7 ms·

Surface Dogged by Low Sales, High Returns

jpeg_hero 14y ago
I returned the Surface I bought. I hardly ever return things. I thought the screen too tall when web surfing in portrait mode. And I had an overall "meh" feel towards the hardware that I knew would have me leaving it in the drawer, collecting dust. -- Sent from my iPad
- jmduke 14y ago
  Genuine question: Did you get the iPad before or after the Surface? For the life of me I can't understand why someone would want both products. (And, between the two of them, I'd personally choose the iPad.)
  - roc 14y ago
    > "For the life of me I can't understand why someone would want both products" You've never met a gadget-hound?
    - jmduke 14y ago
      I'm not saying those people don't exist -- I just don't know why they do. :)
      - pohl 14y ago
        I'm not in that demographic, but it's easy for me to imagine a techie who just likes to be the person in the room who has an informed opinion when the subject of available tablets comes up. For devices that have decent return policies or retain their resale value, there's minimal risk other than one's time investment.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
I've seen a handful of Surfaces around town, but I live in Seattle and every Microsoft employee got one for free. It's a nice device in theory: the build quality is significantly higher than your average PC, but the lack of apps is, I think, a killer. Almost no one understands the difference between Windows and Windows RT, nor understands that this means you won't be able to run Steam, PrintShop Pro, that crappy VB6 app that IT built when Clinton was President, or any other app that's run on Windows for the past 20+ years. Plus, the other thing that boggles my mind is that it is not a laptop. You literally cannot use it on your lap with either of the keyboard covers. It is either an overly long tablet, or a desktop machine. edit: I'm impressed therobot24 can get their Surface to balance properly on their legs. I tried this out and couldn't make it happen in a way that I thought would be safe. Maybe I underestimated the strength of the magnets between the keyboard and device.
- therobot24 14y ago
  I disagree with the 2nd part - I use the surface on my lap all the time - rather 90% of my usage is in bed or on the couch/recliner, each time with the kickstand out and using the type keyboard. I don't see why it didn't work for you, the only problem I can even think of is that sometimes i'm laying down and because i'm looking under my glasses I have trouble reading the screen.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    Do you sit with your legs together so you can support the device with two points of contact, or do you manage to balance the whole thing on one thigh? The problem with the kickstand/keyboard setup is that the keyboard isn't rigidly attached to the screen. You can use force on the palm rests of a laptop to support it in a wide variety of positions that seems really awkward with the Surface.
    - therobot24 14y ago
      legs together, or it's on my chest while i'm lying down. i kind of like that it isn't rigidly attached because my blanket or legs for that matter aren't exactly an even surface and instead of the device losing balance the keyboard leans a bit left or right.
blhack 14y ago
We demo'd a surface at work, and these were my takeaways: 1) The UI is incredibly confusing. It, again, feels like it's just a windows machine with some goofy /thing/ bolted to the top of it. It reminds me of windows media center. 2) At least the one we got was really heavy. Heavier than a macbook air, which is a "real" computer. 3) We all-too-frequently seemed to get dumped back into a standard windows desktop with a startbutton and everything...which would be great, if it functioned that way. All I wanted to do was create a PPTP connection on the thing, but absolutely couldn't figure out how to make that happen. -- I am fairly far from an apple fan, but the reason that the iPad has been so successful is that apple designed it from the beginning to be a new device with new UI paradigms. Android did the same. Microsoft, at least from the experience I got with surface, absolutely did not, which is sad, because they're easily poised to be able to dominate tablets. The "holy shit" dream scenario that I have, and I think it's shared by a lot of tablet users, is a tablet as a detachable auxiliary monitor that I can dock applications into. If I drag, for example, a browser window over to my surface monitor, that surface monitor should be able to get picked up and go with me, and then I should be able to dock that back into my desktop and go back to working there.
- roc 14y ago
  MS can only dominate tablets by upsetting their enterprise segments. Microsoft's personal computing empire is built not directly on Windows and Office, but on the million little customizations and plugins that people build on top of them. That's where their lock-in comes from these days. If they can't put that platform on the new hot computing hardware, their advantage is gone. New people buying a hypothetical "touch first" MS tablet would not only be free to choose other applications than Office, but their enterprises would be forced to rewrite their MS-locked solutions. Thus making it easier and easier for IT groups to push alternate desktop and server platforms. If Outlook is reduced to just-another-mail client, and the workflow/management 'applications' built on top of it have to be serviced elsewhere, you might as well let employees choose mac or linux machines. And you may not even be able to justify Exchange itself after a few years of that.
- WrkInProgress 14y ago
  A couple of notes to your points ... 2.) There are two Surface models, one is the Surface RT (which this article is talking about) and the other is the yet to be released Surface Pro. The Surface RT is slightly heaving than the latest generate iPad. The Surface Pro is supposed to be 2 lbs., which is lighter than the smallest Macbook Air and with the exception of form factor, it is every bit a real computer as is the Macbook Air. 3.) There is no start button in Windows 8 or Windows RT, so I don't know what device you were demo'ing.
n3rdy 14y ago
Perhaps they shipped them with only 23 gigs of free space knowing they would be returned long before anyone could use up that space.
Yhippa 14y ago
I have a Surface RT. Unfortunately I couldn't return it because it was outside the return window and Microsoft's return policy was rather unforgiving. Too late now. I actually like the thing. Pros: - The Type Cover is awesome. It's not bad typing on it and the keys are spaced enough where you don't feel cramped. The track pad works well with this too. - There are enough built in apps to get stuff done that most people need to do (calendar, email, document creation, and web browsing). - Hardware wise it is heavy but solidly built. It really looks nice and the kickstand isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Cons: - Someone mentioned that the aspect ratio of the screen makes it difficult to read documents sometimes. - Windows 8 has a steep learning curve. You won't be able to pick it up and immediately be productive with it like you would an iPad. However once you get used to the gestures you will be comfortable on any Windows 8 device. - For some reason (and this was true with my Windows Phone 7 HTC Arrive) apps take a long time to download data from the internet. You'll frequently be waiting on an app to connect to the internet to use things like the People Hub to see status updates. - Apps. This is a big one. There are few big name apps on there. Was hoping for Spotify, Facebook, and Twitter individual apps. - The name. They dropped the ball on a simple product naming strategy.
ladzoppelin 14y ago
The Pro version is what I think a lot of people are waiting for. The app market is still to small for the locked down arm version to be useful. Obviously the market is getting better but it still has a long way to go.
- nextparadigms 14y ago
  I don't think the $900 tablet that makes you pay for 64 GB of storage, but only allows you to use 23 GB is really what people are waiting for.
  - rednukleus 14y ago
    So put a 64gb SD card in there for 50 bucks. It's not an Apple product.
    - cremnob 14y ago
      With the keyboard the Surface Pro is already more expensive than the cheapest Macbook Air.
      - rednukleus 14y ago
        And they both have their strengths and weaknesses. What's your point? Or is this just blind hatred for a device that hasn't even launched yet?
        rayiner 14y ago
        Is it really hard to believe that rational people can see the Surface Pro as a severely compromised device just based on the specifications? Surface Pro enthusiasts are psyched about the Ivy Bridge CPU and real Windows 8, while detractors are skeptical about the severe compromises in the design: 33% heavier than an iPad with half the battery life and a small screen and pathetic keyboard/trackpad story relative to a real ultrabook. The enthusiasts could be right, it could end up being a "no compromises" hit of a device. But my money is with the detractors. I think it makes too many compromises relative to a real tablet and a real ultrabook to be a successful device that convinces people to consolidate both.
untog 14y ago
I was working out what tablet to get- the Surface was up there, but in the end I went with an Asus Transformer tablet. It has it's own infuriating features (incredibly slow IO performance, for one) but I do feel like Android will be a full OS before Windows 8 is a mobile one.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Its hard to push the envelope. I'm impressed that Microsoft didn't push out a 'me too' product, I wasn't impressed with their ability to 'step outside their comfort zone.' That said, the amount of experimentation that is going on these days reminds me of the early personal computer days and I find that a lot of fun. Its too bad Microsoft didn't hit one out of the park[1] but they've got room to continue. [1] Baseball metaphor for scoring a home run, also reading the Palm story and how they went from 'juggernaut' to 'irrelevant' in 36 months was pretty sobering.
WrkInProgress 14y ago
I have a Surface RT. It was a gift. I also have an iPad, that I paid for. I use both quite often. Is it a good device ? Yes, I think so. Would I recommend the current Surface RT ? No, not yet anyway. Here are my key issues: a.) The app store has to get better. I know it has a full featured browser (spare the IE jokes), so there isn't a need for as many apps as a traditional tablet, but I still think the RT's usage is set up for touch as often as possible and using IE10 in desktop mode just don't cut it for touch usage. b.)It can stand to be a bit cheaper (at least bundle in the keyboard for $50.00) c.) MS needs to get their act together because the built in apps are very bare bones and in fact are at times worse than the apps they replaced (i.e. Xbox Music vs Zune) d.)in terms of hardware, the only real issues I have would be the screen (quality is great, but I think the next iteration should bump up the resolution); and the cameras which are god awful. All in all, despite the criticism, I like the direction Microsoft has taken with Windows 8 and the Surface line. In typical Microsoft fashion, it would have helped if the different divisions had got their act together, so they could have released a more refined, coherent product. It always baffles me when I see incredulous posts on Hacker News that can't seem to grasp the benefits of a device like the Surface RT or the Pro. I think devices similar to the Surface Pro are the future of mass computing.
- meaty 14y ago
  How do you find office on RT? It's unusable for me. Too slow. Fortunately it's not my machine :)
  - pcj 14y ago
    Have you already installed the Office RTM update? It's a bit better after the update.
    - zmmmmm 14y ago
      That update is particularly hard to find - you have to dig several windows deep into the control panel in desktop mode ... it's one of those inexplicable things that just dumbfounds me - they leave a pre-release version of Office on the tablets and then almost guarantee nobody will install the proper version by making the update UI impossible to find.
trotsky 14y ago
How many MS products sell well in their first edition? Besides Kinect? I remember when Honeycomb was first out and all anyone could talk about was channel stuffing and how there wasn't a tablet market, there was an iPad market. A bit lower on that sites newsfeed is a note that the iPad dropped below 50% in the quarter they launched two new tablets.
- revscat 14y ago
  > How many MS products sell well in their first edition? Not very many MS products sell well regardless of version number. Outside of Office and Windows MS struggles, and the only consumer success they have had has been with the XBox. Their other initiatives -- Zune, Windows Phone, Kin, etc. -- have all struggled despite sustained efforts from Redmond. Microsoft has entered a field that already has established players -- Apple and Samsung -- who are on the 3rd+ generation of their devices, and who have greatly refined them over time. Microsoft has put out a device that is first-gen. This is woefully insufficient to make a dent, long-term or short. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the Surface* tablets will eventually suffer a fate similar to the Zune. I also don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Microsoft has shown that it cannot compete in the consumer space.
wozname 14y ago
I will not be getting a surface. I took a borrowed one home to show my wife, she hated it. She wanted the interface switched around since she's left handed, charms on the left and swipe right for more pages, I couldn't figure out how to do it, but I didn't look that hard. I'm also forbidden from installing Windows 8 on her laptop and the games machine. Personally I don't like how I need to be connected to the cloud all the time to do anything.

I returned the Surface I bought. I hardly ever return things. I thought the screen too tall when web surfing in portrait mode. And I had an overall "meh" feel towards the hardware that I knew would have me leaving it in the drawer, collecting dust. -- Sent from my iPad

jmduke 14y ago
Genuine question: Did you get the iPad before or after the Surface? For the life of me I can't understand why someone would want both products. (And, between the two of them, I'd personally choose the iPad.)
- roc 14y ago
  > "For the life of me I can't understand why someone would want both products" You've never met a gadget-hound?
  - jmduke 14y ago
    I'm not saying those people don't exist -- I just don't know why they do. :)
    - pohl 14y ago
      I'm not in that demographic, but it's easy for me to imagine a techie who just likes to be the person in the room who has an informed opinion when the subject of available tablets comes up. For devices that have decent return policies or retain their resale value, there's minimal risk other than one's time investment.

aaronbrethorst 14y ago

I've seen a handful of Surfaces around town, but I live in Seattle and every Microsoft employee got one for free. It's a nice device in theory: the build quality is significantly higher than your average PC, but the lack of apps is, I think, a killer. Almost no one understands the difference between Windows and Windows RT, nor understands that this means you won't be able to run Steam, PrintShop Pro, that crappy VB6 app that IT built when Clinton was President, or any other app that's run on Windows for the past 20+ years. Plus, the other thing that boggles my mind is that it is not a laptop. You literally cannot use it on your lap with either of the keyboard covers. It is either an overly long tablet, or a desktop machine. edit: I'm impressed therobot24 can get their Surface to balance properly on their legs. I tried this out and couldn't make it happen in a way that I thought would be safe. Maybe I underestimated the strength of the magnets between the keyboard and device.

therobot24 14y ago
I disagree with the 2nd part - I use the surface on my lap all the time - rather 90% of my usage is in bed or on the couch/recliner, each time with the kickstand out and using the type keyboard. I don't see why it didn't work for you, the only problem I can even think of is that sometimes i'm laying down and because i'm looking under my glasses I have trouble reading the screen.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Do you sit with your legs together so you can support the device with two points of contact, or do you manage to balance the whole thing on one thigh? The problem with the kickstand/keyboard setup is that the keyboard isn't rigidly attached to the screen. You can use force on the palm rests of a laptop to support it in a wide variety of positions that seems really awkward with the Surface.
  - therobot24 14y ago
    legs together, or it's on my chest while i'm lying down. i kind of like that it isn't rigidly attached because my blanket or legs for that matter aren't exactly an even surface and instead of the device losing balance the keyboard leans a bit left or right.

blhack 14y ago

We demo'd a surface at work, and these were my takeaways: 1) The UI is incredibly confusing. It, again, feels like it's just a windows machine with some goofy /thing/ bolted to the top of it. It reminds me of windows media center. 2) At least the one we got was really heavy. Heavier than a macbook air, which is a "real" computer. 3) We all-too-frequently seemed to get dumped back into a standard windows desktop with a startbutton and everything...which would be great, if it functioned that way. All I wanted to do was create a PPTP connection on the thing, but absolutely couldn't figure out how to make that happen. -- I am fairly far from an apple fan, but the reason that the iPad has been so successful is that apple designed it from the beginning to be a new device with new UI paradigms. Android did the same. Microsoft, at least from the experience I got with surface, absolutely did not, which is sad, because they're easily poised to be able to dominate tablets. The "holy shit" dream scenario that I have, and I think it's shared by a lot of tablet users, is a tablet as a detachable auxiliary monitor that I can dock applications into. If I drag, for example, a browser window over to my surface monitor, that surface monitor should be able to get picked up and go with me, and then I should be able to dock that back into my desktop and go back to working there.

roc 14y ago
MS can only dominate tablets by upsetting their enterprise segments. Microsoft's personal computing empire is built not directly on Windows and Office, but on the million little customizations and plugins that people build on top of them. That's where their lock-in comes from these days. If they can't put that platform on the new hot computing hardware, their advantage is gone. New people buying a hypothetical "touch first" MS tablet would not only be free to choose other applications than Office, but their enterprises would be forced to rewrite their MS-locked solutions. Thus making it easier and easier for IT groups to push alternate desktop and server platforms. If Outlook is reduced to just-another-mail client, and the workflow/management 'applications' built on top of it have to be serviced elsewhere, you might as well let employees choose mac or linux machines. And you may not even be able to justify Exchange itself after a few years of that.
WrkInProgress 14y ago
A couple of notes to your points ... 2.) There are two Surface models, one is the Surface RT (which this article is talking about) and the other is the yet to be released Surface Pro. The Surface RT is slightly heaving than the latest generate iPad. The Surface Pro is supposed to be 2 lbs., which is lighter than the smallest Macbook Air and with the exception of form factor, it is every bit a real computer as is the Macbook Air. 3.) There is no start button in Windows 8 or Windows RT, so I don't know what device you were demo'ing.

n3rdy 14y ago

Perhaps they shipped them with only 23 gigs of free space knowing they would be returned long before anyone could use up that space.

Yhippa 14y ago

I have a Surface RT. Unfortunately I couldn't return it because it was outside the return window and Microsoft's return policy was rather unforgiving. Too late now. I actually like the thing. Pros: - The Type Cover is awesome. It's not bad typing on it and the keys are spaced enough where you don't feel cramped. The track pad works well with this too. - There are enough built in apps to get stuff done that most people need to do (calendar, email, document creation, and web browsing). - Hardware wise it is heavy but solidly built. It really looks nice and the kickstand isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Cons: - Someone mentioned that the aspect ratio of the screen makes it difficult to read documents sometimes. - Windows 8 has a steep learning curve. You won't be able to pick it up and immediately be productive with it like you would an iPad. However once you get used to the gestures you will be comfortable on any Windows 8 device. - For some reason (and this was true with my Windows Phone 7 HTC Arrive) apps take a long time to download data from the internet. You'll frequently be waiting on an app to connect to the internet to use things like the People Hub to see status updates. - Apps. This is a big one. There are few big name apps on there. Was hoping for Spotify, Facebook, and Twitter individual apps. - The name. They dropped the ball on a simple product naming strategy.

ladzoppelin 14y ago

The Pro version is what I think a lot of people are waiting for. The app market is still to small for the locked down arm version to be useful. Obviously the market is getting better but it still has a long way to go.

nextparadigms 14y ago
I don't think the $900 tablet that makes you pay for 64 GB of storage, but only allows you to use 23 GB is really what people are waiting for.
- rednukleus 14y ago
  So put a 64gb SD card in there for 50 bucks. It's not an Apple product.
  - cremnob 14y ago
    With the keyboard the Surface Pro is already more expensive than the cheapest Macbook Air.
    - rednukleus 14y ago
      And they both have their strengths and weaknesses. What's your point? Or is this just blind hatred for a device that hasn't even launched yet?
      - rayiner 14y ago
        Is it really hard to believe that rational people can see the Surface Pro as a severely compromised device just based on the specifications? Surface Pro enthusiasts are psyched about the Ivy Bridge CPU and real Windows 8, while detractors are skeptical about the severe compromises in the design: 33% heavier than an iPad with half the battery life and a small screen and pathetic keyboard/trackpad story relative to a real ultrabook. The enthusiasts could be right, it could end up being a "no compromises" hit of a device. But my money is with the detractors. I think it makes too many compromises relative to a real tablet and a real ultrabook to be a successful device that convinces people to consolidate both.

untog 14y ago

I was working out what tablet to get- the Surface was up there, but in the end I went with an Asus Transformer tablet. It has it's own infuriating features (incredibly slow IO performance, for one) but I do feel like Android will be a full OS before Windows 8 is a mobile one.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Its hard to push the envelope. I'm impressed that Microsoft didn't push out a 'me too' product, I wasn't impressed with their ability to 'step outside their comfort zone.' That said, the amount of experimentation that is going on these days reminds me of the early personal computer days and I find that a lot of fun. Its too bad Microsoft didn't hit one out of the park[1] but they've got room to continue. [1] Baseball metaphor for scoring a home run, also reading the Palm story and how they went from 'juggernaut' to 'irrelevant' in 36 months was pretty sobering.

WrkInProgress 14y ago

I have a Surface RT. It was a gift. I also have an iPad, that I paid for. I use both quite often. Is it a good device ? Yes, I think so. Would I recommend the current Surface RT ? No, not yet anyway. Here are my key issues: a.) The app store has to get better. I know it has a full featured browser (spare the IE jokes), so there isn't a need for as many apps as a traditional tablet, but I still think the RT's usage is set up for touch as often as possible and using IE10 in desktop mode just don't cut it for touch usage. b.)It can stand to be a bit cheaper (at least bundle in the keyboard for $50.00) c.) MS needs to get their act together because the built in apps are very bare bones and in fact are at times worse than the apps they replaced (i.e. Xbox Music vs Zune) d.)in terms of hardware, the only real issues I have would be the screen (quality is great, but I think the next iteration should bump up the resolution); and the cameras which are god awful. All in all, despite the criticism, I like the direction Microsoft has taken with Windows 8 and the Surface line. In typical Microsoft fashion, it would have helped if the different divisions had got their act together, so they could have released a more refined, coherent product. It always baffles me when I see incredulous posts on Hacker News that can't seem to grasp the benefits of a device like the Surface RT or the Pro. I think devices similar to the Surface Pro are the future of mass computing.

meaty 14y ago
How do you find office on RT? It's unusable for me. Too slow. Fortunately it's not my machine :)
- pcj 14y ago
  Have you already installed the Office RTM update? It's a bit better after the update.
  - zmmmmm 14y ago
    That update is particularly hard to find - you have to dig several windows deep into the control panel in desktop mode ... it's one of those inexplicable things that just dumbfounds me - they leave a pre-release version of Office on the tablets and then almost guarantee nobody will install the proper version by making the update UI impossible to find.

trotsky 14y ago

How many MS products sell well in their first edition? Besides Kinect? I remember when Honeycomb was first out and all anyone could talk about was channel stuffing and how there wasn't a tablet market, there was an iPad market. A bit lower on that sites newsfeed is a note that the iPad dropped below 50% in the quarter they launched two new tablets.

revscat 14y ago
> How many MS products sell well in their first edition? Not very many MS products sell well regardless of version number. Outside of Office and Windows MS struggles, and the only consumer success they have had has been with the XBox. Their other initiatives -- Zune, Windows Phone, Kin, etc. -- have all struggled despite sustained efforts from Redmond. Microsoft has entered a field that already has established players -- Apple and Samsung -- who are on the 3rd+ generation of their devices, and who have greatly refined them over time. Microsoft has put out a device that is first-gen. This is woefully insufficient to make a dent, long-term or short. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the Surface* tablets will eventually suffer a fate similar to the Zune. I also don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that Microsoft has shown that it cannot compete in the consumer space.

wozname 14y ago

I will not be getting a surface. I took a borrowed one home to show my wife, she hated it. She wanted the interface switched around since she's left handed, charms on the left and swipe right for more pages, I couldn't figure out how to do it, but I didn't look that hard. I'm also forbidden from installing Windows 8 on her laptop and the games machine. Personally I don't like how I need to be connected to the cloud all the time to do anything.