The Microsoft Surface Tablet thread.

[Puddle Jumper]

The price they launched at was aimed to give room for 3rd parties to make their own WinRT tablets and sell them for less than the Surface. OEMs never really made a go at it (understandably) so I think now Microsoft can decide to be competitive with the price but I still think that means more than $300 since the Surface is a premium device.

The Haswell processor may make them more irrelevant but it's possible they could aim for low end now with WinRT. Any Windows tablet sale is overall a good thing for the Microsoft app store. Almost all Metro apps work on Win8 and WinRT so it's possible that an RT device actually makes more sense in the future than it does right now if the app store continues to grow.

The Surface Pro is a premium device, the Surface RT is a budget device at a premium price.

If Microsoft had launched the Surface RT with a Snapdragon S4 Pro and 1080p screen its would have had a chance at being competitive.

 

[rockyct]

The Surface Pro is a premium device, the Surface RT is a budget device at a premium price.

If Microsoft had launched the Surface RT with a Snapdragon S4 Pro and 1080p screen its would have had a chance at being competitive.

The build quality on the Surface RT far better than build quality of an tablet other than an ipad, and I think it's even a better built than an ipad. My point is that the Surface RT is not aimed for the budget, $300 tablet market. Remember, it also includes a full version of Office.

I think we'll see a budget, 7" WinRT tablet that will probably aim for $250 and maybe be branded as an Xbox type device without Office on it. I could see the Surface dropping to $400 overall when the next version arrives hopefully with that new Qualcomm chip and a 1080p display.

 

[Deeko]

I agree with Puddle Jumper - Tegra3 was just not up to the task and the screen resolution was disappointing. Price and WinRT issues aside, I think if the next surface comes with a Snapdragon 800 and 1080p screen it will be a FAR superior device. It will face stiff competition from Haswell-based devices, but still, it would be a solid product.

 

[dagamer34]

Dream:

8" 1080p screen w/ Wacom digitizer
Snapdragon 800
USB 3.0 port
microSDXC slot
10 hours battery life
1 lb
$399

The failure of the current Surface RT is that it's really just not a good product. I think it's been conclusively proven that the ideal size of a tablet is 7-8", and as soon as the iPad mini gets a Retina screen, I don't think any 10" tablet is going to do very well (even the 9.7" iPad). The people who use a Bluetooth keyboard with their 9.7" iPad just baffle me as you've basically made a kludgy Ultrabook that you can't *safely* use on your lap. Get a MacBook Air at that point!

 

[olds]

I was ready to drop the $1k on the Pro till I found out about battery life.

 

[Deeko]

I was ready to drop the $1k on the Pro till I found out about battery life.

If they release a new one this year with Haswell it should take care of that.

 

[ultimatebob]

Well, looky here... Windows RT tablets are starting to show up on Woot, and they're around $249 just like I expected:

http://www.woot.com/offers/asus-vivotab-rt-32gb-tegra-3-tablet

I'm sticking with my $189 price target by Christmas, with the biggest discounts happening around Black Friday. There are going to a lot of bummed out kids with liquidated Surface RT laptops in their stockings this year

 

[SKORPI0]

Well, looky here... Surface RT tablets are starting to show up on Woot, and they're around $249 just like I expected:

http://www.woot.com/offers/asus-vivotab-rt-32gb-tegra-3-tablet

It's starting. Being returned because they "suck". :biggrin:

Factory Reconditioned. $299 with keyboard dock.
Those are Asus TF600T-B1-GR VivoTab RT 10.1" 32G, topic is about the MS Surface RT. :hmm:

Comparison between the 2 tablets. Tablet Grudge Match: Microsoft Surface RT Vs. ASUS VivoTab RT

 

[386DX]

I will bash Windows RT like everyone else, but I did like the physical design of the tablet. The keyboard cover and kickstand were nice additions, one I hope Apple and Google copy and improve upon.

There's no denying the physical design of the Surface is top notch, but MS really botched up on marketing and pricing which I hope they fix with the 2nd generation.

Here are some things they need to do imo:

- Every surface should come with a touch cover. Make the type cover as the optional accessory. The cover attachment is what made the surface the surface without it's just another tablet.

- remove the recovery partition and put a USB stick with recovery in every box. This will shut people up about no free space on the Surface.

- pricing should be approx $350 for RT, $500-550 for Surface Pro with ATOM, $900 for Surface Pro with Haswell. I know it's like current price however cover needs to be included.

- A lot of traditional PC buyers were put off by Surface Pro's lack of serviceability. New Surface needs to make RAM and SSD accessible, with that in mind a barebone Surface Pro should also be released at $650 without SSD or RAM for the enthusiast.

- release a Surface Phone running full Windows 8. Think Samsung Note but running a real OS you can get work done on.

 

[finbarqs]

They also need to fix windows 8. Too confusing to dumbsumers.

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

There's no denying the physical design of the Surface is top notch, but MS really botched up on marketing and pricing which I hope they fix with the 2nd generation.

Here are some things they need to do imo:

- Every surface should come with a touch cover. Make the type cover as the optional accessory. The cover attachment is what made the surface the surface without it's just another tablet.

- remove the recovery partition and put a USB stick with recovery in every box. This will shut people up about no free space on the Surface.

- pricing should be approx $350 for RT, $500-550 for Surface Pro with ATOM, $900 for Surface Pro with Haswell. I know it's like current price however cover needs to be included.

- A lot of traditional PC buyers were put off by Surface Pro's lack of serviceability. New Surface needs to make RAM and SSD accessible, with that in mind a barebone Surface Pro should also be released at $650 without SSD or RAM for the enthusiast.

- release a Surface Phone running full Windows 8. Think Samsung Note but running a real OS you can get work done on.

Further, they need to drop the "Windows" name altogether and stick with Surface IMHO. Windows just has a bad taste in people's mouths these days and automatically makes them want to not like the product out the gate.

Your pricing suggestions are spot on. $300-350 for RT, $500-550 for Atom Pro, $800-900 for Haswell Pro. All tablets should include a touch cover of some sort by default.

As far as Surface phone goes, I think it's not needed right now. Nokia is doing a killer job producing top notch phones for them. No need to muddy up those waters.

Serviceability is a non-issue. It's a tablet for christ sakes.

 

[Ravynmagi]

Well, looky here... Surface RT tablets are starting to show up on Woot, and they're around $249 just like I expected:

http://www.woot.com/offers/asus-vivotab-rt-32gb-tegra-3-tablet

I'm sticking with my $189 price target by Christmas, with the biggest discounts happening around Black Friday. There are going to a lot of bummed out kids with liquidated Surface RT laptops in their stockings this year

That is a Windows RT tablet manufactured by ASUS.

Surface RT is a specific brand of Windows RT tablet made by Microsoft and is not what was sold on Woot yesterday.

Sorry for the nitpicking. Not sure why people use Windows RT and Surface RT interchangeably. One is an OS another is a specific brand of tablet.

 

[MrX8503]

Win 8, Win RT, and Surface Pro is such a fail. I'm not sure why anyone thought they would be successful products.

The ecosystem is a mis mash and their biggest consumers don't understand the OSs.

 

[gorcorps]

Well, looky here... Surface RT tablets are starting to show up on Woot, and they're around $249 just like I expected:

http://www.woot.com/offers/asus-vivotab-rt-32gb-tegra-3-tablet

I'm sticking with my $189 price target by Christmas, with the biggest discounts happening around Black Friday. There are going to a lot of bummed out kids with liquidated Surface RT laptops in their stockings this year

So... where's the surface RT?

 

[386DX]

Further, they need to drop the "Windows" name altogether and stick with Surface IMHO. Windows just has a bad taste in people's mouths these days and automatically makes them want to not like the product out the gate.

Your pricing suggestions are spot on. $300-350 for RT, $500-550 for Atom Pro, $800-900 for Haswell Pro. All tablets should include a touch cover of some sort by default.

As far as Surface phone goes, I think it's not needed right now. Nokia is doing a killer job producing top notch phones for them. No need to muddy up those waters.

Serviceability is a non-issue. It's a tablet for christ sakes.

The surface pro is a cross between a tablet and a laptop. When you invest $1000 on a device you expect some features of a laptop. I'm not asking for total serviceability, but adding an accessible RAM and SSD panel on the back is trivial to do. Considering that the current Surface Pro uses a standard mSATA drive it's a huge put off for the traditional PC user who expects to be able to extended the useful life of there system usually by RAM or SSD upgrade. I for one know of plenty of people who liked the Surface Pro but ultimately passed on it because they required more RAM or storage space.

Remember the PC market is shrinking MS needs to appease to the PC users to keep them from defecting over to a cheaper tablet. When your competitor is selling a tablet for half the price and there customer generally refresh every 1.5 - 2 years, your tablet that cost twice as much better last 3-4 years. If someone bought a 64 GB Surface Pro now, do you really think they will be happy with 64GB storage and 4GB of RAM in 3 or 4 years? IMO one of the PC industries biggest advantage was value for money, a big part of that has always been being able to extend it's useful life cheaply by upgrading. PC manufacturers need to go back to that advantage instead of just trying to be an Apple.

 

[Roland00Address]

The surface pro is a cross between a tablet and a laptop. When you invest $1000 on a device you expect some features of a laptop. I'm not asking for total serviceability, but adding an accessible RAM and SSD panel on the back is trivial to do. Considering that the current Surface Pro uses a standard mSATA drive it's a huge put off for the traditional PC user who expects to be able to extended the useful life of there system usually by RAM or SSD upgrade. I for one know of plenty of people who liked the Surface Pro but ultimately passed on it because they required more RAM or storage space.

Remember the PC market is shrinking MS needs to appease to the PC users to keep them from defecting over to a cheaper tablet. When your competitor is selling a tablet for half the price and there customer generally refresh every 1.5 - 2 years, your tablet that cost twice as much better last 3-4 years. If someone bought a 64 GB Surface Pro now, do you really think they will be happy with 64GB storage and 4GB of RAM in 3 or 4 years? IMO one of the PC industries biggest advantage was value for money, a big part of that has always been being able to extend it's useful life cheaply by upgrading. PC manufacturers need to go back to that advantage instead of just trying to be an Apple.

While I agree in principle the biggest complaint people are going to have about the surface pro a few years down the road is not the memory or the storage but the battery life. 3 to 5 hours is not enough (depends on brightness or workload) and that is for a new device before battery degradation.

Hopefully Haswell will change this.

 

[MrX8503]

IMO one of the PC industries biggest advantage was value for money, a big part of that has always been being able to extend it's useful life cheaply by upgrading. PC manufacturers need to go back to that advantage instead of just trying to be an Apple.

That kind of business isn't sustainable. How's HP and Dell doing?

The Surface didn't fail because of price, it failed because it sucks. The OS is confusing to users and the Pro tries to be a laptop and tablet, but it ends up being terrible at both. I could have told MS that while taking a dump and I don't require a six figure salary.

 

[BladeVenom]

The Surface didn't fail because of price, it failed because it sucks. The OS is confusing to users and the Pro tries to be a laptop and tablet, but it ends up being terrible at both. I could have told MS that while taking a dump and I don't require a six figure salary.

But that's the wrong answer if you want a six figure salary at MS. The correct answer is, "Brilliant idea Mr. Ballmer, I don't see how it could fail."

 

[ultimatebob]

This $189 Surface in a year is nonsense and you know it.

Well, look at that... Best Buy has a Black Friday sale on the original Surface RT for $199:

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/black-friday-10174-MicrosoftSurfaceTabletwith32GBMemory.html

Staples also has it with the keyboard (a formerly $100 option) for $249.

I still haven't seen the original Surface RT models on Woot for $189 yet, but it's only a matter of time now.

 

[rockyct]

Well, look at that... Best Buy has a Black Friday sale on the original Surface RT for $199:

http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/black-friday-10174-MicrosoftSurfaceTabletwith32GBMemory.html

Staples also has it with the keyboard (a formerly $100 option) for $249.

I still haven't seen the original Surface RT models on Woot for $189 yet, but it's only a matter of time now.

Not really a surprise. It's an old model that's been out for over a year. A good black Friday sale on them is hardly "unloading" them. Your first "any time now" prediction for the Surface on Woot was five months ago but if you wait long enough, I'm sure it will eventually happen. Walmart has the iPad mini for $299 and a $100 giftcard on black Friday. That sure doesn't mean the iPad mini was a failure.

 

[baydude]

should I get a Surface Pro 2 or an Asus Zenbook Infinity?

 

[ultimatebob]

Not really a surprise. It's an old model that's been out for over a year. A good black Friday sale on them is hardly "unloading" them. Your first "any time now" prediction for the Surface on Woot was five months ago but if you wait long enough, I'm sure it will eventually happen. Walmart has the iPad mini for $299 and a $100 giftcard on black Friday. That sure doesn't mean the iPad mini was a failure.

I figured that they would wait until the end of the year to unload them at a discount, and Black Friday is a good day to do it! They already tried selling them to schools for $200, but I'd imagine that they still have a bunch of the original RT's in stock. They sure didn't sell many at $500, that's for sure

Like I said earlier, it's the $89 brown Zune all over again!

 

[gorcorps]

should I get a Surface Pro 2 or an Asus Zenbook Infinity?

You're comparing a premium 13" non convertible ultrabook that costs nearly $2,000 to a 10" tablet that at the very most costs %75 of that. Two entirely different machines, form factors and price points. You are not going to get a recommendation without some more thought about what you're looking for.

 

[ndoggfromhell]

I've been reading through this thread and I have to say a lot of people are bashing this product without actually using it. I originally thought the RT would be useless and that I had to have the Pro model, but didn't want to part with that much money when I really didn't need a tablet. 3 months ago my company had me roll out a new wireless network to accommodate a new product we were implementing in our fixed operations departments. This product would utilize the 4th Generation iPad with Retina display and some proprietary apps that would communicate with our existing dealer management infrastructure. After setting up 20 iPads I was honestly disappointed in the overall experience. I'm not a fanboy of any particular company, i'm more of a "right tool for the right job" type of person. I love my iPhone, but the iPad just didn't really work great for me. About a month ago, I acquired a Surface RT 64Gb and bought it only because I wanted to really get a feel for the device. $150 for the tablet, case, and type cover made it a pretty inexpensive gamble.

The majority of my job consists of editing workbooks, preparing pdf and doc files, remote server management, and system preparation. I brought the Surface to work and set it on my desk. Day 1 I used it to stream xbox music all day and occasionally check facebook. Battery life was pretty impressive to say the least. I still had over 20% when I left at the end of my shift. Day 2 I was installing 3 new pc's in another building and swapping out the existing pc's for others in another section of that building. I used the Surface to access the sharepoint site and it worked seemlessly with the files using the included Office apps. (I can't even do that from my mac pro workstation) While swapping out pc's I used the Surface to modify permissions in our content filter, update IP address workbooks, retrieve passwords for email accounts... all basic stuff, but stuff I was doing on the tablet and not the pc I was installing. Day 2s battery life was remarkably better since I wasn't streaming music. 70% when my shift was over.

At home I have an HP Microserver (Windows Home Server) that I store the majority of my TV Episodes, Movies, and Music on. I stream it to my television through a WDTV. I ditched premium cable a while ago, but for the basic channels I needed to rely on comcast still. They gave me a cablecard and I have a PC in my bedroom that runs Windows Media Center. I stream live TV in my living room using the Mediacenter Extender built into my Xbox360. I really wish the Surface RT could at least work as an extender! I'm also waiting eagerly for VLC player to be ported to Windows RT... as it would be the best way to stream media from my Home server. Alas, my Surface is basically a facebook/internet browser when I'm in my living room. I can remote desktop into my home server to check things out as well... this is a nice feature.

Day 3 onward I carry my Surface with me everywhere I go. It's a tool at work that a lot of people who have played with it are actually coming around to wanting one. One of the other IT persons is actually ditching his Nexus tablet for a Surface 2. The surface has a purpose and it fill that purpose very well. Surface 2 is going to sell more, the Surface 3 is going to sell more too. I think a lot more business are going to want employees with a Surface instead of an iPad.

 

[s44]

I really wish the Surface RT could at least work as an extender!

Splashtop or remote desktop or whatever into the bedroom PC.

And yes, this and the Pro are quite useful in work environments. That doesn't mean they're going over well as consumer devices, however.