to kick my feet up to just browse the web or read a book. Given that it actually sounds inexpensive to me, after you factor in that it saves having to spend an extra several hundred dollars if you also want a tablet.
cbhl 14y ago
For the last decade or so, a x86-based device running Windows with a half decent digitizer cost roughly $3000. I doubt you'll see people picking this over an iPad though.
smacktoward 14y ago
The problem is that the pricing puts it into a weird space in the market. If you want to use it as a laptop, you have to add one of the covers (the $120 Touch Cover or $130 Type Cover) so you have a keyboard, and that puts the price of the package over $1,000. You can get a "real" laptop (even a Macbook Air!) for less than that. An argument could be made that Surface Pro isn't just a laptop, but a laptop plus a tablet, in which case the appropriate price comparison would be the cost of a Macbook and an iPad. But the extra horsepower the Surface would require to run like a laptop would mean lower battery life and greater weight. So you get a tablet, but one that's less appealing than a tablet designed to only be a tablet.
- Bud 14y ago
  Not just a keyboard. If you want to use it like a real laptop, you will need a mouse or other pointing device, as well. Touch on a vertically-oriented screen is not going to cut it for laptop-ish kinds of uses, as has been proven in years and years of UX studies. Clarifying edit: Touch is great if you are holding the device in your hands, of course, like an iPad. But once you are using a keyboard and Surface's kickstand and trying to run Windows apps, which is the use case we're discussing here, you'll need a mouse or a trackpad, just like you do to run Windows on any other device. Windows apps are not touch friendly and that didn't magically change just because Ballmer is trying to enter the market that he publicly mocked in 2007 (iPhone) and 2010 (iPad).
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    Both the touch and type covers have a trackpad built in - it's surprising that they didn't include these items in the package, considering how core they are to the Surface experience
  - cooldeal 14y ago
    >because Ballmer is trying to enter the market that he publicly mocked in 2007 (iPhone) and 2010 (iPad). I'm tired of these kinds of statements. The golden rule is that companies' employee publicly have to put down their competitors' new strategies. Imagine if Balmer said the iPad is great it's going to kill us, or if Jobs said 7" tablets are good but we'll make only in two years, so wait for us to make it. Or even Andy Rubin saying that Android UI is laggy compared to iOS, fix coming in 18 months. All of them(except maybe Jobs) would be summarily fired or atleast will be forced to recant their statements immediately on threat of being fired. It's almost part of their job to publicly mock their competitors, or their shareholders will dump the stock. The more puzzling thing to me is, why do so many people actually think that these people say what they really believe and really believe what they say?
rayiner 14y ago
I don't get the point of a device that's not a good tablet because it doubles as a mediocre laptop.
sliverstorm 14y ago
I'm surprised, but I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised because I knew it would have a premium over the Surface RT. At $699 for the 64GB RT, $899 sounds like just the right price for the 64GB Surface Pro. I'm surprised, because there's no two ways about it- $899 and not even with a keyboard is pricey. I think you're spot on though, this isn't an iPad. Looking at the photo at the top of the page, I have one word ringing about in my head, and it isn't "tablet"- it is "slate". This is not your grandma's new movie device, and it isn't meant to be.

by Permit 14y ago

SG- 14y ago

Oh right, scabble is the only thing tablets or iPads are good for. The rest of your thoughts were spot on, but you sort of went the troll route at the end.

rmrfrmrf 14y ago

I don't get it, really. They designed a tablet whose primary use-case is in laptop mode? Why not just buy a better-spec'd laptop for the same price? And why does Surface have a mission-critical piece of hardware (the keyboard) missing from it? Sorry, but at a whopping $1050 after purchasing this critical component, I'd rather just buy a 11in Macbook air for cheaper.

hosay123 14y ago
Windows has supported gestures and handwriting recognition for years, and the Pro comes with a stylus. To say a keyboard is critical seems a gross overstatement. As for use cases, how about: it's a tablet, without the regular complexities of 'tablet mode'. It runs the same stuff as your desktop, acts, smells, barks and looks just like your desktop, and if you want to use it like a crippled toy in the style of an iPad, you're free to use the metro apps. Let us also not be too quick to forget that Microsoft were the first to seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience. They're the only company (out of two runners, really) with a serious story in this department. Waiting with bated breath to see if Apple wholesale copies the Microsoft approach, toy-apps-as-start-button works wonderfully.
- rimantas 14y ago
  You put a lot of effort to get it backwards. > it's a tablet, without the regular complexities > of 'tablet mode' No, it is a table with added complexities of desktop mode. > It runs the same stuff as your desktop, acts, smells, barks and looks just like your desktop Except your desktop expects you to interact with keyboard and pointer device not with you touch. And there it all fails apart. > if you want to use it like a crippled toy in the style of an iPad The words you were looking for are "use it optimised for touch, as iPad". > Microsoft were the first to seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience And were seriously unsuccessful at it. > Waiting with bated breath to see if Apple wholesale copies the Microsoft approach, > toy-apps-as-start-button works wonderfully. What's the logic behind that? Microsoft "seriously meld the desktop and tablet experience" and it fails. Apple launches iPad with "crippled toy style" and it is wildly successful. No somehow Apple should copy Microsoft's approach which failed?
  - hosay123 14y ago
    A desktop expects input devices, yes, but also there has been a wonderful need to accommodate disabled people for decades prior to the whole tablet thing, and so all modern desktops have great support for auxiliary input devices, and in the case of business software some of it is even legally mandated in order to sell to government. Microsoft has had a great built-in framework for touch/stylus driven input since Windows XP (2001). The end result is that an on-screen keyboard or gesture input is just as capable of driving desktop software, and it's been that way for a very long time. If any aspect of the experience is suboptimal, it would be tiny widget sizes that are unaccommodating to thumb-sized input. But that's covered by inclusion of a stylus.
debacle 14y ago
I think a better question might be "Why buy a tablet that is also a laptop when laptops that are also tablets have been around for years?" Asus has touchscreen laptops for less than half of the price, and convertible laptops have been around for at least a decade.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Try using a Surface - it really is nothing like the old tablets of yesteryears. Convertible laptops were 5lb monstrosities that were nearly impossible to hand hold, emitted tremendous amounts of heat, had incredibly poor battery life, and infamous reliability issues that came from a mechanically complex transformation mechanism. They also used resistive touch screens that were easy to damage, required frequent recalibration when heavily used, and were difficult to use with fingers (making the devices almost exclusively stylus-based devices). So no, the modern incarnation of the tablet (in the way that iPad has defined it) is nothing like the tablet of old. In fact, if you look at the new convertible tablets coming out of OEMs, they've come pretty far too: capacitive screens, solid construction, hugely reduced weight, unbelievably lower heat output, and battery life that actually matters. We're also seeing novel new ways of building convertibles (e.g., separating keyboard from screen entirely) that make the devices far more realistic for handheld use. The big secret to tablets that Apple realized, and other companies are slowly picking up on is the importance of the screen. Old convertible laptops used the absolute worst screens that had limited viewing angles, demonstrated ugly moire and discoloration on taps/presses, along with a slew of heat output and power consumption problems. Compare with the calibrated, accurate, brilliant IPS panels that now inhabit tablets (both Surface and iPad have IPS panels), they are worlds apart. When you're putting together a mobile device that is going to be oriented this way and that in someone's hands, a shitty LCD panel really doesn't cut it. And the problem with Asus and their "half price" touchscreen laptops is all in the screen.
  - debacle 14y ago
    I guess I should state that I plan on buying a Surface when it comes out (not RT). I'm pointing out more from the business standpoint that people are going to be comparing these devices to other devices that look the same, not other devices that are equally as powerful or as well-made. MS is going to have to work really hard to convince people that the surface is worth $900, at least in my opinion.
facorreia 14y ago
I see it as an answer to this question: when I leave home, should I bring my MacBook Air, my iPad, or both? None, take the Surface.
- rayiner 14y ago
  So you have something that's not good at any of the use cases involved?
  - WrkInProgress 14y ago
    I'm curious as to how this isn't as good (on paper) as something like a Macbook Air or a PC Ultrabook ?
    - seunosewa 14y ago
      - A crappier keyboard. - A rigid display whose viewing angles can't be adjusted. - The keyboard doesn't work very well when you use it on your lap. You have to place it on a table. - It's more fragile, especially in tablet mode.
      - JuDue 14y ago
        And portrait mode that has a bad aspect ratio. It's a fundamental mistake for a tablet. People thought the RT was slightly heavy to hold as a tablet. Will be interested to see their opinions of this.

eykanal 14y ago

Everyone's blown away because they priced themselves out of their target market. Whether they agree or not, this is going to be compared to the other tablets (i.e., the iPad) out there, and for the base models, the cost is almost double. For a company attempting to play catch-up, their giving themselves such a tremendous handicap is pretty unexpected.

moconnor 14y ago
I don't think their target market for the Pro is the hobbyist, or Mom and Pa, it's the enterprise business market, where the iPad has seen little penetration. This market doesn't care if the kickstand works on your knee. Or about a few hundred dollars here or there. Exchange integration, legacy internal applications, these things matter. Note taking in meetings.
- steverb 14y ago
  Active Directory integration is huge for the enterprises I deal with.
- taylodl 14y ago
  I work in the enterprise business market, for a 100 year old blue chip firm - and the iPads have come in like a tsunami thanks to our BYOD policy. They have Exchange integration. Legacy internal applications? These have all been web-enabled over the past 10 years. And the adoption has been top-down: it's the C-level execs that are driving this change. This has been going on for two years now. Microsoft seriously missed the boat and more and more is considered to be an old-school technology company like IBM.
- absconditus 14y ago
  Enterprise users are still stuck on IE 6, 7, and 8. How are they going to use tablets with IE 10?
wvenable 14y ago
The 64GB iPad is $699 vs. $899 for the Surface Pro. That's not double. I'd say that's entirely in the same market. In my opinion the Surface Pro is better value since it is a full PC.

bunderbunder 14y ago

Ditto. As it is, I'm seeing it as something that's price-competitive with my Macbook Air, but which can handily double as a tablet for when I want to kick my feet up to just browse the web or read a book. Given that it actually sounds inexpensive to me, after you factor in that it saves having to spend an extra several hundred dollars if you also want a tablet.

cbhl 14y ago

For the last decade or so, a x86-based device running Windows with a half decent digitizer cost roughly $3000. I doubt you'll see people picking this over an iPad though.

smacktoward 14y ago

The problem is that the pricing puts it into a weird space in the market. If you want to use it as a laptop, you have to add one of the covers (the $120 Touch Cover or $130 Type Cover) so you have a keyboard, and that puts the price of the package over $1,000. You can get a "real" laptop (even a Macbook Air!) for less than that. An argument could be made that Surface Pro isn't just a laptop, but a laptop plus a tablet, in which case the appropriate price comparison would be the cost of a Macbook and an iPad. But the extra horsepower the Surface would require to run like a laptop would mean lower battery life and greater weight. So you get a tablet, but one that's less appealing than a tablet designed to only be a tablet.

Bud 14y ago
Not just a keyboard. If you want to use it like a real laptop, you will need a mouse or other pointing device, as well. Touch on a vertically-oriented screen is not going to cut it for laptop-ish kinds of uses, as has been proven in years and years of UX studies. Clarifying edit: Touch is great if you are holding the device in your hands, of course, like an iPad. But once you are using a keyboard and Surface's kickstand and trying to run Windows apps, which is the use case we're discussing here, you'll need a mouse or a trackpad, just like you do to run Windows on any other device. Windows apps are not touch friendly and that didn't magically change just because Ballmer is trying to enter the market that he publicly mocked in 2007 (iPhone) and 2010 (iPad).
- potatolicious 14y ago
  Both the touch and type covers have a trackpad built in - it's surprising that they didn't include these items in the package, considering how core they are to the Surface experience
- cooldeal 14y ago
  >because Ballmer is trying to enter the market that he publicly mocked in 2007 (iPhone) and 2010 (iPad). I'm tired of these kinds of statements. The golden rule is that companies' employee publicly have to put down their competitors' new strategies. Imagine if Balmer said the iPad is great it's going to kill us, or if Jobs said 7" tablets are good but we'll make only in two years, so wait for us to make it. Or even Andy Rubin saying that Android UI is laggy compared to iOS, fix coming in 18 months. All of them(except maybe Jobs) would be summarily fired or atleast will be forced to recant their statements immediately on threat of being fired. It's almost part of their job to publicly mock their competitors, or their shareholders will dump the stock. The more puzzling thing to me is, why do so many people actually think that these people say what they really believe and really believe what they say?

rayiner 14y ago

I don't get the point of a device that's not a good tablet because it doubles as a mediocre laptop.

sliverstorm 14y ago

I'm surprised, but I'm not surprised. I'm not surprised because I knew it would have a premium over the Surface RT. At $699 for the 64GB RT, $899 sounds like just the right price for the 64GB Surface Pro. I'm surprised, because there's no two ways about it- $899 and not even with a keyboard is pricey. I think you're spot on though, this isn't an iPad. Looking at the photo at the top of the page, I have one word ringing about in my head, and it isn't "tablet"- it is "slate". This is not your grandma's new movie device, and it isn't meant to be.