*** The Official Microsoft Surface Thread ***

[englishpremier]

While that is cool, the whole idea of folding a laptop shut is to protect the screen. That outer screen is going to get scratched to hell, surely?

Any news on when full fat Windows 8 tablets are going to start being released?

The idea of a laptop folding shut is portability. Protecting the screen is secondary.

 

[Skeeter]

Still quite important though.

 

[MR.B]

That outer screen is going to get scratched to hell, surely?d?

It's more than likely Gorilla Glass. Most of these new Win 8/RT devices will be using it. It's what most high end phones use and it's very hard to scratch.

 

[Glaucus]

It's still easy to scratch, be nice if some had gorilla glass 3. Why hasn't any phone got it yet.

 

[MR.B]

Because it dont exist yet? Theres Gorilla Glass 2 which is new, my Galaxy S3 uses it. I've never managed to scratch it.

 

[ubersonic]

Any chance somebody could check me on these assumptions here please, just to see if it "sounds" right, the Surface Pro is confirmed to use an Ivy Bridge i5, so am I correct in assuming the is little chance of Intel releasing a new i5 CPU before Haswell?

If that's right and the Surface Pro will use one already on the market then the weakest/slowest/coolest/lowest power using one out atm is the i5 3317U 1.7ghz as used in the 2012 Macbook Air 11", that comes with HD4000 graphics.

Would it therefore make "sense" to assume that if the above is correct then if the MBA 11" can run something the is a pretty ok chance the surface will be able to as well? (assuming of course that they don't disable turbo on either the CPU or GPU).

Its a lot to hope I know, but from the keynote presentation on the Surface it sounds possible.

My reason for asking all this is my current laptop is an 11" unit which has a 1.3ghz Sandy bridge i3 with a HD3000, 4GB ram, a 250GB WD scorpio black and I personally find it adequate for playing WoW/Diablo/Guildwars 2 all on lowest settings, so as the Surface rapes my machine on paper with its Ivy i5, HD4000 and SSD im hoping it will also be able to play those games at least as well, in which case Microsoft can damn well have my money right now lol.

 

[Photek]

Any chance somebody could check me on these assumptions here

That all sounds right. Theirs noway Intel will bring out a new CPU before Haswell just for the Surface Pro. The i5 in the Surface could possibly have a custom made PCB (so it's smaller) as Intel have done stuff like this for Apple, but apart from that it will just be a normal low voltage i5 + HD4000 GPU, maybe with custom clocks/turbo settings. Theres always an extremely slight chance the Surface Pro could have dedicated graphics but i very much doubt this because of battery and the size/weight of it.

 

[DanF]

here's a short vid of UE3 running on windows RT

unreal-engine-3-demoed-windows-rt

 

[Glaucus]

Oh wow that's awesome. I hope it's true and that games are super easy to port.

 

[MR.B]

It's seems to be pretty easy to port games to the Windows RunTime environment.

And MS have just announced that these Xbox Live games are coming to Win 8 on release day....

Microsoft:

Xbox games will be easy to find in the preinstalled Windows 8 Xbox Games app and available in the Windows 8 Store. In addition, all Xbox games for Windows 8 will have Xbox Achievements, and many will also take advantage of other Xbox features, including leaderboards, multiplayer modes, and connecting with friends, and more.

Games:

1. 4 Elements II Special Edition
2. A World of Keflings
3. Adera: Episode 1
4. Adera: Episode 2
5. Adera: Episode 3
6. Angry Birds
7. Angry Birds Space
8. Big Buck Hunter Pro
9. BlazBlue Calamity Trigger
10. Collateral Damage
11. Crash Course GO
12. Cut the Rope
13. Disney Fairies
14. Dragon’s Lair
15. Field & Stream Fishing
16. Fruit Ninja
17. Gravity Guy
18. Gunstringer: Dead Man Running
19. Hydro Thunder Hurricane
20. IloMilo
21. iStunt 2
22. Jetpack Joyride
23. Kinectimals Unleashed
24. Microsoft Mahjong
25. Microsoft Minesweeper
26. Microsoft Solitaire Collection
27. Monster Island
28. PAC-MAN Championship Edition DX
29. Pinball FX 2
30. Reckless Racing Ultimate
31. Rocket Riot 3D
32. Shark Dash
33. Shuffle Party
34. Skulls of the Shogun
35. Taptiles
36. Team Crossword
37. The Harvest HD
38. Toy Soldiers Cold War
39. Wordament
40. Zombies!!!

Source

 

[SKILL]

Maybe worth noting that, iirc, 29 of those 40 are from MS or MS owned studio's, so 'only' 11 independant games noted so far.

Not that that makes much difference but there was clearly no way that those 29 wouldn't be coming out whatever the OS Microsoft was pushing

 

[Martini1991]

Hope we get some proper/official pricing information soon.

 

[Glaucus]

Hope we get some proper/official pricing information soon.

I imagine it will be tomorrow that we get loads of info.

 

[Martini1991]

Unless I'm being dense, why'd you think that?

 

[Glaucus]

Unless I'm being dense, why'd you think that?

Joint nokia and Microsoft event.
So I would expect details or if no details in actual event then for them to release all the details. As they have been very secretive about everything so far.

 

[Martini1991]

Agh yeah, I was being dense .
Most important for me is pricing, as I'm after a tablet after returning my third Nexus.

 

[jonneymendoza]

get the ipad 3. i highly recommend it and everyone knows im a apple hater

 

[RSR]

I will be moving from the iPad 3, once MS Surface has a Sky Go / BBC iPlayer.

 

[Martini1991]

get the ipad 3. i highly recommend it and everyone knows im a apple hater

No.

 

[Glaucus]

I will be moving from the iPad 3, once MS Surface has a Sky Go / BBC iPlayer.

You'll be waiting a while, unless that's your point.
Bbc said they won't be doing one. But this will probably change if sales are strong.

But then why would the need to. Why don't bbc just submit iplayer site for the flash white list. Just like bbc news site is on the whitelist.

Sky go uses silverlight which we haven't heard is included on rt version. However interestingly Netflix is included in the flash whitelist. But Netflix uses silverlight. So are we going to have a whitelist for silverlight as well, or is netflix moving to flash or what.

Like normal need more details.