Surface Windows 8 Pro tablet pricing and launch date

BruceA said:
I think you've missed the point. No-one in their right minds would buy this device to use purely for content consumption - there are better, lower priced alternatives. The Windows 8 Pro devices are meant as very portable alternatives to the smaller laptops and ultrabooks, not the iPad. However, I don't see that the advantage of a slightly slimmer and lighter tablet based machine out-weighs the advantage of a laptop. Having a keyboard and mouse/trackpad is essential - try creating documents in Excel on a touch only machine! Ideally, I like to "work" on as big a screen I can, and therefore favour using a desktop where possible. A laptop will suffice, if there is no option. No way would I voluntarily try and "work" on a tablet.
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But then just plug a keyboard and mouse in if you need to work on excel, or don't if you don't need to. At least here you have the choice and flexibility to use it as you want. The wonderful thing is that things can just be added, just like you do on your desktop.
 
Retail will be the final determinant of the value of the Surface Pro. The Surface RT wasn't the droid we were looking for, but perhaps this one will hit a chord.
 
Not a fan of Surface to be honest,

1st thing that comes to mind was why no NFC? Then I saw the lack of GPS and my mind went yeah right, good luck with that.
Can not wait for ASUS to bring a proper Pro version so I can replace my Eee Pad. Keyboard add on is meh ad best, Keyboard + battery + Eth + extra ports now that is something to look at.
 
I'm buying one. Be a great all rounder for my work and studies. I would take that over a laptop or those new silly 2 screen laptops anyday. I'm not too concerned about battery life.
 
AlphaJohn said:
1st thing that comes to mind was why no NFC? Then I saw the lack of GPS and my mind went yeah right, good luck with that.
Can not wait for ASUS to bring a proper Pro version so I can replace my Eee Pad. Keyboard add on is meh ad best, Keyboard + battery + Eth + extra ports now that is something to look at.
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I didn't realise that... a bit strange. My (cheaper) Acer W510 tablet has both NFC and GPS. I would HIGHLY recommend that as a replacement to the eee pad. Yes, it's Atom, but because of that it's passively cooled and small. Decent keyboard, too.
 
elvis_presley said:
I didn't realise that... a bit strange. My (cheaper) Acer W510 tablet has both NFC and GPS. I would HIGHLY recommend that as a replacement to the eee pad. Yes, it's Atom, but because of that it's passively cooled and small. Decent keyboard, too.
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To comment in their defense, its the metal case that they use. GPS/NFC will need holes or plastic covers to work properly thus break the nice design.

I love the TF101 so I am sure I would find a liking to the VivoTab
 
AlmightyBender said:
No it's a tablet and should be compared with tablets.
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If you don't believe that it should be compared with Ultrabooks - here is a quote from Anand Lal Shimpi:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/6686/...ce-pro-available-in-us-canada-on-february-9th
- I'm not too bothered by Surface Pro's pricing, as it's ultimately an Ultrabook competitor. However I would like to see a bundled touch or type cover at those price points. I'd also like to see integrated Thunderbolt to truly enable the tablet/notebook/desktop usage model.
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AlmightyBender said:
Also Windows 8 runs just fine on 4GB RAM :confused: I know because I am running it on 4GB RAM.
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Most people in the know, recommend 8GB or more for Windows 8.
Sure you can go with 2Gb or 4GB, but load up Office, Outlook, Chrome, and suddenly your'e out of RAM and paging.
AlmightyBender said:
As for storage, you can so easily just plug a flash drive or external in. Not sure you can do that with your iPad... And remember this is a tablet after all and I don't see anyone up in arms about the rest of the 32GB tablets.
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The issue here is that it's sold as a 64GB device, but only 32GB free.
iPad is a 64GB device with 60GB free.
IIRC, there was much unhappiness with Windows RT using too much of the onboard storage.
 
abandonallhope said:
system32 said:
a device that is the minimum spec to run Windows 8.
Running Window 8 x64 on 4GB RAM is hardly fun.
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This is why we can't have normal discussions.

Like a child wandering into a movie...
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Your comments don't refute the fact or provide sensible explanation for your position.
But that's OK, since you don't seem to know much about technology - keep to FB.

Using Windows 8 Pro on 4GB RAM, with only 32GB disk free, with a few open applications, it will not run well.
Most recommendations are 8GB RAM and 256GB for OS, Office, etc.

Remember that Surface Pro is considered to be a Ultrabook class device.
AnandtTech (one of the most respected technology sites) says:
Surface Pro is definitely thicker and heavier than Surface RT. (2lbs)
- I'm not too bothered by Surface Pro's pricing, as it's ultimately an Ultrabook competitor. However I would like to see a bundled touch or type cover at those price points. I'd also like to see integrated Thunderbolt to truly enable the tablet/notebook/desktop usage model
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Ultrabooks generally have more RAM and more disk.
 
system32 said:
Most people in the know, recommend 8GB or more for Windows 8.
Sure you can go with 2Gb or 4GB, but load up Office, Outlook, Chrome, and suddenly your'e out of RAM and paging.
Click to expand...
Nay, Win8 64 with 5 main Office 2013 64 bit apps & Chrome open ...

w8mem.jpg
 
Roman4604 said:
Nay, Win8 64 with 5 main Office 2013 64 bit apps & Chrome open ...
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I checked on my Windows 8 laptop.
  • Word open - with 1 x 14 page document open
  • Excel with 1 XLS with 8 TABS open
  • PPT with 1 presentation open
  • Outlook with my mailbox open
  • Chrome with 6 tabs
Resource Monitor shows
  • 8GB Installed
  • 120MB HW reserved
  • 1.9GB USED
  • 103MB Modified (Cache)
  • 3.2GB Standby (Cache)
  • 2.9MB FREE
In your example, you only opened the applications.
In mine I opened the applications and opened some data - hence the 1.9GB is used by OS+Apps.
But you still need some disk cache, some HW reserved, etc.
So I still maintain you need 4GB is the minimum, with 8GB recommended for decent performance.
 
system32 said:
But you still need some disk cache, some HW reserved, etc.
So I still maintain you need 4GB is the minimum, with 8GB recommended for decent performance.
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One has to also bear in mind that Win8 is aware that it's running on a tablet and/or has an SSD, and changes its behaviour accordingly - being more aggressive on keeping memory free, etc. Win7 pretty much expanded to fill all available memory, and kept everything in memory as long as it could which has given people the impression that Windows is more memory hungry than they think. The Win8 kernel has been massively revamped to be more friendly to run on lower-spec hardware, and it shows.
 
system32 said:
So I still maintain you need 4GB is the minimum, with 8GB recommended for decent performance.
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Cant agree, tried a stress test myself ...

Outlook open on 2GB Exchange mailbox
Word with 2 documents, one 20MB in size
Excel with 18MB 6 tab sheet containing over 100,000 populated lines
Powerpoint with 21MB presentation
Visio with 2 complex 3MB drawings
Chrome with 6 tabs open, all on media-rich news home pages

Task manager still only shows 1.8 GB In Use, 2.1 GB Available, and my 3 year old Centrino 2 based laptop is as responsive as with no apps running. As mentioned I'm running both 64 bit Win8 Ent & 64 bit Office 2013 (Chrome is 32 bit only), are you running 32 or 64 bit?
 
I am running win 8 on an old laptop with 1.5GB of ram. It runs ok.
 
Roman4604 said:
Cant agree, tried a stress test myself ...

Outlook open on 2GB Exchange mailbox
Word with 2 documents, one 20MB in size
Excel with 18MB 6 tab sheet containing over 100,000 populated lines
Powerpoint with 21MB presentation
Visio with 2 complex 3MB drawings
Chrome with 6 tabs open, all on media-rich news home pages

Task manager still only shows 1.8 GB In Use, 2.1 GB Available, and my 3 year old Centrino 2 based laptop is as responsive as with no apps running. As mentioned I'm running both 64 bit Win8 Ent & 64 bit Office 2013 (Chrome is 32 bit only), are you running 32 or 64 bit?
Click to expand...
I use Windows 8 Pro - 64 bit.
Most of my apps are 32 bit.
I had a choice of Office 2013 64bit, but changed to the 32bit Office, as I've had problems in the past with plugins, XLA, etc.
There are a few exceptions, such as:
SQL Server 64bit.
7-Zip 64bit
Sybase ASE 64bit
Oracle 11G 64bit,
etc.
 
The only thing missing for me is a better GPU but I suppose you can't win them all :) perhaps a smaller screen would require less GPU for a bit of on the side gaming?
 
system32 said:
SQL Server 64bit.
Sybase ASE 64bit
Oracle 11G 64bit,
Click to expand...
I would expect for these 4GB might be bit slim, but for heavy Office & general desktop use, my oldish laptop doesnt even break a sweat with 4GB RAM.

And since the Surface Pro's specs chow my laptop in every other respect, I believe it should provide a very snappy experience.
 
Will the Pro allow you to install any flavor of Windows 8 on it or is there a specific version?
 
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