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Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

arstechnica.com

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Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#171

Post by baddox »

criley2 wrote: post #87
enko wrote: post #24

Dear Microsoft: Out of ARM and x86, choose one. Just choose one. For the love of god, choose ONE. Can you imagine Apple, or anyone else, deliberately releasing two different tablets, with the same name, which can not run each others' software? It is inconceivable, and for good reason. MS cannot make decisions. That's what will kill them, long term. Just choose one!!

You've misread the problem. Apple DOES have an X86 ecosystem AND an ARM ecosystem. They do not cross streams and customers are not confused, and Apple can successfully grow application ecosystems across two very different architectures. So what is Microsoft doing wrong? It's very simple, and I cannot believe they haven't already done this. I'm thinking that the naming scheme for their ARM platform is why they're balk…

I would rather them invest more into ARM, and use the Surface name (a great name) for the direct iPad competitor.

The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality. It's the one in a boring (and shrinking!) market.

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#172

Post by Livven »

mietek wrote: post #157
mikevm wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it'd be particularly efficient. I need to be able to write proofs (which include lots of math symbols) and draw diagrams very quickly. I've seen people do it with digitizers, but the results ends up being rather poor. Pen & paper still looks best.

Is there a usable handwriting recognizer which can deal with heavy math notation?

Windows comes with a dedicated math handwriting input panel. Totally random, all because of their long (failed) push for Tablet PCs. I'm not sure how well it works though.

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#173

Post by chatman »

meepmorp wrote: post #107
__abc wrote: post #40

Who's the guying posing in the photo's? He looks miserable.

Yeah, it's weird. Maybe it's just poor choice of photos by Ars, but the guy looks like a bored, minimum wage employee hawking those things at a mall kiosk.

That is insulting. Perhaps you earn more than "minimum wage", but please be respectful to everyone. Everyone out there is doing a job and deserves respect, even if he's earning a minimum wage or if he's working at a mall kiosk.

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#174

Post by dragonwriter »

baddox wrote: post #171
criley2 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've misread the problem. Apple DOES have an X86 ecosystem AND an ARM ecosystem. They do not cross streams and customers are not confused, and Apple can successfully grow application ecosystems across two very different architectures. So what is Microsoft doing wrong? It's very simple, and I cannot believe they haven't already done this. I'm thinking that the naming scheme for their ARM platform is why they're balk…

I would rather them invest more into ARM, and use the Surface name (a great name) for the direct iPad competitor. The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality. It's the one in a boring (and shrinking!) market.

> The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality

Well its a "Windows laptop", except for the fact that its a tablet that can (like most tablets) also function as a laptop and (unlike most tablets) comes bundled with the hardware for that rather than it being a separate purchase.

But its a full Windows tablet, not a WinRT tablet.

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#176

Post by acqq »

bcoates wrote: post #167
twoodfin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emulating an x86 on an ARM like the Tegra 4 would probably result in a pretty unsatisfying experience. Apple was doing the opposite: Emulating a processor with worse single threaded performance and (arguably) a simpler ISA. The alternative is a full port of Win32, which I imagine Microsoft considered and rejected. Even after they incurred all the time and development cost, ISVs would still have to at least recompile.

I think it has a nearly-full port of Win32, it's apparently not hard to disable the signing requirement and run cross-compiled Win32 ARM binaries and turn the Surface RT into a useful computer. Not much commercial software but the regular open-source windows stack works.

it's apparently not hard to disable the signing requirement and run cross-compiled Win32 ARM binaries

Link please?

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#177

Post by codeulike »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #116
JonFish85 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

128GB minus whatever OS overhead there is... I know it's a nitpick, but definitely something to keep in mind.

It's relatively significant for a nitpick, "The 128 GB version has approximately 85 GB free hard disk space." per http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en-gb/support/storage-files... That's probably a combination of OS and the doublespeak/marketing definition of gigabyte though.

Its actually 96GB free on the Surface Pro 128GB (source: http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-officially-and-confusingly-di... ), and you can get it up to 104GB of free space by moving the recovery files (for if you need to reinstall the OS) off onto some other media. Of the 24GB still taken up, I gather some of that is because Office is pre-installed (but not activated) and presumably that can be removed too.

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#178

Post by baddox »

dragonwriter wrote: post #174
baddox wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather them invest more into ARM, and use the Surface name (a great name) for the direct iPad competitor. The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality. It's the one in a boring (and shrinking!) market.

> The Surface Pro is just a Windows laptop with decent build quality Well its a "Windows laptop", except for the fact that its a tablet that can (like most tablets) also function as a laptop and (unlike most tablets) comes bundled with the hardware for that rather than it being a separate purchase. But its a full Windows tablet, not a WinRT tablet.

I guess I should have said "Windows tablet/laptop" then, or better yet, "Windows 8 tablet." It's very similar to other Windows 8 tablets, like the ASUS VivoTab or the Dell Latitude 10.

http://incredibletogether.asus.com/vivotab.html

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/latitude-10-tablet/pd

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#179

Post by barista »

davidacoder wrote: post #68

Why, oh why is there no version with 3G/LTE? That is by far the biggest bummer, imho. For people that are on the road a lot that makes such a difference, and pretty much all other tablets offer that option, so it seems really lame to not have that. Also, if I spent $1800 for a Surface Pro in the best configuration, I really would expect it to have the same connectivity as a iPad mini... Other than that, this seems li…

It's coming early next year. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1mz20e/hi_im_panos_pan...

Re: Microsoft’s Hardware, Round 2: Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2

#180

Post by abuzzooz »

Microsoft sticking to Tegra is an interesting choice. I'm not saying it's bad, but still interesting given the current dynamics of the mobile market.

Now that they have Nokia, I predict that Microsoft will attempt to acquire NVIDIA in order to mimic Apple's and Samsung's vertical strategies. Not sure Jen-Hsun or the board would agree though.

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