AnandTech: Microsoft Surface Review
anandtech.com
anandtech.com
I want this to be successful because I would love something like it with a bit 'denser' screen and flexibility. I wonder if they tried a keyboard with a fold out mouse like ginormous scroll area.
I really like the fit and finish though. That is some awesome tech right there.
Basically, they've gone and perfected the OQO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OQO
Pretty soon, we'll have 512GB flash drives in these things. Most of us won't have a reason for an old fashioned PC. We'll just have different interface form factors.
It'll be interesting to see if the Surface Pro feels more like an iPaddish-tablet or more like a traditional PC-ish tablet. Unless it's really good at what it does, I think it can easily end up doing more harm than good to Microsoft through Surface brand dilution, consumer confusion (x64 vs ARM, which apps run where), etc.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3540550/microsoft-surface...
The promise of the Surface was that it could deliver a best-in-class tablet experience, but then transform into the PC you needed when heavier lifting was required. Instead of putting down my tablet and picking up my laptop, I would just snap on my keyboard and get my work done. But that's not what the Surface offers, at least not in my experience. It does the job of a tablet and the job of a laptop half as well as other devices on the market, and it often makes that job harder, not easier. Instead of being a no-compromise device, it often feels like a more-compromise one.
So if it was going to succeed at something, the most likely outcome would be as a good-enough laptop replacement and a good-enough tablet replacement, even though it would be a compromise as either. Instead, the reviewer came to the conclusion that it was more of a "neither fish nor fowl" product. Having not had a chance to use one myself, I nevertheless suspect that will be my conclusion when I have a chance to try one out.
If Metro apps take off, then in 6 months to a year, Surface could be a completely viable iPad replacement. But right now, you would have to have a pretty limited set of needs to be satisfied with a Surface.
Worse, I've read more than one review claiming that the software is still glitchy. While understandable in a 1.0 product, that's a huge disadvantage when compared to the famous stability of an iPad.
So while I'm sure there will be some interest just because it's a cool-looking product, I don't think more than a small minority of users will find it a realistic substitute for an iPad.
Where 'content creator' means typist - ok, writer.
Meanwhile if you are a musician, painter, sketch artist, calligrapher, or casually work with video or photography or many other artistic or creative media the iPad is a fantastic content creation device. To be fair to Anandtech they don't appear to fall into the trap of narrowly equating typing with creation, but so many people in this comment and many others here and all over the web do so regularly. It's an infuriatingly narrow perspective.
Half the apps pre-installed on the Surface RT launches in the classic desktop interface, most notably Microsoft Office, where the smaller user elements do not play nicely with the touch interface.
I had totally expected Microsoft will get Office right - touch friendly, not relying on classic Desktop and relatively bloat free. If integrated well with the tablet interface it would become a better productivity machine for Enterprise users than competition's offerings.
With what is being said of Office RT, I don't see what the selling point of Surface is - It is Windows but can't run Windows apps, it is a tablet but needs to switch to classic to run a so-so version of touch-unfriendly Office (Do I get Outlook with it?).
May be it will be a better story with Surface Pro.
That said, its desktop mode Office because they are emulating(or just ported) the old Win32 libraries used to run old office code. This is likely the cause of the CPU spike.
I don't know why you'd expect this. The office team has always been one of the biggest violators of any HIG or best practices guide that the windows team publishes, I find it hard to imagine that a new version of windows will suddenly make office a well-behaved windows app, when it has failed to do so for the last 7 versions.
Full Office is indeed a killer app, but $600 (with the necessary cover) is steep when their competition is racing to $200. I'm also interested to see how the size plays in the market. As the first high quality 7" tablets have their first Christmas season, I think the dynamics of the market could shift. Something that fits in a purse is going to be a huge draw for women; something that costs around $300 will put it in kids' price range. Surface might be great on it's own merits, but tech savvy dudes and Excel lovers can't sustain an app ecosystem.
I've been looking for a tablet with a good keyboard recently. The most similar gadget I found, the Asus Transformer, is by no means racing to $200. What did you had in mind?
I'm buying something in two or three months, so I'm genuinely interested. BTW, I don't find the Surface compelling, but that's just another story.
Is the $600 price a steep one? I'm not sure. It's the same price as the iPad and not only can you consume/play with it, but you can also do work. This has the potential of replacing your iPad+laptop combo.
On the other hand, for $600 you could also buy a mediocre laptop that can run full Windows 7/8. But likely without a touch screen (but win8 works fine without one anyways so whatever).
At the end of the day, if your budget is $600 it really comes down to "do you care about tablet use cases". If you do, then buy a win8 device like Surface over an iPad. If you don't then skip this form factor and get yourself a "normal" non-touch laptop with full Windows and likely better hardware.
I guess my original meta point was that if this isn't worth $600, then the iPad shouldn't even be worth $500.
Re: "but with an iPad you have 250k apps" - sure, but I'm confident that the apps will come to win8. It's a matter of time, and I don't think it will take too long. I expect lot more AAA apps to be released after October 26th.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More...
I've understood the Infinity has the same keydock as the Prime. But maybe the keys are better now? How is your typing experience?
And yet, Microsoft lifts the embargo on reviews about 6hrs after the release of the new ipad. Fun timing.
I suppose the extra viciousness is because the next two quarters may well decide the fate of several major product lines: Android on tablets, Windows on phones, survival of companies like Nokia and Sony's mobile division, ...
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/22/3537380/the-high-stakes-o...
I wonder why they used the same name for this product.
In the end, it will probably be between an Ultrabook like the Lenovo X1 Carbon, or the Surface Pro, with the Surface having a slight upper hand because I can use it as a tablet as well.
It's weird and unnatural, and -- here I may just be being eccentric -- it gives me the feeling that the companies are trying to manipulate me, hoping that if I keep seeing "Surface" instead of "the Surface" and "iPad" instead of "an iPad" some bit of my brain will start treating those product names like personal names and feel warm and fuzzy and friendly towards the products.
It's weird the way that Anand goes along with this in his article when he's talking about the Microsoft device ("After living with Surface however, I understand the appeal") but not when he happens to mention the Apple one ("I wouldn’t say that it looks better or worse than the iPad, it’s simply different"). So much so that I almost wonder whether Microsoft made it a condition of providing a review device that the review had to avoid ever saying "the Surface" or "a Surface".
As a measure of how unnatural the locution Microsoft's marketing people are trying to push on us is, notice that almost everyone here on HN, commenting on Anand's review that consistently uses MS's preferred form, none the less says "a Surface" or "the Surface" when referring to a particular instance rather than to the brand. [EDITED to add: I am not suggesting that he's showing some kind of deliberate favouritism or that MS asked him not to do the article-dropping thing when referring to competitors' products. I think he says "the iPad" instead of just "iPad" because by now everyone's stopped indulging Apple's marketing department's whims.]
When reading, and you see the capital, it's easier to determine what is being referred to, but I often hear it being read in a voice as well, and the lack of articles 'helps' in some way.
Would someone more qualified than I comment on this? I seem to remember from high school that magnesium is highly flammable. Its autoignition temperature is fairly high at 473C/883F, but I could see a li-ion battery malfunction leading to a pretty nasty fire hazard.
Is there some special process that can be applied to magnesium to ensure that this product doesn't turn into a flare?
For magnesium alloys, thixomolding uses a machine similar to injection molding.
In a single step process, room temperature magnesium alloy chips are fed into the
back end of a heated barrel through a volumetric feeder. The barrel is maintained
under an argon atmosphere to prevent oxidation of the magnesium chips. A screw feeder
located inside the barrel feeds the magnesium chips forward as they are heated into
the semi-solid temperature range. The screw rotation provides the necessary shearing
force to generate the globular structure needed for semi-solid casting. Once enough
slurry has accumulated, the screw moves forward to inject the slurry into a steel die.
Burning a NeXT Cube (Magnesium) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkvQ-BJD2rU
Why call this out when it is true for every single piece of consumer hardware these days?
I think that's the point the statement is trying to make: that even just looking at the device there are enough things that are glaring omissions and misses that you will feel shortchanged when they're inevitably fixed in v2.
I feel the same way about the iPad mini. The lack of a retina display in this day and age feels like a very obvious miss, and you know they will fix this next year, which makes buying it now seem like a poor proposition.
The extra storage is irrelevant, since they need that for cover for the greater size of Windows and Office, and they shouldn't make the user pay for it. Also how do they explain the fact that Google will use a much more powerful chip (Exynos 5 Dual) and a much higher resolution (2560x1600) in their upcoming Nexus 10 tablet, and yet will still cost $500 or less? Not to mention this entire review is not made for the $500 device, but for the $600 device, with they keyboard.
It seems Microsoft's fans promote TheVerge's reviews only when it suits them. I think TheVerge's Surface review is a lot more objective:
http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/23/3540550/microsoft-surface...
A lot of people still think an iPad can't be used for content creation (not true at all; the thing has supported a Bluetooth keyboard since day one, there's tons of music being made with the thing, there's tons of apps for content creation at this point...) or productivity purposes (a somewhat fair point, but unless Surface somehow takes off, I can guarantee there will be Office for iPad someday). Ask anyone how they can justify spending the same amount of money as an iPad on a tablet that's smaller, with a far worse screen, with almost no ecosystem to speak of, unproven software, and with no accessory ecosystem, and they'll probably tell you "because this one will let me be more productive!"
I dunno. I try not to get too negative about products. I've come around on a lot of Android tablets; the Nexus 7 is a genuinely impressive device for $200. But the Surface seems not only woefully underpowered, but with Windows 8, has proven to manage to be cross-contaminating, harming the desktop OS that Microsoft had so finely perfected with Windows 7.
As for 'cross contaminating', the convergence of tablet and laptop OSes is inevitable. IMO microsoft would be foolish to ignore it. Their moves toward convergence are also far better than Apples iOS influenced changes to OSX, despite being far more bold.
I don't think the review is intentionally biased, I just think it is biased towards the status quo. Instead of reviewing the Surface for what it is and letting the chips fall where they may, he reviewed the Surface based on the features it has common with other tablets, with the question being "how does the Surface compare to the best parts of the iPad and Nexus 7". From that perspective I think the review is fair, but I also think he's reviewing about 60% of what the device can do.
This review doesn't say a thing about the device. He doesn't say anything negative, he doesn't say anything positive. He just says it's worth considering, and heavily quotes a random Microsoft exec. He says he "gets it" but doesn't say what that means.
I have no idea what the point of the article is, or what information it's supposed to convey. He could have simply said "Microsoft has a tablet."
I'd say it was a PR piece if it didn't sound so darn blase on the whole thing, but I guess that echoes the exec he quoted. Is Microsoft's communications strategy simply to convince people not to talk about the features or functions of the Surface?
"As a device, Surface is incredibly well executed.
Surface is the most flexible tablet I've ever used.
Multitasking, task switching and the ability to have multiple applications active on the screen at once are all big advantages that Microsoft enjoys. For productivity workloads, Surface is without equal in the tablet space.
Content consumption is also great on the device. Surface's display isn't industry leading but it's still good. Reading emails, browsing the web flipping through photos and watching videos are all good fits for the platform - just as good as competing solutions from Apple or Google.
I would have liked to have seen faster hardware inside, and there are some rough edges that could use smoothing out (e.g. the power connector and HDMI output come to mind) but overall the device is easily in recommendable territory.
If you're ok being an early adopter, and ok dealing with the fact that mobile devices are still being significantly revved every year, Surface is worth your consideration. If you've wanted a tablet that could really bridge the content consumption and prodcutivity device, Surface is it."
It did not cover the software in details but I think that is the part of the review. Windows 8 by itself has been covered in detail elsewhere.
Also, I get the impression that Microsoft has been set a lower bar -- almost encouraged for just having a go in this space rather than comparing it to existing products. E.g. how does the Type Cover compare to the range of 3rd party products available for the iPad for < $129? How much better is the Touch Cover to onscreen when taking into account predictive text & auto correct? Not much to go on in this review. Maybe MS haven't given a lot of time for people to spend with the product.
I remember to have read that he was playing with the device for almost 3 weeks. That's seems long enough.
I fail to see how the review can be characterized as "meh". It comes off as guardedly impressed to me, and definitely looking forward to the next revision of the hardware.
Hmm. Just saw a Surface commercial on TV while I was writing this. Looks like the war is a "go". Beneficiaries: Everyone.
Although, now that I think of it, Word has auto-corrected common typos for ages now and in more recent versions it never caught something it shouldn't have (unlike Word 97).
I'm a pretty big Apple fanboy. I have the newest iPhone, iPad and Macbook Pro (until yesterday anyway). The one place Apple hasn't taken over is in my living room. My Xbox still rules there and I don't see Apple overtaking that.
If Microsoft can integrate their other products with the excellent living room experience provided by Xbox, I think they can really be successful.
As tablet it has big weight. As ultrabook - small screen and worse input. (And I don't like keyboard layout shown in pictures)
It's not contender for IPad/Android, it's not contender for ultrabooks.
Maybe if I had it in my hands - I had another opinion. Now I just don't understand this middle "Microsoft way"
So it means i can recompile my apps and run it on Windows RT?
Then there's a lot of hemming an hawing over how there's no perfect solution, and it doesn't run Windows applications. This was not enough to convince me to read the rest of the review.
If anything, this review seemed to lean positive. I wouldn't say it was gushing with love, but it's certainly left me with a solid impression of the hardware and a sense that the Surface won't be a complete flop.
The mix of damning judgement and deliberate ignorance here is amusing.