Microsoft Surface Pro's $100 Price Cut is Made Permanent

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stevejnb

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Good. Great product and, while reasonably priced based on hardware standards, it needs a bit of a price perk to make an impact - especially with the $100+ price of the type/touch covers. Another $100 wouldn't hurt, or just drop the bloody price on those covers... MS has a good product but are too focused on making a profit to make a beachhead into the mobile market.
 

stevejnb

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Novu... People think "tablet" and they think "iPad." People go in to look at tablets and they see some other Microsoft product that costs a hell of a lot more sitting there. They don't necessarily realize that it's in a whole other league hardware wise... They just know that the word "tablet" = cheap PC for media consumption, a bit of e-mail and web browsing, maybe a document in class. The general mindset isn't that "A tablet could replace my PC."

May change, but that's where we stand. If MS wants to change this mentality, they better stop taking a loss.
 

InvalidError

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You can get decent laptops for cheaper with more storage, RAM, keyboard, etc. included instead of sold separately or as a beefy premium option.

Making the drop permanent and promising to have keyboard-cover bundles brings it closer to the price point of similarly spec'd laptops. Now that makes the choice between Surface Pro and a generic laptop a little easier - or harder depending on how you look at it.

This isn't too different from how Google decided to throw everything but the kitchen sink at introducing the N7 and N10 as promotional vehicles for Google Play to kickstart production of Android games, apps and filling their music/video selection... except Microsoft needed a year to realize that if they wanted to establish their Surface/SurfacePro brand and Windwos Store, they would have to aim for low profit per initial sale to seed the market.

Lets see if Microsoft now has a late-bloomer on their hands.
 

sean1357

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Surface Pro is heavy and not much app at MS store to compare Apple or Google. Microsoft should look at the design and user interface, but I think it's too late for Apple with iPad second, third, and fourth generation....
 

dimar

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Microsoft have ruined Windows 8 acceptance in general, which is probably the reason those tablets are not selling well. If Win8 had had the same excitement as Windows 7, those tablets would had been sold like unimaginably delicious hotcakes. Everyone pretty much knows who to blame.
 

w8gaming

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The point of owning is Surface Pro is not to run app from MS store. If you are going to pay that much for a Pro model your main objective will be running desktop applications first, new Metro UI app is just a bonus.
 

w8gaming

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First of all, to say Surface Pro is "not selling", it is only in the sense that compare to the unit sales of iPad, it is "not selling". I suspect Surface Pro sells just as well as any other ultrabook in the market. It is a premium priced device with different usage in mind, which the market has shown that it is not as mainstream as iPad class of device that does less, performs slower, but priced much lower. But we cannot look at the acceptance of Surface Pro based on its unit sales alone, because it needs to compete with similar tablets offering, as well as ultrabooks or even laptops from other vendors. The combined unit sales of such device class is still quite substantial, it is just that unlike iPad which is sold by a single company, the market share is shared by many vendors. The fact that almost every vendors out there give up on RT devices but will continue to make Windows 8 pro tablets has shown that the vendors know there are many people buying such devices. Also remember Surface Pro has given other vendor 3 months headstart, and in other parts of the world, sometimes even as much as 9 months headstart. Many people who are interested in such devices already bought similar tablet from other vendors before Microsft made theirs available. Now that Haswell has been released, many vendors have switched to the new CPU which has much better battery running time than Surface Pro. Microsoft really needs to speed up in their product rollout if they really wants to become a "device company".
 

back_by_demand

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Reduction applies to the education sector too, in the UK the 64Gb Pro is £575 and the 32Gb RT is £251. Not long ago some people were saying that is exactly the price cut they were waiting for, so what are you waiting for?
 

Grandmastersexsay

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Great journalism here. You either forgot or intentionally omitted what they actually cost. Amateur hour either way. Don't you think the device's actual price might be pertinent to the story?
 

daekar

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I don't understand why anybody would buy Surface RT. Pro? Definitely. If I weren't a desktop guy, I would be all over that. My wife has been drooling over them since they came out and her boss got one. They are the only game in town for real productivity work on a tablet. They're not selling to consumers because consumers don't DO work on their tablets, they do work on their laptops.

The price premium isn't worth it to most people.
 

g00fysmiley

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still more than i would pay for one, the hardware is sub par still to a comparable laptop or android tablet for the rt version .. just speaking of the pro version look at the asus vivobook, similar specs to the $830 64 gig pro model but for $700, and a bigger monitor at 14" .. and a 500 gig hdd in addition to the ssd
 

xaephod

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I still think its too expensive. $600 for the 64 gig version is the perfect price-point. The cover should boost is to $650, I would even consider getting one and dumping my old laptop.
 
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