The Microsoft Surface Tablet thread.

[ultimatebob]

Microsoft is insane if they think that they're going to be able to sell a product is about on par with an iPad 2 for the same price that Apple is charging. Apple has a huge selection of applications and huge brand loyalty. Microsoft? Not so much.

I'm going to enjoy buying one of these about a year from now at a stock liquidation sale for about $149. It will go nicely with my brown Zune

 

[God Mode]

MS business model is outdated and this will be a repeat of the Zune and Nokia partnership mediocrity. Either release a kickass SDK with incentives for iOS and Android developers or they should stick to their OS and business applications bread and butter. They're selling shelves to people with nothing to put on them.

 

[slugg]

$500? Okay, I lost interest. Android looks a whole lot better, all of a sudden.

 

[bonkers325]

$500 for a 32gb win8 tablet? pass... an extra $100 for the touch cover? PASS!

i was super excited for the tablet, but at that price point... what's the point? and it's not even full blown windows, its just win8 RT. crippled, needs its own app ecosystem... let's wait and see what the ultrabook prices are.

 

[s44]

This needed to be no more than $300 to have a shot. Based on this absurd pricing the Pro model will be $1k if not even more.

Absurd? The $200 rumor was what was obviously absurd. All of you reacting because you believed that nonsense in the first place need to reconsider.

I'm really not sure what Microsoft is thinking by porting Office to iOS and Android, though. Kills the whole point of the RT platform.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Absurd? The $200 rumor was what was obviously absurd. All of you reacting because you believed that nonsense in the first place need to reconsider.

I'm really not sure what Microsoft is thinking by porting Office to iOS and Android, though. Kills the whole point of the RT platform.

It's a Tegra 3 tablet with a low res, possibly not even IPS screen. hardly something worth $499 considering that will get you a Transformer Pad Infinity or iPad 3.

 

[Dominato3r]

Surface RT starting at $499:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-surface-price-revealed-starts-at-499

The actual link to the Microsoft store was working for me at one point this morning but at the moment, is down again.

Yea, link doesn't work for any source. I was hoping for $500 with the keyboard, but I guess this will do

It's a Tegra 3 tablet with a low res, possibly not even IPS screen. hardly something worth $499 considering that will get you a Transformer Pad Infinity or iPad 3.

ClearTYpe HD, any idea what that means? It's a moniker a few manufacturers have been throwing around.

 

[pelov]

MS business model is outdated and this will be a repeat of the Zune and Nokia partnership mediocrity. Either release a kickass SDK with incentives for iOS and Android developers or they should stick to their OS and business applications bread and butter. They're selling shelves to people with nothing to put on them.

There is still no official SDK and won't be one until release. Only a handful of "trusted developers" got an SDK from MS and as a result their RTM versions are going to suffer from having only a handful of garbage applications to choose from.

 

[Dominato3r]

There is still no official SDK and won't be one until release. Only a handful of "trusted developers" got an SDK from MS and as a result their RTM versions are going to suffer from having only a handful of garbage applications to choose from.

Windows 8 SDK has been out for over a year

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hardware/hh852363.aspx

 

[Spicedaddy]

Too expensive... Make it 399$ for the tablet, 449$ with the keyboard cover, and maybe it has a chance. Should be aligned with iPad 2 prices, not iPad 3.

Personally, I think I'll be picking up a Nexus 7 soon.

 

[ITHURTSWHENIP]

Microsoft is betting on Office and "Windows" as the selling point. Wether that will happen or not will be interesting to see.

But given that Apple is going to sell a tablet with roughly the same resolution for like 249-299 i would say competition will become fierce this christmas

 

[pelov]

was referring to Winphone8, sry

It has been a few months since Microsoft unveiled Windows Phone 8, its newest smartphone reboot and the successor to Windows Phone 7.5. In all this time, with the launch just weeks away, app developers have yet to get a software development kit (SDK) to build apps for the new OS. The company claims this is being done to keep the features a secret. This position is either completely clueless or an intentional misrepresentation, and it puts the future of Windows Phone 8 in jeopardy.

The current stock of Metro applications is dwarfed by iOS and Android.

 

[Chiropteran]

Absurd? The $200 rumor was what was obviously absurd. All of you reacting because you believed that nonsense in the first place need to reconsider.

Absurd that Microsoft could offer a price competitive with google and amazon? I guess that is one way to look at it.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

ClearTYpe HD, any idea what that means? It's a moniker a few manufacturers have been throwing around.

No idea, I would assume they would have mentioned if it was IPS though since they have said that Surface Pro has an IPS screen. To be honest it sounds like they are trying to use a fancy name to make the screen sound better than it actually is.

 

[pelov]

Absurd that Microsoft could offer a price competitive with google and amazon? I guess that is one way to look at it.

They didn't want to contend with their OEMs. Unlike Google or Amazon, Microsoft has to take care not to harm their OEM relations because they make a lot of money for them. Pricing it at a loss, essentially what Amazon did, would mean OEMs wouldn't bother with the RT tablets and perhaps even bypass Win8 altogether.

Microsoft does make the same cut Google and Apple make on their respective app stores. Unlike the other two, they can't compete with everyone they want. This puts them at a severe disadvantage when you look at how fierce the competition is in the tablet/ARM space.

They're not at the stage where they can completely replace their OEMs, but if you believe that they want to be more like Apple then that would be their suggested direction.

 

[Red Storm]

They didn't want to contend with their OEMs. Unlike Google or Amazon, Microsoft has to take care not to harm their OEM relations because they make a lot of money for them. Pricing it at a loss, essentially what Amazon did, would mean OEMs wouldn't bother with the RT tablets and perhaps even bypass Win8 altogether.

If they didn't want to contend with their OEMs they wouldn't have made the Surface to begin with IMHO.

 

[pelov]

If they didn't want to contend with their OEMs they wouldn't have made the Surface to begin with IMHO.

Well, they do, but not in direct competition with everyone else. If Microsoft really wanted to compete, they'd have priced their tablets at a loss and could have gotten away with it. The fact that they haven't, instead opting to price them close to Apple (stupid decision), means they wanted to give the OEMs some flexibility with respect to BoM and profit margins.

The $85 price tag for win8 RT + office bundle is stupid, though. That's what's ultimately going to really hamper sales for the OEMs. When operating at such low margins and competing with the likes of the Nexus and Fire, and now the iPad mini, that $85 is likely to price them all out of contention; Microsoft included.

 

[zerocool84]

I feel the same as others, too expensive seeing as they wanted to jump in late to the party. Even $50 less than an iPad would have been much better but we were all expecting $399.

 

[s44]

Absurd that Microsoft could offer a price competitive with google and amazon? I guess that is one way to look at it.

Google and Amazon aren't offering 10" screens at the $200 point. And given the RT license cost to OEMs, they would have had a major revolt if Microsoft went to the no-profit level.

And yeah, $400 (same as the TF300) was the reasonable guess.

 

[Vdubchaos]

Microsoft trying to be like Apple.

What a fail. MS doesn't have sheep following and never will.

I still think Tablet hype is wearing off and will die soon....way to jump on the band wagon MS, it's too late.

 

[Ravynmagi]

This is actually $100 cheaper than I was expecting. My guess had been they'd start at $600 for the RT version and $800 for the Pro version.

It's a nice piece of hardware for $500. I'm positive the screen is IPS. They probably don't mention it because it is something most quality tablets have anyway. The resolution is not great, but I suspect this might be intentional. While the RT tablet won't run x86 apps, the Pro version will and there could be concern with how functional desktop apps will be on a 11 inch screen with 1920x1200 or some other higher resolution.

But the lack of apps makes this really hard to justify the price.

 

[Ravynmagi]

I still think Tablet hype is wearing off and will die soon....way to jump on the band wagon MS, it's too late.

That's far from the truth. Tablets are still doing very well and no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

 

[Skel]

I think the price is too high, but I also am not sure why some people were expecting it to be around the same price point as the 7 inch tablets that are sold at a loss.

 

[lkailburn]

I'm waiting for the Pro. I want it to be my business laptop replacement so badly!!

-Luke

Edit: specs on the RT are pretty good. USB 2.0, 2 720P HD cameras, 2GB system memory, and it comes with Office home and student 2013 included.

 

[amdhunter]

Damn, I wanted an RT for the heck of just having one, but at this price, it's not going to happen.

Totally disappointed in the pricing, especially since it's a non-x86 device. If the Microsoft Store on Windows 8 is any indication of available apps, this thing is going to bomb big time.