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News Microsoft's Surface hits trouble

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by Gareth Halfacree, 16 Nov 2012.

  1. SlowMotionSuicide

    SlowMotionSuicide Come Hell or High Water

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    It is. It also help you develop some self-constraint, and hopefully postpones the inevitable demency ;)

    I still hate how the need to keep my sentences simple makes me sound less astute, just to keep it safe grammar-wise.

    Or I'd suffer the ire of the Grammar Nazis :worried:
     
  2. theshadow2001

    theshadow2001 [DELETE] means [DELETE]

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    Your English is fine. Anyway, the last place to worry about grammar is on the internet.
     
  3. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Well I don't know about your first language, but English has some strong words. 2 line of text in English can easily represent a paragraph in French. In French class when the teach says to write a 2 page essay, it's more of a paragraph of actual content, and the rest filler, to translate what you mean. However, in English class.. 2 page feels like a term paper, as you actually need to start pulling a whole set of ideas to fill 2 pages. :) I am exaggerating a bit, of course, but that's how it feels.

    Anyway, you English is fine. It's just a forum, not some important document to write. :)
     
  4. lp rob1

    lp rob1 Modder

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  5. MjFrosty

    MjFrosty Minimodder

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    Yeah, as if the surface isn't bad enough. Even this thread has derailed just as hard.

    I don't really ever entertain the tablet market personally. To me it seems most of the people that buy into them are the kind who crave gadgets but have no real purpose for really needing or using them.

    As for the Surface, Microsoft has a fairly poor track record with hardware - so build quality issues to me at least comes as no surprise. iOS works so much better than anything else on the market in it's quadrant. It's the only reason I own an iPhone, and it's the only Apple product I'll ever own.

    I think the top post although vague is pretty bang on. Tablets and aesthetics go hand in hand, and frankly Apple has this area nailed down too. Not just in quality but in design also. It's what they do, and I think that even if the Surface was a perfectly flawless and well built device, it would still struggle in an already niche market.
     
  6. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Derailed where? it's not derailed at all. A small side discussion.. more of a note, isn't derailed.

    Sorry, Crysis doesn't run on a tablet, therefore it has no purpose. Tablets do have purposes. Especially Microsoft and Android.

    Poor track record? Oh yea? Give me the list. Go. Except XBox 360 original revision, as everyone and I mean EVERYONE screws up at least once. I guess Microsoft should follow Apple. Deny and ignore, and don't cover under warranty. I guess that's better.


    Tablets is a big market sadly for you. With laptop/tablet hybrid, in even enters the laptop market. Every generation of devices, it gets better and better in merging the two.
    You don't need a fancy 2000$ gamer computer to surf the web, type documents, listen/watch to music/video, and check your e-mail, which is what most people do.

    Why desktop PC sales are down? Because most people have old Pentium 4's or something similarly running XP. It's fine for web and checking e-mail, and even Skyping. So, why change a perfectly working computer? And You don't need to look far for those. Check out most parents computer or your grand father or grand mother (assuming they have a computer). Look at libraries, and so on. And the younger generation simply uses their their phone, or get a tablet. And not the noisy beige box they have on a desk, which they turn on for the occasional long e-mail to type. People are shifting.

    I think, in a few years, everything will be on the cellphone, which you attach inside a tablet format screen, or to some dock station to your TV or laptop or desktop monitor with keyboard and mouse. 1 device for everything. Exactly like the Motorola Atrix. Sadly it didn't work, due to the super high cost, and interface not ready yet, as it's based on Android. But these are just a question of time before they are solved and a right balance is found.

    You are still going to have your servers, workstations and desktop PC's.. but those will go more into the niche market and stay there.

    Anyway, right now, tablet is a big market, and this is the way forward, and this is what people are voting to be with their wallets.
     
  7. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Now this is a joke of the month. I guess you never used Microsoft keyboards, mouses, game controllers, joysticks, remotes...
     
  8. Snips

    Snips I can do dat, giz a job

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    I own a Surface RT, so why aren't I moaning about all these supposed flaws when all of you that don't own one seem to have found and are so trouble by them?

    Reality ladies and gentlemen, you should try it instead of living in the stick your head in the ground anti-Microsoft community ever present here.

    I've had a trouble free experience so far. Go and try it yourselves, no wait...you can't....they've all SOLD OUT!
     
  9. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Reminds of XP, Win7, and now 8, and even Vista I would say if you have the computer for it.
     
  10. Snips

    Snips I can do dat, giz a job

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    True GoodBytes, the minority do shout rather too loudly when Microsoft do something yet again a little too well for their liking ;)
     
  11. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    Their specs are not inaccurate. They are open to misinterpretation, perhaps, but the buyer has some responsibility to research what they are buying. It's not like this information is hidden. Microsoft has been quite honest about it.

    I'm Dutch. I try to interpret things at face value and keep in mind that I can miss something in cultural translation. My Finnish is not so good though, so I may make cultural faux-pas there.

    Anyway, I was commenting on an attitude vis a vis the discussion, not a personality trait.
     
    Last edited: 17 Nov 2012
  12. law99

    law99 Custom User Title

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    It's ridiculous ain't it... ?? It is all out of sheer laziness that figures like these became acceptable.

    People using 1000 becoming so common that even manufactures know that marketing can just lie about capacity on the basis that people either a) don't know any better or b) know they can't do anything about it.
     
  13. Nexxo

    Nexxo * Prefab Sprout – The King of Rock 'n' Roll

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    I think people don't care. Nobody outside of us geeks even understands why it should be 1024 bytes instead of 1000 bytes in a kilobyte, let alone the reason for a 2 to the power of n counting convention.

    They also don't understand what a kilobyte means in terms of storage, or a megabyte, or a gigabyte. How many songs, pictures or documents is that? How large is your music collection in gigabytes (no peeking)?

    It's all a bit academical. Most people just want to know: how much of my stuff can I store before I run out? And most people never run out.
     
  14. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    We are now at the time when people sue for anything, that they think they can get away with due to alot of no win no fee companies.

    Look at the lawsuits between Microsoft and the eu government, utterly pointless yet ms is paying 2bil + in fines.

    Don't think much of this is doing anything to potential sales, apple gets more bad press a week than Microsoft has had in a year and it has not suffered.

    General consensus if the paying public wants your product they will buy it, if not they vote with there wallet. ( which is a key reason why tablet sales are not a huge profit earner unless your called apple, have my douts amazon can continue to afford loss leader tablets it lost alot of money last quater)

    My oppinion in 2-3 years time

    Kindle and nexus 7 and surface will no longer exist. People will have got over the whole tablet craze and apple will be only company left selling a one in the market. Happened to MP3 player market nothing to say it won't happen again.

    End of the day the kindle fire is costing amazon a fortune, similar thing with the nexus 7 and google. Can't keep loosing money in the hope that people will buy items from your store when if you take what people say on this forum as true, very few people who own the nexus 7 have spent any real money on apps, or actual content.

    Even apple bearly makes money on content, so I'm not sure how google or amazon plans to do the same.
     
  15. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Was this meant as a joke ?

    1) Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 8GB were made at cost, maybe with some minimal loss in case of Kindle. Nexus 7 16-32GB were made with minimal profit.

    2) Money on content... Are you kidding me ? Let me do the math for you.
    Apple, Q2/2012 - $1.9 billion in revenue. 30% of that goes directly to apple. That is 570 million US dollars. In one quarter of year. Above 2 billion US dollars per year. Yeah, barely makes money on content. Google mobile business revenue is $8 billion per year - sure, big chunk of that comes from mobile ads, but it is irrelevant from where the money comes.
     
  16. GoodBytes

    GoodBytes How many wifi's does it have?

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    Are these official claim, or what was measured it actually cost to produce.
    I ask, because people who measure how it actually costs, don't figure in engineering cost, marketing, HR, R&D, etc.

    We know that the WiiU gamepad controller cost Nintendo ~100$ U.S to produce. And it doesn't have a processor, capacitive touch screen, large high capacity battery, fancy webcam, nor a super high resolution screen (480p screen is used)
     
  17. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Those are actual costs, Nexus 7 16GB costing $159.25. So until the price drop Asus/Google was making $90 on every Nexus 7 16GB, after the drop they are are making $40 on every Nexus 7. The rest of the costs... well, it's not like Google wouldn't have engineers working on new versions of Android if they wouldn't make Nexus 7, so while there are costs, i wouldn't count it in the costs of Nexus 7. And i am pretty sure the remaining costs are well covered by the profit on the hardware itself, plus on the future sales. Because there are sales of content, and they are not small. Even i bought apps worth around 20€ in a country, where paid apps weren't accessible for long time, and books/music/videos are still not available. Google/Asus are selling 1 million Nexus 7's per month. Somehow i doubt they are losing money on it.

    The reason why these devices are made are to tie you in their ecosystem. Would you switch to other platform if you have money invested in their ecosystem ? Doubt it. That is the reason MS has created surface and pushed Store apps on us - to tie you in their ecosystem.
     
  18. rollo

    rollo Modder

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    you fail to relise

    Apple pays out 1.5billion dollars for content faug. ( and thats just last year, This year will be higher.) Apples app store is not a huge money earner if you have read there figures closely. up till 2011 it was loosing nigh on 500million a year, Once content costs and server costs were added to the bill of materials. Apples app store has never pulled in the huge money most think it should having sold 25billion applications, music, videos, tv shows ect.

    so yeah great they have 2billion cash a year from it but they are paying out around 1.5bil in that.

    Most Wall street analists have said that if the iphone and ipad sales fell enough apple would struggle to support the Itunes store with the content costs it currently has.

    Amazon has a net loss of 244mill dollars for the last quater. So i know for a fact they are loosing money.

    Have you not relised nobody outside of apple has posted even any sales figures, If they were brilliant they would be posted for shareholders to celebrate on.

    If mobile ads stop been profitable and they have come down since last year alot then what does google make again? 1 mobile add is worth less per click than 1 website add which was confirmed by google when they had to explain why there add revenues had dropped. They had gained in mobile adds and lost out on website adds.

    Amazon admited themselves kindle fire is sold at a loss this is not nonesence this was released to shareholders by amazon CEO who said its sold at a loss as they hope to make cash on content.

    Nexus 7 is sold to google at cost, Google then adds in marketing, sales distribution, and the gift voucher its giving away still which adds up to a loss as well. As they are hoping to make it all back on application and mobile adds.

    Ill be very surprised if the nexus 7 or kindle fire has made break even for amazon or google respectively. ( no released numbers have ever seen light of day nor are we likely to see them.)
     
  19. faugusztin

    faugusztin I *am* the guy with two left hands

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    Use your eyes, Luke. $1.9 billion is the revenue per quarter. 70% of that is paid to the content owners (around 1400 million), 30% stays at Apple (around 500 million). Over 2 billion (500 million x 4) is what stays at Apple after they paid out the content owners. Are you trying to tell me
    they spend over 2 billion us dollars on servers ?

    Read the reason why. It is not due Kindle Fire and it is not due bad content sales. Half of their loss is due bad investment and the rest is due investing their money in expansion instead of trying to maximize dividends. Amazon is still a "startup" in this sense.

    Wrong. Amazon said they are selling it at cost. There is a huge difference between "at cost" and "at loss".
     
  20. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Sigh, I didn't want to get involved, but here are a few fact corrections.

    1) Apple have stated their profit from iTunes is minimal (and the source for this is their own investment calls) - any money they make is put back in to the rather extensive costs of running their iCloud data centres, content charges and so forth. They make the money on selling you an iPhone, iPad or iPod.

    2) Google are selling the Nexus at just above break-even, but when R&D is factored in, marketing and so forth, the net effect is a break even. Amazon on the other hand will sell you a Fire for a loss, relying on your content purchases to make money - something that isn't doing much good for their bottom line.

    How long can these guys continue to do this is the real question. Some day they're going to have to turn a profit off these devices and stores, else you end up like Sony, with near-junk credit rating.
     

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