Then why in the world would you want a more expensive piece of hardware that will be more difficult to configure to your needs than just buying an Android tablet?
I absolutely want an iPad app that will allow me to see (and hopefully make) tracked changes in Word documents, so I admit the Surface caught my attention as well. I doubt I will actually buy one, but it is heavily tempting me.
I predict the Windows RT Surface will be decent, possibly even on par with the iPad in price and functionality. The problem is what the Windows Pro Surface looks like. A lot of people will want the features of full-fledged Windows but because of the hardware required I expect the Windows Pro Surface won’t sell for less than $800 and the top-end version may even go for $1100-1200.
That makes it fine as a competitor to Ultrabooks, but if early adopters buy a Windows RT Surface thinking it is an iPad-priced device letting it use full Windows it could result in a lot of unhappy customers. At the Windows Pro Surface price point you have a lot of traditional lap tops and Ultrabooks to compete with and then you get into questions about whether people who want all the features of full Windows need or desire it in a tablet form factor. A lot of the tasks that require full Windows versus a “mobile” OS like iOS or Android also don’t lend themselves very well to the tablet form factor in the first place.
I do and I love that the keyboard is integrated, too. This seems like a fantastic replacement for my laptop. An iPad was never an option because you can’t do anything with it and I’m not spending that much money on something that won’t “earn it’s keep.” It would be extremely awesome if there was a built-in retractable power cord and a solar panel on the cover to recharge the battery.
It’s very interesting that Microsoft is releasing this product themselves, rather than through their hardware partners. I wonder what HP, Dell and the others said when they heard about this.
And I’ll be very curious to see the product. The place where I work almost exclusively uses Windows PCs, although some staff use iPhones and iPads. Will this product be a good alternative to the iPad in enterprises?
:dubious:
Huh?
Agreed. Without a keyboard I have no idea what I’d use a tablet for.
I never considered my iPad as a desktop replacement, but an iPad that could serve as my main computer (i.e. a Surface with a long battery life) would be pretty cool. With online cloud storage, I don’t need a ton of memory, so a truly portable desktop (skipping a laptop and their generally terrible battery life and weight) at a reasonable price point would be cool.
We won’t know until it ships, but I’d bet real money that the battery life on the Windows version of the Surface is going to suck.
I don’t have an iPad, but have absolutely no desire for a tablet until:
- My Excel works on it, and
- I can use a bloody keyboard, and
- Has USB hubs so I can easily copy files w/o dealing with specialized cables
So, on the face of it, I might actually go tablet shopping this Christmas.
Well, PC’s don’t come with Office, so this isn’t really an issue, is it?
The other thing that people don’t seem to notice about the Surface vs. the iPad is that the cheaper Surface (the one that presumably will compete with the iPad) has a 1366×768 screen resolution: only slightly better than the iPad 1, and nowhere near as good as the iPad 3’s Retina display (2048 x 1536). I own both of these iPads, and there is a huge difference in display quality between the two. That’s not to say that the 1 is bad…but the 3 is much better. And here we have the Surface, which is predicted to be priced competively with the iPad 3…with a display that’s 2 years behind the technology curve.
Now, okay, most other tablets have comparable resolution to the Surface. But how well are those selling? Even the Pro Surface will only have 1920 x 1080, which still isn’t as good as the iPad 3, and will likely be significantly more expensive.
I just don’t see what the allure is in the RT (the consumer version), and as for the Pro–I can see why people might want to be able to run full Windows on a tablet, but with the price being so high, why not go with an ultrabook?
- There have been Excel-compatible applications for the iPad since the beginning.
- There have been bluetooth keyboards for the iPad since the beginning.
- Meh. DropBox is perfectly capable, and it’s wireless.
Also, you may want to take a look at OnLive Desktop, which emulates a Windows Desktop (and the Office suite) on the iPad, which all takes place in the cloud (and is connected to DropBox). I’m sure there’s an Android equivalent if that’s more to your liking.
- I want Excel, not “Excel compatible.”
2, 3. Oddly enough, I prefer wires over a connection that can drop at any time. All “wireless” means to me in regards to keyboards and mice is that now I have to spend money on batteries. Ugh.
Martin Hyde provides a lot of good info, but the main thing I believe is OS market share in the tablet market. I don’t think MS really wants to dominate in tablet hardware, but does want to be a major player in tablet software. It needs to convince other companies that a MS Windows(ish) tablet can succeed in the marketplace and the Surface is going to be the demo of that.
Note that there’s a sort of chicken-and-the-egg thing with new platforms. There has to be tablet-oriented apps for it that people want to use, the developers need to have a user base in order to make writing the apps worthwhile. MS is hoping to jump start this process.
Once things get rolling, they no doubt hope that other companies will be jumping in with compatible devices, all running MS software, and it goes from there.
It’s not about whether this device succeeds, it’s about whether the general MS OS tablet-based market segment succeeds.
They have struggled with Windows Mobile and Phone 7. They don’t want to repeat their problems in that segment. (But probably will.)
Not to mention (but I will) the Zune and the Kin.
It would appear that the new version of CloudOn will do that.
Surface looks cool. Not cool enough to beat out an iPad for my personal use (it’s going to take a lot for Microsoft to win me back from Apple), but I can see that a lot of users would like a tablet that runs Office and lots of weird old proprietary Windows programs, but also has a nice modern touch-designed interface (Metro).
If they keyboard works well, then it’s awesome, and a genuine solid innovation from Microsoft in the tablet space that I’d expect to see get imitated a lot.
Those are HD resolutions at that screen size though. I don’t own a new iPad, but I’m going to guess there is some software changes required to make a “retina” display desirable. I have several 24" LCDs as monitors that are 1920x1080, and at their native resolution it’s actually a little too high. I’ll explain–in Windows, the high resolution makes some things small (especially for a man in his late 50s.) Windows has a built in fix, you can adjust DPI, so you get decently sized icons at great clarity/resolution. That’s win/win, and I’m guessing Apple has technology like that which applies to the “whole environment” on its high res displays.
However the issue you run into on Windows, at least if you’ve got your DPI on high like I do with a 1920x1080 or higher res machine, is the native Windows 7 stuff adjusts DPI perfectly. A lot of non-Microsoft software, older software and etc don’t handle the higher DPI setting, so everything looks pixellated and blurry. There needs to be some sort of software change that can affect every piece of software on the system or high res can actually lead to some undesirable effects. In a Windows environment where you’ll be running a lot of random applications from third party sources I could see that being a problem.
I look forward to you presenting DropBox as a file transfer solution to the IT dept at Boeing, for the use of Boeing employees moving proprietary company data on and off of their corporate tablets. 
Well, there are other ways of getting data onto the iPad that don’t involve using the Internet or a third-party server - for example,Files Pro.