Microsoft Announces Pricing Details on Surface With Windows 8 Pro | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Announces Pricing Details on Surface With Windows 8 Pro

wired.com

63 pointsrbanffy64 comments

Along with half the battery life of even Surface RT (so about 4 hours) for twice the price. This thing will be useless as a tablet. Might as well get a proper and cheaper laptop (or more storage for the same price).

http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-surface-pro-to-have-half-the-...

It has about the same battery life as an 11" MacBook Air. If you add a keyboard, then it is about the same price as an 11" MacBook Air but the MacBook Air only has 1366x768 resolution vs. 1920x1080 for the Surface Pro.

Unfortunately very few people will be comparing it against a MBA and other 'ultra'books as MS seems intent on positioning it as a tablet that you can do work on. And compared to other tablets in the market, it seems a bit absurd. They're going to have to do an amazing marketing job to separate the two products into their proper categories, but considering they look the same, and sport the same features I imagine they're not going to succeed.

If you read the comments under the linked article, plenty of people are comparing it to the MBA.

But most importantly, the Surface Pro appears to be limited to 4GB of memory.

That's really not enough if you're a desktop / mobile software developer that wants to use this as a laptop and tablet. 8GB is really the minimum.

You're better off with either a MacBook Air or an equivalent Windows laptop where you can actually get more memory.

Oh sure it is. I use a Dell laptop with 4GB of ram running visual studios (sometimes two instances), full blown SQL Server, SQL Server management studio (graphical database client), Chrome with a bajillion tabs and a handful of corporate-required background applications. I still don't get any noticable lag due to paging.

I strongly disagree. As someone that has done quite a bit of development work on a laptop with only 4GB of memory, I can tell you right now that life was significantly better after I upgraded to 8GB.

If the built-in disk has low enough latency, your memory needs go way down as giant predictive disk caches become unnecessary and swapping is less of a performance killer.

Moving to SSD let me put a VM on my 8GB laptop that stole half the RAM without destroying my ability to run a couple of visual studios, office and a pile of chrome tabs. Under 4GB and spinning disk that was unworkable.

RAM needs might be stagnating for a few years as high-performance flash becomes commonplace and applications don't have to be as aggressive about keeping everything in memory.

You're suggesting that dramatically shortening the lifetime of my SSD through needless writes is better than simply adding more memory?

And what if my working set is incapable of fitting into that measly 4G of memory (which likely will only be 3GB at most once the OS and Visual Studio is loaded) even with swapping? I can tell you right now that's easy to do with Visual Studio with even "relatively" small applications once you start loading debug symbols.

That's fine if the projects you are loading in Visual Studio are reasonably sized. If you load a single monolithic legacy solution, the Intellisense database is huge, and you run into cases where you have to close every single thing other than Visual Studio just to have enough memory to load all the debugging symbols when debugging the application. Life got so much better when we switched to 64 bit Windows 7.

It's nearly impossible to use in your lap, so it's not a LAPtop, and as a tablet it's just weird. Uncomfortable to type on when on a flat surface, and in portrait mode it's a joke.

It's not a tablet. It's an ultrabook in a tablet form factor with a multi-touch aware UI. Is that something that people want? We'll see.

I want one. But, on the same front, I want Win8 Metro apps to do everything I want...which is why I am holding out getting one.

It boggles the mind why they went with Ivy Bridge instead of Clover Trail for the processor. The Surface Pro would be so much more compelling with 8 hours of battery life instead of 4.

My Lenovo Yoga 13 is lucky to get more than 5 and a half hours. And that's a "traditional" ultrabook without even a high resolution display!

So 5 hours, while not spectacular, is probably acceptable for the genre.. plenty of other ultrabooks that do about 5 hours. Even Macs, I hear.

"High resolution display" is a red-herring. iPad gets 10+ hours with a much higher resolution display than even the one in the Surface Pro.

The problem here is the CPU: it's an Ultrabook CPU in a tablet form factor.

Carrying around and using a power adapter for a tablet at a cafe would be incredibly unfortunate. The iPad power adapter has such a small cord, you can tell you aren't meant to plug it in while using it. So that is the main difference between an ultrabook and a tablet, I guess.

128GB? If there was a 256GB, I think this would be a no-brainer.

I was really hoping that Surface Pro was going to be my next lightweight laptop, switching from an Lenovo X201. The later Lenovos seem to get stuff screwed up, like horrible resolutions or wonky physical layouts. I want 12", 1080p (or 1920x1200), full keyboard (like ThinkPad), and a middle mouse button (like ThinkPad, although if everything else is perfect I can compromise. A newer i7 and 8GB of RAM should do it, I'll bring my own SSD. Touchscreen is awesome, but I can live without it if need be.

I was even thinking of getting a MacBook (!) but I hate the look and keyboard (plus Windows support isn't always great).

All the slim "ultrabooks" seem to be poor in some critical aspect. Why? Is there no good replacement for the Lenovo X201? I literally want to give some company $2K, and no one can step up and take it.

You're so clearly not the customer for this then :). You want a laptop with touchscreen optional.

But your comment is illustrative: who really is the customer? When I want to do serious work I want a 13"+ screen and full keyboard. When I want to just relax an iPad is great.

Check out the lenovo X1 carbon touch. Alas, screen resolution still sucks on it.

The problem with the Surface is that it's a cross between a laptop and a tablet that does require you to make compromises. My friend has one for work and it's hard to type on when it's on a flat surface, and impossible to use with the Touch/Type Cover when it's in your lap. It's not a laptop and it's not a tablet. It's just confusing.

I have no problem typing on mine on a flat surface. I can even type on it in my lap, though it is fiddly. Much easier with the firmer Type Cover. I also have an iPad keyboard cover and it's .. frustrating to use, since you can't fold it behind the device, so you are 100% committed to always being at a desk with that. And when you want to use it as a tablet, you have these two pieces to deal with.. and remember to find..

You should try Touchfire on your iPad. It lets you easily type on your iPad when its in your lap...

Yeah, I guess I should keep in mind that it depends on the person. I have a hard time typing on the Surface without the Touch/Type Cover.

I've already decided that I will be buying a Surface Pro as soon as I can lay hands on one.

But you're wrong about the MacBook's Windows support. If anything, Apple has better drivers for the Mac than a huge swath of PC manufacturers (I'm looking at you Dell).

The keyboard layout is weird to use with Windows and there are other niggling issues (like that damned ear bursting noise it makes when you use the keyboard to adjust the volume). With all of that it's by far the best Windows laptop I've used. No clue how well OS-X runs on it since my exposure to iTunes and Quicktime has convinced me to avoid Apple software if at all possible.

> No clue how well OS-X runs on it since my exposure to iTunes and Quicktime has convinced me to avoid Apple software if at all possible.

You might want to reconsider. I would imagine Apple spends a lot more time optimizing software for the operating system it sells rather than another it doesn't control.

I was being slightly facetious. I use OS-X for iOS development, I just prefer Windows.

It has an SDXC card socket, so if you want to plunk down a few hundred more you can add 128 or 256GB of inside-the-case storage.

Pardon my ignorance, but can I run Visual Studio 2012 on the Surface Pro 128GB model?

Can I hook it up to another (bigger) monitor and just use a wireless mouse and keyboard and work as if it were a desktop? (The tablet would just be the 'cpu' nothing more).

Thank you!

Yes. You should be able to run any software that runs on Windows 8 (not to be confused with RT). In addition, you can connect a monitor to it through the Mini DisplayPort and mouse/keyboard through the USB 3.0 port.

If you want a small, quiet desktop computer you can always just get one of those.

At these prices it's up against really high quality ultrabooks. However it seems really heavily compromised if you can't use it in your lap - for many people it just can't replace your laptop. So then it's too expensive to be an "extra" device along side your laptop but it's incapable of replacing it.

I hope to see some more innovative hybrids next year, but I can tell straight away this is not going to be a device for me.

Yeah, leaving out the keyboard seems like a poor idea, though at home most people already have a USB keyboard sitting around doing nothing, most like.

I like that it comes with a stylus (how 90's of me). I find these are one critical input mechanism that is lacking in every major tablet (save the Galaxy Note).

Pen/pencil-like devices have been popular for hundreds of years because they are an excellent mechanism for allowing free expression. Styluses allow creativity to be unhindered.

DOA. Buy an iPad and a good laptop for less money.

Which one of those has a real digitizer and comes with a pen to take meeting notes on?

While it isn't enough for me to want to use the Windows tablets, the lack of a proper pen/stylus tool for iPad really frustrates me. Having tried out writing on a Note/Note2 I'd really love to have an accurate writing tool for my iPad. I'd use it constantly.

Who cares for that? That’s the exact same niche market Microsoft served during the last decade and failed to reach any kind of mass-appeal.

Correction. It's the same "niche" Microsoft wrote _some_ software for, and had their OEMs deliver overpriced, crappy devices. Dell's tablet was around $2200, and had the specs of a $700 laptop.

And not to mention, outside of a few apps like OneNote, using Windows XP/Vista/7 in tablet mode is not a super pleasant experience.

I don’t see digitizers and styluses having any kind of mass-appeal. I cannot imagine any kind of plausible scenario for that. This is not a feature you can sell (except to a niche).

The Surface has to succeed or fail as a post-iPad tablet, not on tech specs no one cares about.

Drawing, and notetaking. Especially the latter. Having a digitizer and actual pen is far superior to capacitive devices for note-taking, since it more closely replicates actually taking notes.

If the battery doesn't last for a full day of meetings then the pen interface isn't a differentiator.

A note-taking device with under 4 hours of battery life is a joke.

Where is the four hours of battery life figure coming from? At least on windows 7, battery life is incredibly dependent on software configuration. Is four hours the default-settings movie-watching battery life or the power-conservation near-idle battery life? Note-taking should be closer to the latter.

I don't know about DOA, it does have wireless and more space than a Nomad.

Your definition of a "good" laptop is different than mine. A sub $500 laptop isn't going to be competitive with this.

A sub $500 laptop is likely to easily outperform this on battery life, which is fast becoming the primary differentiator for me. My two-year-old Dell Netbook I bought for $300 can still go for 4 hours, and that's under heavy usage. Usually it's more like 5 or 6.

If I care about battery life, its because I'm on the move. If I'm on the move, I care about weight. And sub $500 laptops tend not to be ultrabooks.

How much is a 64Gig iPad?

Maybe he knows where you can buy a good laptop for $300.

A 64gig iPad 2, which is still far superior to this, can be had for $400 or so on the used market.

The real comparison, of course, is to a 32gig iPad, since that will have about the same amount of actual free space as this crapware-monster of a hulking beast of a pseudo-tablet has.

iPad without retina is no sale, and three versions behind. Or go iPad mini.

The hardware is still very much flawed. It's a cross between a laptop and a tablet AND you have to make compromises. Maybe the software will run smoother and support Win 7/8 apps, but the hardware will still suck.

One interesting point: the tablet has the same CPU as a Macbook Air. It's basically a really tiny ultrabook and should be decently fast. It might actually be really nice with a good keyboard.

I wonder how desktop apps are going to cope with that high res display. Could become tricky to hit buttons even with the pen. However I like its combination of touch, pen and keyboard input, could be very useful for students and salarymen with lots of meetings.

I have the Samsung Windows 8 Developer Preview tablet they handed out at BUILD 2011, and I can confirm that it's going to be very tricky indeed to hit buttons on the desktop.

The Samsung tablet has a screen that's either the same size or slightly larger, and a lower 1366x768 resolution, and I have a lot of trouble using the windows desktop on it with anything other than a mouse (including the digitizer pen -- yes, it's more accurate than a fingertip, but you still have to hold it steady, and holding it steady enough to hit a 4mm target is pretty tough).

I'd drop serious dollars on one of these if it had more ram and storage.

Why do you need more on board storage? Buy a usb drive or a network-enabled external.

Anybody know if you'll be able to install OSX on it? ... :-)

Already posted and discussed here in the one hour it managed to be on the front page http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4848998

Not on the front page because of flagging from the MS haters,Apple/Google fanboys/shareholders/employees on HN, I presume :)

Discussion of the flagging here. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4849814

Yes, this is exactly what we want. Instead of discussing the surface tablet, let's discuss the discussion or lack of discussion of the surface tablet, along with speculating as to the behaviour of our fellow HN participants, conjectures about what might or might not be the algorithm behind "burying" stories, and so forth.

While I'm sure your insights into online behaviour are valuable, I'd rather read them in a post about online behaviour than in a post about a tablet.

JM2C.

I pointed folks to an article posted just a few hours before this one with more than 100 comments. Is that not enough HN discussion for you? Do we need to rehash the same things here on the exact same story every couple of hours? Why is there a duplicate article checker on this site?

>Instead of discussing the surface tablet

Said discussion was broken because of the flagging or whatever caused it to magically disappear from the front page. Is that not hampering a "discussion of the surface tablet" that you so desire? What's wrong with asking PG for the reason for a legitimate article disappearing suddenly?

Would you be okay if this or any article gets buried to page 3 after you comment on it and thus no one reading it?

Why so soon?

Maybe Surface RT isn't selling so well after all...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com