Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3 | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft announces the Surface Pro 3

theverge.com

275 pointssz4kerto315 comments

That's a really nice piece of hardware. I've used MacBook Airs since 2010, but the Surface 3 looks to be strictly dominating in the hardware department.

Unfortunately, I don't think Microsoft will convert many OS X devs unless they make some changes to their software. One of the advantages of OS X is that it's a Unix, and lots of Unix software runs on it. It's not hard to compile tools such as nmap, Vim, or steam locomotive.

It would be very interesting if Microsoft made Windows a Unix. They could bundle bash or zsh, add the typical BSD tools, and (most importantly) build a cc front-end for the Visual Studio compiler. They'd also have to ship a libc of their own. To save effort, they could base it on BSD's libc. It'd be like Cygwin, but installed by default and officially supported and maintained.

With such a set-up, you'd be able to run your unix tools alongside Adobe CS and Outlook. You wouldn't have to worry about driver support, since Microsoft made the hardware and the OS (just like Apple). The only thing missing would be the ability to dual-boot OS X (to test on Safari or other OS X stuff).

I'm rooting for MS. My (not so serious) test for windows is simple: the day I can resize dos command prompt as easily as terminal windows on linux/osx is the day Microsoft I need to seriously consider going back to windows :)

Properties -> Settings -> Layout -> change res -> Save.

I never understood why some people make such a big fuss out of it.

Because that is a huge fuss to do what practically every other app can easily do by dragging the border, including other windows apps.

Sometimes you need to change your prompt to be a different size and an annoying 5 step thing is a big fuss

Because some of us have to deal with hundreds/thousands of servers. Lots of Windows boxes without Chef/Puppet bootstrapping them is a miserable experience. I don't know how many times I've disabled IEESC and made cmd quickedit enabled in my life just to be able to use the box (prior to doing it via bootstrapping).

Let me enlighten you then. Just create a shortcut to the cmd prompt, change the settings in the shortcut and keep a copy of that shortcut. The seetings for teh command prompt are saved in the shortcut. Now you just have to go around with it on your USB key and double-click on it to have a command-prompt with all your settings already done.

You can thank me later.

I wish all other windows were this easy to resize. I could simply have an array of shortcuts for all the different browser window sizes I might want. It's a much better system, really. Thank you later? I'm thanking you right now! Thank you.

Here's the regkey that controls this setting: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc978570.aspx

Should be fairly easy to script deploying that to all your machines.

Long, long ago, I wanted a way to launch arbitrary numbers of CMD.EXE windows with arbitrarily-chosen foreground and background colors. The standard settings only let you store a finite number of color entries (something like 16) to choose from. However, the registry key it finds the settings in is based on the executable name, so if you make a copy of cmd.exe called cmdb.exe and run it, you have N more slots of colors to choose from. So I wrote a little hack that took --fgcolor rrggbb --bgcolor rrggbb values and then made a hard link to cmd.exe in the temp directory called something like cmd_rrggbb_rrggbb.exe, set up the appropriate registry keys, and then invoked it with whatever other args you provided. Subsequent invocations with the same args would find the temp executable and reuse it. It was an absurd hack, but it worked really well and it amused me to write it. edit: and is a testament to how idiotic the CMD settings scheme is.

The fact that you have to go into the settings to resize it IS the problem that people make a big fuss out of. You didn't offer a solution, you described the problem.

Powershell ISE

The ISE is clever, but honestly, nothing beats a PuTTY-like terminal.

I actually find PuTTY to be horribly frustrating to work with, compared to a proper terminal emulator on OS X or Linux. Part of that is just Windows (when the window closes it's gone), part of it is that it's really just an SSH command (no local terminal, no easy SCP), part of it is the cumbersome UX (make a bunch of changes to the connection and then hit 'go'; oh wait, you didn't save the changes first? crap).

I do agree with the core of your point though; an actual terminal with actual commands that actually work well would be great.

Windows Powershell is actually really fascinating from one point of view though: the idea that instead of passing raw (inconsistently formatted) ASCII/Unicode data between pipes, the data is actually presented in terms of a data structure; thus you can easily say 'sort by the third column descending' or 'show every second record'. A significant amount of my bash scripting on-the-fly tends to be chaining several commands together to munge output data solely for the purpose of letting the next command parse it properly. Powershell, in some ways, takes care of this.

In 2014, PuTTY still makes you set your whole window to a complete Unicode font (usually buggy and weird-looking) to avoid international text showing entirely blank. Surely even Windows has better text API than that?

I think you're going to live forever disappointed. The command prompt shell is one of those programs that just doesn't get updated and/or any new features. Like notepad.exe, there are so many easy things they could do to make it actually _useful_, but won't.

Not disagreeing, but I suspect notepad.exe is the way it is for a reason - it's the Windows equivalent of vi, the thing you use to try to recover when everything else is falling to pieces. As such, it doesn't and shouldn't have dependencies on anything that isn't absolutely essential.

I believe Task Manager eschews the common control library and reimplements a lot of UI stuff itself. Same reason.

I still can't believe that a hung program means the Task Manager can hang as well. I don't know how many times I've had a game freeze and had to wait on the Task Manager. Ctrl+alt+del brings up the "lock, log off, task manager" screen pretty quick, then Task Manager doesn't load until I go make and finish eating dinner.

Ctrl- Shift - Esc

It puts you straight into processes tab and can be done with one hand.

Does it still take minutes to load, though? My problem has never been the difficulty in launching Task Manager, it's been with getting task manager to respond in any amount of hurry.

I just hit CTL+SHIFT+ESC and Task Manager was there instantaneously. If things have gone so screwy that you really need Task Manager, then yeah, it will probably be slow.

Since that shortcut was added, that's almost always how I launch the Task Manager. Recently however, I read that Ctrl-Shift-ESC (CSE) doesn't launch the Task Manager in the same way that Ctrl-Alt-Del (CAD) will.

I went looking for the source but I only found this blog post from Raymond Chen [1]. Based on that discussion, it looks like winlogon.exe is responsible for launching the Task Manager both ways, so perhaps that more recent discussion was incorrect.

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2012/01/30/10261...

You don't really need to pull in external deps to improve notepad.exe; nearly all of the low-hanging fruit would be a few lines of code in that application itself. Even busybox's vi implementation is a more capable editor, and it's one short C file (with a handful of trivial deps on the rest of busybox for shit like the allocator and random string functions.)

I would agree, except for the lack of support for Unicode and LF line endings.

What are you missing in terms of Unicode support? Line endings aside, it doesn't do too horribly with http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/examples/UTF-8-demo.txt

To this day, I don't understand why don't didn't have an intern or somebody fix that. They push powershell so hard, yet provide a horrible, horrible terminal to work in. Make it like putty. In fact, go find one of these makers of terminal software and just buy they out... Do something. Nobody takes their command line stuff seriously simply because the terminal is so god-awful.

I know you're not being serious, but there are some other terminal apps that are better than the basic DOS prompt. Check out ConEmu, for example.

Now, once you've got ConEmu or something like it that will resize nicely and do other things, you'll still be stuck on the crappy DOS-style prompt though. :)

Also checkout Cmder (http://bliker.github.io/cmder/) for a pre-customised ConEmu that bundles several useful UNIX commands. Plus ConEmu supports Quake-style dropdown that has radically improved my work-flow on Windows.

Also Powershell is pretty awesome if you take the time out to learn it.

This. ConEmu combined with cmd/msys/cygwin/powershell is as close to a proper unix terminal app one can get. I actually find ConEmu itself better than the corresponding Gnome/KDE/Xfce/OsX applications.

Why does the default prompt have {git} and {lamb}? Is there any intro documentation?

I feel similarly, and seriously. It's not so much just the usability of the command prompt, but that it would be a symbol of a change in priorities towards adding functionality for developers, and welcoming non-Windows technical audiences.

If I'm using a non-built-in terminal, and a non-built-in Unix compatibility layer, why am I using Windows?

See, this is why I like Linux and OS X. The built-in Terminal is practical. The built-in text editor (well, at least on Linux) is practical. On Windows, I have to replace both from the get-go to get anything done.

Why are you using Windows if you want it to behave like Unix?

For me, personally: Visio and Photoshop

Most developers don't have a choice in the supported platforms of the product they work on. If your product targets Windows (and it will if the customers demand it), you don't have much choice!

I'm not, in that at work I use a Mac. I write Java server code for web servers and batch data-analysis, deployed on Linux boxes. A significant portion of my time is spent either ssh'ed into a Linux machine, or using the various Unix utilities as well as git and mvn in the terminal.

My point, perhaps poorly stated, was this: I prefer a terminal-heavy development environment because that is the most efficient way of interacting with remote servers for the work that I do. I can't consider using Windows without a sense that they've made it a priority to address my use cases and scenarios, and the single lowest hanging fruit possible in that regard is to spend half a dev team (2-3 devs) on modernizing the terminal to the point where when I'm at home and want to check something on a server, I use my Windows desktop instead of switching to my Mac laptop. Even better would be dedicating one or two dev teams to supporting a Unix environment natively, so Cygwin isn't necessary.

For what it's worth, I much prefer the Windows GUI to either Mac or Linux. I was a test developer at Microsoft for Windows 7 and part of 8, and I wrote this comment on my home PC running Win7. I would like to be able to use Windows for the UI and the familiarity I have with it, but those two things, a good terminal and a Unix-like environment, are requirements for my job. And I know from experience that this scenario is absolutely the furthest thing from the minds of the people working on Windows.

The thing is, if you actually look at how those programs work, they're still actually running cmd.exe and then wrapping that. This leads to all kinds of weirdness...sometimes resizes don't work quite right, color support is iffy and requires yet another wrapper, etc. It's better than nothing, but it's a FAR cry from something like konsole or even generic tabbed xterm.

Another is Git Bash (http://git-scm.com/downloads) which gives a reasonable terminal/shell on Windows including many of the standard utilities (e.g. ssh).

Git Bash is just cmd.exe

Not if you launch bash.exe, then it's GNU bash, version 3.1.0

Is it as slow as cmd? I found that running `readelf -a` in cmd will take, say ~5 seconds while running the same command under Cygwin+PuTTY, the command completed in well under a second. The text output is just plain slow and to a baffling degree.

Anyone know why that is?

you can use powershell ISE. you can make the terminal full screen with no issue

Get Far Manager www.farmanager.com - you'll have the both the command-line and midnight-commander/norton-commander like file viewing/browsing copying tool. Press Ctrl+O to toggle between full-screen and showing the file bars. Maximize the windows as much as you want (it'll work). Make the shortcut to start Far Manager maximized.

There is even project to bring ConEmu + Far Manager, and there is even way to make Far Manager work with cygwin's bash (I have separate link for it).

Give it a try - it's zip-installable, and has real installer too. Lots of plugins (including zip browser, exe browsers, ftp/ssh/etc.)

I'm of the same opinion as paperwork. I can't speak for him/her, but for myself the reason is not that I can't get the software I need (Console2 and mintty suit me fine) but because the quality of the tools provided with the OS are indicative of the general level of polish (inside and out) of the OS as a whole.

If they haven't managed to fix some of the most basic and most user-visible flaws in the past decade or more, what other cruft is lurking in places users don't regularly see? Additionally, as a software professional myself I see a whole lot more of the ugliness under the hood than most users and it does nothing to suggest to me that my first impression was wrong.

Edited to add: I know you didn't actually disagree, and your suggestion is a good one. I felt it would be taken by many as a reason to discount the original opinion though, and wanted to emphasize what I feel to be the more important aspect of the original notion.

We can't always choose the hardware that we want, and we can't sometimes choose the software (OS) that we like.

At work I'm stuck with Windows, but at home use OSX & croutonized debianized chromebooks.

In my regular Windows toolbox are: Far manager, cygwin (full install), SysInternals, NirTools, Windows 8 SDK/DDK, emacs-win, but haven't time to get around and learn Powershell...

Microsoft, like Apple, wants you to only be able to use their products, so there's a very low probability of them releasing a Unix version. Both Apple and MS would actively stop people from installing Linux on their hardware if they could get away with it.

MacOS is actually a certified Unix

That's not the case. Microsoft make their money selling software, Apple, hardware. Once Apple have got your money for the device they don't care what you run on it. See Bootcamp.

How do you explain iOS?

They're selling an experience, not a widget.

Of course the app store revenues don't hurt, but at the most basic level they don't want the user to screw up the 'it just works-nesss' of it.

Mac OS X being UNIX compatible only matters for command line and daemons stuff, everything else is Cocoa.

In terms of architecture, Windows is a VMS descendent and although there have been multiple UNIX compatibility layers, both from Microsoft and third parties, very few people really cared about it. As of Windows 8, Microsoft killed their own implementation and is pointing people to Cygwin.

> Mac OS X being UNIX compatible only matters for command line and daemons stuff

Not really. It's much easier to port Unix-native applications to a Mac than it is to port them to Windows. Most of the time, everything just seamlessly compiles on OSX (even if they may need X to run). Also, being "closer" to the environment the app will actually run is a great feature.

To me that WAS true. Nowadays i don't pollute my local environment with services and servers and run all of it in project specific linux VMs (through vagrant mostly). OSX more or less only runs my editor, terminal and browser, something which Windows could also do pretty easily.

If you want Unix on Windows install cygwin, msys, or even a virtual machine with Ubuntu, etc. It's a bit silly to expect Microsoft to provide a full Unix environment for developing Windows software.

Microsoft is running a very confusing strategy here. Google understood that with Motorola and it's why they sold it off. Microsoft hopes to keep its monopoly in the PC space with its multi-OEM operating system, yet still try to get every PC consumer to buy its own devices. Something's got to give.

I expect Microsoft's partners will increasingly continue to push other operating systems into the market on their devices, even if initially it's not exactly what the market wants. But they will do it anyway, because they will increasingly hate Microsoft.

And it will work, because the PC ecosystem is much bigger than Microsoft, and Microsoft won't succeed fighting against it. They will lose more money from lost licenses than they will be making (in profit, since so far Surfaces have continued to lose them money) than they will be making from these devices.

Some speculation here.

There could be a multi-part strategy. Both Google & Microsoft probably covet the revenue and margins Apple received from selling their own devices. Those margins, in terms of phones and tablets are probably un-repeatable. Some next iteration of device however could contain offer big margins. That is something that could double Google's market capitalization. At the least Microsoft and Google understand that they need something to give them hardware experience.

Second, it allows Google & Microsoft to lead in hardware. Even if the Surface 3 flops, the OEMs have a guide pointing what is possible and which direction to go (or not to.) I imagined this was part of the reason why Google has had different manufacturers built their Nexus products.

The Surface buys Microsoft some time. The number of people who need Office and legacy systems is going to continue to shrink as special use case stuff is built -- whether from the analytical side like Tableau to something like FarmLogs. The operating system itself may very vanish in to the background, leaving us with some unix-based combination of Android and Chrome OS.

I think there are signs of change. I read somewhere that they are practically giving away the Windows mobile operating system.

> It would be very interesting if Microsoft made Windows a Unix.

Microsoft's strategy has always been to make it easy to port other apps to Windows (offering POSIX services since ever) but to make it as difficult as possible to port away Windows apps. Offering a full-featured Unix environment would go against that.

I think there's something of a double-standard here.

I use a virtual machine running Windows to take care of software my Mac won't run natively. I could just as easily run Linux or BSD in a virtual machine on a Windows box. Or even OS X, if I were in a EULA-violating mood.

I've had to run a Windows VM on a Mac because I needed to run SSMS, but if I were doing .NET development in Visual Studio and heavily using PowerShell on the command-line, I'd probably prefer to just have a Windows computer rather than having so much of my workflow inside a VM.

Because I currently work mostly on the command-line, having a rich command-line environment with access to a powerful shell and great tools is really important to me, and I wouldn't want that to be restricted to a VM.

I always thought I'd feel similarly, but I've been doing a bunch of .NET/Mono stuff in Windows 8 (instead of using Xamarin Studio), as a virtual machine in my Mac. Works pretty great, as long as I correctly train my fingers to hit the right shortcuts when in and out of the VM.

The only downside I've experienced is really one that I'll lay solely at the feet of Windows 8: If I go a long time without checking in on the Windows 8 VM, it will sometimes auto-install updates and then force a restart. This has rather horrifying results if I had also neglected to save a file I was working on.

Moving back and forth between working on the same codebase on both the Mac and Windows sides is also a little irritating; I find the best way to do this is pumping the data back and forth between them using Git. But that would be what I have to do if they were separate physical machines, too, so I'm not terribly prepared to whine about it.

You mean like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Services_for_UNIX ?

In my experience Cygwin works better for the "compile software targeted mostly at Linux users" use case, but Microsoft definitely pursued the "make Windows a Unix" approach. Sadly Interix saw limited adoption (probably due to pricing) and has been discontinued, so we're left with the user-space emulation approaches (like Cygwin).

Yea, I wonder if MS can bring it back in the next version of Windows.

They should really just buy cygwin and make it the default shell keeping powershell as optional. It's time for MS to acknowledge they need to catch up and be a little bit more interoperable with power users from other oses.

cygiwn is one of the first thing i install when I bring up a new windows box.

Ontopic:

I would buy it, if these criterias were met:

     1) I can install  an unpopular Linux distro onto it (NO VM!).
     2) I won't get serious issues on Linux, due to no drivers being found compatible, overheating, hybrid-gpu switching problems, touchscreen issues, jumping stylus, battery dead in <3h
     3) UEFI isn't causing as much trouble, as I've heard.
     4) The keyboard is much better than the crappy colored plastic it looks like. I want a high quality keyboard with backlight. I would pay $200 extra for that.
     5) It has HDMI, USB3 and a way to increase the internal storage and ram.

@smrtinsert

Should, would, could. But they didn't, for about two centuries, sorry シ There is so much hope in your writing, hope that Microsoft recognizes where it erred and where it did it right. Alas, there might be no such plan, because they haven't found a way to directly capitalize on that yet, or political/strategical/management reasons.

I don't have any prejudices against Windows, OSX, Linux, BSD and alternative OS users, but I like all of them. What makes me and probably others turn off the ears are hardcore evangelists of any kind just as well as fanboys/fangirls. This is not directed to you, you're ok check ✊ . I just want to say that, there are such people whom you can innocently ask, why they've installed Windows onto their Mac (for example) and all you get is arrogance and hatred plus a bunch of prejudices on how one can question the superiority of windows. On another case I talked with a Windows Phone developer and she was such a hard knock evangelist, I was kinda feeling attacked, just because I asked how she plans on integrating with the back-end software we've developed to deploy the final app to various app stores.

> 1) I can install an unpopular Linux distro onto it (NO VM!).

Is it possible to still install Ubuntu through the Windows Installer?

yup, through wubi http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Wubi

Re: 1, 2, 3: Those are Linux problems, not Surface ones. There are types of hardware that Linux is just poor at supporting. It's up to Linux devs and the component manufacturers to fix that problem, not Microsoft.

I found it pretty easy to put Linux on my Surface Pro 2. The problem is that once it's on there, it kind of sucks. Poor hardware support, extremely poor touchscreen UI.

cygwin has a license problem b/c it's GPL. So it's a no-go. You can't bundle your proprietary software with it easily.

That is very untrue.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#MereAggregation

You can even ship it with a proprietary installer.

http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLCompatInstaller

The links you gave leave the issue ambiguous.

It still seems that you can't for instance launch an executable that runs cigwin in the background.

> It still seems that you can't for instance launch an executable that runs cigwin in the background.

[citation needed]

The corporate lawyers that I've talked to at my previous day jobs have told me that this is an obviously legal thing to do.

Just read the links that were posted.

"If the modules are included in the same executable file, they are definitely combined in one program."

Piping programs into each other is okay, but once you start bundling it's all up in the air.

In common usage (I've never heard it any other way in 24 years of software dev) "included in the same executable" means either combining the source files, or linking object files, or similar. "Bundling" means shipping together, packaging together and never, ever has meant "in the same executable". You do know that .zips .gz and other packages aren't "executable" in the sense used by the GPL, right?

The example of an installer can't be more unambiguous. I quote "No. The installer and the files it installs are separate works. As a result, the terms of the GPL do not apply to the installation software." No. Full-stop. GPL does not apply.

If an installer of GPL software doesn't have to be GPL then certainly unrelated software which happens to come in same disk/download doesn't have to be.

Yeah, njharman describes bundling as I understand it as a programmer. What did you mean by "bundling"? If it was "Packaging two programs in the same archive." or "Using Cygwin Bash to kick off our proprietary program.", then those activities are unambiguously permitted.

> Piping programs into each other is okay, but once you start bundling it's all up in the air.

How does bundling mean combining it into an _executable_ file? Sure, this could be the case for an installer, but that one could also just download/copy the files.

Powershell ties in much, much better to the Windows infrastructure than any POSIX-like shell does. Managing Windows revolves around managing long-running services, and sending off requests to them which return rich data objects. This is an entirely different problem set from managing processes and files.

Modifying Windows to be administrable through a POSIX shell would change what Windows fundamentally is. I'm not sure that's a great idea.

Personally, I enjoy working with Powershell much more than I enjoy working with Linux in the traditional way (through a shell), and I currently don't personally own a Windows machine.

I don't think a shell is a very good interface for direct use; it's entirely non-discoverable past man pages. It's a great interface for developing reusable tools, though. I strongly dislike having to use it directly, preferring to develop scripts that I can access from my text editor.

As a developer, I think what you want from a shell is different from what a Windows admin wants from their shell. The Windows admin wants to manage the services they have installed; the developer wants to manage whatever files they have in their source tree. I don't think it's particularly terrible that Windows should be bundled with a tool for administrating Windows, rather than a tool for developing new software.

OSX is less unix than it can get. No X. Crazy apple-only-standards... Heck you can't even use vim!

i will eat my hat if you open vim in OSX and be able to copy/paste. The + register just goes to nowhere. OS X is broken unix.

windows sucks in many regards, but it always had million more devs than OSX... i know implementing fixes on top of windows goes against the free software philosophy, but there are already too many. I can run remote X apps from another box easier on windows than OS X.

The only leverage apple ever had was IOS. you are forbidden by law to emulate IOS or OSX on any non-apple hardware. so people started to be forced to use macs. it wasn't natural adoption. And IOS is only relevant while we have dumbed down smart phones. Now that this became a standard tabled (a full computer, that you can run windows or even install linux) IOS will lose appeal, and apple will be sidelined to the history of computer history as it always manages to get it self into.

downvote with all the hate you want. you know it to be true :)

http://www.opengroup.org/openbrand/register/brand3602.htm

Wow. I think you mean broken X, which makes sense because it isn't based on X and X isn't included by default. The command line vim uses the X clipboard.

UNIX is a separate standard from X. IMO part of really appreciating UNIX is appreciating what is part of UNIX and what sits on top of it. I think that most server-side UNIX installs have a "broken" clipboard in vim too.

The standard distribution of vim includes integration with X11 and Windows, and that's where console vim on linux gets its clipboard from. MacVim on OS X integrates with OS X and I just fired up the console vim and saw that the "+y and "+p use the Mac clipboard.

semantics. you could also says that you may have linux compatibility but no sort of libc... or a "broken libc"

Not sure I understand your post. I use vim everyday with copy & paste on my mac. Maybe the commands are slightly different than when ssh'ed into some box, but us vim users are capable of remembering many obscure keystrokes.

if you use the + register, you probably compiled it to workaround OSX limitations.

I'm sure most of would like for Windows to integrate a Bash shell, but the moment that happens, a ton of Windows sysadmins instantly wouldn't be able to do their jobs. I bet dollars to doughnuts most current Windows sysadmins (even the Powershell people) aren't proficient with Bash. God help the GUI sysadmins if this were to ever happen.

Id honestly love a dock-able iPad with a sandboxed OSX app. <-- this is my prediction as to where Apple is going. They won't merge the two OSes. One would assume that they already have an arm version of OS X running, emulation probably isn't strong enough yet.

I believe iOS is derived from OSX, so that would be correct.

I don't believe that is exactly correct. Both OS X and iOS are based on the BSD kernel, but I don't think iOS was 'derived' from OS X.

It's most certainly derived. The kernel, system libraries and frameworks are common between Mac OS X and iOS (except for Appkit and UIKit)

This article covers some of the Apple internal history of iOS

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/09/the-history-of-ios/

Why not just run Linux in a Hyper-V machine? Hyper-v is type 1.

Hyper V has no USB support (I've often needed to pass-thru USB for a VM) and unfortunately when I first tried it with Windows 8, Debian had a bug where loading the Hyper V client drivers would crash the installer.

Just a note, if you have VirtualBox or VMWare installed and you go to enable HyperV (on Win8), you may get a BSoD.

Do you mean 'sl'?

OS X is different from other Unix in many important ways that will affect you from day to day, so I wouldn't be too quick to congratulate Apple on making a Unix environment. If you want Unix, use Unix.

Today many people run their development environments in VMs with something like vagrant. That, plus the fact that *nix utilities are available through cygwin, make the choice of OS to run your editor in pretty unimportant and more a matter of personal preference.

I still use a Mac but i don't use any OSX specific software apart from some small tools which i could easily replace on other OSes.

Try looking into customizing your powershell. pls refer to https://github.com/mishkinf/PowerShellDev

I'm starting to see more and more Surface devices in my area. It seems to be getting popular with the Starbuck's salesguy crowd who need something as compact as a tablet, but they can use real applications on. I know that's kind of cliche, but you don't really "get" that meaning until you walk into a coffee shop and see 2 or 3 people sitting around with tablets sticking up on the tables. The Android and iPad guys are usually surfing the web while the Surface guy is editing a spreadsheet or doing something in Powerpoint.

Actually a great network effect is getting a presentation of some business proposal off of a Surface. Everybody who see the presentation usually asks what kind of Android tablet it is, and it suddenly turns every real-estate sales guy in the area into an impromptu Microsoft sales guy, extolling the virtues of the device and OS.

They're still too pricey by my estimation. You should be able to get one of these (maybe a low-ebd 32GB model) with keyboard for $799. I don't get why the keyboard/cover is an optional buy.

They've kind of killed this whole angle of "Surface is for getting work done" after they hedged by releasing Office on iPad.

There's a long list of tasks not covered by Office that you still can't do all that well on an iPad or Android device.

And the surface is better?

It runs almost everything you need in a 3D, music, photography, writing, or digital art workflow.

Yes, because you can switch to a full desktop mode without being constrained to a jailed mode as in iOS and Android.

For example, you cannot do programming on the go, without being connected to a server that handles your development tasks.

But is it better than a MacBook Air?

How do you turn a MacBook Air into a tablet?

The whole point people are making is that tablets aren't good for work, which is why the surface is so great.

So the surface has to be better than the MacBook Air for work, or better than an iPad as a tablet.

Otherwise it's just a compromise that is worse at both.

[edit: the downvotes are pretty indicative of the nature of this thread given that all I've done is ask valid questions to which I don't know the answer]

So to enlighten you.

With a Surface, I can go full developer mode in the desktop, while making use of, if you prefer, the old style applications.

I can detach the keyboard, switch the Metro (Modern) mode and make use of the tablet as a digital notebook thanks to pen input and handwriting recognition.

Finally, I can go put the pen aside and just use touch input.

And the ability to have a docking station made specifically for the Surface is the cherry on the top of the cake.

With a Mac Book Air, I am stuck on the classical desktop mode.

You haven't enlightened me at all. I know that the surface can do a lot of things.

The question is - does it do any of those things better than the competition.

When in "classical desktop mode" it needs to be better than the MacBook Air, otherwise for most work it will be a worse experience regardless of whether it could at any time transform into a tablet.

I do programming on my android tablet. There are several IDEs, as well as the CLI/vim kit I use. The screen is a little bit small, but the Nexus 7 is a pretty capable machine: 4 core, plenty of RAM, lots of (small) pixels and solid state secondary storage.

On my (employer) corporate Win7 laptop, the virus checker sometimes lights up the hard drive continuously, making the IDE almost unusable on it. My tablet feels pretty damn snappy.

None of the available environments is able to produce APKs that use the whole system without some server help.

Not really. The office apps for tablets are really more for a quick review and maybe a minor change, but they're nowhere near a full desktop office suite. The Surface and laptops have a real full desktop office suite (Microsoft Office, LibreOffice, etc) and can do everything you need to.

Office isn't the only thing people use to 'get work done.' One of the reasons I'm planning to get a Surface Pro instead of a Android tablet or a iPad is it is a full, real windows OS on an intel processor. I can install and run ALL my existing Windows applications on it.

For me it's more of a light laptop then a limited tablet device.

And then there's the ARM version, which manages to not have the single best feature of Windows: the outstanding backwards compatibility. A very weird decision. Maybe they'll kill it with the 3rd gen.

In a way, the ARM version makes sense; if you're going to buy a bunch of new apps anyway (iPad or Windows RT), why not get the Windows you're used to? I mean, if you're going to buy new apps all over again…

The problem with this logic is that if I'm going to buy new apps all over again, why wouldn't I buy an iPad, which has more apps and an easier interface than Windows RT, which is essentially nothing like the Windows I'm used to. If I have to re-learn a new system, why wouldn't I pick the one that everyone else uses and knows than the new one that no one else really cares about or understands (and which everyone hated when it came out).

The real key now is Universal apps; if you can build one app that works on Windows 8, Windows RT, and Windows Pro (and maybe the XBone in some cases), then we're going to see the potential for a huge increase in apps as people start realizing they can hit all three markets with 'one' build (and three UIs).

Same here. Although I still think it's a bit overpriced, being able to leverage a bunch of existing software and hardware products in a highly portable format is a big win.

I think that really speaks to Microsoft's new direction though.

It's funny, because it used to be that everything Microsoft did was in furtherance of the 'Windows über alles' philosophy, that Microsoft can only win if everyone else loses. Within that philosophy, though, there was no direction. You drank the kool-aid, and then your team just did whatever; see the famous example of the Office manager hating the idea of tablet PCs and refusing to support them in Office. Everyone was working towards the same goal (the Windows hegemony) but doing so in a disorganized fashion.

Now, it seems like Microsoft's new direction is 'stay relevant and make good things'; everyone is working in the same fashion (make new, relevant technology), but there's a lack of coherence. Microsoft making such a fantastic iPad app as Office for iPad is certainly weakens Office on Windows, Surface, Windows 8 RT, etc., but it also means that Microsoft will still be relevant even if any one of those fails. Likewise, it makes no sense for them to make a version of Office for Mac and (intentionally) cripple its compatibility to hurt the Mac's image.

Now that users aren't (and can't be) forced to use Office on Windows, the Office team needs to keep their product relevant and their revenues flowing; that means covering as many platforms as possible, and ensuring proper interoperability between them.

Basically, the Office team's job now is to ensure that Office survives, not to ensure that Windows 8 or the Surface survive.

Well, the iPad owns the tablet app world, Microsoft didn't have much choice. When [/if] Office is released for many of the differing O/S and hardware versions of Android, I'll agree your description have a point.

Edit: Close enough, dragonwriter. I yield the point. (I should have known about this. Also, why is there such a lack of optimized pad sized apps for Android? The phone ones I've seen weren't exactly using the screen area well.)

> When [/if] Office is released for many of the differing O/S and hardware versions of Android, I'll agree your description have a point.

There's a phone version for Android 4.0+, but not yet a tablet version.

Meanwhile there's not a Windows Phone version of Google anything.

I am fine with it. The are alternative for most Google products. Personally, the only thing I miss is Youtube, which ironically MS made best version out there (No ads, downloadable video and worked without crashing) before Google forced them to take it out.

Interestingly, Google has all its products out for the desktop version on Windows 8.

> Interestingly, Google has all its products out for the desktop version on Windows 8.

Comparing Windows 8.x's desktop marketshare with Windows Phone's mobile marketshare might give a clue as to the reason why Google has apps for the former but not the latter.

Yes, the same reason why Google can't avoid making its apps for iOS: "Monopoly". Windows holds a monopoly in the desktop and there is no way Google can't ignore that. Now with the announcement of "Universal apps" by MS, where you write for one windows device and easily port it over for the rest, wonder if things will change.

I'd be fine with it too if Google didn't make MS take their apps down or worse yet block IE Mobile from getting to Google Maps completely [1].

Some might call it Microsoft reaping what they have sown for years and I've even heard people applaud Google for shutting out Microsoft, but when MS is putting tons of apps on the Android store and Google is blocking Microsoft from even getting to their website, from a user standpoint I have to be pissed at Google regardless of what Microsoft has done. It's petty, it's anti-consumer just like mid-90's Microsoft, and it's certainly not "do no evil".

[1] http://mashable.com/2013/01/05/google-maps-windows-phone/

> Also, why is there such a lack of optimized pad sized apps for Android?

I suspect because Android has had significant smartphone marketshare for longer and only comparatively recently bumped over iOS in tablet marketshare, so developers targetting Android have been largely targetting it for phone apps. Fragmentation and demographics probably still make iOS much more lucrative for tablet apps (as it still is, AFAIK, for smartphone apps), but the marketshare numbers are such that the lack of tablet apps for Android should start resolving itself, the same way the lack of phone apps did.

I'm not sure.

A large part of the Android tablets sold are low end models with bad screens, used for Point of Sale (in taxis etc) or minimal web browsing. Not generally used much per day. (Afaik, statistics for web site access generally support that.)

From a business perspective I agree with you, that was huge leverage which could have boosted the sales of Surface considerably. However, from a consumer point of view, nahh that falls into the grey area of a typical monopolistic behavior. So I am glad they didn't. I am all for that gives people choices, regardless of the brand, OS or price.

I'm really excited about this, because its perfect for me (modulo not having Metro version of Office). 12" at that aspect ratio is just right for reading and marking up documents, reviewing drafts, taking notes, etc. That's 90% of my work flow.

Surface Pro 2 wasn't good enough for me because 10.6" at 16:9 was just too narrow. I either did a ton of vertical scrolling or squinted to see things in portrait mode despite having a lot of wasted space above and below. 12" at 2:3 is reasonably close to a sheet of paper (13" at 3:4).

I'm with you. When the first Pro came out, I thought "awesome idea, but I want to wait for them to iron out the inevitable kinks". The Pro 2 looked great as well, and I thought, "just one more iteration".

I don't think I'll be able to resist this time, especially because I don't think there's a Macbook Pro 15" that feels like a true upgrade from 4 year old machine.

In my experience I'm the iPad guy hacking away at code over SFTP or using my iPad for server admin over SSH and most Surface users I spot at coffee shops are using the keyboard as a stand and streaming video. Most iPad users are doing the same thing, or surfing, but I never see a Surface user not using a table-top to hold their tablet. I've seen people walking-and-laptop, walk-and-iPad, walk-and-Nexus, but never walk-and-surface as they move down the street either.

Which makes sense - it seems to be aimed at getting typical desktop-style work done. You don't usually do that while walking around.

> I've seen people walking-and-laptop, walk-and-iPad, walk-and-Nexus, but never walk-and-surface as they move down the street either.

That's an interesting observation. I think it's because with a traditional tablet, it's all one hard device that's easy to carry around, with a laptop, it's less easy to carry, but you kind of know where all the bits will go. With a flexible keyboard/case like the surface, you kind of want the keyboard out like a laptop, but it'll flop all over the place and isn't as usable in that sense. You could just fold it back and use it as a tablet, but that may not be a mode Surface users are used to.

I completely agree about the keyboard cover. That accessory is critical to the experience of using the device. Without it the Surface is an oversized tablet with a diminutive app store (yes, I know that it is a lot better than it used to be). The ability to switch it into "laptop-mode" is the key selling point, and has appeared in every demonstration of the device I've ever seen. It should be included, and they need to figure out a way to do it for less than the effective price of $930. If, as you say, you could get it bundled with the device for $799, the Surface starts to look more compelling.

Is it really laptop mode though, or does the surface pro 3 still require a table to use effectively? I might buy this if I could actually use it well on my lap!

My Pro2 is ok on the lap, but not brilliant. It's the fact that the keyboard isn't rigidly attached to the screen which makes it feel unstable. Although it's perfectly satisfactory to type, the experience isn't as good as with a netbook or MBP11.

I agree. Also, I think it relies too much on your physical proportions; if you have short legs and/or a big gut, you probably can't use it on your lap.

Given the reduced weight and width in the design budget, its a shame they don't offer a counterweighted keyboard as an accessory (with possible extension battery acting as the weight?). Although I understand why from a marketing perspective...

Check out the asus t100. It's what a low end surface would be like. I have one and i really like It.

Wow, that looks great. Even with a 500GB dock (which is exactly what I need) the 32GB version is <$400. That's netbook territory (which is what I'd be replacing).

I've just added this to my wish list.

Warning, rant. Why the duck isn't there information on the Surface Pro 3 on the MS website? Apple has done this so well, for so long, I am pissed-off MS can't get its act together. You make an announcement, you need presence on the web. You need to start your customers expectations building, whet their appetite, and tease them. Their experience starts now and right now that experience is reading news articles and reading a press release. Pathetic. Where is the video of the announcement? Where are the beautiful images and specs. Where are the carefully and lovingly crafted pages that sell this hardware to me? Tomorrow isn't good enough. Next week is utter failure. You step off stage, your site is live. Period.

> Apple has done this so well, for so long, I am pissed-off MS can't get its act together.

Apple doesn't pre-announce products at all, do they?

This was sloppy (Microsoft is going to have something up for preorders tomorrow, why not just put it up when the speech is finished?) but it's not something Apple even does.

As soon as Apple's press event is done, anything they've announced is up on their site to read about or often buy.

Is MS announces something, you should be able to go to microsoft.com to read about it.

You seem to be deliberately missing the point. Apple doesn't pre-announce products at all. Criticizing the way Microsoft did it is reasonable. Making a comparison to Apple while doing so is a little bit nonsensical.

If Apple were to get into the habit of pre-announcing products would they put detailed product data on the web? Would they allow for preorders, as Microsoft is apparently going to do tomorrow? Who knows? Not having to make decisions like that is part of the advantage of not pre-announcing products.

I'm not expecting it to be available for purchase/pre-order (although that's nice). But if you announce it, the information you announce should be on your website.

That just seems like common sense.

What if Amazon announced they were going to start selling houses and then decided not to put any information about it up on their site for a few hours? Plenty of people would go to Amazon.com to learn about it and they're only frustrating those people who have already shown themselves interested in the product.

I don't disagree. If it wasn't clear from what I wrote, I just think the comparison with Apple was gratuitous. Saying Apple gets this right when they don't do it at all makes no sense to me.

I guess as a consumer I have to ask which I'd prefer: this slightly broken Microsoft process, or not learning about products at all until they go on sale. I actually do prefer the Microsoft process.

Ah, that's what's going on. I'm not talking about announcing products before they ship, that doesn't matter to my point.

When a company makes an announcement, any announcement, they should put the information on their website. To leave a vacuum when you have that information ready is odd. I don't understand how a company could, in 2014, announce a product and not update their website.

Let's pick another company: Tesla. When they announced the model S and the model X they put the information on the site. The model X still isn't out (and won't be for what, a year+?) but they put the information they announced up on their site for interested people to see.

Sloppy, or simply "not evil"?

http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/12/15/apples_worldwide_l...

The lengths at which Apple goes to prevent leaks is straight up evil.

    According to the source, Apple takes leaks very 
    seriously. When a leak is suspected, a very specific 
    protocol is followed, involving the confiscation of all
    cell phones and a total blackout of all unmonitored 
    communication. "It is like a gag order, and if the 
    employee does not want to participate they are 
    basically asked to leave and never come back," says Tom.

    "The same Worldwide Loyalty Team does many other things 
    to keep everyone in check, from searching out the email 
    history of every employee, to seeding fake images to 
    catch potential leaks and diffuse the hype about some 
    product introductions."

I've got a couple friends who work for Apple, and they tell me that entire story is utter fiction, they've never heard of a "Worldwide Loyalty Team" - when they read that story they thought the entire things was written in the vein of an Onion like spoof and thought it was funny that people took it seriously.

People who leak things are fired, people have to sign pretty strict NDAs, certain areas are locked off, and certain projects are restricted as to who you can talk about them with - but, that's about it. (And none of those things are completely unheard of in other companies either)

I'm not sure why you were getting downvoted because the one thing that stuck out to me, after saying to myself "Huh, I'd love to get one of those to play around with." was that in the marketing page [1] it said "Go to microsoftstore.com/whatever" to preorder one yet when I poked around that site there was no reference whatsoever to the Surface Pro 3.

It just seems odd to go to so much trouble for the unveiling and then say, "but you can't check out the specs/look at accessories/drool over it" until 12:01am.

[1] http://blog.surface.com/2014/05/announcing-surface-pro-3/

Maybe because they're still selling Surface2's? But some cohesive story like Surface2 is now $X00 cheaper, or pre-order Surface3 today would be the level of messaging needed to match Apple.

http://surface.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/html/pbP... ?

If you go to microsoftstore.com it shows a giant countdown to when you can preorder the SP3 and a large banner mentioning the SP3 getting added to the Surface family. Clicking on that banner loads into the above link with all the details of the SP3 and pricing and everything.

it's now on their front page

Small things continue to kill the surface pro acceptance:

- The Surface site on the surface site hasn't updated with surface pro 3 info/pricing. The run way for this is long, why isn't the site updated or ready to go?

- Accessories are notoriously out of stock. Why are they hard to get? Docking station, keyboards, mice. Fix that.

- The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?

- Updates for firmware and drivers assume enterprise infrastructure. Without the infrastructure you need a manual upgrade using command line tools. The updates don't come through the normal windows update channel. You have to discover them on your own.

- The track pad on the type/touch cover is flaky . Its forever getting stuck in a fixed place and stuck on gestures you cant turn off or control. You end up having to disconnect the cover and reconnect. this is stupid for an elite/pro device.

Despite the gripes these devices continue to show promise and I see them more and more around airports and coffee shops.

When the cursor gets stuck, just press one of the arrow keys to unstuck it (works for my Surface Pro Gen 1 with the type cover).

I've got a Surface Pro 1 (with Type Cover 2), and have never had problems getting firmware and driver updates from Microsoft Update. Have no idea what you're talking about regarding "manual upgrade" with CLI tools.

I was talking about these driver/update packs for Surface Pro 2:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3882....

I've never seen these updates come through standard Windows Update for the Surface Pro 2.

"This firmware and driver package contains drivers for all of the components in the Surface Pro device, as well as updates to the system firmware that have been released via Windows Update."

>The run way for this is long, why isn't the site updated or ready to go?

I don't think that's a big problem.

> The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?

Dog slow as well, I suspect it's USB!

> Updates for firmware and drivers assume enterprise infrastructure.

Not my experience at all, windows update did all my driver updates and at least one firmware update too.

> The track pad on the type/touch cover is flaky

They claim to have addressed this (which you know, because you read the article right?)

>> The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why? > Dog slow as well, I suspect it's USB!

The weird thing is that the dock has USB 3 ports, which can easily support a GB LAN connection. I was going to buy one for my Surface Pro (gen1) until I saw that it was 10/100. You're better off buying something like a Plugable (plugable.com) USB 3 dock.

> Dog slow as well, I suspect it's USB!

What, the Ethernet doesn't give full 100 Mbps throughput?

The dock has 10/100 Ethernet. In 2013-2014? Why?

Can any of the onboard hardware actually handle a 1Gbit firehose? 100Mbit is enough for any streaming you could throw at this thing.

It's not that gigabit is too much, it's that 100mb isn't enough. Pulling a file from a server at 10 megabytes per second is dreadful compare to 50 or 60

Oh, I agree, I just wonder how many 10GB files anyone would be transferring onto a 64GB Surface.

It has been a pain in the ass to get PXE booting working on the Surface Pro 1 and well as Lenovo's Yoga and Yoga 2. Some of their USB-Ethernet adapters don't support PXE at all.

- Accessories are notoriously out of stock. Why are they hard to get? Docking station, keyboards, mice. Fix that.

This is indeed painful. Every time I check the Canadian MS Store site, the Power Cover is out of stock.

The Surface Store is also not trivial to buy from. I live in a country where Surface Pro isn't sold officially (a blunder in itself, if you ask me) and I failed to buy from MS Store. I transferred funds to an American friend and they failed too! They even spent half an hour on the phone with useless MS tech support person, who doesn't acknowledge their fault: (it must a fault on be bank's, Paypal's site, but not MS') I gave up and bought on Amazon; still waiting for shipment (the issue with a particular seller).

I have mixed feelings with regard to this new release. I didn't expect MS to announce it that soon and it's kinda frustrating to have a new model be announced while you are still waiting for the previous one, but I'm not sure I would like the newer, larger form-factor, digitizer, design and color better. I own a 12" ThinkPad now, and I want to try switching to Surface in part because it is smaller, which ThinkPad is refusing to be over the years. Would it kill MS to make a newer, smaller, variant, along with the larger one? OTOH, I kinda expected MS to back away from what good it came up with, with their tablet. Microsoft is not known for sticking to their ingenious innovations, like Lenovo and Sony and unlike Apple.

As a proud Gen 1 Surface Pro owner, this looks spectacular.

My Surface replaced my laptop, and while I definitely had my issues with the transition (trackpad sucks so often use external mouse, aspect ratio is inconvenient for Office, display angle is limiting, and no built-in LTE), I've ultimately come to enjoy using it.

I've almost always got it with me, and I've found I've become nearly as productive on it as I was with my laptop. I've been willing to make the "nearly" tradeoff since I have it on me more often, so more opportunity to be productive, and I do use it as a tablet in ways that I obviously couldn't with my laptop.

The updates in the Gen 3 address nearly all of my gripes (why can't they integrate LTE??). I'm not sure if I'll pick up a 3, but only because my Gen 1 is less than 2 years old and still under warranty. If not a Gen 3, then a Gen 4 will definitely be on my shopping list.

I can't imagine I'll go back to a normal laptop. I guess I'm exactly who they are targeting.

> The updates in the Gen 3 address nearly all of my gripes (why can't they integrate LTE??).

I suspect that enough of the people who want LTE have shareable (wirelessly or with wires) LTE modem with them at all times as to make the added cost of integrated LTE not a particularly effective selling point for the added cost (and very much not attractive for the base model, so it would necessitate added SKUs, as well.)

Oh indubitably! It was really more of a rhetorical question, but it is my biggest lingering gripe and wish the segmentations would work in my favor to make it a viable/valuable option for them.

It's just frustrating to see that the Surface 2 (not pro) has integrated LTE as an option, but it's not available for the Pro line.

Yeah I have a Surface Pro 1 and I now use it for everything - development, taking notes, writing apps, playing minecraft, scribbling on PDFs. The direction they're taking the Pro 3 seems to be a good clear message at last 'the tablet that can replace your laptop' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t7rSZT_77E The bigger screen is a good move I think.

I've started using the ArcTouch mouse with my surface when I'm out and about, rather than the touchpad on the cover. Works pretty nicely and folds flat. But then I've always preferred a proper mouse to a touchpad.

Just out of interest, are you developing on Windows? Do you have any experience running Linux on them or know if that's pretty much a no go?

For my case, windows runs vagrant pretty well, so i have no problems developing web apps on windows as i have used vagrant on OSX before anyway.

Microsoft needs to keep at it. While this iteration is great, the platform will not flourish if they falter or take a release cycle off. Consistent upgrades to the Surface hardware, and support of the developer community is key to winning the overall tablet war for MS.

While it's great to see Microsoft innovating like this and pushing their product aggressively forward, it must really chafe with their OEM community. Why would you buy some clunky classic notebook when you can get a Surface 3 for virtually the same price?

It's basically impossible for OEMs to compete when Microsoft can include Windows for free and they have to pay a premium to bundle it.

I really haven't seen the surface pro compete on price. Similar Lenovo offerings for 256GB and 512GB SSD ultra books have similar pricing. I honestly think MS shopped around the concept of surface to OEMS and I think the OEMs said "Pass. No Thanks. we'll stick with our incremental and existing form factors".

I think MS was forced into a corner and concluded they needed to go it on their own.

Kind of like how Razer built their own laptop - the OEMs have stagnated and their hardware isn't competing on an innovation front.

This new surface starts at $799 which puts it clearly in thee mid-range notebook market where there are plenty of compelling alternative laptops, many of which sport clearly superior hardware. Bump it up to an i5 or i7 and I'm sure the price will be north of $1K.

The premium paid here is the form factor and it's related features so the comparison to traditional laptops isn't valid (even if MS is making it). Maybe if you're cross shopping svelte, premium laptops the Surface 3 would be an option, but not for someone looking for a $400 i3 Windows laptop.

>Why would you buy some clunky classic notebook when you can get a Surface 3 for virtually the same price?

Well one of the reasons why I got my first gen Surface Pro was because none of the OEM's were making a similar product. Did you notice how awful the options were before the Surface came out? The OEM's were doing nothing but cashing in on the "Windows" name, throwing in a crappy product with Win 8 and some their own proprietary bloat and call it a "Windows Tablet". This was the only way MS could save their name, introduce itself to the tablet market and step up the game. I am all for what doesn't cause stagnation in the market.

As far as I can tell the surface pro 3 is still not lap friendly, which makes it a no go for my working preferences (a sofa chair at Starbucks sans table).

I'm interested in what the OEMS will produce, if only I could get a true convertible with hi dpi + decent stylus support! I would buy that (yoga pro 2 is tempting, but no stylus + crappy trackpad...). Competition is good (and I say that as an MS employee).

>As far as I can tell the surface pro 3 is still not lap friendly

Huh? Din't they demonstrate that on the video? he was using it on his lap at multiple angles and including his legs stretched. If they missed that part watch it here[1]. It starts around 41 minute mark.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/may14/05-20w...

I use my laptop on my lap for about 4 hours a day coding. I really need a laptop that works as a laptop in that case, nit just something I can use on my lap occasionally. Perhaps someone will make a counterweighted and braced keyboard like they have for iPad to solve this problem.

>Perhaps someone will make a counterweighted and braced keyboard like they have for iPad to solve this problem.

Did you watch the video I posted above? He does show the feature where the top of the keyboard can be folded and magnetically attached to the bezel to provide a stable structure.

I am just curious, what kind of job requires you to place your laptop on your lap for 4 hours a day? I learned it the hard way not to put laptops on lap after getting a burn (it was an old hp laptop), one of the reasons that prompted the name change from laptops to notebooks. Although now most have moved the vents to the side, I still feel unsafe to place it on my lap for a long period of time. Then there is also [1]

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/11/05/us-laptop-testicle...

I've seen he old one many times, it just doesn't seem like the typing experience would be very good...try typing on a piece of cardboard....for example. A beefier keyboard is really needed for laptop usage, braced in somehow into the tablet. The new video isn't loading for me right now, but I'm in china so....

It's my preference to use a laptop on lap, and I don't have a problem with it using modern ultra books (like an X1).

>It's my preference to use a laptop on lap

Gotcha. Here is that video on Youtube if you are still interested [1]

[1] http://youtu.be/ZfvhKBp-Chw?t=42m

I can view it at work (well, it is Microsoft). The leg crossing experience is interesting (that is a common posture for me). I really need to try this to get a feeling for whether it would work form me or not.

Just when I was "boohoo"-ing over Sony Vaios entirely leaving (WORLD & ~JAPAN), MS does this. Awesome. I would probably buy one if I didn't just buy a new laptop 2 months ago.

The slightly bigger screen also makes this a worthy competitor to "real" laptops (as in, 13" and up) - a first for the Surface IMO.

3:2 screen ratio is a killer feature. The size (800g, 9.1 mm) is quite unbelievable as well.

Except there's not much point to a 12" portrait tablet. How often do you think you'd be using such a tablet in portrait mode?

I use my ipad in portrait mode for reading pdfs and because it's easier to hold; I don't think that changing the aspect ratio would make much of a difference for either of those tasks, but it would make typing in landscape mode much better

12" portrait is the right size for working with Word documents and PDFs.

Well, 14" would be better for letter-sized documents, but 12" is tolerably close to right.

Do you print your letters on US Legal or something like that?

> Do you print your letters on US Legal or something like that?

No, "letter size" was a reference to US Letter, which is 8.5"x11", which has a 13.9" diagonal, so a 14" screen would be about right (a little small for a 100% display if it is 3:2, because US Letter has a 1.29:1 aspect ratio rather than 1.5:1.)

US Legal is 8.5"x14" which is closer to 3:2 (1.65:1) but also 16.4" diagonal.

Whoops, forgot about the difference was of measuring screens & paper...

I have a huge library of PDFs that I prefer to read on a fast tablet (where I can annotate and so on). This is a big plus for me.

It will be interesting to see how that aspect ratio feels. I definitely like the 4:3 ratio on the iPad, and hate the fact that Android devices are all 16:9 or 16:10, which is a terrible tablet ratio for anything other than watching widescreen video content. I would also prefer a laptop with a taller display. 3:2 might be a really good sweet spot.

Really impressed by this, especially the 3:2 ratio screen which will be great for writing and for browsing, and amazing for photos. The pen looks great. I've recently been given an iPad by work as part of a trial. It's great for quick e-mails, but really seems hard for me to get 'proper' work done. This might be the thing - shame I have to pay for it.

It's really irritating that Lenovo won't source these for the X-series laptops.

Looks awesome.

I always say I won't buy a tablet until it is as useful as my laptop - this is a great step in that direction with the multi position stand, 12" screen, core i7, thin and light...Will I actually enter the tablet world?

Did I miss that or they said nothing about the battery duration? For me that's a very important information. For the rest is a really great piece of hw

edit:

Yep I missed: "Over ~20% more battery life than any product Surface has shipped before"

and: " battery life is up to 9 hours on the Surface Pro 3."

The anandtech live blog says it's 20% better than surface pro 2.

What version are they testing though, the Core i3? What is the Core i7 battery life I wonder...

Idle power consumption of Cores is about the same.

I really hope a real world battery test isn't just checking stuff at idle.

...and how hot it gets!

"The first surface that can't boil your eggs" would be a slogan that make me buy one.

I was holding out for this announcement to upgrade my Surface Pro, which I've been happily using as a main work PC for more than a year now. I'm not big on the size/aspect ratio change--I don't carry a bag around, and the current surface is about as large as I'd want to handle. A bigger, presumably floppier keyboard isn't too enticing either.

3:2 makes the portrait mode go from silly to potentially useable, except for the part where almost no Windows programs are actually usable in portrait mode, and of course the keyboard requires landscape mode anyway.

With no interesting spec upgrades over the Pro 2 (I was hoping for LTE, or more ports) I think I'll get one of those instead.

3:2 is the feature that makes me actually want one of these now. I find that 16:9 on a screen the size of the Surface's is okay for watching video and not much else. I have the original "RT" Surface and my biggest complaint, even over the awful performance, is the aspect ratio. It's not comfortable to hold in your hands in either orientation and it isn't helpful for most productivity-related stuff.

Portrait orientation is important to me, but there are very few applications that I actually use in it, the top one being a browser. With a keyboard attached in landscape, the extra screen area will be extremely welcome.

Looks good, but I was expecting a screen with the same specs as Google's Chromebook Pixel. I understand that, beyond a certain point, pixel density ceases to be relevant, but the different numbers mean this is a different part.

Now, I wonder how good would Linux support be.

Also, weighting a keyboardless tablet with a MacBook air is disingenuous at best.

They put the typecover on - stills weigh less.

Image link that prove it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BoF3_u-IgAE2WBh.jpg

After seeing that photo, "this other device with a significantly larger screen weighs more" isn't so impressive.

No, not at all. I stated elsewhere: The point of the comparison isn't to compare the two products against each other, but rather to suggest that the Surface is more power/technology for less weight as a portable device.

Macbook Airs have 11.6" or 13.3" screens. So it's about 1 inch difference in either direction.

You mean 0.4 versus 1.3?

Is that a mechanical backlit keyboard? Are we comparing apples to apples (no pun intended)?

The point of the comparison isn't to compare the two products against each other, but rather to suggest that the Surface is more power/technology for less weight as a portable device.

Putting two objects on a scale is pretty much the most literal way to compare them. You're being far too generous in your interpretation here.

No, I'm not. I was watching the live feeds - they even put both iPad plus MacBook Air on the scale versus the Surface Pro with the pure intention that one would carry both laptop and tablet on a daily basis, and that they are aiming to have the Surface be a full solution in a single, smaller form factor. Again, it is pretty clear that the intent wasn't to present the weight of product A vs product B, but rather the weight of one solution versus others.

Edit: Otherwise, the comparison is completely redundant - different form factors, different materials, difference screen sizes, etc.

Even the whole theme of the event was that the want the Surface to replace laptops. "You've been told to buy a tablet, but you know you need a laptop. Today we're going to focus on that, and only on that, taking that conflict away."

I would expect a brand new just launched device with the most recent technology available would stack up favorably against an older device that uses a different form factor and has not been significantly updated in about a year.

It's like saying your V-8 Corvette is lighter than your 3 year old V-8 Dodge Challenger. I would be very surprised if it weren't.

I have both the touch and type (mechanical backlit keyboard) covers. The difference in weight between the two is barely noticeable so trust me the way the scale is tipping over, it wouldn't make much of a difference with the substitution. Regardless, a fair comparison would be iPad with its keyboard cover too.

According to the press release it is less than the 11" macbook air too.

I look at the environment in which the product was presented and it's just one no-no after another. Check out this photo:

http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/05/20/microsoft-unveils...

They've picked some awful desaturated blue/green wallpaper image that clashes with the tiles that are supposed to be so great in Windows. Then the tiles themselves have this weird whitespace issue that creates an imbalanced appearance and even allows some tiles to use a right-aligned symbol rather than the default center.

To say nothing of the shirt Panay is wearing. Nice and shiny, I'll give it that.

Then I watch the MS dubstep ad for this product and it's just a bunch of meaningless flash. You don't even get to see people smiling, just music and lights (dah dah-dah). Oh and a pen writing on the screen, as if that's some miracle of modern technology. You can take notes with pictures in them, too.

This is a step up from most Windows laptops, I'm sure, but the presentation really needs improvement. There is amateur work that is so much better than this. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugmR9nq3Yiw -- Wacom review done by an Australian cartoonist.

I have a similar issue with the Metro color scheme. It's incredibly overstimulating. Each time I open the start menu, I feel like I just walked in to a kindergarten. I wish there was a way to make it black and white b.c applications icons are generally colored as it is (but get washed out by the tsunami of color coming at you)

Really akward that they made a point of saying the device is 'fanless' when it clearly has a fan and vents around the side. Sure it might be a very nice and quiet fan, but it sounds disingenuous to be saying there isn't one.

Yeah I watched the event and I didn't understand that part, he first called it fanless and then waxed poetic about how nice and hidden the vent is and how thin the fan is. Maybe marketing told him that it was okay?

For reference:

Surface Pro 3: 12" @ 2160x1440 => 216 PPI

MacBook Air 11": 11.6" @ 1366x768 => 135 PPI

MacBook Air 13": 13.3" @ 1440x900 => 128 PPI

MacBook Pro 13" (Retina): 13.3" @ 2560x1600 => 227 PPI

(Rumor) MacBook Air 12" (Retina): 12" @ 2304x1440 => 226 PPI

Don't forget the horrors of Windows high DPI scaling.

Poor, blurry Google Chrome.

Edit: I was inspired to look into it a little more, and it looks like Chrome does have high-DPI support: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chrom...

It has to be enabled by a registry key and seems to break Chrome's notification tray icon.

I was actually thinking about asking that, I have no idea how things will look at such high resolutions. I do use Windows on a Macbook Air 13" and it's pretty much retina to me but I'm getting old, I don't think I'll recognise a pixel anymore during the upcoming years. :)

Win8 desktop is definitely better than Win7. The worst thing is that the scaling (and touch) breaks all the non-standard GUI kits.

XMind, for example, has icons that you can hardly see on my Pro2.

Unity3D's GUI scales up correctly but there are a whole load of fixed-sized panels that become too large to be useful.

Chrome's font rendering is still screwed even on low DPI windows machines, especially if Google Web Fonts are used.

Dell XPS 13: 13.3" @ 1920x1080 = 166 PPI

Asus Zenbook Prime: 13.3" @ 1920x1080 = 166 PPI

Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga: 12.5" @ 1920x1080 = 176 PPI

Lenovo Yoga 2 Pro: 13.3" @ 3200x1800 = 276 PPI

Notice in the video he didn't weigh an iPad, he weighed the MacBook Air. Microsoft is going after laptops – not tablets – with the Surface. This makes sense to me because when I'm working I need a keyboard (typing is just too important). When I'm in a meeting I want to jot notes down with a stylus (feels more personal then typing). This is a pretty impressive bridge between these ideals.

I bought a Surface Pro 2 a while back, mostly excited about the digitizer. I was definitely not disappointed.

From a casual digital artist's perspective (read: I draw a webcomic and occasionally dabble in hobbyist animation), this is a dream device. The ability to sit at my desk with the tablet hooked up to KVM via a USB hub, write and edit my script like on any desktop computer, then simply unplug and start drawing right on the screen is an amazingly satisfying work-flow. Looks like the Surface Pro 3 will only make that even better with the larger screen area.

With the right tools that are touch-enabled for panning, zooming, and rotating, it's basically the perfect way to work.

If this has good support from *BSD (or perhaps, Linux) -- this sounds like it might be the device that'd tip me from laptop to tablet user as a primary machine.

$799. Impressive. I think this is a big moment for Microsoft.

Impressive, as in cheap or expensive? It depends on your perspective.

I meant cheap for what it is (or seems to be).

Strange, I think it's the opposite. That's a lot of money for an i3 with little memory. It's cheap next to a MacBook Air perhaps, but still quite expensive.

MacBook Air base model ($900):

* 1.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor

* Turbo Boost up to 2.7GHz

* Intel HD Graphics 5000

* 4GB memory

* 128GB PCIe-based flash storage

The base Surface is cheaper than the Air but the second tier Surface (The one with more or less parity) is $100 more than the Air.

Don't forget that with the Surface, you're also paying a premium for the touchscreen and digitizer with pen, which is not available on an MBA.

Edit-- removed the word "Wacom", turned out to be a false assumption.

however for $100 more you get a High DPI touchscreen and a digital pen but the GPU (HD4400) is a bit slower.

Looks like the specs / pricing might be as follows.

Core i3, 4GB RAM, 64GB storage - $799

Core i5, 4GB RAM, 128GB storage - $999

Core i5, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage - $1,299

Core i7, 8GB RAM, 256GB storage - $1,549

Core i7, 8GB RAM, 512GB storage - $1,949

http://www.zdnet.com/surface-pro-3-price-and-spec-leak-70000...

4GB RAM? A couple of Chrome tabs and I'll be out of memory.

Why not let me choose how much of each component I want? I'd be interested in having 64GB storage, with 8GB+ RAM and at least an i5. I personally don't need so much disk space on a portable device.

Because all the components come soldered to the motherboard out of the factory, I suspect, the same way Apple has been shipping notebooks recently.

Why? Last year it was a Core i5 for just $100 more. Now it's $100 less for Core i3 (and of course all the other components would be cheaper by now, too, which either allows them to improve some of them a bit, or keep buy them cheaper than last year, like the 64GB storage).

> According to Microsoft’s Panos Panay, “This is the tablet that can replace your tablet.”

Does that man have his doctorate in Tautology, or a PhD in saying the same things twice?

This tablet will replace your tablet (probably an iPad).

This is a notebook killer literally. It is for taking notes as a notebook should do. Maybe it is a laptop killer for some too.

Comparisons with Ipad and ohter tablets are ridiculous. This is a working machine.

I think this will be my next machine.

Nobody in the press has mentioned the new power connector by the way. If you look at the docking station all connections are done by this connector. I hope there will be a cable based adapter for usb+dp+power too.

And there goes Samsung Note Pro 12.2. The Surface Pro 3 cost's the same, is only 1mm thicker and 50g heavier. And runs full Office and Photoshop.

The ability to use Visual Studio on the go, while keeping the capabilities of a tablet is quite nice.

It sure is on my list, in case I need a laptop replacement.

The only downside to this is the HD 4400 graphics unit. [1] I'm worried about it running everything smoothly at 2k. The HD 5000 is much better suited to run at that resolution.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/download/presskits/surfa...

After talking to people in the know, the reason they didn't upgrade to the Haswell with HD 5000 is they didn't want the increase in power related to having the extra graphics units.

My Samsung ATIV Book 9 Plus has a HD 4400 graphics unit and runs fine at 3200 x 1800, so you shouldn't have to worry unless you're doing something pretty graphically intensive.

Same here. I run graphical software like Office and Photoshop on my 3200x1800 ATIV Book 9 Plus and haven't noticed any performance issues.

Some interesting decisions here. No RT version. Home button on the short edge not the long edge. Clear marketing message: "The Tablet that Can Replace Your Laptop" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t7rSZT_77E I think they might finally be figuring out what they've got here.

While the device is nice, I still see it as very niche-y item. It's too expensive once you add in a more reasonable amount of storage and the keyboard. For those who benefit from the stylus, I can totally see it being a really useful device. I don't think it will fare any better than the previous iterations.

I wonder what the battery life and graphics performance are like? If they're decent (6+ hours of moderate use, plays CS:GO at 60fps), this will be a really great machine. The latest i7s tend to have pretty good integrated graphics, so I think at least that won't be an issue.

They claim that it's +20% compared to SP2, and SP2 achieved 8:51 on the Verge's battery test.

Looks like HD4400 which is not great, but should run older games on 720p pretty good.

Ah, that's too bad. I was hoping for Iris graphics. (CS:GO at 60 might still be doable, though.)

I would love to see Microsoft come out with Windows/Developer which targeted people who were creating applications rather take existing Windows, which focusses on the big market of App users, and bolting on some developerness.

I could imagine something like CTRL-Alt-F4 on Linux where you press the key combo and the Windows/Apps view is replaced with the Windows/Develop view. Easy access to terminal screens, build tools, layout creators, etc.

Win+D is the desktop shortcut. I know you were talking more about a general OS paradigm but you can get pretty close.

I don't see GPS anywhere mentioned in the article or the specs on Microsoft site[1]. Is this taken for granted or did they really not included a GPS sensor with this?

It even mentions the digital compass and gyroscope sensors. I'm having a bad feeling about this.

[1] http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-us/products/surface-pro-...

Was anyone else really uncomfortable with Panos singling out Joanna Stern during the event? I don't know if he was trying to praise or berate her, but it just looked terrible and made me feel uncomfortable about the whole thing. Really weird why they would do that--I have no idea what message they were trying to send but it doesn't seem like a good one.

Which CPUs are there in Surface Pro 3?

I was sure the Broadwell Microsoft won't release them for another half a year, because Broadwell CPUs are not announced yet and are expected early next year, or for Christmas season at best.

I wonder whether they are the same Haswell CPUs as in SP2, or did MS get a very special treatment from Intel for Broadwell CPUs?

Does anyone know how the N-Trig digitiser compares with Wacom? I'm interested in this as a Cintiq replacement.

One thing that Microsoft could learn from Apple is to have their online store ready immediately.

Sure, you can't always buy Apple stuff immediately when it's announced (see Mac Pro), but you can always go onto the online store and 'window shop'.

Unrelated to the actual article content, but what kind of website autoplays two videos when loading the page?! One is annoying enough, but to have two videos start simultaneous doesn't even make sense. That is a terrible user experience.

Does anyone have any actual working experience with the new pen/stylus capabilities?

The only interesting part of the surface pro was the Wacom digitizer and they are ditching it.

Pricepoint is more attractive, that is for certain.

How can it be 3:2 aspect and HD at the same time? It's one or the other or it has rectangle pixels.

Edit: nevermind... comes in 3:2 AND HD display. This is what happens when you read while doing something else.

Quite a lot of digital artists were using the surface pro 2 instead of buying the Wacom companion. I think the n-trig stylus will scare a lot of them away from the surface pro 3.

No wonder it's cheaper - N-trig instead of Wacom. (I'm not commenting on the technical merits of either choice, just that one tends to be cheaper than the other.)

The parallax and purported improvements in accuracy are a big deal though. Even with a >100 point calibration, the stylus on my Surface Pro gets weird tracking on the screen's edges or when the pen is held at off angles.

I was sold once Panay clicked the Stylus and popped up OneNote instantly. There's a lot of value in that for people like me who still prefer to use a pen to take notes.

Yes, N-trig's edge performance is better. But Wacom is better supported in terms of software, has more granular pressure sensitivity and the pen does not require a battery.

What strange pricing.

    i7/256GB = $1,549
    i7/512GB = $1,949

That's a lot of money for a slightly larger SSD.

Any word on the batter life, what with it being thinner and lighter the previous models?

Awwww, man. N-Trig pen.

Is this an x86 or ARM cpu?

x86

Anyone else felt like the presentation was done by the Shamwow guy?

Figured that Tom Warren would write the most hyped-up sensationalist Microsoft PR-fed headline for this.

Price is too high, it'll never sell in the volume they expect to get (unless their expectations are quite low).

This sure is a bummer for people who recently bought a Surface Pro 2 (like me). It's unreal that a 6-month old $1200 machine already is outdated

The thing to remember is that you don't have to have the latest greatest thing. In worlds where a Surface Pro 3 was coming out now, and worlds where that wasn't happening, your Surface Pro 2 would still be able to do the same things. The presence of something newer doesn't need to diminish your existing possessions.

I wanted to buy a Surface Pro 2 but the model I wanted has been out of stock at the Microsoft Store for a few weeks now.

You may be in luck then as early adopters dump their 256Gb models on craigslist and ebay.

Yeah, looks like Surface follows a 8-9 month cycle. I bought SP2 right when it came out and then they bumped the processor by a little a month later.

It isn't all that outdated, and it isn't anything we haven't already run into with phones. The latest $600-800 iPhone is routinely outdated every, what, 18 months?

I do feel your pain a little though, I bought a Moto G just before they added the SD card slot & 4G. You've just got to come to terms with the fact that device lifetime is longer than the product cycle.

Its really not unreal -- there's new computer hardware coming out all the time. Its been true for decades that hardware you buy today isn't going to be top of the line in 6 months. But what's going to be available in six months doesn't do you any good today, either.

Ha I am on my first gen Surface, still within its original warranty and there is already two versions out. A a techie it sure is a bummer since I want the latest and the greatest. However, it still doesn't undermine the usefulness of the current one. I regularly use it, it gets the job done and I am happy with it. I will keep using it until it dies out or needs a replacement. Hey atleast by then we might have ultra thin i20 with 1 week of battery life (hopefully).

As with anything tech related, your machine is outdated the day you buy it.

Having said that, it doesn't mean your Surface Pro 2 is useless. It's still a great device with power to spare... for most people.

Got an SP2 at launch, and it has served me well. Will skip this upgrade, but it's pretty tempting with the new form factor (aspect ratio, thickness, screensize). Calibrating the digitizer for accuracy in corners is a struggle on SP2, and although I remain skeptical about N-trig, I'm optimistic that it is something they've had to notice/address when changing vendors, but losing pressure levels is kind of a bummer. The type cover touchpad update would also be a significant change, because v1&2 are borderline unusable touchpads. That is one of the primary reasons for me to holdoff on charge cover; great idea, but it took too long to ship and I'd be willingly paying for the same bad touchpad as my typecover. They would've sold far more charge covers if the touchpad was an improvement over typepad2.

I'm glad that Microsoft is committed to this offering. However, my thought process to rationalize holding off on a preorder as follows:

1) I would likely try to sell my SP2 for some amount, and my loss/cost-of-use might be significant since form factor is changing. Alternatively, if I stay the course, I might be able to pick up SP/SP2 docks & accessories from SP3 early adopters on the cheap, holiday discounts, or inventory clearance.

2) haswell has been great, but even with all the advantages of SP3, I can't justify the cost of #1 without some iGPU spec bump. MS has the $ and will likely want to ship a broadwell model eventually even if SP3 doesn't sell like hotcakes. Probably a 2015 ordeal though since holiday will be reserved for discounts & bundles.

3) SP2 got a haswell slight spec bump after launch, due to inventory I suppose, so I feel somewhat burned. Irrational, I know, but I need to acknowledge it.

4) same CPU generation, same battery, bigger screen, no chargecover -- SP2 battery life for my usage was good, but unless reviews prove otherwise, I've no reason to think SP3 will have a better battery life.

5) SP2 works well. Microsoft should have sales penalized for shipping the slate & typepad separately, if it is going for "laptop". An expected retina refresh to the ultraportable macbook line will likely be priced comparably or less than SP3 w/ typecover so marketing will have fun with that.

Anyone tried the keyboard on this model ? It's unusable, it's too soft. Did someone try another keyboard for the Surface ?

> When you write notes using OneNote you can then click the top of the stylus again, just like an ordinary pen, and it will sync those notes up to the cloud instantly so they're available elsewhere.

Elsewhere -- as in the laptop you will inevitably go crawling back to when it's time to get real work done. It's always humorous when an article about a device that is supposed to kill the laptop ends on a note like that.

Yeah, he could not have possibly meant your phone, work issued pc/laptop, etc...

Why differentiate between a personally owned and work issued desktop/laptop?

Because on of them I'm making the purchase decision for and one of them someone else is. So if I work at a place that isn't BYOD friendly, and have to do certain things on my work-issued desktop, its very good if I can easily access the notes from my personal tablet convertible that I'd prefer to take to meetings when I am using that desktop.

I use my Surface to take notes in meetings. The notes are transparently synced to my main desktop machine, ready to be broken into tasks or emailed out. If I've taken notes with the pen, the desktop version is able to convert them into text. It's a workflow that is working out well for me.

Why are they still trying to turn a tablet into a desktop? They are different things, with different purposes - not everything needs to be the same thing.

Tablet All The Things!!

Try looking at it another way. I have my laptop plugged into my monitor 90% of the time, and I use it with a keyboard and mouse attached. So, I rarely touch the hardware.

When I do, use my laptop, I'm using it for the same type of things I would use a tablet for 70% of the time. Rarely am I actually doing any coding on it, but when I need to, I need to.

Therefore, I can add a 3rd device, a tablet, into the mix, but why bother? One well built device now handles 100% of my use cases.

I suspect many people don't use the surface as a tablet most of the time, but when you want to, it's nice to have that capability.

It's nice but it must suck when faced by the behemoth that is the iPad.

The differentiator is the OS. One of them is for play, the other is for productivity. Comparing full Windows 8.1 to iOS is Apples to Oranges.

Keep telling yourself that. Meanwhile, back here in reality, iOS dominates the enterprise:

http://media.www1.good.com/documents/rpt-mobility-index-q413...

Hacker News 2014: where empty, baseless Microsoft marketing regurgitation gets upvotes and actual statistics get downvotes.

Keep making enemies, Microsoft. That'll be a very effective strategy.

OR maybe Hacker News 2014: where people grew up to look past their fanboism and review a product for what it is.

Not among the microsoft fanboys, clearly, which is the entirely point.

But, you know, why don't you go ahead and regurgitate a Microsoft market phrase since that apparently trumps actual facts. Note that I'm the only person who actually cited a real source with hard numbers in this discussion, and I've been the most downvoted. Go figure. I suppose we've already established that actual facts are irrelevant to you people.

How many MS fanboys do you think there are on HN? If there were any considerable, this MS pro post like any other wouldn't get flagged off from the frontpage in less than 8 hours.

>why don't you go ahead and regurgitate a Microsoft market phrase since that apparently trumps actual facts.

What facts are your referring to? That iOS dominates the enterprise world? It may but its rarely work related, my gf and her colleagues got awarded an iPad from work (she is not a techie), the most she does is email some documents and maybe make minor excel modifications. Its shouldn't take a genius to figure out that the current versions of tablets are anything but a productivity tool. I am not going to say Surface dominates the enterprise market but more realistically no tablet dominates it yet. However on a wild guess, I believe a hybrid version of any OS on a tablet would be the future.

> It may but its rarely work related

What data do you have to support this obviously unfounded statement? Let's see:

> my gf and her colleagues ...

umm its a statement based on my observation and not a fact... I can only make an assumption on what goes around me. If you want to believe that iPad is the tablet that replaces the enterprise workload and would replace the desktops in the corporate world, then by all means be my guest to that illusion. However don't go around expecting everyone to buy into it. I think you want to live within that "fact" so its a pointless to make an argument.

iOS is great for certain tasks but comparing it to OSX or Windows for productivity is silly. I have 3 iOS devices in my household, we love them. None of us use it for work though, they're leisure devices. No one at my company uses iOS for work, they use Windows and OSX. Also, your link is showing smart phones and tablets used at work, which certainly favor iOS. What does this have to do with the Microsoft Surface?

I agree, what does anything have to do with the Microsoft Surface? As I can tell, it has virtually no traction for "work," which makes it entirely irrelevant outside of the flood of fanboys in announcement discussions on the internet.

Anyone wanna sponsor a broke but aspiring student (me!) with one? :)

I still can't get my head round paying for one of these at £1000+ when it's effectively disposable if anything goes wrong. I bought a used i7 Lenovo T410 a couple of weeks back for £150. Totally serviceable and the battery it came with lasts 6 hours. This will be my workstation for a couple of years, plus if its like my T400 it lives in the back of the sofa and takes a beating every day. I'd kill a surface in about two days.

You bought a used laptop which is slower, no touch screen, digitizer, pen, Windows 8, SSD, etc. That's like comparing an old Blackberry to the iPhone 5. There's really no reason to try and compare them.

I don't use a touch screen or a pen. It's fully supported on windows 8 and I stuck my Samsung 840 Pro in it.

It does however have a decent keyboard, a trackpoint, 3G card, a service reputation and a bomb proof chassis. All of which reduce the ownership risk and make my day slightly better.

plus 150 quid... That's about 100 dollars cheaper than what I can find in the states with those specs. Additionally if a part fails, MUCH easier to fix.

Comparing apples to oranges as both devices serve a moderately different purpose. Mainly body position while using them (Laying flat and using my finger directly on the screen to read books and watch movies or sitting up and using my finger on the keyboard to read books and watch movies).

>> I don't use a touch screen or a pen.

Simply put, the Surface Pro isn't designed for people with your use case. And more likely than not, your laptop isn't useful for the people MS had in mind for the Surface Pro.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com