Surface 3 - New direction, higher prices and crappy i3

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Ubuntu Unity 8 will be out soon. Might be ok with a real OS.

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You get a really nice screen with a computer inside for not much more than the price of the screen.  The 27 inch screen is beautiful and really large enough that you could live with only one screen if you had to.

I've been wondering who still bought iMacs.
There must be a market for these, but I didn't understand it when the iMacs were introduced and I still don't get it.

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An i3 while bottom of the line is still powerful enough for a lot of tasks.  Microsoft is still trying to find the sweet spot between battery life and power.  Windows 8.1 spring update fixed most of the glaring problems of Windows 8 by giving the desktop a reason to exist again.  There's still some life in Microsoft and with Blamer gone they could just become the comeback kid.

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Mice don't really interest me, I have carpal tunnel and so just use a track pad.

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And memory and graphics cards are also important, an i3 with a reasonable amount of ram (say 16 to 24 GB) and a GB or two graphics memory on a good card will perform better than an i5 starved on 4 or 8 GB of RAM and a cheap 512 Mb graphics card.

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Bah, an i3 with 4 GB ram and no graphics is barely a phone.

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Have you tried the "spring update" of 8.1?  It fixes most of the problems.  App Store apps now appear in the task bar, there are arrows to guide you and you can close/minimise App store apps with a trackpad/mouse.

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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.

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Well the desktop is again the centre of Windows 8.1 function.  Really the difference between 7 and  8.1 is a slight difference in how the Windows ball (called Start a decade ago) functions. Rather than flop up it opens a tiled display....

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8.1 has a lot of stuff left over from Vista...

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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.  

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.)

[persia]

Yes, the 8.1 Spring Update to Windows, which made the desktop experience tolerable really ruins the tablet experience.  The desktop so vital to the success of the desktop now sucks the life out of the tablet experience....  There's a reason Apple forked iOS off of OS X.

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A Windows 8 App runs full screen and just like a full screen app on OS X, moving the trackpad/mouse pointer to the top of the screen reveals a hidden bar that allows you to close it.  On OS X of course it also allows you to make it non-full screen, but maybe Windows 9 will add that....

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Another problem is that Windows Store apps suck on the desktop, so being able to run them on a desktop is meaningless.  Apple got it right, tablet and phone are different to desktops and laptops.

And touch screens on laptops and desktops will always be secondary to trackpads (or I suppose mice).  The price of the touch interface on the two or three 27 inch or larger monitors you have on your desktop would be better spent on a 4K screen instead.

[persia]

Windows 8.1 looks a lot like Windows 7, especially if you don't use any Windows Store Apps.  Yeah the "Start" ball (actually a Windows logo ball) takes you to the tiles, but really that's the only difference.  Well that and the search area for apps is to the side rather than an the bottom of the menu.

Windows Store apps appear on the task bar even.  And you can create shortcuts on the desktop to them.