Microsoft Surface tablets

[wco81]

Meaning what, you can't fall asleep or have a good night of sleep if you read on iPad in bed?

I stare at an LCD monitor all day. Then look at iPhone and iPad at home before eventually going to bed.

I haven't read books on the iPad yet but do read a lot on the web. Maybe I have to look at the e-ink to notice the difference. Though honestly, I think the advantage of a Kindle over iPad would be the form factor, much thinner and lighter.

Of course, it offers a limited surfing experience.

 

[Mize]

I know the studies he's talking about. They're large enough to be statistically relavent. Basically people who looked at illuminated displays (TVs, computers, tables, etc.) took longer to fall asleep than those who read books, kindles, etc. and it didn't matter if what they were doing on the illuminated display was reading.

 

[Xmas]

LMFAO. I totally disagree. Backlit displays can be very hard on my eyes. It may have to do with my vision (I have extremely good night vision to the point that I can navigate a harbor on a moonless night better by starlight than by flashlight). I have all my monitors on computers at minium brightness. I wear dialed-in computer glasses when on the computer and bifocals when reading.

I'm not saying backlit displays can't be hard on the eyes. I'm saying many people blame them for the wrong reasons. The reason why they're hard on the eyes isn't simply that they have a backlight.

Quite often, however, the backlight and/or reading background are set too bright for the ambient lighting conditions (or conversely, people forget the ambient light). Of course it doesn't help that few monitors have ambient light sensors, that frequently the text background colour is pure white, or that even at minimum brightness many monitors are far too bright (or the ambient light too dark). The minimum backlight brightness of one of my monitors is still so high that I use graphics driver presets to scale down the brightness to 40%, and even that is too much sometimes.
Hold a piece of paper next to some text on your monitor. Does the monitor appear significantly brighter than the paper?

Then there's the screen door effect and colour fringeing due to text antialiasing, both solved by much higher resolutions. There are reflections and glare, unsuitable fonts and text sizes, different viewing distances, and, rarely, flickering from the backlight unit.

But a very high dpi, matte LCD with properly adjusted backlight levels and sufficient ambient light would be just as readable as paper.

 

[metafor]

It's basically the same effect of shining UV light on plants. The day-to-day bio cycles of a lot of organisms are triggered by the amount of illuminated light that's available. This is also why many people who don't see sunlight a lot have messed up sleep patterns; their body thinks it's always night.

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Don't knock it unless you've used it.

I wouldn't, but I have used very similar products - enough to make an educated guess on that one (i.e. the ones I've used aren't even in the right order of magnitude of precision). I'm also fairly aware of the limitations in precision of these multitouch screens due to doing some software experiments with them.

 

[RudeCurve]

If you say 'for me' fine, but in general, unless you are a professional artists married to a pen or a business user who cannot part with handwriting, I think this comment is highly exaggerated.

+1

Speaking as someone who owns a Wacom Bamboo Create drawing tablet with formal art training (drawing, sketching, painting) as well as technical drawing (drafting, blue prints, CAD/CAM)...I agree with that statement.

 

[dlm]

I'm not saying backlit displays can't be hard on the eyes. I'm saying many people blame them for the wrong reasons. The reason why they're hard on the eyes isn't simply that they have a backlight.

Quite often, however, the backlight and/or reading background are set too bright for the ambient lighting conditions (or conversely, people forget the ambient light). Of course it doesn't help that few monitors have ambient light sensors, that frequently the text background colour is pure white, or that even at minimum brightness many monitors are far too bright (or the ambient light too dark). The minimum backlight brightness of one of my monitors is still so high that I use graphics driver presets to scale down the brightness to 40%, and even that is too much sometimes.
Hold a piece of paper next to some text on your monitor. Does the monitor appear significantly brighter than the paper?

Then there's the screen door effect and colour fringeing due to text antialiasing, both solved by much higher resolutions. There are reflections and glare, unsuitable fonts and text sizes, different viewing distances, and, rarely, flickering from the backlight unit.

But a very high dpi, matte LCD with properly adjusted backlight levels and sufficient ambient light would be just as readable as paper.

A lot of display eye strain is indeed exacerbated by poor resolution. However, it is also true that direct light and reflected light are not the same.

You can do things to make active displays stress your eyes less, but all of those things are radically more expensive than eink and still don't solve the issue of the chemical effects on the body of backlighting.


That's why Kindles are great. They cost a fraction of what an iPad does for a better reading experience. If what you care about is your ability to read on the display (and not to do other things), there's nothing that touches it in terms of price/performance.

 

[silent_guy]

Meaning what, you can't fall asleep or have a good night of sleep if you read on iPad in bed?

Why is it that relative statements always get converted into binary on/off axioms?

 

[wco81]

No I was asking what he meant.

What about people far in the northern hemisphere. A lot of daylight in the summer. Or people taking siestas in the middle of the day?

Anyways some people may want to read or watch videos in bed without keeping their partners awake. Guess you can get those clip-on lights for the Kindle but out of luck with videos.

 

[silent_guy]

What about people far in the northern hemisphere. A lot of daylight in the summer. Or people taking siestas in the middle of the day?

What about them?

Anyways some people may want to read or watch videos in bed without keeping their partners awake. Guess you can get those clip-on lights for the Kindle but out of luck with videos.

Nobody is judging anyone who uses LCD instead of eInk. I use LCD pretty much exclusively in the evening. All we're pointing out is that one has a bigger impact on sleeping patterns than the other. The extent of that will depend from person to person. And on whether or not they live in Lapland, I guess.

 

[french toast]

It's basically the same effect of shining UV light on plants. The day-to-day bio cycles of a lot of organisms are triggered by the amount of illuminated light that's available. This is also why many people who don't see sunlight a lot have messed up sleep patterns; their body thinks it's always night.

Circadium rhythm..or internal body clock is governed by natural light, indeed people on night shifts can reset their circadium rhythm by using a light box for a few hours in the morning..this also combats things like depression and and many other things.

It is no coincidence in my mind that since more and more people work night's in the last 50 year's, along with the introduction of tv's and computers where people now spends hours looking at a false luminous light that the rates of all sorts of illnesses have gone through the roof...indeed there are studies that link such things...anyway that is another discussion entirely.

eLink's are better for your eyes,mind what ever.

 

[Arwin]

What about them?

Nobody is judging anyone who uses LCD instead of eInk. I use LCD pretty much exclusively in the evening. All we're pointing out is that one has a bigger impact on sleeping patterns than the other. The extent of that will depend from person to person. And on whether or not they live in Lapland, I guess.

Another factor is what you do with it. I read that people playing games before going to sleep have relatively little trouble falling asleep, but people who use it for social stuff like facebook tend to have more issues with sleeping.

 

[Laurent06]

Last rumours say $599 for the ARM version and $999 for the Intel one (Source). Looks too expensive to me.

 

[wco81]

How much for the keyboards though. Logitech has a keyboard cover for iPad which is $99 SRP. Eventually third-party accessories get steeply discounted. But first-party accessories?

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

Last rumours say $599 for the ARM version and $999 for the Intel one (Source). Looks too expensive to me.

Pricing the ARM version more expensive than the iPad would be suicidal IMHO. It has nothing particularly amazing to set it apart except for a long road to catch up in apps. Don't get me wrong, it has a few nice features, but they have a lot of catching up to do in that space and starting with a higher price is not the way to do that.

The $1000 price point sounds like what I'd expect for the Intel one though; perhaps even slightly cheaper. For reference, the Samsung Slate is slightly more expensive than that with less features/polish overall. I don't think that's an unreasonable price for what you're getting (compared to ultrabooks in a similar price range).

Hopefully they don't decide to be stupid and charge irrational prices for the SKUs with different amounts of memory like Apple.

 

[eastmen]

I bet the ARM verison they are talking about is the 64 gig verison. It would make sense 32gig at $500 and 64 gig at $600. You'd be under cutting the current ipad prices.


As for the intel verison I bet the 64 gig with the slowest verison of the cpu and least amount of ram will be $800 but the one most will buy is $1k

 

[Andrew Lauritzen]

As for the intel verison I bet the 64 gig with the slowest verison of the cpu and least amount of ram will be $800 but the one most will buy is $1k

I can imagine different size SSD/flash SKUs for the Intel part, but do you really think they're going to have different chip/RAM configurations? I highly doubt that unless I've missed them announcing anything to that end...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Pricing the ARM version more expensive than the iPad would be suicidal IMHO. It has nothing particularly amazing to set it apart except for a long road to catch up in apps. Don't get me wrong, it has a few nice features, but they have a lot of catching up to do in that space and starting with a higher price is not the way to do that.

The $1000 price point sounds like what I'd expect for the Intel one though; perhaps even slightly cheaper. For reference, the Samsung Slate is slightly more expensive than that with less features/polish overall. I don't think that's an unreasonable price for what you're getting (compared to ultrabooks in a similar price range).

Hopefully they don't decide to be stupid and charge irrational prices for the SKUs with different amounts of memory like Apple.

But how difficult would it be for existing Windows shareware or demoware companies to port their offerings to Metro, including any changes to UI to accomodate touch useage? I think that's going to be key as to whether there will be a large or small amount of apps available when Windows RT (and hence the Arm slates) launch.

I can imagine that many of those companies are excited by the chance to be exposed to a potentially large customer base without (until someone jailbreaks it) the fear of rampant piracy.

Likewise it's a prime opportunity for some of the current freeware vendors to perhaps release their products as 99 cent downloads. Think XBMC, for example.

I wouldn't be surprised if Valve was trying to think of a way to shoehorn Steam into Metro, but I'm not sure if MS is that tolerant of what basically amounts to another app store on RT. Either way, I'm sure many of the indie developers must be looking at Windows RT with great interest.

All of the above have certainly had time to work on porting apps and games to Metro over the past year or so. It could be that there won't be many apps, but there's also a good chance that there could be a lot of apps.

I agree about pricing it higher than iPad, however. Even though it is going to be more expensive to manufacture (that Wacom digitizer and pen) as well more feature rich (again that Wacom digitizer and pen), they would be smart to price it either the same or 50 USD lower at least for the first gen slates based on RT.

Regards,
SB

 

[Squilliam]

I agree about pricing it higher than iPad, however. Even though it is going to be more expensive to manufacture (that Wacom digitizer and pen) as well more feature rich (again that Wacom digitizer and pen), they would be smart to price it either the same or 50 USD lower at least for the first gen slates based on RT.

Regards,
SB

What about releasing a SKU without the digitizer and pen at a lower cost? Say make that the $399-$499 basic iPad competitor and release the next step up slightly higher? That way they can do the same Core/Pro Xbox thing where lessor informed people come in for the Core and leave with the Pro.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

What about releasing a SKU without the digitizer and pen at a lower cost? Say make that the $399-$499 basic iPad competitor and release the next step up slightly higher? That way they can do the same Core/Pro Xbox thing where lessor informed people come in for the Core and leave with the Pro.

I would imagine that would be something one of the various Windows OEMs will end up doing. I can't stand it, but there's probably people out there that just want a media consumption device that won't mind it.

Microsoft is going the relatively premium route with the Surface in terms of build quality and features. Basically, they want to make sure there is a quality Windows slate available at launch rather than relying solely on an OEM to release a high quality slate at launch.

I'm sure there will be plenty of cheap (quality, price, features) Windows RT devices available from OEMs. Look for Asus, Samsung, etc. to retrofit their Android slate designs for Windows RT, for example.

Regards,
SB