Surface 3 - New direction, higher prices and crappy i3

[SysAdmin]

The Surface tablet continues to struggle and the idea to take down the iPad failed so with Surface Pro 3 the plan has changed. The new Tablet now has a higher price ($799 vs $499) and is aimed at corporate customers. It also includes a crappy i3 processor instead of the i5 that the Surface Pro 2 had. You can get a i5 or i7 but the prices goes way up.

Happy computing!


http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9248464/Microsoft_doubles_down_on_2_in_1_enterprise_first_Surface_strategy?taxonomyId=241&pageNumber=2

[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.

[SysAdmin]

@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.

[CritAnime]

Well I would never have thought a i5 would be more expensive than a i3. Or that the performance wouldn't be the same. How I have had my head in the sand....

Also get the pricing right.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/mobile/microsoft-surface-pro-3/

[Lurch]

Here we go again, is this an Amiga website or an anti MS forum? Quit posting other websites FUD here.
Anything to keep the keywords going for the search engines I guess.

[SysAdmin]

Well I would never have thought a i5 would be more expensive than a i3. Or that the performance wouldn't be the same. How I have had my head in the sand....

Also get the pricing right.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/mobile/microsoft-surface-pro-3/

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

[Andre.Siegel]

The Surface tablet continues to struggle and the idea to take down the iPad failed so with Surface Pro 3 the plan has changed.

Source?

The new Tablet now has a higher price ($799 vs $499) and is aimed at corporate
customers.

As someone else pointed out, the new tablet is a successor to the Surface Pro 2 and Surface Pro, which have always been aimed at professionals and power users. The new Surface Pro 3 is in fact less expensive than both of its predecessors.

It also includes a crappy i3 processor instead of the i5 that the Surface Pro 2 had.

At the lower price, it also features a 12 inch display instead of a comparatively tiny 10 inch display. Apple's smallest laptop has a 11.6" display for a reason. Anything smaller is simply not usable for serious work with common desktop applications (for most people, anyway).

You can get a i5 or i7 but the prices goes way up.

The cheapest i5 version costs as much as the entry level Macbook Air 13. (The Surface Pro 3 has a slightly smaller, but much, much better display. It also features twice as much as memory at this price. The Macbook Air's 4 GB look fairly dated in 2014.)

For people who do not mind the Metro user interface, which does not include me, the Surface Pro 3 is valid alternative to a Macbook Air or similar Windows-based Ultrabooks.

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

Again, source? This sounds more like wishful thinking than anything else. The iPad mini outsold the full-size iPad in 2013. On amazon.com, the best-selling Android tablets are all 7 inch models. Clearly, there is a huge demand for lower-cost, smaller, highly portable tablets in the 7 to 8 inch range.

The only way to compete in this space in terms of price and user experience would be to release a new Surface RT tablet, which is exactly what many media outlets were expecting to see at Microsoft's recent press event. The assumption that Microsoft will just leave this huge market niche to Android and iOS is not plausible.

[yssing]

It looks really great.

[SysAdmin]

@Andre.Siegel

Surface RT caused MS to take a 900 million dollar write down ouch! Surface RT has always sold very poorly and did not have many apps available. A Surface Mini was developed but then the decision was made to no longer try to complete with low cost iPad's and Android tablets. Thus Surface RT will be cancelled shortly, collect them for door stops while you can.




Surface Pro 3 can make sense for some users since it can run all their Windows applications. I'm wondering how WinUAE preforms on it myself. Could someone test WinUAE on Pro 3 and report back? Surface RT makes little to no sense for anyone. It's not viable for customers and MS has to answer to shareholders. It was a solution chasing a problem that didn't exist. Goodbye just like ZuneHD & Kin phone.

[som99]

My source http://Sweclockers.com

SweClockers.com is a Swedish online magazine about computers and computer hardware, founded in 1999, with about 250,000 unique visitors per week, as of January 2012. The website has one of Sweden's largests forums which is focused on computer hardware, software, modding and overclocking. Folding@ SweClockers.com is the most successful Nordic team in the distributed computing project Folding@Home and has its own forum on the website.

$799 (Core i3, 4 GB RAM, 64 GB SSD)
$999 (Core i5, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD)
$1299 (Core i5, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD)
$1549 (Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD)
$1949 (Core i7, 8 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD)

[Duce]

These generally half cocked and generally ill informed "news" features get tiring, especially on an Amiga site.  We get it, MS bashing is the cool thing lately, just like it was 30 years ago, lol.

Anyone that read the stories, or watched the product launch could tell you that this product is geared towards the enterprise market as a laptop alternative, not a competitor to a $100 Android tablet.  They only mentioned it about 150 times in the product launch.

Like any other higher end product, it comes in lower end and ultra high end hardware configs - including an i7, 8 GB and high capacity SSD model.  The base model, like any other base model PC (again, it's being marketed as a laptop alternative, not an ipad replacement - it does have a full OS, after all) comes in cheapie form and price escalates the more you tack onto it, just like any other PC..

Much like you can buy a Mac Air for $900, you can also custom spec a Mac Air to cost you $2000.  Just like the Surface 3.  Neither are kiddie toys, they are being marketed and sold to people looking for something that does more than an iPad.

I had my supper break last night with a few guys that are chomping at the bit to get their hands on a Surface Pro 3.  I'll likely buy one myself once they are in stores for IT work to replace an old Mac Air I have, in fact.

The RT Surface tablets should have never, ever come out.  Just a giant mistake on MS's part.  Says "Windows" on the damned thing and you cannot run any traditional Windows (x86) software on them.  One of the most dead in the water products I've ever seen.

[wawrzon]

my surfacepro (1) i got in autumn to have something to work on for three months abroad has practically replaced my i7 main pc for most tasks. it is not suitable for high demand gaming okay, the touchscreen functionality may be clumsier as apple products, but wacom pen is great, expandability is reasonable and it has occurred to be a really versatile device for a price of rather low range notebook. i dont get what that bashing is supposed to achieve, especially if on has not used the particular hardware to the limits. i as an owner am satisfied so far ..

[Andre.Siegel]

@Andre.Siegel

Surface RT caused MS to take a 900 million dollar write down ouch! Surface RT has always sold very poorly and did not have many apps available. A Surface Mini was developed but then the decision was made to no longer try to complete with low cost iPad's and Android tablets. Thus Surface RT will be cancelled shortly, collect them for door stops while you can.

Again, this is pure speculation on your part. Microsoft also wrote-off 1 billion USD on the Xbox 360 in 2007. Yet, Microsoft did not stop selling the Xbox 360. They even launched a successor a few months ago. Arguably, Microsoft's general purpose computing devices (i.e. Surface and Surface Pro) are more important to their core business than Xbox has ever been, and will ever be.

[Andre.Siegel]

The RT Surface tablets should have never, ever come out.  Just a giant mistake on MS's part.  Says "Windows" on the damned thing and you cannot run any traditional Windows (x86) software on them.  One of the most dead in the water products I've ever seen.

From a branding perspective, it was clearly a huge disaster that could have and should have been avoided. Long before the products became available for sale, I predicted that there would be immense consumer confusion surrounding the ARM and x86 versions of Windows.

Two 10 inch tablets. They share the same user interface, but one is compatible with old applications and one is not. No wonder this caused all kinds of problems...

That being said, if consumers can choose between a 12 inch Pro model and a 7 inch RT model, that is an entirely different situation because these highly distinctive form factors are perfectly able to convey a different set of features and use cases on their own.

Realistically, most people would not expect to use a desktop application on a 7 or 8 inch tablet because it is rather obvious that the usability would be absolutely horrible. Consumers also do not get confused by the fact that they cannot run standard desktop applications on their Windows Phone devices either, afterall.

So, with regard to the Surface devices, the Windows branding itself was not necessarily the key problem. The RT and Pro form factors have simply not been distinctive enough in the past.

[yssing]

And here I was thinking, that I should get a lifetime membership of amiga.org.
It is not suitable for the SysAdmin to post stuff like this.
Anyway glad I did not throw money after amiga.org