News Microsoft's Surface hits trouble

Microsoft already has an O/S that can do things that full fat computers do. So, job done I suppose.

 

Im not saying that there isn't enough space on it, I'm just saying that its wrong to market something as 64GB when its blatantly not even close. Sure everyone does this but over half the storage on the surface pro will be unusable, which is far different from a small percentage.

 

But there is 64GB! If you open the system, you have 64GB.
Microsoft CLEARLY state on the Surface website how much space is usable. So Microsoft is going 1 step beyond everyone else, and they are being bashed for this. I am sure that if Microsoft didn't say anything, all this conversation would not exist, and no one would have noticed. The same way no one notice this kind of stuff.

 

But full-fat computers are changing. They are not going to be boxes on desktops with keyboards and monitors anymore. They are evolving to have the power of a PC, but the user-friendliness of iPads.

And even friendlier than that. Machines you can talk to. That answer back. That think for you, make choices for you and pre-empt your needs and wants. That will be so embedded and taken for granted in our lives that we will only notice their absence, not their presence.

So the GUI has to change suit.

 

Greetings!

Surface Pro is a tablet.
You can argue that it is a more complicated tablet and more functional than other tablets, but it still a tablet.

The lost space for OS in "everyone elses" tablets is not as high.

 

Then everybody else is lying.

 

Greetings!

We have already discussed this before, no?
iPads and Androids offer much more free space relative to the SSD size than Microsofts Surfaces. Windows is just too fat compared to iOS and Android.

iPads 32GB comes with 28GB of free space. Surface Pro 64GB comes with 23GB of free space. Half the SSD, more 5GB free.

Nexus 10 32GB comes with 27 GB of free space. Surface RT 32GB comes with 16GB of free space. Same SSD size, way more free space.

I cant even begin to understand how can you claim "everybody else is lying". These are facts, not opinions.

 

I have a 64Gb Acer Iconia W510 similar to surface really, though lower specced, it has a large >10Gb recovery partition that leaves me with 47.5Gb for OS and Acers bloatware etc and then there is about 23Gb left free for me on it ( well probably more as I didn't actually check what it was out of the box before I started to use it, that's how important I thought it was ) which isn't bad consider I have put office pro 2010 on and a load of apps and games already, seems OK to me, I could backup and recover the recovery partition if I wanted more, otherwise I'll just pop a big micro SD card in, doesn't seem like a big issue to me for the performance and compatibility an x86 tablet gives you.

My TF300 didn't give me access to full 32Gb space either and my missus' iPad 3 16gb is even worse in that its now chocabloc with stuff and she can't even expand it.

 

She can't. Sorry for being a grammar nazi, but this is a case where a typo/incorrect usage of word completely changes the meaning.

And impar, it's easy - you don't like the product, you won't buy it. Complaining that Windows is big won't change anything in the fact, that Windows is big, recovery partition is big.

Sure, MS could have gone Apple way - if your device bricks itself, you have to download the whole flash image using iTunes and reflash your device. But somehow i doubt that at 10GB+ recovery size it is a reasonable thing to do.

 

No worries, I meant to type can't

 

Sorry, read 'laptops', not tablets. You are right that the OS on other tablets is not as big...

...but they are also much more limited OS's. Remember the hullabaloo when the iPad first came out in 2010, when people complained that it was not a 'real' computer with 'real' OS?

Neither iPad or Android talk to NAS. Neither talk to printers or any other standard USB peripherals. When you brick them, you have to hook them to a PC to recover them. They are very well-balanced devices, but they are not the jack-of-all-trades that PCs are. Windows is a full-fat OS and you pay for that in space. Even then it is very easy to reclaim about 23Gb in space by moving your recovery partition and limiting your restore points to the most recent ones (Apple OSX stores its own preferably on the Airport NAS/router).

And the Surface RT comes with a full Office suite. Don't see that level of out-of-the-box functionality on an iPad or Nexus.

When the Surface RT has been compared against the Chromebook or iPad for work scenarios, it has come out ahead. Ironically the Surface RT has come to this race naked, with a (much-dismissed) 'zero ecosystem' and has been pitted against devices that have 100.000+ apps on the market to boost their functionality. And it still beats them on productivity. Has to say something.

 

Surprised this topic has continued.

If sales talk

Microsofts rt has been a poor seller worse than most andriod tablets. It also has a high return rate for whatever reason.

However good the OS is on the tablet side it still lacks major developer support and sales below 1million will not help it get devs on its side.

Also not seen 1 in the open yet in a cafe or on a bus see a lot of iPads nexus 7s but no windows tablets.

Surface pro will likely sell better than the rt has but surface pro and surface rt are 2 different OS with totally different applications.

The rumours going around the net is that we will not see a surface rt 2 as it has not broke even which was the least Microsoft expected.

Whilst we will see a surface with haswell on it under the pro monicker.

Microsoft to me need to get it into computer stores instead of just 1-2 shops. They need to advertise the system to the masses, they need to get critical dev support. And they need to release a halo or gears of war exclusive game for the system. All of these things would help sales.

It's in john Lewis only in the uk that's a total of 26 shops.

Competing tablets are in basically every store and sold in every online outlet.

It's not been advertised in the uk no more on tv or elsewhere most of the windows 8 posters have been removed from pc world Ect. The general public does not even know it exists anymore.

Reminds me alot of rims playbook which was widely advertised suffered similar low sales and high return rate and quickly disappeared from the market.

 

Surface is a poor seller because it is next to impossible to buy one outside few selected major markets.

Metro applications are the same, only a limited subset of Metro applications won't run on RT.

This one we can agree on. For now, the only option for a non-US/Canadian person to get a good Windows 8 tablet is Acer Iconia W700. There is nothing else with reasonable pricing (read sub-1000e) with acceptable performance (read non-Atom) and higher than laughable 1366x768 resolution.

 

Samsung smartPC Pro is available for under £950 if you want the power, I almost bought it but just don't need the grunt, I've been running Atom/Brazo plus arm based stuff like tegra3/a5x for the past couple of years on my own laptops/tablets, that level does me fine but then I game on machine appropriate for it, monster PC and console, my portable netbook/tablet mainly used for email/web and silly touch stuff.

 

Because £950 is a really reasonable pricing against a €699 (64B)/€899 (128GB) Aspire W700 and Surface Pro with lower price as well, right ? And when you look around and see most 1366x768 Atom solutions in the €600 region as well, then all you can do is wonder if the manufacturers are drunk or what. Sub-500€ region is acceptable for Atom (Vivotab hits that mark), sub-1000€ region is acceptable for i3/i5. Meanwhile what i see is 900€ Atom/2GB/1366x768 tablets (Samsung ATIV Smart PC, HP Envy x2) and 1400€ for Samsung ATIV Smart PC Pro. Did the people who set the pricing of these producs got hit on head or what ?

Seriously the only reasonably priced W8 tablets right now are Acer Iconia W700 (700/900€) and Asus Vivotab (480€). Everything else is priced out of market (Samsung, HP, Fujitsu, Dell) or unavailable/unreachable (Surface Pro, Dell).

 

The iPad 1 sold only 1 million units in its first month. This is considering it had no competition, was expertly marketed and launched in Apple shops all over the world and had already created familiarity and a positively disposed audience through the iPhone and iPod Touch. In comparison to that, the Surface RT has been doing quite well.

 

Greetings!

 

The iPad 1 at launch was mostly dismissed as a big iphone, had very little apps and the market for tablets was basically non existent. Now millions of tablets are sold every year (corrected) . Its much easier for a company to sell a tablet now.

 

There is 100 million iPads sold. Total. Since the first one. Hell, even in case of PCs there are sold only 400 million units per year. The expectation is to sell 100 million tablets this year in total, not every month, quarter sales are around 25 million.

 

Greetings!

I can see that happen. But a tablet is not exactly the best tool to work on and for play Androids are just more acc€$$ib£€.