I'm planning on getting one of these to upgrade my current laptop, a cruddy old 15-inch Toshiba Windows Vista hunk of junk. From what I've seen of it and from what I've done at the Microsoft Store, it's really great and seems to fit my needs perfectly.

Discuss the Surface Pro! But not the RT, because that is the single most useless tablet in the history of forever.

banana500 wrote:

I'm planning on getting one of these to upgrade my current laptop, a cruddy old 15-inch Toshiba Windows Vista hunk of junk. From what I've seen of it and from what I've done at the Microsoft Store, it's really great and seems to fit my needs perfectly.

Discuss the Surface Pro! But not the RT, because that is the single most useless tablet in the history of forever.

RT?

DotDash wrote:

banana500 wrote:

I'm planning on getting one of these to upgrade my current laptop, a cruddy old 15-inch Toshiba Windows Vista hunk of junk. From what I've seen of it and from what I've done at the Microsoft Store, it's really great and seems to fit my needs perfectly.

Discuss the Surface Pro! But not the RT, because that is the single most useless tablet in the history of forever.

RT?

The Surface RT includes a slimmed-down Windows 8 called Windows RT, in which you can't install applications like on normal Windows and you are restricted to the Windows Store, which has a terrible library of apps.

The Surface Pro is definitely a cool device, but I personally would suggest either a wait or a jump. If you wait a little longer, you could hope for a Haswell version which likely will have better battery life, among other improvements. On the other hand if you jump now, you could possibly try to justify getting a Broadwell version in a few years, which based on what I've found will be absolutely incredible. According to some googling Intel may not be releasing Broadwell until 2015. So if you can justify buying another one in a few years I'd say get one now, but otherwise wait until Microsoft updates it to Haswell.

I think it's insane that everybody got so worked up over the failure of the Surface RT. Yes it was an abysmal failure, but everybody focuses on that instead of the success they reached with the Pro. If I could change one thing though, it would be to have a more legit keyboard dock. Not the flimsy (yet cool) snap cover that they have now, but one with real keys and maybe a battery extension in it. Of all the form factors for convertibles, I think that having a detachable screen is the clear winner.

It got a big price cut. It's now $799 for the 64 gb version.

16Skittles wrote:

The Surface Pro is definitely a cool device, but I personally would suggest either a wait or a jump. If you wait a little longer, you could hope for a Haswell version which likely will have better battery life, among other improvements. On the other hand if you jump now, you could possibly try to justify getting a Broadwell version in a few years, which based on what I've found will be absolutely incredible. According to some googling Intel may not be releasing Broadwell until 2015. So if you can justify buying another one in a few years I'd say get one now, but otherwise wait until Microsoft updates it to Haswell.

I think it's insane that everybody got so worked up over the failure of the Surface RT. Yes it was an abysmal failure, but everybody focuses on that instead of the success they reached with the Pro. If I could change one thing though, it would be to have a more legit keyboard dock. Not the flimsy (yet cool) snap cover that they have now, but one with real keys and maybe a battery extension in it. Of all the form factors for convertibles, I think that having a detachable screen is the clear winner.

It does have an accessory that has physical, mechanical keys, instead of the Touch Cover.

Yeah my dad also suggested maybe waiting for the Haswell version, but the i5 by itself works just fine for me. I'll be using it all throughout high school for work and maybe sometimes use it as a gaming device (in the sense of emulation).

I think it's a little underspecced for use as a main computer though, especially storage and graphics wise.

banana500 wrote:

16Skittles wrote:

The Surface Pro is definitely a cool device, but I personally would suggest either a wait or a jump. If you wait a little longer, you could hope for a Haswell version which likely will have better battery life, among other improvements. On the other hand if you jump now, you could possibly try to justify getting a Broadwell version in a few years, which based on what I've found will be absolutely incredible. According to some googling Intel may not be releasing Broadwell until 2015. So if you can justify buying another one in a few years I'd say get one now, but otherwise wait until Microsoft updates it to Haswell.

I think it's insane that everybody got so worked up over the failure of the Surface RT. Yes it was an abysmal failure, but everybody focuses on that instead of the success they reached with the Pro. If I could change one thing though, it would be to have a more legit keyboard dock. Not the flimsy (yet cool) snap cover that they have now, but one with real keys and maybe a battery extension in it. Of all the form factors for convertibles, I think that having a detachable screen is the clear winner.

It does have an accessory that has physical, mechanical keys, instead of the Touch Cover.

Yeah my dad also suggested maybe waiting for the Haswell version, but the i5 by itself works just fine for me. I'll be using it all throughout high school for work and maybe sometimes use it as a gaming device (in the sense of emulation).

The main thing isn't about the power. Ivy Bridge is pretty beastly (although hot) even in graphics compared to older Intel chipsets (I can play BF3 on minimum settings, TF2 on max settings). If you've seen the new MacBook Air, they practically doubled the battery life. How much of that is due to optimizations in OSX or how much is due to the Haswell processor is something to ask a higher-up at Apple, but these days I consider battery life to be one of the most important specs in a computer.

banana500 wrote:

DotDash wrote:

banana500 wrote:

I'm planning on getting one of these to upgrade my current laptop, a cruddy old 15-inch Toshiba Windows Vista hunk of junk. From what I've seen of it and from what I've done at the Microsoft Store, it's really great and seems to fit my needs perfectly.

Discuss the Surface Pro! But not the RT, because that is the single most useless tablet in the history of forever.

RT?

The Surface RT includes a slimmed-down Windows 8 called Windows RT, in which you can't install applications like on normal Windows and you are restricted to the Windows Store, which has a terrible library of apps.

^ That and it stands for Run Time.

Doesn't the Surface Pro have a lamentable battery life as well?

jji7skyline wrote:

Doesn't the Surface Pro have a lamentable battery life as well?

My understanding is that it is decent for a laptop-type device, but not so great compared with ARM tablets like an iPad. Thats one of the reasons I suggested holding off.

Ok, most review sites agree with you.

What I don't like about the newer Windows 8 laptops is that they lock the bootloader.

jji7skyline wrote:

Ok, most review sites agree with you.

What I don't like about the newer Windows 8 laptops is that they lock the bootloader.

+1
I don't have a Windows 8 laptop myself, but if I did, I would probably want to install Linux on it.

jji7skyline wrote:

Ok, most review sites agree with you.

What I don't like about the newer Windows 8 laptops is that they lock the bootloader.

Yes that is a problem to a certain extent. Are there root/jailbreak style workarounds yet to unlock it? I'm a big freedom-of-technology person, but I really can't fault MS for this completely. iOS and most Android devices are sold with a locked bootloader, so I can't justify nitpicking Microsoft for doing something that is becoming closer to internet-standard. Admittedly OSX no longer does that, but not too long ago they used an entirely different CPU architecture and it was impossible to install Windows, not to mention the policy of installation on only Apple hardware. While it is arguable that limiting the OS on a PC is a bigger problem than limiting the ability to apply a custom ROM on a smartphone, it could also be argued that it is less limiting to restrict the OS on a full powered computer due to the increased capacity to VM.
Basically it's an industry trend that you can only break free from by making your own. If you can't do that, throw on VirtualBox.

I really like what I have seen about the surface Pro. I tried one out in BestBuy a few months ago, and really liked what I saw. It was very responsive, fast to open apps and programs. The screen was pretty good, but I am worried what it will look like now that I have gotten used to the screen on my new Nexus 7. I will probably get the Haswell version, if I get one, because of the improved battery life (my current laptop has awful battery life).

If I had the money, I would definitely get the Surface 2 Pro. For now, my 2nd-gen Nexus 7 does the trick, and quite well I might add!

Microsoft are still trying to make Windows tablets happen? Really?

Flamekebab wrote:

Microsoft are still trying to make Windows tablets happen? Really?

Why not? The Surface is actually a good tablet, not like the ones made by like Samsung and others. Well they're good, but they'll never be as good as the ones designed by the company who made the OS. Hence the high performance of Nexus 7 and iPad.

LeDerpy123 wrote:

Flamekebab wrote:

Microsoft are still trying to make Windows tablets happen? Really?

Why not? The Surface is actually a good tablet, not like the ones made by like Samsung and others. Well they're good, but they'll never be as good as the ones designed by the company who made the OS. Hence the high performance of Nexus 7 and iPad.

Actually Microsoft make the OS and the hardware for the Surface. The hardware for the Nexus 7 is more made by Asus.

LeDerpy123 wrote:

Flamekebab wrote:

Microsoft are still trying to make Windows tablets happen? Really?

Well they're good, but they'll never be as good as the ones designed by the company who made the OS. Hence the high performance of Nexus 7 and iPad.

On this point I both agree and disagree. In theory a unified design process gives better results but when it's MS at the helm I'm very, very cagey about getting on board. They don't exactly have much of a track record of supporting hardware!

Personally I don't want to buy into a product that can't be relied on to have a living ecosystem in a couple of years. MS have pulled the plug on more developments than I care to remember. It's no surprise they're still single after all this time given their commitment issues XD

This is also the reason I'm starting to get cold feet about Google. There was a time where experimental projects they launched could be relied on to stick around for the long haul. These days I don't want to jump in with both feet in case the rug is pulled from under me. Google Buzz came and went, Google Wave rocked but was swiftly euthanised, Google Reader got the chop recently, etc..

At the moment I mostly want a tablet running Ubuntu on ARM hardware.