Microsoft today announced that its Surface Pro tablet will go on sale on February 9 in the United States and Canada. Originally slated to arrive in January, the Surface Pro tablet is priced at $899 for the 64GB model and $999 for the 128GB model.
The Surface Pro sports an Intel Core i5 processor with Intel HD Graphics 4000, 4GB of RAM, and a more robust battery. Unlike the RT version of the Surface, it is able to run the full version of Windows 8 as well as Windows 7 applications.
Both versions of the Surface Pro ship with a Surface pen, but the Touch or Type Covers, which retail for $100, are not included.
Anandtech took a preliminary look at the tablet, and created a chart comparing the Surface Pro to the Surface RT and Apple's iPad.
Beginning on February 9, the Surface Pro will be available for purchase on Microsoft’s website, at Microsoft retail outlets, and third party retailers like Staples and Best Buy.
Alongside the Pro, Microsoft is planning to release a 64GB standalone version of the Surface RT for $599, $100 less than the version that ships with the included Touch Cover, and a slew of new Surface accessories.
The more appropriate price comparison here is to the MacBook Air (and Touch Cover or Type Cover keyboard needs to be included in that price comparison). From the early reviews I have read, Surface continues to be a compromised tablet and a compromised "ultrabook".
As a tablet it is heavy and much of the software is not optimized for touch.
As an ultrabook it cannot be comfortably used in your lap and the keyboard and trackpad are not as good as the MacBook Air.
I think the Windows 8 OEM's have better answers for the "convertible tablet/ultrabook" category than Microsoft does.
EDIT: According to Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jan13/01-22SurfaceFamilyPR.aspx), the Type Cover is NOT included in the $899 price. They refer to it as optional in a caption for a picture, and when listing what is included, they omit it. So the Surface Pro price (with keyboard) is $1028 versus the MacBook Air at $999. If you are in the market for a convertible Windows 8 machine, I would look to one of the Microsoft OEM's that at least gives you an actual full-blown UltraBook that can be used in your lap, but can also serve as a compromised tablet like the Surface Pro. There is no sense on compromising both the laptop and tablet experience in a convertible laptop.
Wednesday April 24, 2024 2:05 pm PDT by Joe Rossignol
Apple is set to unveil iOS 18 during its WWDC keynote on June 10, so the software update is a little over six weeks away from being announced. Below, we recap rumored features and changes planned for the iPhone with iOS 18. iOS 18 will reportedly be the "biggest" update in the iPhone's history, with new ChatGPT-inspired generative AI features, a more customizable Home Screen, and much more....
Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Saturday April 27, 2024 12:41 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
There are widespread reports of Apple users being locked out of their Apple ID overnight for no apparent reason, requiring a password reset before they can log in again. Users say the sudden inexplicable Apple ID sign-out is occurring across multiple devices. When they attempt to sign in again they are locked out of their account and asked to reset their password in order to regain access. ...
Best Buy is discounting a collection of M3 MacBook Pro computers today, this time focusing on the 14-inch version of the laptop. Every deal in this sale requires you to have a My Best Buy Plus or Total membership, although non-members can still get solid second-best prices on these MacBook Pro models. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a...
Apple used to regularly increase the base memory of its Macs up until 2011, the same year Tim Cook was appointed CEO, charts posted on Mastodon by David Schaub show. Earlier this year, Schaub generated two charts: One showing the base memory capacities of Apple's all-in-one Macs from 1984 onwards, and a second depicting Apple's consumer laptop base RAM from 1999 onwards. Both charts were...
Top Rated Comments
Why the comparison with the iPad only ? Surely a fairer comparison would be between the surface pro and the MacBook Air 11" stock.
MBA
11-inch : 64GB
1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor
Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz
4GB memory
64GB flash storage1
Intel HD Graphics 4000
1376x768 Resolution
$999.00
SurfacePro
10.1"
Dual Core i5 processor
4GB memory
64GB flash storage
Intel HD Graphics 4000
1920x1080
Surface Pen accessories included.
$899
Touch Cover additionally $119
Total cost of Surface pro including Touch Cover = $1018
As a tablet it is heavy and much of the software is not optimized for touch.
As an ultrabook it cannot be comfortably used in your lap and the keyboard and trackpad are not as good as the MacBook Air.
I think the Windows 8 OEM's have better answers for the "convertible tablet/ultrabook" category than Microsoft does.
EDIT: According to Microsoft (http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Press/2013/Jan13/01-22SurfaceFamilyPR.aspx), the Type Cover is NOT included in the $899 price. They refer to it as optional in a caption for a picture, and when listing what is included, they omit it. So the Surface Pro price (with keyboard) is $1028 versus the MacBook Air at $999. If you are in the market for a convertible Windows 8 machine, I would look to one of the Microsoft OEM's that at least gives you an actual full-blown UltraBook that can be used in your lap, but can also serve as a compromised tablet like the Surface Pro. There is no sense on compromising both the laptop and tablet experience in a convertible laptop.