
Leaked Windows 8 tablet pricing suggests Microsoft may have already lost the war - evo_9
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/136368-leaked-windows-8-tablet-pricing-suggests-microsoft-may-have-already-lost-the-war-and-its-marbles
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lambda
"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

I'm not a big supporter of Windows 8, but writing them off based merely on
price and specs seems a bit shortsighted.

~~~
aristidb
You're comparing the iPad with the Nomad? A curious analogy.

EDIT: I do know about the old Slashdot meme. I just think the situation is
drastically different here, hence "A curious analogy".

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freehunter
Google that quote. It's from a comment on Slashdot a decade ago predicting the
swift death of the iPod.

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prodigal_erik
Did he ever claim it would die?
[http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-
ip...](http://slashdot.org/story/01/10/23/1816257/apple-releases-ipod) just
called it lame, which it was, not that people wouldn't buy it anyway.

~~~
freehunter
Maybe swift death was an overstatement. He certainly wasn't a believer though.

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vyrotek
So Microsoft lost due to Asus pricing? I think I'll wait until Microsoft
officially releases their product and pricing before making that call. I
actually really want a Surface tablet.

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runjake
Two points:

1.) The article title and contents say it SUGGESTS Microsoft has/will lose the
war. It doesn't declare anything.

2.) Historically speaking, pricing commodity gear isn't rocket science.
History shows that competitors in the space almost always are on price parity.

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taylodl
Microsoft knows what they're doing? That's the funniest thing I've heard in a
while. For the record, Microsoft has never had a success in the mobile space
(PDAs, tablets, phones, MP3 players). They've come close a time or two but
never in the past 15 years have they been the _leader_ in any of these
categories.

Microsoft dominates the desktop. The XBox is an extension of the desktop.
They're hoping to leverage their desktop dominance into a laptop-lite tablet.

I'm betting they could care less about the user experience of Win 8 on the
desktop. After all where else are their customers going to go? Apple? Linux? A
few might. Most won't. This way they can focus all their energies into the
tablet and then use their desktop dominance to move people to their tablets
instead of Apple's. After all how many iPad owners have a Windows desktop?

It's probably the best strategy they have. We'll have to wait and see how well
it pans out for them.

And no, I have no intention of buying one of these things.

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freehunter
The Xbox, which is not a general purpose computing device, is an extension of
the desktop, while a tablet (which is a general purpose computing device) is
not? How does that make any sense?

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taylodl
The tablet is an extension of the desktop. Microsoft has never been successful
with them though. Now that the iPad has shown what a tablet can do perhaps
Microsoft will be more successful this time around.

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dmix
Apple has demonstrated that providing a premium product at a higher price
point does not equal failure.

There's been a hundred low price and low quality tablets pumped out of asia
that we never hear about after launch.

Why is that the strategy that should be followed?

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tomjen3
Because MS is not a premium product. Once Unix was a premium product, MS had
DOS. Now Apple is a premium product and MS has Windows.

MS has made billions on cheap computing, Apple has made them on expensive,
premium products.

The problem is that now MS is trying to sell budget devices, at the most
expensive price. That won't work.

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WayneDB
> Because MS is not a premium product.

In your opinion...

I'd be willing to pay extra to be able to run a full OS,
specifically...Windows, on my iPad instead of iOS.

Being able to do what I want easily: that's premium to me.

Locked down hardware, locked down OS, locked down everything: that's not
premium, that's Apple.

~~~
ralfn
>I'd be willing to pay extra to be able to run a full OS,
specifically...Windows, on my iPad instead of iOS.

That version is going to cost 800 dollars according to the article, and thats
without a keyboard/dock.

Also, the "full OS" experience, may not be as full as you would think. They
make a logical (IMHO) trade-off between performance, battery life, weight and
price. This thing wont run Photoshop, Crysis, etc in a useable way.

So, you're essentially paying 200+ dollars extra for the ability/freedom to
side-load. The target audience of this is limited to corporate use (classic
desktop as backwards compatibility) and developpers.

And this is the strategy of both MS and Apple now. They are moving the low-end
and mid-range to walled-gardens, while charging premium to professionals, who
can afford it. The cheapest win8 device with the ability to side-load? 800$ ..
The cheapest OSX device? 999$ dollars.

It will get even more expensive as the transition closes. The current price
point of a laptop didnt aim at us: it aimed at the casual market. They are now
turning the freedom to sideload (and to pirate, btw) into an expensive niche.
They are going to milk us for the fat cows we are.

This is in no way limited to Apple, unfortunately. Our best bet for an open
platform, is Android, because of its opensource nature, but be wary of the
bootlocks.

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WayneDB
I wasn't planning on running Photoshop or Crysis. I don't even run them on my
half-dozen other computers, but I do run hundreds of low-requirement programs.

The "full OS" experience, to me, is not simply side-loading either. I want an
OS that was built for general purpose computing from the get-go.

The target audience for this does not seem to be limited to corporate use and
developers. It seems to be for anyone who just wants general purpose computing
in a highly portable format. That's me. Furthermore, corporate users is not a
small market - so I wouldn't say "limited", even if that were the case.

> The cheapest win8 device with the ability to side-load? 800$ .. The cheapest
> OSX device? 999$ dollars.

Right, but it's a bad comparison because one of them is Windows and the other
is OS X. One of them is a touch enabled transformer, the other a laptop.

> Our best bet for an open platform, is Android...

Maybe what you want is an open platform. That's fine, but I don't care about
how open the platform is. I just want Microsoft's new premium device with
their premium OS because it seems to do exactly what I want it to. We'll see
though, maybe I'll be disappointed.

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vondur
We don't know what Microsoft will be charging for their own surface tablets,
I'd hold off making any conclusions until then. I'm going to guess that
Microsoft will be undercutting their "partners" in the tablet market.

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WrkInProgress
There's no mention of the storage on these Asus tablets.

The article compares to the 16 GB "new iPad" but if it has 32 GB or 64 GB,
it's actually priced in line with the respective model on the former and $100
cheaper on the latter.

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kyriakos
if windows 8 has even half the success of windows 7 it will automatically
become a big player in the tablet market considering all those convertible
laptops that are showing up. pricing will matter but getting an i7 processor
and SSD in tablet form does cost a lot and if they are to be compared to
Apple's products I believe they should be compared to MacBook's rather than
iPads. Talking about Windows 8 x86.

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rsynnott
> pricing will matter but getting an i7 processor and SSD in tablet form does
> cost a lot

These prices are for a Tegra 3 and an Atom. One assumes that if you want an i7
it'll be a little more :)

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stephengillie
_These price points jive fairly well with Steve Ballmer’s comments in an
interview with The Seattle Times last week, which suggests that between $300
and $800 is the “sweet spot” for the bulk of the PC market._

Instead of starting as a status symbol and accessory and growing into a full-
use device, Surface seems to be coming in as straight PC replacements, and
it's being priced appropriately. The keyboard dock is shown as an accessory,
but as a necessary accessory - ads seem to show Surface docked as often as
solo, and it's the best bridge to people who believe they'll never give up
their laptop. When viewed this way, it's like shrinking the laptop to remove
the keyboard, leaving just screen and processing guts. (I work with someone
who likes to complain about how he believes tablets are useless)

The $600 model says it comes with Office 2013 preloaded -- is that full office
or just the demo? Remember that Office 2010 retailed for more than $400.

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Drakim
Obviously for Microsoft including a $400 copy of their own software doesn't
actually cost $400, unless one hundred percent of the people who get the
surface would buy Office 2010 if it wasn't included.

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daspecster
I doubt Microsoft is targeting the consumer market. Most of these tablets will
probably be bought by businesses which then force their employees to use them
in their already fully integrated Microsoft ecosystem. So...I guess it depends
on what Microsoft's priorities are.

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sixothree
I don't think I could bring myself to spend $800 on a 10" tablet, nor could I
convince myself to spend $600 on a tablet that runs Win RT.

Besides, Windows 8 is just plain gross to look at and nothing ever fits on the
screen.

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unwiredben
One thing I've not seen anyone mention: MSRP for the Windows ecosystem devices
tends to not be what the devices are actually sold for. There's a lot of
margin built into those prices to allow for sales and other retail actions.
Apple doesn't have to add buffer to their MSRP as they tend to not leave much
margin for other retails; the reason you can buy an iPad at Best Buy isn't
because BB makes much money on the iPad, but because they can make big money
on the accessories.

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arocks
Of course, consumers would not be comparing Microsoft, Android and Apple
tablets as Apples to Oranges. There are various factors which influence a 'buy
decision' and price is just one of the factors.

For example, if Windows 8 tablet becomes a highly coveted or must-have gadget
then the premium pricing might look rational or justified.

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mtgx
Why would it though? Windows RT doesn't even have access to x86 apps, which
means it's starting its ecosystem _from scratch_. And that means it's even
further behind than Android in tablet apps.

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moistgorilla
Just so people know, this is not talking about the pricing for windows rt and
windows x86, which is what most of us care about.

