*** The Official Microsoft Surface Pro Thread ***

Rilot

Rilot

Rilot

Don
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Surface Pro info is getting lost in the Surface RT and Generic Windows 8 tablets threads so let's consolidate it in here from now on.

So, first review is up at Ubergizmo and is pinning the battery life at 6hrs of productivity and 5hrs of local viseo playback. That's good enough. http://www.ubergizmo.com/2013/02/microsoft-surface-pro-review/

C|Net review: http://reviews.cnet.com/microsoft-surface-pro/

Release date in the US and Canada is 9th February but so far no release date for other markets has been announced.

I shall be ordering one as soon as I can.
 
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They are all pinning it in the 5 to 6 hour range which is enough. Ultrabooks aren't much better than that and I see this device as an ultrabook replacement rather than a tablet replacement.

There does seem to be an awful lot of hate for this device from commentors on those reviews. The reviews themselves seem pretty well balanced but the comments from people are just absolutely slating (excuse the pun) it. I'm not sure why.

The objections I see are:

Too expensive compared to iPad: It's a full PC and should be compared to ultrabook pricing.
Bad GPU: It's good enough and can push a lot more pixels around than all ARM based tabs at the moment.
Crap for productivity: I guess people have never heard of network docking. Connect to a USB hub and a nice 22" screen and you have a workstation.
Not enough storage space: This I can sort of agree with from some angles. 128GB is a little on the low side for a full Windows machine but are you really going to keep your entire iTunes collection on it?

It fits my usage profile nicely so I will definitely be getting one. I can see though that most people would be better off with an iPad.
 
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It drives me nuts they cannot see what this tablet is able of doing and still they go at it with the though that this is JUST a tablet akin to the likes of iPads etc, its not, its nothing like them, its an UltraBook in a tablet form factor, so maybe an UltraTablet?
Talking about the battery life is a mute point, Engadget complain it "only" got near 4 hours of a constant video played though it, id say that was bloody impressive!
 
cu3ed said:
It drives me nuts they cannot see what this tablet is able of doing and still they go at it with the though that this is JUST a tablet akin to the likes of iPads etc, its not, its nothing like them, its an UltraBook in a tablet form factor, so maybe an UltraTablet?
Talking about the battery life is a mute point, Engadget complain it "only" got near 4 hours of a constant video played though it, id say that was bloody impressive!
Click to expand...

That's more than enough for what I need. For me, it will replace my laptop for day to day use.
For me, something that I can use as a tablet when I want to, is small enough to fit in a small shoulder bag and has enough battery power to last me most of the day is what I need.
 
If it had thunderbolt then it would be perfect.

Could "dock" it when you get home with a nice external video card and display, and it would be more than adequate for my casual gaming.
 
paradigm said:
If it had thunderbolt then it would be perfect.

Could "dock" it when you get home with a nice external video card and display, and it would be more than adequate for my casual gaming.
Click to expand...

This would have been a great feature.
The acer w700 protoype had it on, but was removed for production :(
 
I've got an RT, I'll be getting a Pro as well, whichever doesnt work for me will be handed off to the tech here.

As I can see it the problem is its being called a tablet so people automatically think iPad etc and as expect similar weight, size, battery life etc so its never going to match up to those expectations.
Drive space, I had an XE700, 64Gb version, Win8, Office 2013 and all was well, had about 15/20gb available which is plenty for a portable device, then theres the mSD card giving you another 64Gb if needed, so I dont see that as a problem personally.

It should be called an UltraTab or UltraPad or something, not a tablet, bad marketting imho...

Trade off is in the i5 side of things, give it a gen or two as far as CPU's go, wait for AMD based ones or Atom based ones and they might be onto more of a winner, the quad core Atoms that are due shoudl give Win8 a decent enough bit of CPU to run on and add a few hours to the battery...
 
Haswell if it delivers will be great, so that'll be CPU and battery life sorted. Hopefully.
Haswell should deliver twice the battery life, twice the gfx power over hd4000 and marginally faster CPU 10% iirc.
 
I doubt it'll be twice the battery life, I dont think any chip manuf has made that sort of leap..

25% would be nice but i'd expect ~10% tops
 
Thing is they haven't focused on power before.
What they doing is shutting more parts of the CPU down than they have every done. Along with when doing menial tasks running at 10watts rather than the current 17watts.

Which should mean a huge jump in battery life. Obviously if your gaming 100% of the time on it you aren't going to see much if any benefit. The benefit is when you aren't taxing the CPU, we are going to see massive savings in power.
 
I don't foresee the Surface Pro selling very well to be honest. I'd be surprised if it outsold the RT.

I have confidence in the Surface brand going forward though. I think in the not too distant future they're going to have some really compelling tablet PCs on the market.

I can just think of too many reasons to avoid the Pro at the moment, although you could arguably say that about the current RT as well.

I also think they need to crack on and get some nice accessories out there too for the Surface tablet. No dock? Why not? It's a no brainer for the Surface Pro. The ability to just plop it down and connect up to a full keyboard/mouse/monitor would really open peoples eyes to what this thing actually is. A PC.

And maybe then it would be reviewed accordingly.
 
Kind of depends what you mean by sell well.
They are not a mass market product, in the same way something like ipad is.

But I Do think they'll do pretty well with us enthusiasts/gamers and in the business world. If w8 pro tablets can replace say 20%+ of the ultra book market in its first year, I'll consider them a success.
 
I dont get the business use for the iPad tbh, the number of people I've sat in meetings with where they show you a product catalog on an iPad and as soon as you get down to the numbers a laptop comes out, the RT wins hands down there...
 
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