Really? I’d think the integrated pen would make it a pretty good candidate for use for photo retouching/light photoshop work.
The Lumia tablet is an epic fail on the magnitude of the original Surface.
I’ve just started using the pen in photoshop and it is a pretty good experience.
No, they already positioned the device as LTE only, that is small segment of the tablet market, I doubt they have very big marketing campaign and the production run is certainly going to be small, any eventual failure will not be significant.
And the answer is a big fat NO. I was also hoping they would dump the 16GB and move everything down one, but no luck.
I was glad Apple added the 128GB option 6 months ago or so, even if it is at a big price premium (my iPad is constantly out of space mostly from videos – the HD stuff chews up space at a prodigious rate).
Darn…maybe I’ll get a Surface Pro 1…selling those smallest units for $699 at BB. That would save me $200 bones and I’m not a power user…just want to make sure WOW and DOM4 work on the thing…hmmmmmmmm.
Surface Pro 2 arrived!
-
two position kickstand is a great addition
-
does feel slightly faster in use
-
battery now depletes at a merely “concerning” rate versus the “HOLY SHIT MY BATTERY” rate of the original Surface Pro
-
new backlit type cover is quite swank
Much more recommendable device now. But Bay Trail if you want 10 hours of battery or anything close to that.
Actually now that I think about it…I wonder if I can play Dom4 and a few of my turn based wargames on the Surface 2? Uh…oops…guess not…back to the old Surface pro for 699!
If they released a bay trail atom surface, I would very seriously consider it.
I’m in the same boat, but I believe it’s called the “Dell Venue 11 Pro”. Upgradable from top Bay Trail through Core i5, touch cover and desktop dock.
I definitely think the non-Pro Surface should just be a Bay Trail machine. Maybe next gen.
I’m also waiting for the Venue pro to come out. Supposedly 100 bucks cheaper than the Surface Pro in the same configuration with the i5…we’ll see.
We’re getting a few of the Venue 11 pros in next week or so for evaluation as our new enterprise laptop. If these are as good as they seem, I’m going to pick one up myself. I’d kill for a Win8 tablet with LTE…
I’m a bit disappointed by the battery life reports in Surface 2 Pro, but I do suppose it’s an improvement. I might need to wait another generation.
Thanks everyone for mentioning the Venue 11 Pro. I think I scanned across a few headlines about the Venues, but didn’t catch that they’re also doing Intel processors and are significantly more customizable in terms of hardware than Surface. The couple of places I scanned mentioned the 11 Pro having a 10 hour battery life. Curious if that holds up in testing. I hope we’ll see some actual benchmarks soon.
The problem with Bay Trail is that its GPU performance is still extremely weak. Especially compared to Tegra 4 and Snapdragon 800. If you want GPU performance that can match those ARM chipsets, you have to go with Intel Core or AMD CPU/APUs that have far worse battery life.
That’s probably why almost all of the Bay Trail tablets are running at 1280x800 instead of 1920x1200 like the Surface 2 and Lumia 2520 are, not just because of price/size.
The other nice part about the Venue 11 is that it has a swappable battery. Apparently with the extended battery keyboard, you’ll get up to 18 hrs of usage.
I’m about the farthest thing possible from an Apple fanboy, but I give them credit for one very important thing: these days, and especially in mobile devices, GPU performance is more important than CPU performance. CPUs have been good enough for a long time, but you can always be more fluid/have more effects. I think the reason they decided to do their own chips was that realization, and the subsequent realization that it would be a huge competitive advantage, since nobody else thought that way.
It’s starting to change, but I think mostly because of the surge in high density displays.
Mobile CPUs have only very recently become fast enough for lag-free day to day stuff like web browsing with last year’s A6 and snapdragon S4. With windows8.1 and bay trail, the concept of mobile being separate from desktop is starting to dissolve, and that is fully CPU-driven. GPU matters for super high DPI displays much more than gaming.
Agreed. But in many ways, look at the ipad 3. To me, the new retina screen was cool, but the fact that they packed in enough GPU horsepower to run it somewhat fluidly was the real accomplishment. Two years later and the Intel GPUs are still catching up.
According to Anandtechthe Baytrail GPU performance is
" that you shouldn’t expect a GPU monster out of Bay Trail. In our cross platform graphics tests however the T100 is quite competitive, although not industry leading by any means."
So not top of the line but is competitive, and unlike previous Atoms this is using Intel technologies instead of PowerVR so if in CPU space they have caught up I would give them a year to do the same on GPU.
The new Surface Commercials are really nice. They actually make an argument to buy it, as opposed to that moronic dance crap they did last time. In fact the new commercials are so persuasive I’d buy one if I had the money. I’m tired of Apple’s proprietary crap.