The Surface 2 | Hacker News Reader

The Surface 2

penny-arcade.com

87 pointskposehn70 comments

The new docking station and ability to drive high resolution displays is a lot more important than sites are recognizing. We can finally truly have 1 machine for everything on the go and docked at work or at home. No doubt it'll likely be more of a pleasure perhaps in a Surface Pro 3 that would be lighter and even more powerful.

I don't really see the current crop of convertible laptop/tablets as solving this problem due to low perf and the fact that I'd never be able to code all day on those cramped keyboards.

This. I would go as far as to say this is where the PC is headed. Consumers will have one device like the Surface2 which is a tablet on the go and can be docked on the desk. Its already powerful enough for most peoples computing tasks and this will get alot better in the coming years.

The traditional desktop PC will be (or already is) a niche again like workstations from the past for professionals.

Good point. Ever since I touched my first computng device I've been longing for something that would fullfill the "1 machine for everything" principle properly. Lately this turns up more often on the net, mainly while referring to phone-like devices which seems awful to me as the screen is just to tiny to feel comfortable. A surface-size device however would be the real deal, for me at least.

This is where I see the traditional PC headed. Many people think that MS and traditional PC makers are taking a risk by making convertible/dual-use devices, but Apple is also taking a risk by not doing it. If the market decides that having a tablet that can multi-task as a fully fledged PC is a good idea, then Apple has a problem, because they can't make OSX touch friendly in a hurry. Their other option is make iOS more capable and make it run on Macbook level devices, but this won't be a quick task.

Many people will say that dedicated devices like tablets and laptops are what people want, but there are plenty of cases where a multi-use device succeeds. The obvious case is the smartphone - it's basically combined a phone, MP3 player and camera together, and people love it.

I've been happy with my Surface Pro; the two changes I'm most looking forward to are the docking station and Haswell. The extra pixel density is a nice-to-have, but being able to pop it in and out of a docking station is killer. There are some other minor things I'd like addressed (the impossible-to-use microSD slot, for one. The always lost stylus is another), but I'll rebuy and probably hand the Surface Pro on to the kids.

Are you using it for anything in particular which benefits from the touch input? If so, is the stylus an important positive?

I like the stylus for scribbling notes / impromptu architecture diagrams in one note, especially in meetings.

I definitely view it as an ultrabook replacement. My only major gripe is that it's not a comfortable machine for on the lap work compared to a proper laptop.

Could this be fixed with some of those iPad cases with built-in keyboards (except, of course, made for Surface)?

Potentially, because the join between the type cover and tablet is obviously flexible it moves a lot when laying on a non uniform surface (my thighs).

Also because of it's width I feel like I need to sit with my knees together to try and balance it, trying on one leg feels stupidly awkward.

I own a surface pro and bought it particularly for the stylus and touch input.

I tend to take a lot of notes at work, and also as I am working on side projects and one day I took a step back and looked at my desk and said "Is it really 2013 and I am pretty much scraping away at dead trees with a piece of metal dipped in ink like a caveman!?". I had notes spread out over dozens of binders, notebooks, engineering pads, etc, etc. How is this still a thing?! I also lost a bunch of notes from my schooling simply because the box they were in got lost. It felt to me like the equivalent of conducting all of my correspondence via paper letters, and keeping them in boxes in the basement. Of course, instead I do it through email, all nicely searchable at the drop of a hat.

So the first thing I will say is that OneNote and the pen are a great writing experience. I do kind of miss the feedback of a pen against paper, but the "inking" in OneNote is top-notch, somehow looking even better than my regular writing. The response is really quick as well, which makes a big difference in feeling like you are actually writing instead of watching a line chase your pen around the screen. I've tried the Galaxy Note 10.1's stylus and S-Note and it is nowhere near as good. Syncing my notes to the Microsoft cloud is of course an added bonus for easy backup.

That said, the widescreen aspect ratio was pretty dumb, especially for something billed as a device for being productive. I really can't understand it from any direction, I mean writing a document will be worse, editing photos is probably worse, I guess maybe people editing video will be happy? A better, wider aspect ratio closer to paper would be a serious improvement.

At the end of the day however, I am able to take notes and do sketches, designs, etc, in a way that has a great writing "feel", offers search via really good text recognition, and offers seamless backup. I got mine discounted at a conference, so I can't say if I'd pay $900 for the ability to do this, but if I was back in University it would be an absolute no brainer. You probably won't find a better "writing" experience on the market, and if you do a lot of that then I recommend it.

"How is this still a thing?!"

Because the alternative costs $900 and doesn't fit in your pocket. Oh, I get what you're saying, I loved OneNote back when I had the old TabletPC. It's the best thing going, IMO. But I'm not spending that kind of money to run an OS I have no other use for, just to take notes. Make a $300 machine with a good digitizer that runs nothing but OneNote and I'd buy two.

The Asus EeePad was the best thing I ever used as a notebook replacement. I had to buy it from China and change the display text to English when I got it, but the screen felt like paper, the digitizer was Wacom, and the battery life was excellent. It would sync with Evernote (I wish it synced with OneNote). I could read and annotate ebooks and PDFs. There were two styluses, and a place to store them both. You could write normally, since the screen did not respond to touch (only the pen). The black and white screen was okay for notes, but if you hooked it to your PC, it became a full Wacom tablet for Photoshop etc.

Unfortunately, they never released it in the US, dropped Evernote support a while back, and have completely discontinued it. Did I mention that importing from China through a reseller and with shipping included it only cost $250?

I think you mean the Asus Eee Note? http://www.asus.com/Eee_Family/Eee_Note_EA800/

And dammit, that looks perfect for notetaking/sketching/etc. :(

It looks like they are still available on eBay.

Yup, EeeNote. Sorry! It really was great, but it lost all use for me when Evernote sync was deprecated. The barrier to getting my files off became too high (move them to a microsd card, then move them to my computer with an adapter I always lose).

The new Nvidia Tegra 4 tablet supports "directstylus" and i'm wondering if Microsoft could enable this with the new Surface 2.

> Make a $300 machine with a good digitizer that runs nothing but OneNote and I'd buy two

Samsung Galaxy Note 8.0 [1]

I have to physically restrain myself from buying one of these just about every time I walk into the local electronics stores. Samsung has actually done a really nice job, it has a Maths mode that recognises handwriting as formulas which insanely actually works ...

[1] http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxynote/note8.0/

Is it really 2013 and I am pretty much scraping away at dead trees with a piece of metal dipped in ink like a caveman!?

I'm the opposite. I love tech but I have an a4 sized sketchpad and a good pencil I take everywhere with me. I use it for everything from meeting notes to drawings/ideas. I'll use it to demonstrate ideas/concepts to a client or just to hlep me work out something (I'm very visual)

I can't see myself ever parting with it. I love the feel - there's something about using real pencil and paper digital can never replace, and I have a draw full of old notbooks I can look back through which is kind of nice.

As far as search/organisation etc well... a notepad's not so good for that but my drawings tend to be write-only. I use them as a tool to help me think and to clarify ideas.

For me, I don't deal very well with digital to-do lists and such. Pen and paper is king for me.

Usually, I don't need the stylus; I'm using the keyboard and touchpad. However, when I do need it, I can't find it because it attaches where the power cord attaches, so I'm always removing it and setting it down, then forgetting to pick the stylus up. If they had a place to dock it on the top edge, that would be great.

When my daughter uses my Surface, she uses it as a WACOM replacement, so she needs (and finds) the stylus.

What about the microSD slot makes it impossible to use? (I'm thinking about getting a Surface Pro 2.)

The angle of the edge makes insertion tricky. The lack of visible indicator as to which direction is correct; It would be nice if there was a little glyph showing the expected orientation.

Okay, thanks.

I've often wondered why Apple doesn't have an "iPad Pro" that includes a Wacom or Wacom-like stylus system. I know that Apple is very much "no stylus" and I'm positive that was the right move for most uses, but there seems to be an obvious market here for creative types that need a real stylus (as in tip angle detection, pressure sensitivity, on-stylus buttons, etc).

If I had to guess, the market isn't large enough nor or are the margins high enough for Apple to actually care. Aside from the Mac Pro, Apple seems allergic to creating products that only serve a single niche.

You're probably right. In that case, I wonder if Wacom could make some kind of a "frame" around the iPad that can triangulate a stylus and receive pressure data, etc?

They'd probably be more inclined to find out if the market response to Surface had been something better than tepid.

http://intuoscreativestylus.wacom.com/en/

The Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus (what a mouthful) uses Bluetooth for pressure, which is similar to the Pogo Connect and Adonit Jot Touch styli. What the OP want is perhaps something similar to the iPen 2 <http://www.cregle.com/>, a pen and receiver combo that captures pressure sensitive data.

Thanks for this comment. It made me see Apple in a new light.

Apple in my mind is now a consumer products business (has been for years I guess) not a computer business as I used to "feel".

Perhaps I'll be more open to other hardware for my next dev machine.

Everyone at Google and CS academia seems to have Macbook Retina Pros these days. They do very well in selling their consumer laptops to...developers, at least in these niches (I would guess that many HN crowd are in the same boat).

And really, what more could you want as a dev (at least in a laptop)?

My wife is a visual designer who has an external waccom tablet. She said the primary problem with integrated solutions to her is occlusion: she would still prefer a separate tablet. Gabe obviously has a different feeling about this, though I think he is using Illustrator also.

Steve Jobs:

"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that’s what you needed on the farms. Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular.

PCs are going to be like trucks. They are still going to be around…they are going to be one out of x people.

This transformation is going to make some people uneasy…because the PC has taken us a long ways. It’s brilliant. We like to talk about the post-PC era, but when it really starts to happen, it’s uncomfortable."

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20006442-56.html

Wiki:

"A sport utility vehicle (SUV) is a vehicle similar to a station wagon or estate car, usually equipped with four-wheel drive for on- or off-road ability. Some SUVs include the towing capacity of a pickup truck with the passenger-carrying space of a minivan or large sedan.

Since SUVs are considered light trucks in North America, and often share the same platform with pick-up trucks, at one time, they were regulated less strictly than passenger cars under the two laws in the United States"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_utility_vehicle

People do not want trucks OR cars they do want BOTH.

The problem isn't post-PC era, but the problem is that our appliances will be PCs only crippled by a piece of software and you can be ruined for "unlocking" them.

Imagine if you wanted to use your toaster to do Folding@Home while not doing toast and you get two years in jail.

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/23/civilwar.html

Another more dangerous side is that is a real risk of someone misusing these computers in ways that make it hard to distinguish hacking something for use from abuse.

If you knew a high ranking Apple employee, slip “MacBook touch” in a conversation. You’d get an uncomfortable pause followed by a forced laugh.

http://gizmodo.com/5027706/rumor-macbook-touch-coming-in-oct... ?

[2008]

>I've often wondered why Apple doesn't have an "iPad Pro" that includes a Wacom or Wacom-like stylus system.

As much I'd like one (I have a Wacom too), the reason is because that's a market around 1/10000 the size of the overall iPad market.

MS offers that because it tries whatever it can as a differentiator, but it's not working very well for them.

The market for fingerprint readers for smart phones was almost nothing. Just look at the motorola atrix. Now Apple has added a fingerprint scanner and integrated it purely to make it slightly easier to log into your phone, and the iPhone 5s has sold out.

If Apple added proper pen support with palm rejection software APIs to an iPad, you'll bet that people will still buy iPads. Mums will use pens to annotate their extension plans for their new house, maps to the park for child birthdays. Kids will use the pen to become better illustrators which will help them be better communicators later in life. Uni students will use pens to jot down notes quickly and draw math equations with ease.

The pen on a tablet is not a niche. The Surface Pro is a niche product.

I had the original Palm Vx. I would never use a stylus because it makes nothing easier, except drawing. The stylus is sort of a gimmick. If you need to get serious work done and you are serious enough to need a stylus, the iPhone and iPad are not for you. As Elton Brown would say 'there is no room in the kitchen for multitaskers.' They do a bad job at many things.

Touch unlock, however, is already in use by someone's grandpa... it's clean, it's easy. It's not multitasking. It's making the current norm safer and faster.

> makes nothing easier, except drawing

Exactly. Drawing includes illustration and annotation. Two things that make communicating faster and easier. As the old saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words.

>As the old saying goes, a picture paints a thousand words.

Only, as my current saying says, not many users paint any pictures or care to.

Everyone uses a pen.

The palm vx, did not have a capacitive touch screen with an interface designed for touch. Adding pen support to the iPad does not affect the interface. I'm not sure how your comment is relevant to the conversation?

s/Elton/Alton

I wouldn't say adding pen input would make the iPad a multitasking device.

He doesn't mean it in the CS "multitasking" sense.

He means it would try to be two things at the same time (a painting surface and a regular tablet), a "jack of all trades, master of none" thing.

The iPad has already mastered touch tableting. Adding a digitiser does not change that.

Correction: Alton Brown says there is no room in the kitchen for UNItaskers (except fire extinguishers). He's actually a huge fan of multitaskers!

You are correct. Yikes, I got that one wrong.

>The market for fingerprint readers for smart phones was almost nothing. Just look at the motorola atrix. Now Apple has added a fingerprint scanner and integrated it purely to make it slightly easier to log into your phone, and the iPhone 5s has sold out.

The iPhone 5, 4s, 4 etc has sold out too, despite not having one. So I'm not sure it's the fingerprint scanner that's the differentiator here.

And the analogy is not apt for other reasons too. Apple didn't put a "fingerprint reader" because there was a market for it. They did it because it enables some things like easy mobile payments and better security.

Whereas with something like a wacom-like tablet capability, there IS a market, but it's tiny. And the technology doesn't offer much outside of that market (designers, painters and painting enthusiasts etc). There will be an improvement for handwritten notes and annotations, but that's not the major selling point of the iPad. If it was, Surface would have faired better too.

Still, they might add it at some point, if a dual-technology screen becomes cheaper and mature.

>The pen on a tablet is not a niche. The Surface Pro is a niche product.

Well, judging by unit sales, it very much is.

> The iPhone 5, 4s, 4 etc has sold out too, despite not having one.

The iPhone 4 added a gyroscope, the 4s added a better microphones and associated audio chipset to improve speech recognition. The iPhone 5 added support for Airdrop. Following your logic then Apple really has no excuse not to add features like a digitiser because they will sell out anyway.

> They did it because it enables some things

Yes, and a pen digitiser and palm rejection enables reliable note taking, annotation and illustration.

> the technology doesn't offer much outside of that market (designers, painters and painting enthusiasts etc) That's like saying that only journalists and novel writers need a keyboard, only photographers need a camera. The success of the iPad over traditional laptops has come from a natural way to interact with things directly like they do in real life. In real life people use pens everyday to jot things down.

> If it was, Surface would have faired better too. What? The Surface does not have a pen. Only the Surface pro which is $400 more expensive than an iPad and doesn't run iOS.

Not an artist and I use my stylus constantly with my Surface for note taking. I probably wouldn't have bought one separately without having tried, but I'm glad it came with one.

>MS offers that because it tries whatever it can as a differentiator, but it's not working very well for them.

which serves Apple as a great "field test" in case someone at Apple had actually thought about this. We all know how "well" MS does with their tablet. And if that proposed market would be significant, MS would have sold more of their product as they offer just that which Apple does not.

So, Apple does not just stipulate that this niche is not big enough for them to cater to, they have real life data that devices with this feature don't sell.

But, to be frank, that of course has other reasons besides this small niche not buying the product.

If you're serious about art, you'll probably want a Wacom. If you're a professional you'll want a mac too, as there's the (almost standardised) software ecosystem with the creative types. There are Wacom Interactive Pen Displays for those who want to see their art digitised straight away.

Gabe's requirements are quite niche, though if tool suits you there's nothing wrong with that. Though why bother to fork out $700 for a tablet when you can get a second hand tablet on ebay for less than $100?

I'm not sure I agree that being able to draw properly on the go is such a small niche. While most work undoubtedly happens at a desk, it could be useful for artists / illustrators on the move.

There are a couple Bluetooth and infrasound options for pressure sensitive pens for iPad/iPhone. Not as good as a Wacom sensor built into the display itself, but they are there to some degree.

The issue is the same on Android. Android devices are so cutthroat that an extra 25$ cost to include the pen and screen sensor will sink your product and not including the pen just makes it into an accessory no one has. And even then you won't beat Google's whitebox or Amazon's loss leader hardware pricing.

Samsung is really the only successful Android device maker with a built-in pen, and they already pour ridiculous amounts of money into things no one else but Apple can, like marketing, so it isn't surprising. Although an infrasound pen works with any Android, just not as well again.

There's actually a quite simple answer to this: iPad's are too profitable. That may not seem like a problem, and it certainly isn't to Apple, but it's a problem for the market. When it's easy to make huge profit margins and massive sales volumes with relatively simple designs there's not much impetus to innovate, take risks, or pursue smaller markets. The potential opportunity cost that Apple faces in spending a lot of development effort as well as production volume on an "iPad Pro" would be enormous, and almost certainly more than what could be recouped in profits even if such a thing were successful.

Why does the ipad need to be any different? Why can't all the hardware functionality be self contained in the stylus, and have it wirelessly convey signals to the ipad via Bluetooth or some such thing.

There are a number of rumours of Apple trialling a 12 or 13" iPad going round at the moment [1].

To my mind, that would be Apple cannibalising Mac sales - an iPad that big would be aiming squarely at Macbook Air territory (especially coupled with the A7 and future processors).

But if they did release one, they really should give it a decent digitiser - that, plus the bigger surface (sheesh) area, would be perfect for drawing on.

[1] http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/24/apple-may-be-working-wit...

I had a Fujitsu Lifebook P1510 running Windows XP back in 2006... a 9" convertible tablet with a capacitive stylus. It's still my favorite machine that I've owned, and felt like the future (sitting on a couch, browsing the net & playing games).

It saddened me greatly that Microsoft forbade anything under 10" for Vista & Win7. The Surface Pro is the first Windows machine I've actually desired since then -- the only thing that held me back was the 4gb cap on RAM. I already pre-ordered an 8gb model and can't wait to play with it.

I'm wondering how good is Surface as a Wacom replacement? Is it passable, how does its pen work with Windows/Photoshop?

I was looking to buy Cintiq 13HD for $1000, but a fully fledged tablet/laptop that is also a drawing board, for $900?! I mean compare this to Cintiq Companion which is $2000.

IIRC it has actual Wacom digitizer hardware in it, so that brings it a lot closer to a Cintiq than a typical touchscreen would be.

What about the pen pressure levels?

It has 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity. So it's very good at that. Initially it didn't work w/ photoshop so it was useless for many digital artists but they've fixed that now.

I just created an account to say that it's actually 2048 levels of pressure (instead of 1024), or at least it is according to the Cintiq Companion website. My cintiq 21UX is also 2048. I'm looking to nab a companion later this year so that I can work and be location-agnostic, so I've been watching the details of it as they've been coming out. on a side note, My only hope is that the battery life is good enough :P People have been decrying the lack of a haswell (the win8 version, not the android hybrid) which I guess makes for a less solid battery life? I'm not up on my cpu tech, so I can't say.

Wow, that was a longer comment than I'd originally intended. Sorry.

Thank you for the response. I should have been more specific in my comment. I meant that the Microsoft Surface Pro and Surface Pro 2 have 1024 levels of pressure sensitivity.

You are correct that the Wacom Cintiq Companion has 2048. Another down side for the Wacom Cintiq Companion is that it's quite heavy compared to other tablets. I have a Cintiq 13HD and I'm very pleased with it but for portability I might get a Surface Pro 2.

No, no, that's my bad, I didn't read very carefully.

Agreed re: weight, but I think (or at least right now I think I do) that that's not as big a consideration for me -- it seems worth it if it gets me a piece of hardware that's as good as my cintiq. But I agree that could certainly be a turn-off for some.

I'm still waiting for more definite battery data, but I think that might not be more forthcoming until people have had it in their hands for a while.

I did a bit of research on tablets and hybrids recently since my fiance needed a new machine. I ended up buying her a Sony Xperia Tablet Z (Andriod) since there really wasn't any good Windows hybrids on the market except for the Surface Pro. However, the battery life for the first generation was terrible and Surface RT isn't a smart investment because of the OS [place bet]dead in the next few years cough[/end bet].

However, I personally want a compact machine with the full Windows 8 experience so I've been waiting for the Surface Pro 2.

If this thing has an all day battery life it will be an instant sale for me.

Devices like the Surface2 with docking capability could very well be the future of the PC. I could totally see myself getting one of these for my girlfriend or my parents as its all they need for personal computing.

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