Surface PRO pricing revealed !

The Surface Pro is still only available in the US and Canada, right? I don't think 400k (if that's actual sales) is a bad start at all, but it will require at least one technology refresh before Windows 8 tablets can become really popular. My expectation is that Win8 tablets will gain a lot of momentum over the next two years, taking over a large part of the Ultrabook segment.

I'm not surprised about Windows RT faring poorly, though. It just doesn't add anything significant over Android or iOS at the moment while being less mature.

 

Maybe the market of people who dance with their keyboard isn't as large as they expected?

 

RT shouldn't exist in the first place, either the tablet or the OS itself. It's one of the most stupid decisions from Microsoft that I've seen in ages.

Using ARM for Microsoft's smartphones at least had the excuse of Intel not being up to par with a x86 offer. For tablets it's just ridiculous to further fragment their OSes and make a mess out of people's expectations about a Windows tablet.


They should've done a Surface with an Atom and a Surface Pro with the Ivybridge, both using Windows 8.

 

I looked at Surface Pro. It's neat but it is heavy and it runs warm even idle. Sweaty hands with that thing.

I am somewhat interested in the Atom tablets but I think I will wait until the new Atom architecture. I am entertained by how Atom Z2670 and its SGX 545 are utterly blown away by AMD C50 in 3dmark2001. A Geforce 3 is faster too I believe.
http://www.golem.de/news/samsung-at...das-beste-aus-beiden-welten-1210-95423-7.html

But I think these x86 tablets could be cool for turn based strategy games.

 

...But we established absolutely ages ago that windows is inherently not a touchable operating system. Without RT actually being realized, I seriously doubt win8 would have taken the form it has today. ...Which would actually have been an improvement for regular windows users, but that's a different thread for a different time.

 

Maybe they wanted RT to help with Windows Phone apps, to have binary compatible software which could be used on both Surface RT and WP devices?

As for margins, they were reportedly even higher than Apple's. However, they could reduce margins on the hardware and presumably still get the 50% margins they get on software? Or is that margin only from Office, not the OS licenses?

They'd be able to produce more competitive (lighter form factors, better battery life) as Intel improves their offerings but the competition isn't going to stand still either.

Clicking keyboard covers apparently are not the hook to get people to buy a Surface over other tablets.

But Surface Pro sales seem to indicate that running legacy apps. on a heavier-than-the-competition tablet isn't the way forward either.

 

I don't think RT was a mistake as much as tegra 3 and 768p rez.

 

You mean you want some other ARM chip? Isn't it a bit like splitting hairs since the performance is almost trivially different between the options? Atom is faster than all of them AFAIK which says something lol.

 

The ARM Cortex A15 CPU is faster than any current commercial Atom CPU, and should work quite well in a tablet form factor.

Neither Windows RT tablets nor Windows 8 tablets have been a huge sales success so far (although Microsoft has sold more than 1 million Surface RT tablets in just a few months, which is certainly not bad considering it is their first effort with limited distribution in the beginning too). The few Windows RT tablets that are out on the market are not using the most cutting-edge ARM-based SoC hardware.

The idea of creating a Windows operating system that runs on ARM processors makes perfect sense, as ARM is by far the most prevalent CPU processor used in mobile handheld devices today. The implementation of this idea could have been better by Microsoft. What Microsoft should have done is to create a heavily streamlined and very low cost operating system aimed at ARM-based smartphones and tablets. Instead, they created an operating system that has some of the same software bloat that is found in regular Windows. They also bundled Microsoft Office Home & Student Edition with Windows on ARM (but not with Windows 8), which added additional cost for commercial Windows RT tablets. What ultimately happened is a very confusing scenario where Windows RT tablets are available for ~ $499 USD at the same time that Windows 8 [Clovertrail] tablets are available for $499 USD (or even less).

 

Ipad 2 is the same as ipad 4?.

I'm not sure what the best option for MS may have been, but the transformer prime launched a year ahead of the surface RT with tegra3. It seems a bit cheap to launch your new platform with internals that have been floating around for a while.

 

Sure but the only direct comparison I've seen between the two (the Exynos) has the A15 based CPU consuming a LOT more power for a relatively modest performance increase. Perhaps there's a better implementation of A15 that consumes significantly less power than the Exynos. As is, had they used the A15 based Exynos, battery life would have been quite a bit lower or the tablet would have had to be thicker and heavier to accommodate a larger battery.

Regards,
SB

 

You've seen a comparison sponsored by Intel and using the dual A15 Exynos not the newer one with big.LITTLE. I don't claim this comparison is completely wrong, just that a single comparison where everything was put in place by Intel should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

How does old AMD C50 and C60 fit in against them?

 

Sure, but in this case, I don't see how Intel could have influenced it. They didn't dictate the tests to be run. And Anandtech also tested power at the wall to make sure that the power measured for the CPU and GPU were in line with overall power consumption.

I'm not convinced that big.LITTLE will actually have a significant impact on actual power useage. But we'll find out eventually.

Regards,
SB

 

Hey how about the AMD Z60 "Hondo" refresh that apparently has exactly one product win? Seems like CPU performance will be similar to Atom, but obviously it has a real GPU inside. Of course things will be more interesting when Intel and AMD move to new CPU and GPU microarchitectures.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6672/vizio-tablet-pc

I am interested in x86 tablets but the Atom has a pathetic GPU (with questionable driver support), and the Core i5 is too warm and heavy for a tablet in your hands IMO. And what's the deal with 2GB of RAM in those $500+ Atom tablets? Cheap skates eh?

 

There's a vizio and a fujitsu z60 tablet, but probably belongs in a different thread.

 

Im surprised and a bit doubtful over the 400k number, I assume thats shipped. What reasons to get a pro when you can get a decent laptop for that cash. its stuck between two worlds
its a bad laptop
and its a bad tablet

combining 2 bad implementations doesnt suddenly make it a winning idea.
what they can do?

release a proper laptop, the cheapest version has 32/64 gb and is really cheap (bugger all margins) but the 256gb version (better battery/gpu etc) has apple like margins
release a proper tablet, same idea (cheap version to get market share), expensive/good version to get profits

I predicted this would happen before (see my old posts), MS want to do an apple, theyre still stuck in 2000 mentatlity when they ruled the roost, the worlds moved on. they cant behave like apple and expect to succeed

 

400k is a small number? Not sure why it's hard to comprehend. I'm sure I can find 400k people that wouldn't buy an apple product. There's your target market.

Considering they did most of the selling themselves through their own stores, I'd guess its sell through.

 

When I travel, I don't want to take multiple devices. It's why I don't have a dedicated MP3 player anymore. Why I no longer take a dedicated portable DVD player.

So, for travelling, I no longer bother with laptops. But I still require full PC functionality while travelling.

Right now, my current travel device is sub-optimal being based on the first gen Atom. But current solutions are, in theory, going to be at a huge disadvantage compared to what is coming out in 6-9 months. Otherwise, I'd certainly consider the Surface Pro, although I'd probably go with a slate with a keyboard dock with included battery.

Just like you can't see why people would want to do this. I look at people that take a laptop + tablet when travelling as crazy and can't understand why they would do that.

Regards,
SB