Other Everything about Microsoft Surface - Pre-order, price and design decision

Here's your list of iPad apps Goodbytes, as you can see it is pretty much on par with Surface with the exception of Office.

Built in Apps:
Safari
Mail
iBooks
Photos
Facetime
Camera
Maps
Newstand
Messages
Calendar
Reminders
Contacts
App Store
iTunes
Music
Videos
Notes
Game Center
Photo Booth
Clock (haha)

Free Apple Apps on App Store:
Cards
iTunes U
Podcasts
Remote
AirPort Utility
Find Friends
Find iPhone (iPad)

Paid for Apple apps:
Garageband
iPhoto
iMovie
Pages
Numbers
Keynote

Quality wise - I would imagine they are of comparable quality, but I am yet to try out a Surface tablet. I am interested in the type keyboard but I am already bought into the Apple app ecosystem now so it would need to be amazing to convince me to shift and buy apps all over again.

 

Thanks. +rep
I updated the table. If I didn't miss anything it should be good.

 

Bill Gates on WIndows 8/RT, and Phone 8

 

Skype for Windows 8

 

Trouble pre-ordering Microsoft Surface?
Head over to the Microsoft Store AND pop-up holiday shops on Oct 26 to get it there. The first 100 people in line, will also get 1 year of XBox Music subscription, that's 99$ U.S value.

Microsoft Surface purchase necessary, and does not extend to the web store, you physically have to be there.

 

Microsoft start shipping pre-order to people:
http://www.wpcentral.com/microsoft-shipping-surface-tablets-confirmation-emails-being-sent-out

 

Microsoft Surface review:
http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/23/microsoft-surface-rt-review/

In sum, a great system. Not perfect, but does deliver. Smooth as the iPad 3. Can have some hick ups, if you push the system too much when multi-tasking, but in general, iPad 3 smooth. Very solid product, screen resolution is no issue, camera is good but not great, excellent battery life at 8h of general usage, and 6h and half of playing video non-stop, max brightness, and speakers at 100%.

Touch Cover is impressive, and does work perfectly, the Type cover is very good also. The track pad on both is excellent. Very well implemented, especially considering it's small size, and technologically limited due to the required thinness of the cover.

Downsides:
Some Apps take a bit of time to load compared to the iPad 3.
Office is CPU intensive. Can easily bring the CPU at 50% load just by typing fast. This is not an issue in Notepad. So clearly some more work needs to be done optimizing it. The Tegra 3 T30 is actually down-clocked, sadly. It's only 1.3 GHz max, and not 1.6 GHz.
Adobe did a poor job with Flash plug-in as usual, again, Adobe never cared about Flash since day 1 of the purchase of Macromedia. Flash would have been a very powerful language today, but development has stop dead the moment Adobe acquired Macromedia, and I believe Adobe sees Flash a a dead weight department, has no vision for it, and see it as a software that cost them millions of dollars, instead of how to make it profitable. If Adobe showed some care, and didn't want to support Flash, at least put it open source. Anyway, I am going on a tangent. HTML5 videos plays perfectly fine, but not Flash. Hopefully Microsoft will push Adobe for a more performing release.

I did notice that they are a lot of pro-Apple bias reviews, though. Even from big sites. They contradicts them self, or their argumentation is just lame. Bashing just for bashing.
Here are some example on what I read:
"Its thicker than the iPad 3" -> Sorry but no, specs shows that the latest iPad is thicker than the Surface.

"Few apps"- > Well obviously! It's not even actually out. It will take time before you have them. You have now over 5500 application as of Oct 17, based on Microsoft tweet. It's a new OS, new platform, you can't have a full set of software. And to remove high marks on this issue, is just silly.

"Low resolution" -> But you just said a moment ago, that you see the difference between the iPad 3 and the Surface.. now it's an issue?

"When using the kickstand you can't put it on your lap" -> Are you kidding me?!

"Can't run desktop programs" -> No **it Sherlock! You can't run Mac programs on the iPad either!

So there you have it, Surface is a great product. A serious contender to the iPad.

 

In todays market a great product does not ness mean great sales which is about all microsoft cares about, I hope it sells well but i just dont see it. Many tablets have got great reviews and still have close to 0 sales, Even the kindle fire has bearly broken 5mil if estimates are to be taken with any accuracy.

Hurry up and release the pro already.

 

Looks like prices for the iPad Mini start at £269 for 16Gb to £349 for 32Gb, and £429 for 64Gb. I guess I was only £20,-- out.

Compare that to the Nexus 7 at £189,-- for 16Gb and £199,-- for 32Gb, that means a £80,-- to £150,-- penalty for entering the Apple ecosystem rather than Google's. Ouch!

 

http://gdgt.com/microsoft/surface/with-windows-rt/

Reviews are generally positive with a few niggles about the Surface with RT so far. The Verge review came off pretty negative though!

Is BT going to be reviewing the Surface?

 

Can't see it, it's not reviewed a single tablet product, nor is there any mension of that area in the news either. Nor do they have anything to compare it too.

Anandtech will do a review so will trusted reviews.

 

The Video review seems more balanced. They do seem to gloss over the (at least for me) massive features of this device, split screen and file system + USB. Maybe trying to make it fit into an ipad shaped hole?

 

The Windows 8 Launch event live stream is here. The OS has just been introduced; next up is the Surface.

 

Reviews are available on most sites now, generally mixed one or two pro Microsoft reviews lauding it as the god of computing were funny. Andriod fanboy one was just as bad.

Anandtechs one looks pretty balanced, the one worrying thing doing the rounds at the minute is load up time of applications ranging from 5-20 seconds ( vs andriod iOS 1-2 using same apps where avail)

It's also been shot at for poor marketing with most reporting little to nothing about the devices launch.

 

As mentioned most reviews are bashing Surface with no real reason or being moronic (ie: you can't run Windows programs.), or being bias. Engadget has a great review.

Collecting the list of actual issues, I would give it a 9/10. It's a great device. As for the performance issues, as mentioned before, developers didn't had Windows RT. Their game/program that are now, haven't been tested. Once they'll get a Windows RT device in hand, now they focus on optimization and fix all the issues. I won't be surprised if Microsoft releases an update soon which will improve performance of the tablet as well. One thing I did notice form reviewers, are that it seams that if you have multiple Office programs running, and you open several Metro programs, now you are pushing the system quiet far, and it's choppy. Office is really intensive, and requires some large amount of optimization.The Verge showed that simply typing in Word, the CPU spikes at 50%. While its no issue when you us Notepad. So clearly the issue is only temporary or unless you do a lot of multi-tasking with Office open.

 

My problem with it is that people who don't have an iPad are people (like me) who don't believe £500 on a tablet is a wise investment when you can get an i5 ultrabook for around about the same price. Now that isn't picking on the Surface - I think it's MUCH better than the iPad in terms of usefulness and value for money. However, that isn't really saying much, because I've always found the idea of the iPad outrageously pointless and poor value for money.

Now I definitely see a point in the Surface Pro, but at £800 it still isn't screaming value. As mentioned before, IDE's aren't too easy to get around on a 10.6" screen, and when you consider you can get a 13.3" ultrabook for far less, it makes the Surface pretty bad value. I'm not sure it's worth the extra £300 just to enable touch, even if that is Windows 8's best input method.

 

I think that the Surface et al. are not really aimed at people who just want a laptop. It is aimed at people who sometimes want a tablet, and sometimes need a laptop. Wouldn't it be nice to have one device that could serve as both? Some people will pay the added price for the convenience of having one device to perform both roles instead of two separate devices possibly costing more added together, and having to shuffle data between the two.

Basically it is an AND device. Not an overpriced tablet OR laptop.

 

Anyone know where these things will be sold in the UK? I'm keen to have a look see.

 

I am very keen to see how the Think Pad 2 performs with its Atom CPU and Windows 8 Pro, for £500.00 for the basic device, the fact it has an optional docking station and keyboard - interests me a lot for work.

 

just online Jehla there is no microsoft store in england that im aware off, No retailer like pc world or currys is selling it. If you want one the only place you can get one in the uk at least is at microsofts online web store.