Support NeoGAF

[eastmen]

1. Fragile, moving parts, heat output, having to worry about restricting airflow, all things I never want to see in a tablet. Ever seen ultrabooks running resource intensive apps? They sound like jet engines and get incredibly hot. The Surface will probably be no different, that's not something I want to lug around, personally.

Yes but thats normaly with a poorly designed netbook. Properly designed you wont have those draw backs. The netbook i had (hp 311) had a small fan with one small area to exhaust heat and one small area that drew heat in.

2. Who cares about e-ink when none of the devices in this discussion have it? We weren't even talking about the pro model either. For everyday tablet reading, be it webpages, comics or ebooks, the iPad is still your best bet.

if someone wants to just read a e-ink device is the best bet and they are $80 and under now

 

[DieH@rd]

It's possible to cool a 17W chip passively, but you need a massive heatsink like this:

So possible on a desktop, but on a tablet? Not so much.

17W chip? How about 80W?

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/sapphire-radeon-gpu-7770-heatsink,15927.html

 

[Hoo-doo]

Yes but thats normaly with a poorly designed netbook. Properly designed you wont have those draw backs. The netbook i had (hp 311) had a small fan with one small area to exhaust heat and one small area that drew heat in.


if someone wants to just read a e-ink device is the best bet and they are $80 and under now

Bullshit. Put any ultrabook/netbook to work and it'll start to heat up, rev its fans and get obnoxiously loud. This is simply unavoidable. Especially in super-thin frames like the surface and ultrabooks.

And does he just want to read? Nope.

 

[coldfoot]

yea but i doubt they haven't been converted to win 32.

the prob will be going from win 32 to metro.

Run them on VM's running XP, and use remote desktop.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Bullshit. Put any ultrabook/netbook to work and it'll start to heat up, rev its fans and get obnoxiously loud. This is simply unavoidable. Especially in super-thin frames like the surface and ultrabooks.

And does he just want to read? Nope.

My Samsung slate gets warm, but does not make noticable noise when working hard. An Ultrabook manfacturer isn't going to optimize for the same things a tablet maker will.

 

[coldfoot]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

 

[Windu]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

uh ok, thanks for posting it?

 

[D4Danger]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

why didn't they buy the product you can't buy?

 

[Marty Chinn]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

And Gary Whitta questioned my usage of the term fanboy....

 

[brotkasten]

uh ok, thanks for posting it?

He mentioned Surface, so it must be relevant to this thread.

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

this si dumb on so many levels...

 

[Complex Shadow]

He mentioned Surface, so it must be relevant to this thread.

and i am the king of siam.

 

[kehs]

He mentioned Surface, so it must be relevant to this thread.

Time to go in the ipad thread and mention how theirs 53 districts with chromebooks in schools because ipad.

 

[VanWinkle]

For all of you who think of buying Surface tablets to your schools, San Diego thinks otherwise and buys 26K iPads:
http://www.10news.com/news/31225263/detail.html

Man, that's too bad. I was one of those people thinking of buying Surface tablets for my school. Now that San Diego thinks otherwise, I can no longer do so. All of us here that own schools are disappointed. Thanks a lot, San Diego

 

[Wazzim]

What's the rumored price of this tablet (high-end version)? I'm debating to either get a MacBook Air or go with the Surface.

I'm only seeking for something to write on and light music/video play so both will work.

 

[Windu]

What's the rumored price of this tablet (high-end version)? I'm debating to either get a MacBook Air or go with the Surface.

I'm only seeking for something to write on and light music/video play so both will work.

all they said was comparable to a ultrabook. So anywhere from $700 (highly doubtful) to $1400.

 

[Wazzim]

all they said was comparable to a ultrabook. So anywhere from $700 (highly doubtful) to $1400.

I wish them good luck selling this to the random consumer for $1000+

 

[coldfoot]

All I'm saying is don't discount the affordable pricing of the iPad combined with a simple OS that works well and doesn't mess up, and its enormous app store.

 

[Iced_Eagle]

I wish them good luck selling this to the random consumer for $1000+

Then get the Windows RT version which is going to be closer to $500. The Pro version at roughly $1000 would be an awesome price for what you get in my opinion.

 

[Scalemail Ted]

For academic purposes, i have found that the ipad is not a very good device for note taking. An 'active digitizer' enabled display coupled with onenote is so good. My iPad is great as an ereader tho. Although being able to annotate PDFs is really good with proper pen support. So I guess it's not really as good for that as it could be either

 

[Lynn616]

All I'm saying is don't discount the affordable pricing of the iPad combined with a simple OS that works well and doesn't mess up, and its enormous app store.

But who are you talking to?

 

[tino]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

I do look forward to this epic fight between three IT giants. Everyone is sending in the best troops. No more shitty proxy war through Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs, they are sending in the corperate ninjas. This is going to be an awesome tablet war.

 

[border]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

It's a little hard to get excited about the Surface RT because it's not a real Windows product. It has all the same drawbacks as an iPad but will probably be the same price. It's a little hard to get excited about the Surface Pro because it will be very expensive and not all that powerful. It will be pretty cool a few years down the line though, when devices like the Pro are sub-$500.

I don't think they really want to get into a pricing war with Apple though. If they undercut the iPad 3 by $100, then they still have to compete with the iPad 2 at a $400 pricepoint. I don't think they want this to turn into another netbook situation where the only way to make money is to sell products at razor-thin margins.

I could be totally wrong, but I feel like if they had some killer pricing in mind they already would have told us. And I think they're hoping all the bundled-in extras will help more than just a low number. $500 seems pretty reasonable for a tablet, keyboard with trackpad, and a copy of Office.

 

[Karma]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

I do look forward to this epic fight between three IT giants. Everyone is sending in the best troops. No more shitty proxy war through Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs, they are sending in the corperate ninjas. This is going to be an awesome tablet war.

LOL, if Apple had came out and shown the same device but running iOS and OSX they would have said it was the greatest thing ever. Just think what Apple fans would say if the new Mac Air was just like the Surface Pro but also ran iOS.

 

[jagowar]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

I do look forward to this epic fight between three IT giants. Everyone is sending in the best troops. No more shitty proxy war through Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs, they are sending in the corperate ninjas. This is going to be an awesome tablet war.

I think both will end up being "sucessful" for different reasons....

I think as long as the winRT tablet is not more than the ipad it will sell. WinRT is quite a bit more powerful than the ipad even if it is not full windows because its a desktop os scaled down vs a phone os scaled up and the many advantages that brings. The question will be apps. If their appstore is like wp7 a year from now the sales will fall off significantly but if they get a steady flow of apps it will be fine.

The pro tablet is the interesting one.... Ultrabooks really aren't taking the market by storm and primarily because of their high price compared to other laptops and pc users in general are not used to paying high prices for pc's. I could see surface pro doing better than your normal ultrabook because of the cachet ms brings to the table and that pen input if they market it right.

The key for both will be WinRT/metro apps (and really games).... the app situation is somewhat negated by metroIE being a "real" desktop browser but they need to have a good games portfolio.

 

[Steelyuhas]

I wish them good luck selling this to the random consumer for $1000+

The RT will vastly outsell the Pro one to consumers I think. The Pro version is mainly for hardcore users and enterprises.

 

[venne]

I could be totally wrong, but I feel like if they had some killer pricing in mind they already would have told us. And I think they're hoping all the bundled-in extras will help more than just a low number. $500 seems pretty reasonable for a tablet, keyboard with trackpad, and a copy of Office.

Reportedly, Google is announcing their tablet soon and Amazon next month.

I'd keep it close to the vest and see how things play out.

 

[saltywalrus]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

I do look forward to this epic fight between three IT giants. Everyone is sending in the best troops. No more shitty proxy war through Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs, they are sending in the corperate ninjas. This is going to be an awesome tablet war.

Windows RT is fast and fluid and digitally authentic. iPad doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't be surpised if iPad sales start crashing after the release of Surface.

 

[Talon]

Windows RT is fast and fluid and digitally authentic. iPad doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't be surpised if iPad sales start crashing after the release of Surface.

This should be a tagline.

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Reportedly, Google is announcing their tablet soon and Amazon next month.

I'd keep it close to the vest and see how things play out.

Yeah, Google is announcing their Nexus tablet very soon. Very.

I'm a Windows Champion Blogger and on a conference call with the MS folks last week they mentioned Surface, but said at this point they can't share any more information. They talked about how the team working on it has been on lockdown for awhile and most inside the company had no idea what they were working on. There was a definite upbeat, excited feeling to the tone though and I know that that the MS team is anxious to get more info about Surface out there and share them with the public.

 

[tino]

Windows RT is fast and fluid and digitally authentic. iPad doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't be surpised if iPad sales start crashing after the release of Surface.

This sentence is so crazy I can only describe as "crankberry.com crazy". I have no words.

 

[Lynn616]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

Anyway, my opinion on the RT is that it need to undercut the comparable iPad 3 for $100 in order to move units. MS is probably overestimating the value of Office on the go.

I do look forward to this epic fight between three IT giants. Everyone is sending in the best troops. No more shitty proxy war through Taiwanese OEMs and ODMs, they are sending in the corperate ninjas. This is going to be an awesome tablet war.

Ryan Block was saying you would be crazy to buy a Surface Pro over a Mac Air. Surface Pro is both laptop and tablet in one device. Seems like that is where we should be going.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Windows RT is fast and fluid and digitally authentic. iPad doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't be surpised if iPad sales start crashing after the release of Surface.

funny guy.

Ryan Block was saying you would be crazy to buy a Surface Pro over a Mac Air. Surface Pro is both laptop and tablet in one device. Seems like that is where we should be going.

Depends on how it turns out. battery life, screen quality, etc. Nobody wants a jack of all trades that is master or nothing. We've already seen that in the Netbook and TabletPCs up until now.

All I know right now is that I can watch an hour of netflix on my iPad and still have 93% battery life remaining. I did last night and I was like, "amazing." If these Surfaces can't do something similar, they instantly become less attractive.

 

[border]

Reportedly, Google is announcing their tablet soon and Amazon next month.

I'd keep it close to the vest and see how things play out.

Google and Amazon are clearly not creating devices in the same class as the Surface. They are going to beat whatever price Microsoft comes up with by a hefty margin.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

Google and Amazon are clearly not creating devices in the same class as the Surface. They are going to beat whatever price Microsoft comes up with by a hefty margin.

they've been beating the competition in price for some time, but it's not helping them gain any marketshare.

The Android tablet market is on the endangered species list. I don't see how Android survives the Surface and similar Win8 tablets. Outside of the Kindle and Nook--which are 7" tablets--I see that market drying right up. Still, I'll withhold my final opinion until we see Google's new products.

 

[Lynn616]

funny guy.



Depends on how it turns out. battery life, screen quality, etc. Nobody wants a jack of all trades that is master or nothing. We've already seen that in the Netbook and TabletPCs up until now.

All I know right now is that I can watch an hour of netflix on my iPad and still have 93% battery life remaining. I did last night and I was like, "amazing." If these Surfaces can't do something similar, they instantly become less attractive.

We will see about battery life but from the specs I dont see anything to worry about there. Having both tablet and laptop in one device just seems perfect to me.

 

[Talon]

Ryan Block was saying you would be crazy to buy a Surface Pro over a Mac Air. Surface Pro is both laptop and tablet in one device. Seems like that is where we should be going.

This is the argument, right? Is convergence the answer or not?

I think Ryan's point is that you're making concessions on both ends of the coin with the Windows 8 Pro version.

From a tablet perspective, you're going to undoubtedly suffer a worse battery (as non-ARM) and who knows how it will deal with heat dissipation.

From a laptop perspective, a 10 inch screen is a big step down from 15/14 or even 13/12 inches. Plus a price competitive laptop is going to have dedicated input devices.

I'm excited to see the market sort itself out. I like the idea of convergence initially, but I do think there are some clear drawbacks.

 

[Dreams-Visions]

We will see about battery life but from the specs I dont see anything to worry about there. Having both tablet and laptop in one device just seems perfect to me.

if it can deliver in battery life, it's a winner. If it's only getting 4-5 hours of battery life, I'll not be impressed at all. We'll see soon enough.

 

[NullPointer]

if it can deliver in battery life, it's a winner. If it's only getting 4-5 hours of battery life, I'll not be impressed at all. We'll see soon enough.

Pretty much where I fall in all of this.

 

[Erdem]

If the ARM one included a stylus I'd buy it in a heartbeat. I really need something with a stylus for uni. Keyboard+stylus+metro+desktop combination is such a win for me.

 

[Lynn616]

if it can deliver in battery life, it's a winner. If it's only getting 4-5 hours of battery life, I'll not be impressed at all. We'll see soon enough.

It is not going to get iPad type battery life. It should be like the Mac Air.

 

[GG-Duo]

Windows RT is fast and fluid and digitally authentic. iPad doesn't stand a chance. I wouldn't be surpised if iPad sales start crashing after the release of Surface.

Are you a viral marketer

 

[Talon]

It is not going to get iPad type battery life. It should be like the Mac Air.

I have to imagine it's closer to 4-5 hours (a la the 11.6" Air) than 7 hours.

 

[Lynn616]

I have to imagine it's closer to 4-5 hours (a la the 11.6" Air) than 7 hours.

I thought most Ultrabooks were getting 5-6 hours. That is what I am thinking for the Surface Pro.

 

[jagowar]

I thought most Ultrabooks were getting 5-6 hours. That is what I am thinking for the Surface Pro.

I actually expect it to get on the higher end of the battery life charts.... simply because ms will fine tune windows to get as much life as possible out of it and I would expect them to be far better at knowing what tweaks to make compared to dell/hp/asus/etc.

 

[tino]

The more I think about the Pro the more I think there is no market for it. I simply don't believe there is enough $1000+ Ultrabook. Right now the Surface basically is taking the market pie from the potential Ultrabook base, not the potential iPad base. I think the $1k+ market has already saturated with MBA and there isn't enough space for Ultrabook anyway. No matter how much market pie the Pro can steal from the potential Ultrabook users, it's not going to be enough.

And tablets only do a few things better than Ultrabook/MBA, namely content consumption with video and book/comic. And the Surface Pro version is too heavy to use comfortably as a consumption device. So my opinion is that the Surface Pro won't sell much no matter how cheap it is.

And the reason MS bring out the Pro instead of just push the ARM version because they want to create this "synergy" between the established platform and the brand new platform. Frankly at this point I can not tell if this is actual synergy or just illusion of synergy. Either way this "synergy" reminds me of the Shadowrun project. In an attempt to push this grandiose cross-platform PC-console vision, MS force fed a FPS into a RPG ip, and crippled the superior PC version in order to bring the parity to the cross platform game play, which ultimately didn't bring any benefit to the inferior console version. The project was rejected by the fans and folded quickly.

I think the lessen we learn is that you can't force a synergy between two platforms if there is little similarity. I think MS should have bitten the bullet and port Windows to ARM directly. Sure you will break the legacy software. But by skipping the virtual "Metro/RT" layer that run on both ARM and x86 you get serious performance gain for running on ARM natively.

 

[eastmen]

funny guy.



Depends on how it turns out. battery life, screen quality, etc. Nobody wants a jack of all trades that is master or nothing. We've already seen that in the Netbook and TabletPCs up until now.

All I know right now is that I can watch an hour of netflix on my iPad and still have 93% battery life remaining. I did last night and I was like, "amazing." If these Surfaces can't do something similar, they instantly become less attractive.

The pro won't get battery life like that. The rt will

 

[lunarworks]

I listen to the new TWIT podcast, interestingly they are alot more down on the Surfaces than i do. Leo thought the RT won't get any traction. Ryan Block OTOH was down on the pro version. His reason was that its just a reskined XP/Win7 slate PC. I want to hear buzzkill Dvorak's opinion but he was not on the podcast.

This is another problem with announcing something too early.

Once the sugar high of the announcement wears off, people sit back, without the product in their hands, and start to think "What if..."

 

[saltywalrus]

I think MS should have bitten the bullet and port Windows to ARM directly. Sure you will break the legacy software. But by skipping the virtual "Metro/RT" layer that run on both ARM and x86 you get serious performance gain for running on ARM natively.

MS did port Windows to ARM directly (including the Win32 API), they're just restricting 3rd party apps from using desktop.

Developers can write native code in Metro apps.

 

[tino]

MS did port Windows to ARM directly (including the Win32 API), they're just restricting 3rd party apps from using desktop.

Developers can write native code in Metro apps.

Well I would actual consider the RT if Adobe make real Photoshop on it. Not just Photoshop Touch. I want identical UI and filter support.