*** The Official Microsoft Surface Thread ***

thep02 said:
Yup the $ £ parity thing with tech goods makes me hate shopkeepers no better than burglars if you ask me.
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What you fail to take into account (again) is everything from cost of living (for example simple things like comparitive costs of simple things like basic medical care) to salary, housing costs, to size of market and local legislation/customization along with a whole bunch of other variables. Available disposable income as well as things like localisation costs for things like tech goods feed into prices, not just straight $ to £ conversion. /sigh

FWIW last time I looked as a rule of thumb retailers make around 5% tops on computer hardware before costs (although of course that varies of retailer, volume, phusical or etailer etc), maybe 15% on (new release) software.
 
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Athanor said:
What you fail to take into account (again) is everything from cost of living, to salary, housing costs and costs of simple things like basic medical care, to size of market and local legislation/customization along with a whole bunch of other variables. /sigh
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So how do you explain why Germany is so cheap when all the social costs you listed are greater, look basically no one with a retail biz wants to work for £4/5/600 so they whack up the prices and take £1200+, pricey drop shippers mostly.

All while the tax man gives up his bit on everything they can get their accountant to include, my mate the "landscape gardener" puts Jimmy Carr to shame.
 
Fallen god said:
This is exactly what I meant, just having it built in or connected throught a port, so you could upgrade and sell them and use them as you pleased. I really see this becoming the 1 Device to rule them all.

TBH the iPad is mostly good just beacause it has nice apps, android tablets personally for me offer a better overall os in terms of ICS but they lack any good apps and seem to be more like hey lets make a random tablet and not put much thought into it but will add millions of random things and hope we can get a few sells.

These MS tabs seem to be very well thought out, and are a step ahead of the game, I would have liked to see 1080p be the only res on these just to give them that extra sharpness. The build is top notch, the OS runs very well on tablets and its not just a mobile phone os like apple and google. What will be the big thing is how well everything runs, and if you can run all the desktop apps for me.
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In which case I agree with you!

How about the tablet being your start screen when plugged in to the dock. You do your work on your non touch screen...screen and use the tablet as the touch navigation of the metro start screen, could also be used as a drawing pad for photoshop (with a Wacom digitiser) and as a touch screen area for stats and options in games...

So many possibilities and hopefully someone designs something that can do it!

cu3ed said:
550 is a pipe dream for that i5 machine, but..my god...I can dream....the RT version would be blown away.
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Agreed. For those wondering about price of the Pro version there is basically only one "competitor" at the moment, the Samsung Series 7 Slate which sells for around £1k.. And it doesn't have a magnesium body or 1080p display.

It also seems like one manufacturer has already got their knickers in a twist about this release. Acer aren't very happy apparently, but then it's Acer, the purveyor of cheap tat that usually sells on price alone... Maybe they will have to up their game? Although to be fair to them since they decided to change tack late last year they have got better. Their Ultrabooks are a prime example of cheap as possible though.
 
$699 for the Tegra 3 RT, are they having a laugh? The iPad and Kindle 2 (when they finally release it in the UK) will kill it quicker than the Playbook/Touchpad.
$999 for the i5? Interesting ...but won't that harm every Windows OEM?
 
thep02 said:
So how do you explain why Germany is so cheap
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It's not... Even a quick look shows the iPad 2 on Apple.com as roughly £329 in the UK and £321 in Germany. A Macbook Pro (these are all bog standard spec from the UK and De Apple home pages) is £1004 in Germany and £999 in UK.

I'm sure you can find specific examples that support your theory and of course there will be exceptions. I've not tried particularly hard, or scientifically to waste time on this beyond going to the front page of Apple.com in the UK and Germany and picking two random items then feeding the prices through the first currency converter that came up on Google search.

Whilst there may be difference in prices, as I say, cost of living, localization costs, size of market, established pricing expectations, retail premises rates/rent/utility costs/staffing wage costs etc all feed into pricing and explain why it's not a simplistic $ to £ conversion. A simple example for a retail store might be that on average the average minimum wage in the US is £4.52 per hour, in the UK it's £6.09 (for over 21s).

Don't forget, most states in the US then add local sales tax (anywhere from 4% to 13%) to headline prices depending on state. In the UK the price usually already includes VAT. The US has ready access with minimal shipping costs to over 300m people, in the Uk that's 60m. Ecomomies of scale and all that...

I'm not saying the UK is the cheapest place in the world for tech by any means, however i don't believe retailers are the rich fat cat rip off thieves you say they are.
 
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sarge78 said:
$699 for the Tegra 3 RT, are they having a laugh? The iPad and Kindle 2 (when they finally release it in the UK) will kill it quicker than the Playbook/Touchpad.
$999 for the i5? Interesting ...but won't that harm every Windows OEM?
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$999 is what the base model series 7 slate above sells for in the US so it's about what you'd expect as a minimum price. That will probably equate to £900-£1000 here if most other computer style pieces are to be used in comparison.
 
sarge78 said:
$699 for the Tegra 3 RT, are they having a laugh? The iPad and Kindle 2 (when they finally release it in the UK) will kill it quicker than the Playbook/Touchpad.
$999 for the i5? Interesting ...but won't that harm every Windows OEM?
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It's not about the specs it's about the experience. If anything the iphone's success should have taught us that by now. WP7 runs better on single core processors in terms of speed and how nice it is too use than android does on most dual and even quad core phones. I wouldn't be surprised if this flops by virtue of being a microsoft product alone, but as a product this seems good.

re i5 pro Not really. It might harm ultrabooks a teeny tiny bit, but it has no real competitors other than the Samsung Slate which was a bit meh given its price.
 
Amp34 said:
Agreed. For those wondering about price of the Pro version there is basically only one "competitor" at the moment, the Samsung Series 7 Slate which sells for around £1k.. And it doesn't have a magnesium body or 1080p display.
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If I was a betting man (I'm not) I'd put the RT at £495 and the Pro at £995 on release.

Keep in mind it's a "premium" product rather than mass market, and I dare say there will be cheaper options from HP/Dell/Asus/Acer etc.
 
Athanor said:
Pretty decent hands on with the RT Surface here http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...-surface-tablet-1085839/review#articleContent
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Hmmm.... I kinda swore to myself that I wouldn't really use an ARM tablet but... After reading that all I can say is why have MS exposed it so early. I want one next month!

I'm busy trying to work out how I can juggle my electrical items about and justify to myself why I prefer browsing on my Air than my touchpad... Maybe I can use my Air as the main machine attached to my monitor and the tablet as the machine I browse with... Or use the tablet most places and dock it to the machine, using my Air to browse when I'm at home...:o
 
Athanor said:
If I was a betting man (I'm not) I'd put the RT at £495 and the Pro at £995 on release.

Keep in mind it's a "premium" product rather than mass market, and I dare say there will be cheaper options from HP/Dell/Asus/Acer etc.
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I would be inclined to bet against you for the RT, I'd go for around £370 for the 16GB model, in line with, but slightly cheaper than the equivalent Apple model and not to cheap as to annoy the OEMs.

I'd bet with you on the Pro being £995 though.
 
Amp34 said:
I would be inclined to bet against you for the RT, I'd go for around £370 for the 16GB model, in line with, but slightly cheaper than the equivalent Apple model and not to cheap as to annoy the OEMs.

I'd bet with you on the Pro being £995 though.
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I think the RT is only going to be available as 32Gb and 64Gb models (64 and 128 for Pro), hence my price guess. It also leave some wiggle room for other OEMs to produce price sensitive models.

I dare say i'm completely wrong though :)
 
Athanor said:
I think the RT is only going to be available as 32Gb and 64Gb models (64 and 128 for Pro), hence my price guess. It also leave some wiggle room for other OEMs to produce price sensitive models.

I dare say i'm completely wrong though :)
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Oops.. Sorry... For some reason I was thinking 16 and 32GB... I'd suggest slightly cheaper though, something like £450 (again slightly cheaper than the comparable iPad).

Techradar about the Pro said:
It's got DisplayPort instead of HDMI and as well as the two keyboard covers it also comes with an active pen.
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Interesting... Why the change to display port. Higher resolution output?
 
Amp34 said:
Interesting... Why the change to display port. Higher resolution output?
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Indeed. To me that suggests perhaps the RT is envisaged as being focused more on casual/consumer use where you may hook it up to a LCD TV to play back movies etc where as the Pro needs to be able to hook up to higher res monitors.

As HDMI can handle 1080p happily (funnily enough :) ) I wonder if it may indicate the Pro will support something like 1440p on an external display port connection? #makingitupasigoalong :D
 
Microsoft Surface

Just been watching the keynote
http://techreport.com/discussions.x/23154

A presentation very much like Apple in style, although not as slick.

I reckon they have totally blindsided Apple with the cover that is actually a keyboard - that is neat, especially the proper travel key version.
The pen input is another major plus and the magnesium case is better than the precious Apple aluminium that needs a cover at all times.

And the holy grail - a USB 3 port :cool:


http://crave.cnet.co.uk/laptops/microsoft-surface-specs-price-release-date-and-more-50008313/

What do you think, Surface or iPad, or are these totally different markets?
I reckon the iPad will be nicer to use, the MS Surface easier to do actual work. I really don't like Apples concept of file transfer, a USB key is just easier and quicker.

(I have an iPad, so slightly biased)
 
microsoft_surface_tablet_announced.png

LOL
 
Apple still has some of the worst operating systems in the industry for their pads and phones, so on the software side of things it's not hard to outdo them. Hardware-wise, it's very well designed and they have obviously put a lot of thought into it. It's about time we went back to the bad old days of Microsoft versus Apple to be honest.

Their lawyers will benefit more than anyone else I feel. Predictable like clockwork, within the next few weeks, Apple will claim the Surface infringes patents. That's when you know they are worried.
 
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