Surface 3 - New direction, higher prices and crappy i3

[psxphill]

The new Tablet now has a higher price ($799 vs $499)

If you can get a Surface Pro 2 with an i5 for $499 then you should buy them up and sell them on, because that is the price of the Surface RT 2 with an Arm processor.

Either that or you're confused. The articles I've read have the Pro 3 with an i3 cheaper than the Pro 2.

The only "news" is that they haven't announced a replacement for the Surface RT 2 yet.

 But computerworld manage to mess up that too.
 
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248465/Windows_RT_isn_t_dead_yet
 
 "After that, RT would be transitioned to Windows 9, sharing the same code base with full Windows in 2015, he predicted."
 
 Windows RT is and always has been the same code base as full Windows. I'm not sure what his point is.

[psxphill]

Looks like the regular Surface RT tablets will be discontinued thus Surface will now start at $799 instead of $499.

Unless someone wants to buy an RT and not a Pro then it won't make any difference. If people want to buy them then they'll keep selling them, if not then it doesn't matter that they no longer sell them.
 

@psxphill
 
Surface Pro 3 is cheaper than the Pro 2 because it uses the crappy i3 processor instead of the i5 that's in the Pro 2.

I know & you were comparing the price of a "crappy" i3 surface pro 3 with a surface rt 2 with an even crappier arm.
 

Everyone is different but I would never buy or want a machine with an i3.

Don't buy the i3 one then. They also have models with an i5 or i7 if you want.

[psxphill]

Former Windows 8 developer

It doesn't appear they are a developer.
 
"Back when I was a category manager for the Windows 8 app store"
 
I'd be interested in when he left, he asserts that Windows 8 is broken and needs fixing when it's 18 months old and has had two updates since (and is now called 8.1).

[psxphill]

This reminds me of the old Windows Vista days when it was almost universally hated but had a few defenders. MS solved the Vista problem by killing it and replacing with something better. I never bought or used Vista and I'll never buy or use Win8.

People are always told to hate new Microsoft operating systems. For Windows 95 it was because it replaced Program Manager with the Start Menu. If you're the type of person that takes notice of what other people say then you'll always have problems upgrading.
 
What seems to happen is that people accept changes in the version after they are introduced. So Window 95 was bad, Windows 98 was ok then Millenium was bad. Windows XP was good, Vista was bad, Windows 7 was good, Windows 8 was bad.
 
I don't know if this is because of finally becoming familiar with it, or because it sounds better if one time you hate something and the next you write about how "you know you all hated the last version, but you'll love this one".
 
I used Vista, it had many improvements over XP. It was for example the first supported 64 bit release (XP 64 was pretty much a barely supported pre-release of Vista). If you hate change and don't need any of the new features then you'll never want to upgrade.
 
I find it funny that in response to being forced from XP some people have been trying to switch to Linux, which doesn't solve the problem of change and introduced an even bigger learning curve. However this is glossed over because someone told them it was great.
 
I expect people will be told to love Windows 9, including metro apps & the start screen. At that point they will become more popular.

[psxphill]

Microsoft hasn't used the word "metro" in a couple years, and then only as a code name, never officially. The new apps are Windows Store Apps.

It was still the official name after RTM but it changed before GA.
 
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/windowsappdev/archive/2012/08/06/building-your-own-windows-runtime-components-to-deliver-great-metro-style-apps.aspx
 
Apparently an internal memo said they had to change it because of a trademark while the public statement was it was never meant to be an official name. This appears to have been a surprise to the majority of Microsoft employees who appear to have been under a different impression.

[psxphill]

I call it 1996 AOL wants their interface back.

AOL was hugely successful with non techies, I'm not surprised they want it back.
 
You're going to try harder.

[psxphill]

As much as I like them--and I do--iPads are still just iPads. If they were actual desktop replacements running Mac OS X, I'd view them differently. Being able to do "everything" on a Surface Pro is a big draw. (I'm still going to game on my PC and consoles, but I'm sure you get my meaning.)

 

You didn't watch today's WWDC Keynote. iPhones, iPads, Macs are all extensions of the same thing. It's an information ecosystem that shares everything within it. If you are at all interested in Apple watch the Keynote, the vision is back.

Being an extension of the same thing isn't the same as being able to run everything. It's exactly the same problem as you can run applications for Windows RT on a Windows 8.1 desktop, but you can't run a desktop app on Windows RT.
 
The vision might be back, but it's the same as Microsofts old vision that "everyone" hated. I expect that because it's Apple and not Microsoft people will like the idea though.

[psxphill]

For most work purposes, however, it was fine. I'm sure if it had been an i3 I would've been able to stick with it as a primary (as well as super portable) work machine.

There are faster atom's than what was in the latitude st now. But if you want an i3 then they do this for $799.99 or they do an atom one for $429.99 with less disk space
 
http://www.dell.com/us/p/dell-venue-11i-pro/pd?oc=ftcwe04h&model_id=dell-venue-11i-pro
 
The Venue 8 pro is atom only but starts at a better $249.99 and the Venue 7 & 8 are arm and run android and start at $149.99
 
http://androidandme.com/2014/06/news/dells-affordable-venue-7-and-venue-8-tablets-announced-at-computex/

[psxphill]

The difference is Apple never promised you could run Mac applications on the iPad.

When did Microsoft promise you could run desktop applications on Surface RT?
 

Oh wait, I remember I can't easily figure out how to close a Metro app. I guess they just close themselves after not being used for a while like all tablet OS's do? I really don't know, and I shouldn't have to figure out some strange incantation of how to close it, so I just switch back to the desktop view where I had opened the PDF from in Windows Explorer.

Possible ways of closing a metro app
 
Alt f4
click the close button in the top right
right click on the task bar icon and click close
open task manager and end task it
 
The close button and task bar icon might only be in the latest Windows 8.1 update, but Alt f4 even works in Windows 8. Alt-f4 has been used to close windows since the 80's.

[psxphill]

By giving customers the standard Windows Desktop in Surface RT it's implied that it's Windows compatible.

You said they promised it, not that you inferred it. They never implied it and were always clear that it wouldn't run x86/x64 apps and they wouldn't allow developers to port their apps to arm.
 
 

From Windows Supersite.
 
"Windows 8 is not well-designed. It's a mess. But Windows 8 is a bigger problem than that. Windows 8 is a disaster in every sense of the word.
 
This is not open to debate, is not part of some cute imaginary world where everyone's opinion is equally valid or whatever. Windows 8 is a disaster. Period."

What isn't up for debate is how biased that piece is because it's written to generate clicks to raise advertising revenue.
 
http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/what-heck-happening-windows
 

"More Microsoft exec departures mark end of a Windows era
With Jon DeVaan and Grant George officially retired and most of rest of Windows 8 team out to pasture, Microsoft silently acknowledges complete lack of faith in Windows 8."

By you quoting that web site you silently acknowledge that Windows 8 has been a huge success. See I can do it too.
 
People retire all the time, it doesn't say anything about their past work. It might say something about their ability to perform future work. It might be a case of them making scapegoats of the people involved.
 
Microsoft took a punt with Surface and it didn't pan out, which wasn't because you don't like the start menu & doesn't count as Windows 8 being a failure. Some people might have been moved on because of the loss on hardware, although Microsoft usually are cool with ideas not panning out, they aren't as money driven as someone like Apple.
 
Enterprises not running Windows 8 is not entirely new. When Vista was coming out I was hearing about Enterprises that were still running projects to roll out XP to their NT4 machines. But "enterprises are as annoyed as usual about new version of windows" is not as compelling a headline.

[psxphill]

Prior to that the only way I could figure out how to close that rubbish was by grabbing the "window" at the top center of the screen, and dragging it downward entirely off the bottom of the screen. Makes sense if you're using a tablet with your finger, rubbish for use with a mouse. But just wanted to add one more way to your list, lol.

In windows 8 you can also close apps running in the background by moving the mouse up to the top left right and clicking close (I've not gotten round to installing 8.1 on this machine).

[psxphill]

The scale of Windows 8.x’s failure is staggering!
 
http://betanews.com/2014/05/08/the-scale-of-windows-8-xs-failure-is-staggering/

He seems to have a personal grudge, or he's figured out that his commission goes up ever time he bitches about 8.1.
 
The graph looks quite different if you add Windows 8 & 8.1 figures together, so you can tell he wasn't even trying to be objective about it.
 
He also talks a lot about Apple stuff.

[psxphill]

You sure spend a lot of time trying to get us to buy Windows 8.

I have never encouraged anyone to buy Windows 8.
 

I said Windows 7 works fine for me so why do you care what version of Windows I or others in this thread use?

You sure spend a lot of time trying to get us to not buy Windows 8.
 
Including lying that Microsoft promised desktop Apps would work on Suface RT.
 

It's a fact that Windows 8 was a huge failure and most of the team that created it have been fired. Those facts are not debatable they are easily verified.

One minute you say people have retired and now you're saying they were fired. It's hard to verify facts when they change all the time.
 

If Microsoft losing 900 million on the Windows 8 based Tablet is success to you I would hate to see what you think failure looks like. That almost 1 billion dollar loss was in one quarter of the year.

The loss was on Surface and not Windows 8, it's the first thing you'd find out when trying to verify the facts. Microsoft made a loss on the original xbox for a long time as well.
 
Losing 1.2 billion dollars sounds like a lot, but they have 88 billion dollars in cash and had an income of 5.7 billion dollars for the last quarter. Which makes Surface the same type of failure that people go through every week playing the lottery.

[psxphill]

I actually know people who went to PC World, had a tablet demonstrated to them, they were told "it runs windows, so you already know what to do"... They get it home and it doesn't run any of the software they already have despite the fact it is running windows...

PC World will also sell you an £85 HDMI cable because you will get a higher definition picture than a £5.99 cable. That doesn't mean it's the fault of the manufacturer.
 
I don't recall Microsoft ever making that claim about Windows RT. If someone in PC world lies to you then you should take it up with them.
 
They've agreed to swap HDMI cables (although it will be interesting to find out how that works out).
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/h9RmpnFKD38wsv6DX1Fx4b/hdmi-cables
 
FWIW the opposite argument that a cable either works perfectly or doesn't work at all is also incorrect but it's not as wrong as what PC worlds claims. Also if you want to run your 4k TV at 60hz then you need an HDMI 2.0 cable and that is likely to be more expensive. You need to know what you're buying or go to someone who does, or you're likely to get fleeced no matter what shop you go into.

[psxphill]

Yes, the graph certainly would look different if no sales of 8.1 were from someone upgrading from the horror that was vanilla 8.

You lose the argument immediately by using emotive language purely to cover up your inaccuracies. People upgrading to 8.1 don't count as sales of 8.1, this is the whole reason they should be added together as buying 8 or 8.1 you're likely to end up running 8.1. I'm not sure if he did it on purpose or whether it's a happy coincidence that it helped his argument but it's subverting the facts.
 

Tons of enterprise customers do this as well. Get boatloads of Win8 PC's and reimage to Windows 7 before they are deployed in the company.

I've never heard of an enterprise do that, they usually buy their computers without an os. Even when windows 7 was the latest and they would be running windows 7. MAK keys used to only be used for really big companies as they were effectively unbounded & the only security was that the person who had the key wouldn't give it to their mates. With Vista they switched to KMS and every company can use that now, so your 2000/XP anecdote is no longer relevant. Maybe a small company that doesn't know how to buy a machine with windows 7 or os-less will do as you say.
 

Hadn't gone to 8.1 because apparently driver support wasn't complete for the AlienFX keyboard on my model according to Dell, but maybe I'll give it a shot anyway.

I'd be surprised if the windows 8 driver didn't just work, even windows 7 drivers will usually work. There aren't many differences in the driver model. XP graphics drivers are no longer supported and they do work on windows 7, so on really old hardware you might not have noticed you were running an xp driver. If this affects you then you'll be stuck with the generic super vga driver, but your graphics hardware is probably not that powerful anyway.