Next week, Microsoft officially releases the Surface Pro tablet.
It's basically a full Windows 8 laptop in tablet form.
You can run any Windows software on it.

I feel that the 40GB windows 8 install is a bit much on a tablet.
I can definitely see it's appeal though.
I might even buy one.

What do you guys think?

I think its going to flop because it brings little to the table. It has nothing new to offer except a tablet PC that runs Win8 meaning your old apps work on it. Price wise its expensive. Its too heavy to use as an actual tablet PC; its 2lbs where as the Ipad is 1.4 and that alone is enough to cause 'gorilla arm.'

I think it'll have a niche market but this past holiday season did a number on Microsoft. A lot of people bought sub-$700 laptops which might signal that people aren't interested in $900+ laptops like they once were (for Windows).

Yeah, I think of it more as a laptop in tablet form.

At 2 lbs, it's a heavy tablet. But as a laptop, it's extremely light.

That's where I think it has an advantage. People who want the
laptop experience without the laptop weight and in a very compact
form factor. In a way, it may be next evolution of the netbook.

The question now is where or not that's a big enough audience.

I was thinking about using it for music software. I can load it up with
software instruments (especially Pianoteq) and carry it around with my music keyboard.
A whole lot less easier than lugging a laptop and AC adapter around.

I also hope someone figures out how to put Linux on it.
If someone could make a custom Linux distribution for Surface Pro, that would be killer.

Just thinking about it, a Surface Pro plus cb4960's tools like Rikaisama seems like a win to me :>. Though you can probably use the tools with an atom based full Windows 8 tablet (not RT). An atom based tablet would be lighter to hold but it would probably be slow for most other programs. I'm actually considering a Surface Pro but it seems like it may be a little heavy for long sessions when I want to use it for reading. As a laptop replacement and other tasks it seems fine. I think you can run Rikaichan on android tablets but that's obviously not as good as Rikaisama which lets you add anki cards.

Please don't buy this. Windows 8 is such a horrid abomination. There's too many problems with it to list, but the most obvious was already mentioned: It's 40 gigs. 40 freakin gigs for an operating system. On a tablettophybridthing with 64 gigs of space available. This is freakin robbery.

And then you get to what Windows 8 is actually like when in use. Oh dear lord, the pein...

Zlarp Wrote:Please don't buy this. Windows 8 is such a horrid abomination. There's too many problems with it to list, but the most obvious was already mentioned: It's 40 gigs. 40 freakin gigs for an operating system. On a tablettophybridthing with 64 gigs of space available. This is freakin robbery.

And then you get to what Windows 8 is actually like when in use. Oh dear lord, the pein...

For the performance improvements alone it's worth the upgrade. It manages to have significantly more features than Windows 7 while requiring less battery/electricity usage, and a 30% general reduction in memory and cpu usage; from a coding perspective this is phenomenal, as to expand features while lowering resource demand is what every developer tries to achieve.

Even if you don't like metro, which functions the exact same way as the start menu (click corner and type to automatically search programs, or press the windows key and start typing), there are things like the vastly improved explorer (file browsing, copy dialogues, and etc), native ISO mounting, native screenshotting, vastly improved task manager, improved Windows Defender (now includes virus definitions instead of just "spyware" definitions), significantly lower start-up time, et cetera all while using significantly less cpu usage and ram than Windows 7.

Please don't spread misconceptions.

I do feel that Microsoft dropped with the 40GB Windows 8 install.
This is a tablet after all (or looks enough like a tablet to fool people).
They should've aimed for a more lightweight OS that is binary compatible
with Windows 8 applications. Maybe they'll get this right in the future.

I think that the form factor is possibly the future of PC computing.
A more compact, lightweight, portable design for laptops.
Compared to tablets, laptops are fairly large. With the intregration of
so many features in a minimum amount of space, I can see laptops
shrinking down to the size of tablets.

ryuudou Wrote:Please don't spread misconceptions.

Features and performance wise, I'll agree, its many steps above 7. But the UI is 2 steps back. Many people have talked about how much of it isn't all the intuitive and breaks so many of the common place ideas in GUI design. Part of the problem is that Metro and Aero function as 2 completely separate entities in functionality.

While I think they should be commended for their under-the-hood improvements; people don't care about those things when it comes to using a piece of software (just see the mess in the "Good Alternatives to Anki?" thread). What matters is what they see, the UI, and that's busted out of the box. They've shoved Metro down everyone's throats just like they shoved ribbons down everyone's throats and I see no reason why they shouldn't be burned for such a thing.

This video sums up some of the issues present within the OS.
30 Days using Windows 8, Review

I was at a Microsoft Store today and they had the Surface Pro out for display although it's not for sale until this Saturday. It seems to be a pretty nice unit. It's speedy compared to the atom based tablets and the stylus seems to track well. At 2lbs, it's a bit heavier than other tablets but I don't think it is prohibitively heavy. If I get one, I would like to use it as a pseudo laptop replacement and also to use with rikaisama to facilitate reading Japanese texts. I think you really have t get the 128gb version because of the space issues so $999 is pretty pricey. Then there's the ~$100 keyboard cover if you want one. But the atom based units which also have an active digitzer costs between $600-800 already and they are slower. I'm kind of a tablet nut. I already own an iPad 4th gen and a Galaxy Note 10.1.