Microsoft's Surface Tablet Gets a Release Date
Surface and Windows 8 will debut on the same day.
It's been well over a month since Microsoft gave us our first glimpse of its Surface tablet. Though the company was more than happy to show off the device back in June, Redmond left out some key details, including a full spec list, a price, and a release date. While we may still be in the dark with regard to the full spec list and a specific price, it seems Microsoft has confirmed a release date for the device.
Microsoft just recently filed its annual report for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2012. This report includes confirmation that Microsoft will start selling the Surface on the same day Windows 8 launches.
"The next version of our operating system, Windows 8, will be generally available on October 26, 2012," the company wrote in its report. "At that time, we will begin selling the Surface, a series of Microsoft-designed and manufactured hardware devices."
This shouldn't come as a huge surprise to anyone. After all, Microsoft did say the tablet was scheduled for availability around the same time as the Windows 8 launch when it unveiled the device on June 18. However, we can't imagine Microsoft's hardware partners will be pleased they'll be directly competing with Microsoft from the get-go. Several PC makers have talked about their plans to release Windows 8 tablets as soon as Windows 8 is available.
Microsoft announced the release date for Windows 8 last week. The company's annual report didn't specify as to whether or not both the ARM- and Intel-based Surface models would be available from October 26.
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The Surface Pro has a 1920x1080 screen. 16:9
This remains to be seen. Remember the Xbox360? Red ring of death? Is that the quality we are going to see? I hope whoever makes xbox consoles doesn't touch the Surface, otherwise it will be a total catastrophic failure and will bring down the Windows 8 OS along with it.
The thick and heavy dust breathing (yay moving parts) Pro version will come in late January/early February and cost around $1000. Can't wait to use Photoshop on a 10" screen on a crippled ULV processor, it's gonna be awesome!
You'll just have to suck it up. I know it sucks, but that's where everyone are going. I have a X230T and the tablet is almost useless for note taking in portrait mode. It is okay for reading long PDF articles and such, but horrible for the pen experience. Especially because the pen has a hard time with accuracy on the edges.
I have tried Samsung Series 7 Slate, it was a really good experience, except the fail build quality and problems with the backlight problem.
Care to try that again with a few facts this time?
But to be fair, there are a lot of tablet designers and manufacturers with a lot of engineering technical expertise. Most engineering issues are likely already solved given how big the tablet market is at the moment, it just remains to have the OS and applications' code running properly.
Well you can try Windows 8 Release Preview and third party apps available there, like the Wikipedia app that doesn't have a search function, that's pretty innovative, right? Seriously, what apps I've seen either I don't know how to use (bad for something supposed to be simple), or they are really half assed and broken (bad as Microsoft has them as featured apps). It will be some months before quality Metro app development takes off, unless Surface and WP8 are as successful as every other Microsoft mobile device, in which case well... it's never going to take off.
Why would you have a wikipedia app? what the hell is wrong with the wikipedia website? Apps on a small screen like a phone make sense, they are formatted to be more easily used on a 4" screen (or less). On a 10" screen you can just use the website and there should be no issues.
There's nothing wrong with the Wikipedia website, but the Wikipedia Metro app is one of the featured apps that Microsoft is showing off on Metro. The fact that it's half-assed and broken neatly illustrates the current state of Metro app development, which teh_chem was talking about. And Metro on mobile devices is not exactly a brand new thing, it's been like 16 months since WP7 was released.
If you buy a Surface RT, you're looking at several months of having to put up with a small number of crappy apps on your rapidly depreciating shiny new hardware, without any guarantees that it's going to get better.
Anyway I'm hoping that the quality of the internals is up to snuff. I also agree with the above comment about the iPad but you can read e-books on it at least. I don't own one because I see it more as a toy as well.
Call me back when the Surface pro rolls out.
Lately they've been copying Apple at a lot of things (own retail stores, app store, walled garden, personal audio player, tablet, forcing design choices on users, style over substance), so it wouldn't surprise me if they did this in the long run. They realized that having 15-20% of rabid fanboys and fleecing them (a la Apple) will make them a lot more money than what they've been doing so far.