Surface Pro 3 – some specs and pricing are revealed | Hacker News Reader

Surface Pro 3 – some specs and pricing are revealed

wpcentral.com

25 pointstweakz31 comments

The Yoga Pro, which I otherwise liked, was kind of unusable in practice as a tablet just due to weight and size. 13.3" was too big, too heavy.

I worry that a 12" Surface (up from 10.6") might have the same problems. They'll need to really reduce the bezels and keep the weight way down.

This is quite interesting that Microsoft is rolling out new iterations so quickly. It was only a 8 month gap between the Surface Pro 1 and the Surface Pro 2. If a Surface Pro 3 makes a debut next week, that would be approximately 7-8 months since the last iteration yet again.

For comparison, it Apple refreshes the Macbook Air and iPad about every 12 months.

Why do you think it's such a big deal? First off, the latest Surfaces came in the middle of Intel's chip cycle. And now they are launching it at the beginning. That's how they are are able to launch with a "new" Intel chip - which isn't really new anyway, just a repackaged Haswell (2014 was supposed to be the year of Broadwell, not Haswell repackaged).

Second, Sony and LG are already launching "new generations" 6-8 months later, too, with the Xperia Z2 and LG G3. Just because you put an incremental number at the end of the product, doesn't mean it's actually a "next generation" one. I doubt you'll see 1440p resolution and double the storage for the same price on this one for example. They were probably just working on Surface 2 and Surface 3 in parallel, too.

Do they really have a choice? For better or worse they aren't getting traction with the Surface family, so they need to keep trying new stuff in the hopes of finding a device that consumers want.

They are getting some traction, but they entered the race late.

What does "some traction" mean? Do you have any market share numbers?

http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/microsoft-surface-sales-doubl...

They estimate a million units. While a very small piece of the market, a million units says they found traction to me.

Linux has a larger market share on the desktop. Did I miss the year of Linux on the desktop? Sounds like you are making that "one millllliiioooon" number sound bigger than it is.

I'm not saying they are kicking butt and taking names. Just that they clearly have found some people interested in the device. I don't think you can move a million units on accident, even if it is a tiny piece of the market.

You are comparing apples and oranges. Linux is a OS and more specifically a kernal and surface is a brand of tablet.

Yes million is pretty remarkable given most people wrote it off as DOA.

Microsoft is pushing really hard. I see commercials everywhere. In this other HN post, it says that Microsoft has lost $2 billion on the Surface.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7770452

They are certainly putting up a fight. Anything could happen in the future but I think getting excited about a million units shipped is a bit premature.

Nobody is getting excited. You are reading way too much into our comments.

So far they've only lost money with Surface. And I remember they were saying to their partners initially "don't worry, this is just a reference product - it's like not like we're actually trying to compete with you or anything like that!" - yet they're now at the third iteration.

I hope they succeed eventually.

Microsoft has the right product for those of us that would like rather have a laptop capabilities with the size and battery duration of a tablet.

iOS and Android ecosystems require a big brother computer for proper application development, whereas on the Surface I can change to desktop mode and run Visual Studio with the full SDK.

This is what has putted me off to buy a Android Asus Transform a few years ago and buy a Asus Netbook with Ubuntu instead.

how about using an android VM on windows desktop\laptop ?

I tried once but never did any app development

How does it have anything to do with using a tablet with laptop capabilities feature wise?

What you are suggesting is no different from using the Android SDK on a desktop/laptop, which by definition isn't a tablet.

no, i am not suggesting anything. I just had a question so I asked. Sorry, if i was not clear.

Replaced my Latitude 6230 with a Dell Venue Pro 11...which i am now using as my primary dev machine.

love it, Dell took the surface and imrpoved it in several ways, notably the dock/keyboard options.

Why isn't the link to the original story

http://www.wpcentral.com/surface-pro-3-real-specs-and-pricin...

Is HN still autobanning wpcentral?

We unbanned it and changed the url to there from http://www.cnet.com/news/next-microsoft-surface-pro-intel-sp....

Submitters: please don't post stories that just point to something else. Post the something else instead.

What if someone wants to re-post something that was posted 1+ year ago to see new opinions? I think at the moment it navigates back to old post without creating a new one.

I've posted about this a few times:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7727075

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7544123

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617961

HN's duplicate detector is left weak on purpose so that people can repost interesting things, either because they haven't received significant attention or because more than a year has passed. You may need to change the URL slightly for the repost to work.

Because it's an honor system, we ask people not to abuse this. Examples of abuse are deleting posts that didn't get traction and resubmitting them; or reposts of the same material over and over. In general, we're more tolerant when people are reposting things because they're interesting and less tolerant when they're promoting something.

Thanks for taking time to reply!

I was about to buy a Pro 2, might hold off on one of these.

For taking notes and digital art/illustration, these devices are amazing and I've been using my friends one a lot.

Came here to say pretty much this as well - since the Surface came out I was interested in it especially after trying it out with the pen + OneNote; being able to have one device that does the tablet stuff like touch/pen/note taking and the C++/C#/Virtualbox cross-platform development stuff sounds like a dream to me (which makes me guess I'm probably in the target group for the device). Expecting MS to come with an update I was waiting a bit though and the Pro 2 came close already, but mainly due to coincidences I haven't gotten around to get one. Plus the specs were still not on par with my current laptop's it seems. Now this Pro 3 however: extremely tempting. While at the same time makes me wonder if I should wait another couple of months for yet another, faster update :]

It is really excellent if you will actually use the pen. I love pen input (I have a Note III and a Surface 2). I love using Hyper-V -- which seems much faster than VirtualBox (on Windows).

I went through like 7 devices prior to sticking with this one -- Macbook Air and Pro, Asus Transformer, X301, Pixel ... and others. None of them had all the things I wanted in one place... the Surface 2 is just about a perfect fit for me.

I doodle on it (pressure sensitive pen is AWESOME), I take hand written notes, I run Ubuntu and CentOS in Hyper-V for work stuff, I run Visual Studio, I play League of Legends (1080p mid-low settings) and it is just my go-to device when I am not on my desktop.

I purchased it on a complete lark -- just to have one, and it is quickly become my go to device when traveling. It is a machine of compromises... it has a "good" screen, it has "good" battery life, it has "good" performance, it has "good" pen input, it has a "good" weight. Not exceptional in any category, but if you want something that places in all of them -- it is perfect.

Just make a model with a fucking 4:3 screen. PLEASE!

Not everyone uses tablets for watching movies. I use my Surface 2 RT pretty much exclusively for reading, in portrait mode. A 4:3 model would be a immediate buy for me.

Surface keyboard design and the way screen gets docked into keyboard is plain terrible. MS need to get the right design clue from Acer where keyboard is still detachable but it remains firm like a normal laptop keyboard.

You can look at Acer surface tablet here - http://www.amazon.com/Acer-Iconia-W510-1422-10-1-Inch-Keyboa...

If this keyboard is as lightweight as others i've seen, I imagine this Acer solution to topple over if the screen is pushed back more than 90 degrees, no? What keeps it upright?

Sorry, hard to explain. This acer tablet is on display at MS store so if you have any nearby - please visit to experience it.

down voters - care to share the reason ?

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