Microsoft Surface Pro Availability Date Revealed, Plus New Surface RT Model
Microsoft's Intel-based Surface Pro arrives in early February along with a few new accessories and a new Windows RT SKU.
Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that its Surface Pro tablet will be available for purchase on February 9, 2013, in the United States and Canada at all Microsoft retail stores, microsoftstore.com, Staples and Best Buy in the U.S., as well as from a number of locations in Canada.
Packed with an Intel Core i5 CPU and Windows 8 Pro (nope, none of that ARM-based RT stuff here), it will have a starting price of $899 USD and arrive in 64 GB and 128 GB flavors. A Surface pen with Palm Block technology, designed specifically to work with Surface to let customers edit, collaborate and get things done, is included with Surface Windows 8 Pro.
"The response to Surface has been exciting to see,” said Panos Panay, general manager, Microsoft Surface. "We’re thrilled to continue growing the Surface family with the availability of Surface Windows 8 Pro on Feb. 9 and by increasing the number of places customers can experience Surface firsthand."
In addition to releasing Surface Pro in the coming weeks, the company has also made available Surface RT in 13 additional markets worldwide. Even more, a new 64 GB standalone version for $599 USD will be made available soon and will come with a free Cover of your choice.
In addition to the Surface tablets, a Surface Edition of Microsoft's Wedge Touch Mouse, costing $69.99 USD, will be expanded into additional markets in the coming weeks. There are also three new limited editions of Microsoft's Touch Cover in red, magenta and cyan (seen above) that will soon be launched at an estimated retail price of $129.99 USD each.
"Each design is different and allows customers additional personalization options beyond the various colors of Touch Cover that are already available," Panay said in his blog on Tuesday. "These limited edition Touch Covers will be available for purchase on Feb. 9 in the 8 markets in which Surface is currently sold, with additional markets to follow in the coming weeks."
Panay goes into greater detail about all the products listed here in his Tuesday update, located here.


It most certainly is a Dual-Core design without hyperthreading, based on Ivy Bridge, running like 1.7-2.0 GHz. Good enough for a tablet.
Part of the talk though is just unashamed PR BS. It's amazing how Microsoft thinks that they can somehow bend reality to fit their agenda. This paragraph alone is just amazing:
The response has been exciting ? Well, if you consider the people that actually bought the device and select those that are happy. In all other respects, the market response is all but great. Initial order of 4 million units cut in half, and then only around half of that amount sold, even though they started selling the RT in major retail outlets before the holiday season.
Also, wasn't Surface Pro supposed to be available on the 26 th of January ? They now just say 9th of February as if it's all going according to plan ?
Edit: Yes, as I suspected, it is late. Here: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/01/later-than-planned-surface-pro-coming-february-to-us-and-canada-only/
Haswell tablets won't happen until much later this year, a Haswell Surface pro 2, if it happens, will likely be released just before the holidays 2013. this is because the Haswell chips released in June will be the laptop and desktop models, the ultra low voltage models ideal for tablet construction are typically last to come as they usually come out after Intel has had time to refine and tune each process.
That said, ultra low voltage haswell chips will definately be much more power efficient than Ivy, and will likely render this gen of surface devices very obsolete as they'll probably have a nice 8-10hr battery life like any half decent tablet should
The gaming part depends. Intel HD 4000 will play some games surprisingly well. I helped my brother build a PC that didn't have a good enough PSU for his new graphics card so we stuck with integrated for a bit. Mass Effect 3 ran surprisingly well, and Diablo 3 was also playable at lower settings. Some games are out of the question though (like BF3).
fixed
I was surprised and disappointed how poorly the HD4000 performed in MVM on TF2. It absolutely choked when groups of scouts or huntsmen showed up. Multiplayer seems to really put a strain on that thing. Seemed to be fine in singleplayer which is what I think that Microsoft Bulletstorm demo was to show.
And also, while it is possible to make such a unit, the cost will be too high and the battery life would suck like most Androids....
Aside from Alienware computers, I do not know many "gaming" laptops out there...
The HD4000 may not be super impressive, but I think you're way overestimating the GPUs in ARM SOCs if you think they're about to surpass even the performance of Intel's HD4000.
From a quick looksie, it seems that the HD4000's theoretical GFLOP performance is in the range of 166.4 to 294.4, depending on the model. The PowerVR SGX 554MP4 in the iPad4's, currently the best GPU in an ARM SOC that I'm aware of, can do a theoretical 76.8 GFLOPs. Of course, there's more to a GPU than it's theoretical GFLOPs, but it's rather difficult to directly compare ARM GPUs to x86. Still, it's pretty plain it's still not in the same ballpark.
I could be wrong, but I doubt even the upcoming Tegra 4 will close that gap.
Y-series, most probably.