Microsoft Surface Review, Part 2: Battery Life, Multi-Monitor, And More

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mayankleoboy1

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Tegra3 is the biggest weakness in Surface. This SoC is already outdated.
I wouldnt buy a device today which i know is going to be upgraded in a few months with atleast a better SoC, and probably a better display.
 

tedx

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"Windows Internet Explorer (Not Responding)"

Its comforting to see that not everything has changed with Windows RT.
 
Already have an ASUS Windows 8 RT tablet for the mrs -- she loves this thing, and from the lounge if my media center decides to play up i can use the tablet to remote desktop in

The ASUS also claims up to 16 hours battery life for theirs (im thinking less but still amazing if its 12+).

These things simply WORK
 

kyuuketsuki

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[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]The ASUS also claims up to 16 hours battery life for theirs (im thinking less but still amazing if its 12+).[/citation]I'm assuming that's with the keyboard dock.
 

besterino

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(Even though) being an hardware (PC) enthusiast I have bought the Surface (64GB, touch and type cover) for my wife and both she and I are seriously impressed.

For her it is simply perfect: she can do with it all she would do with an ipad (she's not much of a gamer though) AND it actually replaces her desktop-PC... she's using office without macros and addins so the RT-Office is "good enough". She just plugs in an extra monitor and USB hub (for full-size keyboard and mouse), and she is all set for productivity. We did not experience any hardware limitation related issues (obviously office doesn't start as fast as it does on a x86 PC with SSD).

Based on our experience with the Surface RT I will definitely buy a Surface Pro for myself (I need Office with macros and addins for work) and hopefully finally have a PC that works both as a productivity tool as well as entertainment gadget. Yay! And *poof*, there goes the business notebook...

Too bad I will still need my desktop gaming rig (HD 4000 still not powerful "enough")...
 

monsta

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The Asus Vivo Tab is much better than Microsoft's own version of surface, the display is much brighter, the keyboard dock has a battery, usb and SD card inputs. The battery life is amazing.
 

tipoo

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Is the "Apple iPad" with no number in the charts the iPad 1 or the iPad 4? Can we just snub Apple to make our lives easier and keep using the numbers? :)
 

darkchazz

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[citation][nom]mayankleoboy1[/nom]Tegra3 is the biggest weakness in Surface. This SoC is already outdated.I wouldnt buy a device today which i know is going to be upgraded in a few months with atleast a better SoC, and probably a better display.[/citation]
I completely agree. Tegra3 is a complete joke of a chip, but nvidia has managed to fool a LOT of people with marketing (QUAD COAR CPU!!! 12 COAR GPU ZOMG SUPER FASTTT BEAST).

I'd understand if tegra3 was included in a cheap $200 tablet(e.g. Nexus 7) to cut down the costs, but for a $500+ tablet?! that just sucks
Ofcourse, UI may be optimized and runs great, but gaming though will suffer from low frame rates. mark my words
 
My job has a Surface that we're testing, and I'm struck most by the size of the thing. I like devices that are on the small side...so, 768p at 11.6" and 900p at 14.0" are my preferred screen size/resolution tradeoffs for laptops...but frankly, I feel like the thing is just too small.

I'm probably in the minority here (and that's fine), but (setting aside my dislike of Windows 8) I think I'd rather have a device in the 13.3"-14.0" range, especially given that 16:9 devices are smaller overall than 16:10 and 4:3 devices at the same diagonal measurement.
 

cknobman

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We have a few Windows RT tablets floating around the office and I have to say they are very impressive.

The only thing holding me back from a purchase right now is Tegra 3. As soon as they upgrade the SOC to something more powerful (or if Surface Pro comes in something less than equal to $800) I will be getting one. I currently have a Asus Transformer android tablet and that thing does not hold a candle to Windows RT.
 

tomfreak

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[citation][nom]darkchazz[/nom]I completely agree. Tegra3 is a complete joke of a chip, but nvidia has managed to fool a LOT of people with marketing (QUAD COAR CPU!!! 12 COAR GPU ZOMG SUPER FASTTT BEAST).I'd understand if tegra3 was included in a cheap $200 tablet(e.g. Nexus 7) to cut down the costs, but for a $500+ tablet?! that just sucksOfcourse, UI may be optimized and runs great, but gaming though will suffer from low frame rates. mark my words[/citation]Agree, even tho I dont like Apple, but their approach of sticking on using 2 high performance cores in A6 CPU is simply a better choice than Nvidia crappy quad core CPU. Software are slow on taking on multi-threading, fewer high performance core provide more reliable user experience.
 

bllue

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This kinda gives me hope for the Surface Pro and the other manufacturer W8 tablets. For the most part, the most complained about things are performance and hardware - which can be fixed by having better specs (like from OEM tablets), and future patches. There will also be more apps being released. I don't know but I think the next version of the Surface (if there is one) will be highly improved in every way and be able to do everything everyone wants. I'd keep an eye on what's to come from OEMs, Surface Pro and Surface 2.
 

TeraMedia

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if MSFT were really on the ball, they would have done an Android end-run with Windows RT.

When Windows 7 came out, there was an "XP Mode" feature that allowed you to install Windows XP (and other O/Ses, for that matter) as a VM, with some odd limitations but also some unusual advantages compared to the typical VMware / Virtual Box implementations. Applications installed on the guest O/S could be launched and run just as if they were installed on the host O/S. User files on the host were shared seamlessly with the guest, so that double-clicking e.g. an Excel document could launch an instance of Excel in the guest, and load the file, and the window would look like it was running in the host.

Apply this to Android running as a guest O/S under Windows RT, and what do you get? All of a sudden, Google Play, Google Apps, etc. become accessible. If the host/guest integration is done in such a way that the GPU is accessible to the guest, then you even get full gaming of all Android games. On your Surface. Seamlessly. MSFT could even go so far as to declare Apple's refusal to license iOS as a separate product to be anti-competitive, and push for the DoJ to force Apple to allow the installation of iOS as a guest OS on Windows RT.

I mean, why not? Yes, the HW and in particular the CPU and GPU architectures probably need to be modified to support this, but the concepts for how to do that have already been figured out. If MSFT wants to truly own the tablet space, this would seem to be the most profound way to get there.
 

serendipiti

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While the Surface rests in its own niche, having such a contradiction with AppStore, might kill both the Surface Pro and Surface. Is quite understandable that if Surface it's correct won't have direct competitors (people will usually buy the MS hardware to use W8-RT) but with x86 hardware I am not so sure people will choose any x86-tablet-from-almost-any-tablet-builder-and-also-AMD with W8 over the SurfacePro...
 
[citation][nom]Teramedia[/nom]if MSFT were really on the ball, they would have done an Android end-run with Windows RT.When Windows 7 came out, there was an "XP Mode" feature that allowed you to install Windows XP (and other O/Ses, for that matter) as a VM, with some odd limitations but also some unusual advantages compared to the typical VMware / Virtual Box implementations. Applications installed on the guest O/S could be launched and run just as if they were installed on the host O/S. User files on the host were shared seamlessly with the guest, so that double-clicking e.g. an Excel document could launch an instance of Excel in the guest, and load the file, and the window would look like it was running in the host.Apply this to Android running as a guest O/S under Windows RT, and what do you get? All of a sudden, Google Play, Google Apps, etc. become accessible. If the host/guest integration is done in such a way that the GPU is accessible to the guest, then you even get full gaming of all Android games. On your Surface. Seamlessly. MSFT could even go so far as to declare Apple's refusal to license iOS as a separate product to be anti-competitive, and push for the DoJ to force Apple to allow the installation of iOS as a guest OS on Windows RT.I mean, why not? Yes, the HW and in particular the CPU and GPU architectures probably need to be modified to support this, but the concepts for how to do that have already been figured out. If MSFT wants to truly own the tablet space, this would seem to be the most profound way to get there.[/citation]

That'd be a lot of hassle for MS and probably also Google and would probably have significant performance needs for a tablet. The Tegra 3's four cores would probably be able to handle it just fine since it would otherwise mostly be poorly utilized, but power consumption would probably be higher and it'd still need a huge amount of work. Such a complex system would probably be difficult to debug too.

Then the question of why comes in. MS has what should at least be a decent app store at this point and with that, what's the point of trying to get with Google's stuff too?

How can Apple not licensing iOS to others be anti-competitive? That's not anti-competitive at all IMO, that's forcing your competitors to use either their own or someone else's operating system and software platform(s) instead of piggyback on your success. I don't like Apple, but I don't see why bullying even them into doing something that no company should be required to do is fair. It's not fair to tell a company that they must share their technology when there are practical alternatives anyway.
 
[citation][nom]serendipiti[/nom]While the Surface rests in its own niche, having such a contradiction with AppStore, might kill both the Surface Pro and Surface. Is quite understandable that if Surface it's correct won't have direct competitors (people will usually buy the MS hardware to use W8-RT) but with x86 hardware I am not so sure people will choose any x86-tablet-from-almost-any-tablet-builder-and-also-AMD with W8 over the SurfacePro...[/citation]
From my understanding, if a program is written as a .net app, it will work for both versions. Hopefully most apps take this approach.
 
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