News Microsoft releases Surface Pro pricing, specifications

[Gareth Halfacree]

It's a mixed bag for the Intel-powered tablet.
http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...-surface-pro/1

[billysielu]

how much!

[Nexxo]

How is this a mixed bag? It's exactly what you'd expect at the current state of technology.

[Gareth Halfacree]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

How is this a mixed bag? It's exactly what you'd expect at the current state of technology.

It's a mixed bag because some things are good - high-res screen, full-fat Windows - and other things are bad - poor battery life, no bundled keyboard. Mixed, y'see.

[Nexxo]

None of these drawbacks exceed normal limitations though. It's like saying a Porsche is a mixed bag because it's fast but its fuel economy is poor. You get what's technologically feasible.

[r3loaded]

The battery life is comparable to a 11 inch MacBook Air which is ok, especially when you consider it's also driving a 1080p IPS screen. The extra backlighting needed for a high-res screen factors in a lot to the power consumptions.

Similarly, the iPad 3's battery was bulked up not because of it's A5X chip (which needed a heat spreader) but because of that incredible screen.

[Gareth Halfacree]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

None of these drawbacks exceed normal limitations though. It's like saying a Porsche is a mixed bag because it's fast but its fuel economy is poor. You get what's technologically feasible.

Really? 'Technologically feasible?' The Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook, which has a high-res touch-screen, Core i5, and 4GB of RAM manages 12 hours of battery life - and is thinner than the Surface Pro, despite making room for a proper physical keyboard.

If Microsoft wants to catch up to Apple and Google in the tablet market, it needs to excel - not to release something which is basically the same as or worse than devices already in the market. While the Touch Cover is clever, and the high-res screen is nice, there are plenty of downsides too - hence the 'mixed bag' comment. Also, bundling the Touch Cover - really the Surface Pro's only defining feature over rival devices that you can buy today - would have helped, but you need to shell out for that separately, which has nothing to do with "technological feasibility" and everything to do with maximising profit.

[Nexxo]

The $1400,-- Acer Aspire S7 manages four hours of battery life, according to Endgadget's review, and about five according to Acer itself. The price of course is commensurate with its technology.

[faugusztin]

Originally Posted by Gareth Halfacree

Really? 'Technologically feasible?' The Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook, which has a high-res touch-screen, Core i5, and 4GB of RAM manages 12 hours of battery life - and is thinner than the Surface Pro, despite making room for a proper physical keyboard.

Where ? When ? My Aspire S7 doesn't. Unless you mean with an additional battery, which is nowhere to be seen.

As Nexxo says, it's 4-5 hours max without the additional battery.

[Gareth Halfacree]

Originally Posted by Nexxo

The $1400,-- Acer Aspire S7 manages four hours of battery life, according to Endgadget's review, and about five according to Acer itself. The price of course is commensurate with its technology.

Huh - how odd. I got the figure from Microsoft, which claims twelve. I sit corrected.

[faugusztin]

With minimal display backlight, with no wifi, bluetooth etc, zero usage, downclocked to minimum, with the additional battery it can maybe reach that 12 hours. But in real world it is impossible.

On other side - just a few years ago we would be happy with anything which can have more than 3 hours of battery life, and now 4 hours is "bad".

[fix-the-spade]

£800? Any word on whether the stylus is a Microsoft own or a Wacom unit?

I love my ASUS 121 dearly, but if this is Wacom enabled and has 1080p built into, then it might be the little EP's undoing.

I'd have to wipe it and put Win7 on though...

[Picarro]

My biggest gripe with this tablet is the "pro's will want this for on-the-go work". Now, I've been doing on the go work for some time with a 12" HP laptop and I couldn't settle with any less screen than that. And I don't do any image editing or PowerPointing or the like, I simply use Word and Maple15.

The Lenovo X230T will still be my Windows 8 weapon of choice.

[Ritlihn]

Actually. The basic Surface with Windows RT goes for 499$ and 399£, when you compare the US vs. UK prices on the microsoft store on their webpage.

So there doesn't seem to be the need for skeptism in price with Microsofts pricing of the Surface as expressed in this article. ;-)

[Yslen]

Originally Posted by Picarro

My biggest gripe with this tablet is the "pro's will want this for on-the-go work". Now, I've been doing on the go work for some time with a 12" HP laptop and I couldn't settle with any less screen than that. And I don't do any image editing or PowerPointing or the like, I simply use Word and Maple15.

The Lenovo X230T will still be my Windows 8 weapon of choice.

I agree. I love the idea of a full x86 tablet, but I think it needs considerably more battery life to be practical. The E-450 in my laptop is fine for the work I do, and I would expect it would be fine for many others. It's 7-8 hour battery life would be far more useful for a tablet.

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 2

[Platinum]

That price and that battery life to me makes this product pointless, go with a proper laptop if you need the power.

[alf-]

It looks like one big compromise.

its not a good a tablet as an Ipad or nexus 10, and isn't as good a laptop, as well an actual laptop.

And at that price point, you could spend 159 quid on a nexus 7 and still have a good chunk left to buy a pretty decent laptop, heck you could buy a nexus 10 and get a perfectly reasonable laptop.

[wafflesomd]

I'll just wait for some other company to a better job.

[GoodBytes]

For those you are concerned with the battery life, remember that the Surface Pro, power adapter is actually smaller than most (if not all) ultrabooks, and that it recharges pretty fast. Also 4-5h of battery life, is average for an ultrabook.

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by wafflesomd

I'll just wait for some other company to a better job.

I don't think you'll still be in the world when this happens. OEMs aim for the consumer market, and what the consumer market wants is:
-> high fancy numbers
-> Lowest price possible

A few years back, you used to see really powerful laptops, powered by med-low to med range Nvidia of ATI GPU, with high screen resolution in a 12inch form factor, with extra long battery life, that is still not common today (9h easy). You could find them in 13 and 14inch models, with a well build, well engineered, sturdy system. Now all you have is for most systems: Intel GPU, sometimes not even the higher end model, cheap plastic, 0 cooling engineering, or any engineering at all, ugly design, Windows minimum resolution display, laughable battery life in many cases, huge power brick. They are cutting corners so much, that they don't even include any disks with the systems. And its getting worse every single year.

And you expect someone to do a better job. HA!

Last hope is ASUS and Samsung, and even then they are not putting much effort into it. No wonder Apple sales are up. Microsoft is actually providing competition, and actually providing a quality device and I hope it will wake up some OEMs.

Anyway, this is off topic.