Comments on: No surprise: Microsoft Surface Pro arrives to a mix of cheers and jeers

By: Spinedoc

Spinedoc — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:13:37 +0000

I’m first in line to buy one, that’s if the snow doesn’t swallow me first. Revolutionary device, but not for everyone. I think it will be popular, but remain somewhat niche until next year when they can give more battery life. The place to be at is the atom based tablets, which is why it’s a mystery MS didn’t use an atom CPU in at least the base model.

By: Over Zeetop

Over Zeetop — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 03:02:58 +0000

Funny, I see it as the perfect device for when I travel, since it means I don’t have to carry two devices. It’s got a better screen than any laptop under $700, and a better digitizer than (or at least as good as) any tablet on the market. It has the potential to be a tablet you can do real work on, whether its Photoshop/Lightroom and the rest of the Creative Suite, AutoCAD/Revit/Bentley/ProEngineer, Notion/Sibelius/Finale, Bluebeam/Acrobat, Audition/Audacity/Cubase/Reaper. Can you imagine how much better it will be to have MediaMonkey on your portable device instead of the glorified pocket players on current tablets? How about real Flash, Java(script).

I’ll agree that battery life is going to have to get better, I wish the SSD was upgradeable, and I think not having at least a modular LTE option will hold it back. Still, it has the potential to remind every single PC user out there what they’ve been giving up by using an iPad. The longer I have the iPad, the more I realize how horribly limited it is. If the Surface lives up to the display quality hype, and they get a grip on the scaling (or its not as bad as they say), I suspect my iPad will take up permanent residence in my vehicle as a great GPS and media player, and nothing more.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 00:02:48 +0000

That is probably why we should never suggest the Surface to anyone who you will have to be their IT support. They can screw it up to easily. That is pretty much the major of people out there. I truly believe that a limited device like the iPad and Android tablets have been a godsend.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:49:41 +0000

It’s the only tablet that will run Python, so it’s the only tablet on the market of any value to me.

By: realjjj

realjjj — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:09:57 +0000

The surface would be nice at half the price.
If a 10 inch netbook is sub 300$ and a dual core laptop with better perf (no low voltage -read low perf- part) is 400$ then Surface pro perf is worth 350$ and you add 100$ for the screen and touch (not thinking about BOM but about the value it brings to the user) to get to half the current price.
The Intel chip is listed as a 225$ part at a die size of 118.1mm2 (smaller than the SoC in the iPad 4, granted on a different process). The extra NAND versus a 16GB tablet should cost less than 30$. No idea how much Intel asks for the chipset but it’s pretty clear what drives the price up and why any such device has minimal relevance.

By: Mark

Mark — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 16:14:07 +0000

” but it’s still compromised at both angles of attack.” That is typical of Microsoft Products. Take SharePoint. It tries to be all things to all people without being really good at anything (not out of the box).

“I keep scratching my head over who Microsoft expects to buy the Surface Pro”

Well, lots of people buy SharePoint.