Microsoft Surface

  On 10/25/2012 at 7:51 PM, eugene said:

mobile desktop pc.

 

yep. this is the problem. been tried many times before, always failed. people don't want a mobile desktop pc: it's a fucking oxymoron. you can't sell an oxymoron.

  On 6/23/2012 at 11:15 PM, Ego said:

Although I doubt Microsoft is making the right choices with their silly touch UI in Windows 8 there might be people interested in a touch device with an operating system that is not jailed like iOS or Android. Running actual programs instead of some low-footprint version lacking features.

Ha. First Microsoft manufactured tablet is a jailed OS with app store only distribution. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/10/microsofts-first-stab-at-a-pc-surface-reviewed/

 

  On 10/25/2012 at 8:01 PM, BCM said:

  On 10/25/2012 at 7:51 PM, eugene said:

mobile desktop pc.

yep. this is the problem. been tried many times before, always failed. people don't want a mobile desktop pc: it's a fucking oxymoron. you can't sell an oxymoron.

Yeah, let's continue limiting device capabilities because it fits the form factor... If we can improve tablet specs, connectivity and software it could be a mobile PC that you can transform depending on your current use case. Attach mouse & keyboard, plug into larger screen etc. Edited October 25, 2012 by Ego

  On 10/25/2012 at 8:01 PM, BCM said:

  On 10/25/2012 at 7:51 PM, eugene said:

mobile desktop pc.

 

yep. this is the problem. been tried many times before, always failed. people don't want a mobile desktop pc: it's a fucking oxymoron. you can't sell an oxymoron.

 

No, but you can sell Oxy to morons...

The whole Surface thing just makes me laugh at how far behind Microsoft has fallen since Gates was at the helm - even then, he didn't alway make the best decisions (he hired Ballmer), but at least Microsoft had it's dominance going for it.

 

Hopefully Windows 8/Surface will make Microsoft realize it's time for new leadership and direction and get rid of Ballmer.

Depends how it all goes.

 

If they can get people to accept Win 8 then they've got a chance to nail the business tablet market for the next 5 years or so.

 

The gamble they are making is a gamble worth making, I think.

Edited October 25, 2012 by zazen

I picked up a 2nd hand Surface Pro this week, and for the record, it has blown me away.

  On 9/27/2013 at 9:27 AM, zazen said:

I picked up a 2nd hand Surface Pro this week, and for the record, it has blown me away.

You do realize the Surface 2 is coming/already out?

yeah it's bad time to buy old gen tablets/laptops, haswell is apparently living up to its promise and it's gonna get traction really soon.

Haswell, yes, unlike Surface. lol

After the 900 million USD write off Microsoft had due to unsold Surface tablets, the Surface 2 is their last chance at breaking into the tablet market. If I was a Surface 1 owner, I'd be pissed they released a new device so soon after Surface 1 came out. Stinks of what Apple did with iPad 3 and iPad 4 owners, although that was just a processor bump up - everything else was the same.

Yeah dunno, apparently you gotta come out with new stuff every now and then, everybody does it innit...

At least if you buy a Apple thing you can rely on them supporting it for a few years, unlike most other vendors.

  On 9/27/2013 at 6:45 PM, Joyrex said:

 

  On 9/27/2013 at 9:27 AM, zazen said:

I picked up a 2nd hand Surface Pro this week, and for the record, it has blown me away.

You do realize the Surface 2 is coming/already out?

 

 

yeah! It was announced the same day. I never buy new stuff (too many blood minerals involved, stuff like that) so I buy second hand things about a year or so later.

 

I believe the $900m writedown is mostly due to the Surface RT, which is a little bit pointless as windows on arm has limitations. The Surface Pro has been doing OK, I think.

 

They should have made the names more different because the RT vs Pro lines are totally different really.

Edited September 28, 2013 by zazen

A Windows 8 x86 tablet is a real computer. Why is it so funny to prefer to play with a tablet thats a toy and not a real computer? It's interesting in a forum full of music producers, the tablet that can most easily be used to compose a song is widely mocked

Edited September 28, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

look at him:

 

 

 

do you think he even gives a shit? about music?

 

 

this is why.

 

  On 9/28/2013 at 11:29 PM, phling said:

look at him:

 

 

 

 

do you think he even gives a shit? about music?

 

 

 

this is why.

 

 

 

He's actually a reasonable presenter, he's just a bit deadpan so it doesn't come accross to well in stills.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Ivvn8dhqU

 

Does he care about music? Did you see the remix cover he demoed?

 

 

Its a fairly simple prototype - think simple controller linked to a stripped down ableton type thing, aimed at people who just want to play around a bit. But it raises some interesting possibilities.

Edited September 30, 2013 by zazen

OK, here's a quick review after using the Surface Pro for a week or so.

 

First off: I'm not setting out to say the Surface Pro is 'better' than a MacBook Air (those things are beautiful) or an iPad or whatever. But having used it, the Surface Pro is a serious device. Its not just some piece of shit that Microsoft have come up with. Its a compelling product.

 

Basics: Think of it as a small, very powerful Windows laptop that also happens to behave like a tablet.The screen is nice. Really nice colours and brigthness and contrast. Weight-wise its obviously heavier than iPads etc, but it feels nice to hold. It has internal fans to cool the processor but they are very very quiet. Its smaller, quieter, faster and much nicer looking than the laptop I had before.

 

Using it without any keyboard is actually really nice. The on-screen keyboard is good. When you see the Windows Desktop come up and realise you can do all-your-normal-windows-shit via touch its a mini revelation. The touch works as naturally and smoothly as any other tablet or phone I've used.

 

I'd used windows 8 before but not with a touchscreen. Suddenly it all makes so much more sense. There are a few things to learn - swipe from left, right and bottom do different things - but after 30s of instructions it all works very naturally. I'm starting to really like the whole charms thing - e.g. to do a search, or get to app settings, whatever app you are in, its the same swipe from the right.

 

As the Surface has a 10.6" screen, for any serious work I'm going to plug it into my full size monitor. It has a USB3 port on the side. I'm going to be using it for windows development (Visual Studio etc) so I've got a USB3 hub that connects to keyboard, mouse, monitor and ethernet. I plug the USB hub into the Surface and its basically like having a docking station. So while I'm at my desk, thats how I use it.

 

I have a Touch Cover for it, and it works OK, although I havent done loads of typing on it yet. It feels a bit like using an on-screen keyboard, except its off the screen. The mousepad on it works OK, and I usually hate mousepads. But like I say for anything serious I'll be docking it into a proper keboard, mouse and monitor anyway. I hear the Type Cover is much better than the Touch Cover, but I wanted the lighter option. So I think of the Touch Cover as primarily a cover, but that it also happens to work as a reasonable keyboard should I need it.

 

The speakers are surprisingly good. And there's the wacom pen which was really fun to use because I've never used anything like that before. There are lots of note-taking apps (OneNote etc) to make use of it. Also whenever the on-screen keyboard is in use, you also have the option to switch it to OCR mode - and it gives you a space to write and then converts it into text. I havent taken it into the office yet and tried to make notes in meetings etc but I suspect its going to be damn handy.

 

The battery life isn't great - about 3 or 4 hours or so. But thats what I'm used to from laptops anyway. Like I said above, I think of this thing as being a small, light powerful laptop, rather than a big tablet. Its a laptop that you can also sit on the sofa with and use like a tablet when you just want to vaguely meander around the internet.

 

Space wise, I've got about 96GB to use, which is actually fine for me (I keep all my music and photos elsewhere, on media players or in the cloud, so the days of needing loads of space on my main device are behind me). You can stick an SD card in it to get an extra 64gig, or you can plug a hard drive of whatever size you like into the USB port.

 

I'm wedded to windows because of my job, although philosophically I much prefer the Linux/Android universe, and I tip my hat to Apple who have done amazing stuff thats driven the whole industry forward. Hence, as I have to inhabit the windows universe, this device makes sense to me, while it might not for everyone.

Edited September 30, 2013 by zazen

I was actually excited about the Surface Pro. Then, yesterday I walked into a Microsoft store, and put my hands on it.. Not good. Specifically, the keyboard. I don't know why, but i thought the keys would actually be 3 dimensional, and would actually MOVE. They don't.

 

The Sony Vaio Pro 13 is what I want. That thing is fucking amazing as far as I can tell.

there are two type of covers for surface, the one that's called type cover has mechanical keys

  On 9/30/2013 at 4:03 AM, zazen said:

OK, here's a quick review after using the Surface Pro for a week or so.

 

First off: I'm not setting out to say the Surface Pro is 'better' than a MacBook Air (those things are beautiful) or an iPad or whatever. But having used it, the Surface Pro is a serious device. Its not just some piece of shit that Microsoft have come up with. Its a compelling product.

 

Basics: Think of it as a small, very powerful Windows laptop that also happens to behave like a tablet.The screen is nice. Really nice colours and brigthness and contrast. Weight-wise its obviously heavier than iPads etc, but it feels nice to hold. It has internal fans to cool the processor but they are very very quiet. Its smaller, quieter, faster and much nicer looking than the laptop I had before.

 

Using it without any keyboard is actually really nice. The on-screen keyboard is good. When you see the Windows Desktop come up and realise you can do all-your-normal-windows-shit via touch its a mini revelation. The touch works as naturally and smoothly as any other tablet or phone I've used.

 

I'd used windows 8 before but not with a touchscreen. Suddenly it all makes so much more sense. There are a few things to learn - swipe from left, right and bottom do different things - but after 30s of instructions it all works very naturally. I'm starting to really like the whole charms thing - e.g. to do a search, or get to app settings, whatever app you are in, its the same swipe from the right.

 

As the Surface has a 10.6" screen, for any serious work I'm going to plug it into my full size monitor. It has a USB3 port on the side. I'm going to be using it for windows development (Visual Studio etc) so I've got a USB3 hub that connects to keyboard, mouse, monitor and ethernet. I plug the USB hub into the Surface and its basically like having a docking station. So while I'm at my desk, thats how I use it.

 

I have a Touch Cover for it, and it works OK, although I havent done loads of typing on it yet. It feels a bit like using an on-screen keyboard, except its off the screen. The mousepad on it works OK, and I usually hate mousepads. But like I say for anything serious I'll be docking it into a proper keboard, mouse and monitor anyway. I hear the Type Cover is much better than the Touch Cover, but I wanted the lighter option. So I think of the Touch Cover as primarily a cover, but that it also happens to work as a reasonable keyboard should I need it.

 

The speakers are surprisingly good. And there's the wacom pen which was really fun to use because I've never used anything like that before. There are lots of note-taking apps (OneNote etc) to make use of it. Also whenever the on-screen keyboard is in use, you also have the option to switch it to OCR mode - and it gives you a space to write and then converts it into text. I havent taken it into the office yet and tried to make notes in meetings etc but I suspect its going to be damn handy.

 

The battery life isn't great - about 3 or 4 hours or so. But thats what I'm used to from laptops anyway. Like I said above, I think of this thing as being a small, light powerful laptop, rather than a big tablet. Its a laptop that you can also sit on the sofa with and use like a tablet when you just want to vaguely meander around the internet.

 

Space wise, I've got about 96GB to use, which is actually fine for me (I keep all my music and photos elsewhere, on media players or in the cloud, so the days of needing loads of space on my main device are behind me). You can stick an SD card in it to get an extra 64gig, or you can plug a hard drive of whatever size you like into the USB port.

 

I'm wedded to windows because of my job, although philosophically I much prefer the Linux/Android universe, and I tip my hat to Apple who have done amazing stuff thats driven the whole industry forward. Hence, as I have to inhabit the windows universe, this device makes sense to me, while it might not for everyone.

Beyond taking it to meetings for notes, it sounds like it will spend most of it's time docked on your desk - why sacrifice power (same goes for a docked laptop) for little-used portability? I'd prefer (and do) have a standard desktop as a primary workstation, and by leveraging remote desktop and network-based resources, can potentially (if the need arises, that is) work remotely from a laptop (or Surface, for that matter - I imagine they have some flavour of Remote Desktop on it) then.

Yeah I suppose - I never really consider buying desktops because I live in a smallish flat and I like everything to be portable. And my desk sometimes doubles as the dining table etc etc.

  On 10/1/2013 at 12:12 AM, zazen said:

Yeah I suppose - I never really consider buying desktops because I live in a smallish flat and I like everything to be portable. And my desk sometimes doubles as the dining table etc etc.

Most desktops are roughly 3-4 laptops stacked up, so not that big, really - but, if space is a premium at home (and you work from home a fair bit), then a laptop or something you can put away makes sense - you could also consider mounting a desktop underneath a desk or in a cabinet, and either have a wireless monitor/keyboard/mouse setup, or a well-hidden wired setup where only the keyboard and mouse are wireless.

Anyone bought one of these and had it for an extended period of time? It's always like the shiny new thing that everyone walks past in the shops isn't it? Considering getting one to replace this old toshiba thing I currently use.

Guy at work has one, but he also has a windows phone, so. Personally the tiles idea really annoys me, a lot, like giant steaming volcanic vent of terrible rage, so I won't give you my opinion on it as it might be a little slanted (to the outside viewer).

I've had a Surface 2 for almost a year now. I've been on Macs exclusively for about 10 years otherwise, so I'm not sure if this is a Windows problem or a Surface issue, but it has been consistently twitchy since day one. I don't hate it; in some situations it's perfect. But the inconsistencies of the software (native windows programs are too-often glitchy, lack of decent apps available) and connection issues (Wi-fi, keyboard), I'm not sure I'd much recommend it. The Surface Pro 3 is supposedly a bit better, since it's running full Windows 8 and not the neutered Windows 8 RT, but I can't say...

I love how they're using the apple font