These are the ARM-based Windows8 RT tablets, which I honestly believe are a dead-end since the new intel atom SoCs are comparable to ARM SoCs in both speed and power consumption and can execute x86 code. The future of thin/light/long life Win8 tablets is Atom.
Anyway, that aside, there are also full Windows 8 tablets running intel core chips. They will be priced similarly to ultrabooks and yeah, I’m sure someone will release one with an integrated gaming GPU, and it will certainly start well over $1000.
Wow. Comments here – and pretty much everywhere else I’ve read – are universal. Too expensive, no sale, too bad because I would have bought one at $399, etc.
It always amazes me when corporations so widely miss the mark on something so universally obvious. I would have loved to be sitting in on those product meetings; surely someone said “ummm… guys? 500 bucks is too much. We’ll get slaughtered, and have to drop the price in the first 30 days anyways.”
We’re all wrong. Remember, most people don’t even know the difference between WinRT and Win8, so we’re a way-tech group of people. Maybe your proverbial mom will eat this up.
Microsoft is wrong, but had no choice. Materials costs are too high, or they had to sooth OEM feathers by promising not to undercut a pricepoint, or some other constraint forced their hand.
Microsoft is hideously wrong, and they’re able to adjust, and probably will.
I think there’s an element of #2 with at least some #3, but who knows.
Also, a thing to keep in mind with the Surface: Microsoft says they started in on it three years ago. So they were doubtless looking at a market where a $500 tablet was the “standard” price, and didn’t anticipate the new $199 standard, or the effect that a surgent Android would have in commoditizing medium-end tablets and pushing prices for good large-screen tablets well below $499.
Plus, Microsoft probably does think that the Surface is a high-end device and compares favorably to the iPad 3 and Transformer Infinity and all that. We don’t look at it like that, but if you’re in Microsoft, you can see where the blinders would come on, and nobody would think that they’re building a low-end value-priced machine.
It reportedly is a beautiful high-end device, except for the low resolution screen. The problem isn’t the hardware, it’s the lack of an ecosystem. They needed to retool and deliver a 7" tablet for $250, making whatever tradeoffs were required, to truly be competitive. But they didn’t.
I could almost see these price points if Microsoft had a healthy and inexpensive app store. They could get away with these prices if they were first on the block. But being third and having no real app store backing them? It’s crazy.
I’m trying to get to a list of their available apps just to make sure I’m right about their catalog, but it looks like you can’t even get to a browser-based version…you have to be running some flavor of Windows 8. That’s another goofy decision.
The only other audience that I possibly see for this, apart from the uninformed who see Windows! and Tablet! might be the slight less tech savvy business person who wants Office on a tablet. But that’s not exactly who they’re marketing to is it?
Microsoft is wrong, but had no choice. Materials costs are too high, or they had to sooth OEM feathers by promising not to undercut a pricepoint, or some other constraint forced their hand.
This is the only real reason I can see them releasing at these price points. OEMs were obviously upset when they announced Surface. There must have been some concession made to give them some room to undercut Microsoft-made tablets. But if you do that, why even bother releasing it? It’s like they’re putting out another Zune.
Which obviously is a pretty big “except for,” but my point (which I think you more or less agree with) is that by definition, any Windows RT device is non-premium. Windows RT is a weak OS, running a weak browser, with a weak app selection, and anything that runs WinRT can’t be high-end.
Really, I think Microsoft made a mistake even creating WinRT. You can see why they did – it wasn’t clear, years ago, whether Intel could be relevant in an ARM world – but given that Intel is entirely relevant, and that Windows really really wants Intel, they should have avoided this entirely by just making the $499 Surface powered by an Atom chip. The instant they do that, it’s three million times better and an object of lust that makes ultrabooks look stodgy.
But instead they kept the RT/8 divide, and relegated Win8 to a clunky fan-cooled desktop-replacement tablet.
Once you’ve made that decision, and you’re putting out a device that’s nearly useless, you have to make it super-cheap no matter what.
The problem isn’t the hardware, it’s the lack of an ecosystem. They needed to retool and deliver a 7" tablet for $250, making whatever tradeoffs were required, to truly be competitive. But they didn’t.
I don’t think that would even work. Why would you spend $250 on a 7" Surface RT when the iPad Mini is the same price and the Nexus 7 is $50 less? A 7" Surface needs to be $150 to compete.
Well, atoms weren’t very good on tablets/phones until very recently. They couldn’t come close to competing with ARM SoCs in power usage. MS would have been forced to base their entire strategy on a promise from Intel. What if that promise didn’t pan out? Previous atoms were less than spectacular.
I strongly feel that this will be the only generation of Win8 tablets running on the ARM architecture. Next generation and every one following will run atoms. And a $499 tablet with a super-thin keyboard case with 10 hours of battery life weighing 1.5 lbs that runs all your x86 windows apps and gets 10 hours of battery life is pretty sexy.
There’s a lot of fluff in the questions and answers. But the answer to the resolution question deserves some kind internet bullshit award:
Hey this is Stevie. Screen resolution is one component of perceived detail. The true measure of resolvability of a screen called Modulation Transfer Function (MTF), not Pixels. MTF is a combination of both contrast and resolution. There are over a dozen subsystems that effect this MTF number… Most folks just focus on one number out of dozens of items that effect perceived detail. Without good contrast resolution decreases. Check out contrast sensitivity of the human eye graph (http://www.telescope-optics.net/images/eye_contrast.PNG) and if you want more see the links below. Basically, as resolution/DPI increases the eye has becomes less sensitive. So as a result, the amount of light in a room and the reflections off the screen have a huge effect on the contrast of the display. In fact, a small amount of reflection can greatly reduce contrast and thus the perceived resolution of the display. With the ClearType Display technology we took a 3 pronged approach to maximize that perceived resolution and optimize for battery life, weight, and thickness. First prong, Microsoft has the best pixel rendering technology (cleartype 1.0 and 2.0) … both these are exclusive and unique to Windows, it smooths text regardless of pixel count. Second, we designed a custom 10.6” high-contrast wide-angle screen LCD screen. Lastly we optically bonded the screen with the thinnest optical stack anywhere on the market… something much more commonly done on phones we are doing on Surcace. While this is not official our Cleartype measurements on the amount of light reflected off the screen is around 5.5%-6.2%, the new IPad has a measurement of 9.9% mirror reflections (see the displaymate link: new iPad Display Technology Shoot-Out). Doing a side by side with the new ipad in a consistently lit room, we have had many people see more detail on Surface RT than on the Ipad with more resolution.
Some more links to share if you want to know more… (Understanding resolution and MTF)… Also This is a great book to read if you really want to get into it: Amazon.com or more here http://alexandria.tue.nl/extra2/9901043.pdf
Personally I don’t think its incredibly overpriced. 1 thing the ama pointed out that I had forgotten about is the usb support. I really hate getting stuff on and off my ipad and I think usb would make that much nicer.
Right. Like I say, going all-in on Intel would have been an unjustifiable leap of faith. But where the market is today, it’s clear that it’s a reasonable approach. Intel isn’t compelling vs. ARM, and being locked into a single CPU vendor isn’t awesome, but given how crippled WinRT is in comparison to Win8, it doesn’t matter.
Given a choice between an Atom-based $499 Acer W510 tablet and an ARM-based $499 Surface RT tablet, all the construction details in the world don’t add up to squat, because the Win8 one has an actual reason to exist.
I wouldn’t buy a non-Pro Surface at any price, but I’ll almost certainly buy some Win8-based hybrid laptop/tablet this year. The Asus Transformer I’ve been using since the release of the original Transformer convinced me that laptop/tablet hybrids are the way to go, and one that can run real (x86) Windows code is a no-brainer.
I’ll stick with Android for my phone because Google Nav is a killer app, but I think Android loses a lot of its value for non-phones once these Win8 devices are plentiful. Especially considering you’ll almost certainly be able to run most (non-high-end game) Android apps on the Win8 devices using Bluestacks or similar solutions.
