
Microsoft Announces Pricing Details on Surface With Windows 8 Pro  - rbanffy
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/11/microsoft-announces-pricing-details-on-surface-pro/
======
mtgx
Along with half the battery life of even Surface RT (so about 4 hours) for
twice the price. This thing will be useless as a tablet. Might as well get a
proper and cheaper laptop (or more storage for the same price).

[http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-surface-pro-to-have-half-
the-...](http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-surface-pro-to-have-half-the-surface-
rts-battery-life-7000008113/)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you!

~~~
pook1e
Yes. You should be able to run any software that runs on Windows 8 (not to be
confused with RT). In addition, you can connect a monitor to it through the
Mini DisplayPort and mouse/keyboard through the USB 3.0 port.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JM2C.

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

>Instead of discussing the surface tablet

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

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

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kmfrk
Why so soon?

~~~
s3bast0m
Maybe Surface RT isn't selling so well after all...

