
The Microsoft Surface Isn’t Rosy - cgarmstrong
http://chasingperfection.co.uk/post/2013/02/01/surface-rosy
======
bitdiffusion
More FUD about the disk space issue... yes - there is a large recovery
partition and yes - you can delete it to free up space. Any yes - perhaps MS
would have been better off if they included a USB drive for recovery purposes
(although I imagine trying to walk the average user through "booting from USB"
to restore their partition would be a support nightmare).

This is just like the "omg - the desktop is gone and all we are left with is
Metro!". Um yes... unless you "show desktop" and move on with your life...

And the "purpose of the surface pro"? How about "a tablet for those who need
to be productive in a windows environment"?

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>although I imagine trying to walk the average user through "booting from USB"

How is that any worse than the current status quo of every Windows product
ever sold? I'd say it would be harder to walk mom through deleting the restore
files when she calls and says her tablet won't hold all her movies and music.

Let's just face it, MS made a very stupid decision. I could see this happening
during the Vista era, but SSDs have been mainstream for YEARS now. Windows
should have a smaller footprint and holy hell, should not have a 12-18gb cab
file to restore from on limited storage.

Enthusiasts spend way too much time making Windows SSD friendly. We need to
delete superseded update from winsxs, shrink the default massive page file,
delete the hibernate file on machines that don't need it, manually stop
superfetch/defrag even though windows is supposed to do this on its own, etc.

>And the "purpose of the surface pro"?

In the age of affordable ultrabooks, who knows. Essentially you're buying an
ultrabook without a keyboard and with a super tiny screen.

That said, I love the RT product and if the RT tablet was $299 it would sell
like hotcakes. Especially if the 'desktop mode' didn't exist. MS should never
have bothered with the Pro line and instead should have made a proper android
and ios competitor.

~~~
dpark
The screen isn't "super-tiny". It's 10.6". Compared to an 11" ultrabook,
you're not loosing a lot of screen space (especially when you consider the 11"
ultrabook probably has a much lower resolution than the Surface Pro). If
you're comparing against 13" or larger ultrabooks, then sure, the Surface
Pro's screen is small (though still higher resolution than most 13"
ultrabooks), but then that's a different conversation, and one that people
already have every time they choose between an 11" and a 13" ultrabook.

P.S. Disclosure: I work for Microsoft.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
The popular ultrabooks and all of the ones I've seen in real life are 13". My
comparison is between 10.6 and 13, which is a pretty big difference.
Regardless, I can see how this is arguable.

~~~
dpark
Definitely, if you want a 13" screen, the Surface is a poor substitute. But by
the same token, if you want a 15" screen, a 13" Ultrabook is a poor
substitute. It's a tradeoff between portability and screen size. If you're
willing to go down to the low-end of screen size for sake of portability, the
Surface Pro looks very competitive with 11" ultrabooks. If you're not willing
to go to that screen size, then the Surface Pro isn't really an option.

------
whatprojectnext
I actually thick the Surface Pro, or something like it, will be the future of
home computing. It is exactly what everyone with an iPad, including myself,
wishes the iPad would actually do. It is a tablet form factor with a the guts
of a true computer and support for multiple peripherals. Dock it wherever and
have a real computer system or take it on the go like any other tablet.

~~~
mckoss
I think it's wrong that this level of product integration is what everyone
wants; i.e. functioning as a tablet and as a laptop. One of Microsoft's most
powerful profit generators was software integration (both in Office and
Windows).

But integrated products (ones that do BOTH X and Y) are necessarily inferior
at being the best X or the best Y. A designer must make trade offs in order to
make the integration work. In the realm of software, the trade offs can be
quite small, and so the integrated whole is quite good. But in a hardware
device, integration imposes critical constraints that make integration across
functions quite painful; limited screen size, battery life, memory and
storage, etc. Perhaps the most insidious is overall UI complexity. Making a
device for keyboard and mouse is quite different than making a device with a
great touch experience. Having both (and even adding legacy Windows UI) is
very challenging.

Microsoft should not have released a "turd" if they could not achieve a great
experience within the design constraints. I think most people believe this
first attempt has serious flaws and compromises.

Because Apple has shown the world what a great experience a tablet can
provide, I think users are unwilling to compromise just so they can
occasionally connect a keyboard and mouse to it, or run legacy applications.
I'd rather carry two devices than use one (inferior) product.

~~~
whatprojectnext
I agree that the Surface is not the final realization of the ideal home
computing device but it is a decent step towards it. Eventually the device
will be a phone with the computing power of a laptop that you can dock and
have a full environment ready for you. Clearly we are not there yet but this
is a towards that reality.

------
Yhippa
I actually own a Surface RT and I like it. I get the feeling that a lot of
people try out Windows 8 or the Surface RT for a few minutes and pan it as
crap. There's definitely a learning curve associated with it but the payout is
that it's got advanced gestures that allow you to do more without a keyboard.

One thing that could be impacting sales is that you have to go to a Microsoft
Store (brick-and-mortar) or online there to purchase it. There is no try-
before-you-buy experience unless you're lucky to live close to one of those
stores.

As for the storage space what I've noticed is that I need just enough space
locally to have certain files available to me. So local storage for me is
basically a cache where I keep most of my documents in the cloud.

~~~
dpark
> _it's got advanced gestures that allow you to do more without a keyboard._

I really like the edge swiping. I miss it on other devices where menus and
such are wasting my screen space all the time.

One thing I don't like is the "swipe from left to change apps". There's a
setting to adjust that, though, so the left swipe pulls up the app switcher
instead.

~~~
Yhippa
Coming from WebOS I love swipe gestures and am more sad more OS's don't
utilize them.

I didn't know about that setting. Thanks, I'll have to check that out!

One other thing that I do like is the ability to show more than one app on the
screen at the same time as appropriate. So you can see your music app in the
left 25% of the screen while you type up a document or surf the web. Really
underrated.

------
lutusp
> How many times do I have to say it: The Microsoft Surface is a turd.

This should have been the article's title, just so readers know what the
author plans to say. Not to argue for or against the position, just for
maximum candor.

------
millerc
Comparing sales between a phone you find in every shopping mall and could buy
without knowing the differentiators, and a new class of device? That doesn't
sound like an unbiased argument.

------
anarcticpuffin
My take on this is that the Microsoft's strategy for the Surface wasn't
necessarily to sell a ton of Surface tablets and take out the iPad. I think it
was to illustrate what Windows 8 brings to the table in terms of a hybrid
tablet experience. This is similar to how Google had lackluster sales of their
Nexus phone but it was a reference model of what you could do with Android.
The Surface opens up some eyes to the idea of the "convertible laptop", which
I think ultimately is how Windows 8 starts to make more sense. On any other
configuration it's a clunky experience. Windows 8 is a poor tablet experience
and a lame desktop, but as a convertible laptop it's actually quite enjoyable
(in my opinion).

~~~
newplagiarist
I think Windows RT is an amazing tablet experience. As others have mentioned
some of its UI conventions are different and require learning. Overall, its a
very well made and pleasant to use device that does what I need it to do.

Though I should note that I've loved them Metro UI since I saw it on the
Windows phone.

------
TheAnimus
The strange thing is, in his self citing comment about it been a turd, it
becomes apparent he hasn't touched one.

This is the issue MS have, not some cries of false advertising of free space.
No one is buying them, no one is seeing them. A guy I work with commented that
he's not seen one despite it been months after the RT launch. He quite liked
it, just not the price tag.

~~~
cgarmstrong
I've used one.

------
username3
_My 64GB iPad has 57.1GB free space. That's 89%._

57.1 - 32 - 16 = 9.1; 9.1 / 16 = 0.56875; 16GB iPad has 9.1GB free space?
That's 56%.

 _My 16GB iPhone 5 has 13.4GB free. That's 83%._

13.4 + 16 + 32 = 61.4; 61.4 / 64 = 0.959375; 64GB iPhone 5 has 61.4GB free
space? That's 95%.

Edit: These calculations are not accurate. Read replies.

~~~
danpalmer
This would seem to be correct but doesn't take into account different hardware
specs.

For a start, the larger the disk, the more is used for formatting and is lost
due to the difference in how manufacturers specify sizes, so you can't just
add/subtract storage amounts, you need to scale.

Also, different combinations of processor, cellular modem, etc, will require
different parts of the operating system, and Apple differentiates between
these in the distributions it provides. It's not a massive difference, but it
is something.

Finally, on Mac OS, the operating system reserves some space for a memory dump
if the device loses power so that it can resume where it left off. This means
if you have 8GB of RAM, you will always have 8GB of disk space reserved
(search for sleepimage). I don't know for sure, but iOS may do something
similar.

~~~
username3
I agree with this. Also, if they calculate space in GiB instead of GB, we
should add/subtract 14.9 and 29.8.

------
jiggy2011
So, let's start a conversation that we've never had on HN before. How relevant
will Microsoft be in 5 years?

~~~
arethuza
Still more relevant than SAP or Oracle are today and both of those companies
are doing pretty well...

~~~
jiggy2011
True, although they do have the advantage of being somewhat more niche in that
they aren't developing an entire platform from the ground up with all the
costs that entails.

For example if MS loses enough ground with Windows in the consumer / small
business space and begin to cede the enterprise desktop too does it make sense
for them to continue development of Windows as a pure server platform?

Or will we start to see ports of stuff like Exchange,Active Directory,VS,SQL
Server to other platforms?

~~~
arethuza
I think they will focus on higher level (and therefore value) enterprise
applications - SharePoint, Dynamics ERPs (particularly AX) and Dynamics CRM.

It also wouldn't surprise me if they decided to take all product consulting
in-house and become much more of a consulting company with products as a
useful sideline - a bit like IBM.

------
nakedrobot2
Sales numbers for the Amazon Kindle have been famously opaque, and not
disclosed by Amazon.

This is worth considering - I would guess Amazon is VERY PROUD of their sales
numbers, but it's just "none of your damn business".

