Really?
>>If it tarnished the <Microsoft> brand<< Perhaps they could use the polish that BoJo mentioned last week.
For left pondians BoJo is our recently resigned Foreign Sec.
Microsoft has avoided cannibalising its boutique, premium Surface line by making one that's a lot less boutique and premium – at around half the price. Steven Sinofsky at Surface launch event Microsoft returns to Valley of Death? Cheap Surface threatens the hardware show READ MORE In May, when word of the initiative first …
I don't get the market this is aimed at
It looks good, but basically for £379 you get a sub-standard iPad with a non-existent app store. To do anything useful you need to spend £100 to get a keyboard and mouse, which is optimised for travel not work.
The killer app would be the touch interface, but a pen is another £100! for a device which is certain to go missing at some point in its life.
You can get a pretty decent laptop for £500. The only advantage being a slightly improved iportability. Basically you either the combination of tablet with limited functionality combined with less than optimal laptop. Ok its less than say a iPad and a laptop, but most people in this market will go for that option
I'm sure it fits some people need, but I'm not sure there is a big market out there
A laptop is not an alternative - at least not if portability (i.e. size and battery life) is the key.
Use case 1: work on a plane (or a train). Good luck with opening that laptop (though the weird surface-stand-thingy means it will be inconvenient at least!) - ok, so you need a netbook-sized machine.
Use case 2: a conference. Look at all of the geeks running around looking for a free power outlet to charge their mobile workstations.
As this had a sim card it was perfect for what management wanted and exactly what a bit of CRM software required.
Bloody charging the thing is a pain (Has to be a charger at least 2.5 Amp, has to be a specific quality cable or it doesn't charge (Amazon basics usb cables oddly we found worked perfect)), building the thing with standard MS SCCM tools is a bloody pain.
They don't want a more epensive version and with the sim card removed from most models means once people drop them they are impossible to replace with the same thing.
I feel they will just do the same thing for their student grade surface and fear someone will go Aha thats what we need.
Didn't know it was a typo -- this was the first article I read on the device, and 800x1200, though in portrait mode, is a much more common resolution than 1800x1200.
However, my point still stands -- and is perhaps reinforced:
1. my 5-year old 8-inch tablet still has a higher resolution, and cost significantly less.
2. 1800x1200 is still not FHD, as a minimum horizontal resolution of 1920 is required for that.
This second point makes me think someone at Microsoft wanted to keep this product on-point and didn't want people looking to use it as a budget FHD media player, as it's suspiciously close to FHD.
1920 X 1080 = 2073600
1800 X 1200 = 2160000
The surface go has a slightly higher resolution and is going for the 3:2 aspect ratio which I find really works on the other surface devices for reading and annotating scientific journals. However, that's my personal usage scenario and the resolution probably isn't great for content consumption.
I take your point, but Apple continually flout the accepted wisdom of cheaper, faster, better, usually in favour of shiner, more expensive, less features and get away with it.
I accept that Microsoft do not have the consumer brand awareness that allows Apple to get away with this however.