Surface PRO pricing revealed !

I'm not too surprised, Atom has been running well even on smartphones (Medfield).
This one, the Clover Trail, has been said to only support Windows

So if you want to tinker and try other stuff (let's say the KDE tablet interface) then you'll lose that battery life as well as the accelerated graphics.
But it's the worst thing I can say about it and 95% of the users aren't interested in wiping the OS.

 

This thing has gotten my attention. Early previews are looking promising. If Microsoft have somehow produced something that makes virtually no noise I'll be seriously impressed.

 

Wot, like my mac mini?

 

You turned your mac mini into a tablet? Woah, I want pictures .

 

not quite but both are roughly the same mass 0.90 kg vs 1.22 kg
and similar performance

my monitor makes more noise than the mini, if that doesnt please you
you might wanna check out some ultrabooks etc, near silent devices are hardly new

 

That's not roughly the same, that's 36% more without even including the weight of a screen or battery, nor is the mac mini cramming all this inside a 13 mm chassis.

I don't know why you're making that comparison.

 

I bought a Samsung NP900X3B almost the weekend it came out. I'd been following the ultrabook trend and this one seemed to be the ideal combo of thinness and performance with a great screen. It cost a bomb, too.

I ended up taking it back over noise issues however (you can read the whole sorry story here; my username is the same). I think I'm a real noise-snob however, so if this is as quiet as the previews are making out I'll be impressed.

 

So the fans on the Ultrabooks run often?

And on these convertible or hybrid tablets too?

 

I had a guy around a couple of weeks ago, he couldnt believe my PC was silent, he didnt think such a thing was possible, I dont know what mcsven's knowledge is but I was pointing out that its been possible for a few years to get a decent machine thats near silent. No way Im going back to a desktop that makes sound

 

It's been possible for years before the mac mini came out, too, but whether you compare to those or a mac mini, it's irrelevant because you have gobs of room in them to make a good cooling solution.

Quieting a full x86 processor in a tablet is another matter. It's much harder than doing so in an ultrathin like the MacBook Air (which Apple advertises as improved for 2012, so it's not a solved problem yet) because a tablet has less surface area, smaller mass budget for a heatsink, less volume for airflow, and a heat-producing display on one side.

These first impressions suggest that MS did an excellent job here.

 

Oh I have no special knowledge, and I recognise that quiet PCs have been out for ages. The Samsung ultrabook I mentioned was silent until the fans started, and even then the noise wasn't outrageous - it was just obvious to me that there was a fan imbalance or something similar and I knew it would continue to grate on me forever. So it had to go.

That said: there's a difference between an ultrabook and this thing, which has all of the components inside a 13.5mm shell (as Mintmaster said) and includes a touch screen and fully-fledged i5. It looks good...

 

I'm waiting for a decent W8 Pro tablet that has a good keyboard dock with ethernet, I5 and under $1k. Only new tablets I've seen available so far is the Samsung ATIV and the W700, neither which are suitable.

 

Perhaps you had a defective model? Surely the shop you got it from will let you exchange it.
Im gonna get a laptop in the next month, for travelling in asia (so a fair chance its gonna get nicked at some stage) I might ask later in the hardware suggestion forum for ppl's ideas

 

Why an i5, why not Android etc.
Ethernet has many useful charateristics (faster including establishing the connection, few congestion, goes through walls and floors without degrading etc.) but more important than that may be you can access more networks, or even wire it directly to a lone computer.
If you need to do some technical and IT work ethernet on a very portable device is precisely what you need (among other things you might be the one setting up that wireless n router )

Especially, in a corporate environment and even if you don't do IT jobs (but suffer the IT instead), the wired network might be the "real" one. With access to the NT domain, customer data etc.
Wireless can be used as a segregated, "internet-only" network open to everyone and any device but not able to reach the sensitive things.

 

Well I need an Ethernet port for work, not just for getting onto the wireless/internet. Configuring routers, switches, copiers etc. It's not really critical as I could just get a USB-Ethernet adapter but there will definitely be times where I won't have wireless, only wired connectivity.

Ideally I'd love it just built-in to the tablet but given the thickness required, probably not going to happen.

 

Oh I exchanged it. Replacement model had the same problem. Then I went back to the shop and listened carefully to the model that was on the shop floor - same thing. That's when I got a refund. There's been at least one revision on the model since then however, so it may no longer be an issue.

 

The only time I miss Ethernet a little bit, is when traveling for business: low end motels have wifi without fail these days, but the more expensive the hotel, the more likely it doesn't. In this case, my standard solution is to walk to the nearby electronics shop, buy a wifi router, and expense it. It's usually cheaper than a single breakfast in said expensive hotel. (A bit sad, if you think about much brain power went into the design of this thing!) I have heard of other people doing the same thing. I have a bunch of these routers laying around in my office now, because I always forget the bring one along for the trip.