Microsoft Surface tablets

Actually not only resolution is poor, I would say that the overall screen quality is low.

 

It's also worth noting that Home and Student in general doesn't include Outlook and RT doesn't include most e-mail related features or VBA. For really serious Enterprise use, that's probably not ideal.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/home-and-student/office-home-student-rt-preview-FX103210361.aspx

This doesn't say that it doesn't do IRM. Hopefully that means it does. One of the big disadvantages of the Office Web Apps for enterprise use is lack of full IRM support, and this could help fill that gap (maybe?).

 

I have to disagree. Is the Surface supposed to compete with cheap laptops or iPad's?

A $499 IPad has had a high density display for almost 8 months now. A $299 Kindle HD has a higher density screen as well. IMO, at this point in time and especially at that price, a high res display is expected.

I remember a quote from one of the CEO's/higher ups of General Motors years ago when they were failing and trying to recover. Paraphrasing "We have to sell cars that people want to buy instead just the cars we have"

That seems to be MS to me lately. This is what we have and this is what we want to sell, completely oblivious to what the competition is doing and what the consumers want.

I really hope this isn't an indicator of how Durango will turnout.

 

I think you're making very broad statements about "what the consumers want" that I have a hard time believing you have any actual data aside from your own preferences to support.

You are also assuming that MS did no market research on this subject, which is an assertion that I find extremely unlikely.

A higher res display may be expected by you. You'll have to pardon me for not considering B3D posters to be generally indicative of the overall consumer base.

I'm also a bit skeptical of someone talking about how poor a display is that they have never seen. Maybe the display won't end up being super great. But your argument seems to be increasingly painting Surface as a failure because the display resolution isn't the number you like (if this was not what you were intending to convey, apologies. I'm simply speaking from perceived tone, which in text is of course notoriously dicey). That seems rather premature to me.

 

I agree. In all likelyhood most consumers won't care about the resolution.

I worked in a computer shop for a while and most customers couldn't care less about the resolution of the screen. Some even said they'd rather have a 13xx screen because on the 1080p ones everything looks so small! The people buying 1080p laptops usually said they were going to use photo/video software or play games.

Given that most tablets will be used for internet, media, games (though you don't need 1080p games on a 10'' screen), and maybe some office tasks a 13xx screen will be more than sufficient for most users.

I had to live with a 11.6'' 13xx screen for the past 5 months and while the screen is a bit small to work with for hours at a time, the resolution doesn't bother me at all. You can even do some multiwindow word withouth too much hastle.

Anybody who's going to use software that really needs/benefits from a high resolution screen will probably either switch to a desktop or hook up the tablet to a external screen (windows tablets can handle higher resolutions on external monitors?). Whatever the case, I doubt they are going to screw around on a 10'' screen. Lets be honest, you might have enough space to work if it had a 1080p screen but everything would be so damn small it wouldnt be comfortable to work with.

 

They did a redit the other day. Here is some info on the screen

I'll be quite happy if they do all this to the pro's 1080p screen also. Should make for some nice veiwing

 

It probably won't be as good as the RT version simply because the Pro will have an active digitizer for the pen. Hopefully there won't be a huge air gap like on the Samsung Slate 7.

 

one nice thing is battery charging. 2 hours to get a full charge 0-100% . Thats not bad , it takes a new ipad 6-7 hours for a full charge 0-100% (from what i can find on the web) The device lasts 8 hours in mixed useage so normaly during that 8 hours i should be close to an outlet for some of it or a portable battery to steal juice from.

I hope the pro charges as quickly

 

I think you've guessed the nail on the head!

 

yea i feel you , even the new ipad's 264ppi is to little for me now that i've seen htc butterfly J with its 440ppi display . Who can live with such sub par screens ? I certianly can't !

 

yep, same here, I got a ipad3 about 3 months ago. I could of saved some cash and got an ipad2 (little bit lighter as well which is good) but putting both side by side, there was no comparrision.
heres my game on the ipad2 vs ipad 3
OK the ground looks practically the same in both (I need to use higher res texture) but with everything else theres no comparison, Now WTF are they gonna start making desktop montors > 200DPI

 

Zed, with all due respect, you have completely missed the point of the last few posts here.

Of course a higher resolution image viewed on the same display is going to have more detail than a lower resolution image. Nobody argued otherwise.

What people are saying is that there is more to the perceived quality of an image than the raw resolution because not all displays are the same. Both the iPad2 and iPad3 have significantly more reflective glass than Surface. The result is that the amount of detail that actually makes it to a viewer's eye is diminished by the reflected light.

I would assume that the darker the room, the less material this becomes. So it is quite likely that an iPad 3 display is going to look sharper than a Surface display in darkness. But a Surface display may very well by more legible during the day.


The second point under discussion is the degree to which the maximum level of visible detail is actually important to the average consumer. I think people on this forum are likely to have a tendency to want higher resolutions and better images. However, remember that there are still a lot of SDTV's out there and I seem to recall the Wii doing pretty well versus the 360 and PS3 for quite a while.



I think it's quite likely that there will be some number of people who would prefer the iPad's higher resolution to the Surface's less reflective screen. I just don't think that it's enough to say that it's an obvious choice which way a manufacturer "should" go.


P.S. The tiling in that scene looks really nice.

 

And you think that was because people preferred lower specs or because Wii and SDTV were cheaper than their counterparts?

We will see this christmas how people decide. If they will pick an Surface RT over the iPad 3 or even the cheaper iPad Mini with roughly the same resolution

 

I keep asking myself who in this day and age would want a tablet based on Tegra 3 (30T)?

Why didn't they go for Snapdragon, like Windows 8 Phone? It perplexes me.

 

Its most likely too new and they wouldn't be able to order enough.

 

This is exactly my point. One individual number does not exist in a vacuum. I would argue that the Wii's popularity was based on the relative novelty and accessibility of the motion controls. Coupled with its price, that drove huge popularity in spite of having lower graphical fidelity. Ultimately, graphical fidelity was -not- the primary driver in many people's actual purchasing decision.

Surface and iPad are not "the same except for resolution." The glass covering those pixels isn't the same. Surface at the same storage capacities is cheaper than iPad. They run different operating systems.

The idea that your average consumer is going to make their entire purchasing decision on a single number is the notion that I object to. If the -only- difference between two devices is one particular metric, then yes, that metric becomes very important. But when there are many related competing factors, the importance of one number declines.

The question isn't, "would people like to have the highest possible resolution?" It's, "If the resolution is lower, but there are other improvements to visual quality or other things that make a device attractive, is resolution alone going to be a massive dealbreaker?" I think that history tells us that it isn't.

Whether or not it ends up being significant -in this particular instance- remains to be seen. I am simply speaking out against the notion that a difference in resolution alone relative to the iPad is automatically this catastrophically bad business decision by MS, which several people in this thread have implied to varying degrees.

 

No the primary driver was its price. Why else do you think it had crappy software attach rates (excluding the games bundled with the system)? Had Nintendo set it at the same price as Xbox/360 then people would have started asking themselves why they should pay the same for less hardware?

Agreed. Even here Microsoft is at an disadvantage since they lack Apples brandname and drawing power. They are not in a position where people wait in line for their products, they actually need to convince the consumer to buy it over an iPad


[/QUOTE]The question isn't, "would people like to have the highest possible resolution?" It's, "If the resolution is lower, but there are other improvements to visual quality or other things that make a device attractive, is resolution alone going to be a massive dealbreaker?" I think that history tells us that it isn't.[/QUOTE]

You are speaking on its visual quality without even having seen one in person let alone been able to compare it to an iPad, you do realize how that sounds right? And if anything history goes against your logic. Remember Zune? Amazing piece of hardware, how did that end up for Microsoft when they tried to go toe to toe in prices with iPods?

Well that depends on your viewpoint. Some people believe Microsoft has the same drawing power as Apple and every tablet owner secretly wishes they had Office. Well we will find out this christmas if that is true or not.

 

It had crappy attach rates because people were buying it -for- the game that came bundled with the system. Even after the first couple of price drops, Wii still outsold 360 and PS3 for a long time. Price was -a- consideration, and in fact a pretty significant one, but saying it was -the primary driver- doesn't really go far to explaining the level of cultural impact that the Wii had at the time.

And yet, despite that, PC's still radically outsell Macs. They have done a bunch of things with the surface to convince consumers to buy them. Suicidally low pricing or an ultra-high resolution display are simply not among them. Whether or not those resonate with conusmers as a whole remains to be seen.

I have seen both iPads and screens that use similar technology to the Surface's screen, and we have hard numbers on the properties of the two screens. Many people have also seen Surface's screen and have spoken positively of its clarity.

So I'd say my argument sounds a lot better than, "But the resolution is lower so it must suck."

I don't think it would be a fair statement to say that Zune is to iPod as Surface is to iPad. There is significantly more distinction in the latter case. Microsoft is also clearly aiming for much better integration in the Surface/Desktop/Phone ecosystem than Zune ever saw.

Beyond that, Zune was priced in lockstep with iPod even at similar storage sizes (whereas Surface is priced cheaper). Zune was also more or less sent out to die. Advertising efforts were pretty lackluster.

This is another false dichotomy. There is a huge market of consumers that own no tablet whatsoever. These people have many reasons. The question is whether their reasons for not buying tablets on the market today are concerns that Surface addresses or not.

You also seem to be implying that I've made some grand statement that Surface is going to immediately eat away all of iPad's market share. My point was significantly simpler than that. The single bullet point of resolution is simply not as important as you (and some others in this thread) are making it out to be.

 

It's not like the difference in capabilities is hugely significant, is it?

 

In terms of seeing the displays, there was a somewhat amusing exchange in the comments of an ArsTechnica article.
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012...eal-hardware-company/?comments=1#comments-bar

anthrobug wrote:
I also found the comment in the article about a lower resolution, less reflective, higher contrast display could be better than a higher resolution, higher reflective, lower contrast display completely absurd. Sounds like they're making excuses to me; There is no higher resolution, lower contrast display - There's only the iPad(3)'s retina display which wipes the floor with surfaces' LCD for the same price.

Editor's response:
I've seen both LCDs side by side. You haven't. You're wrong.


I will personally hand out grains of salt for all to consume with that one. But it's an amusing anecdote regardless.