Condemning the Surface?

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Originally Posted by hardtailstar

If I had all of my emails/cloud/calandar in hotmail then I might get a windows tablet but as mine is all in Gmail ill be getting an android, unless you can link it up with gmail which I cant seem to find so far.

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id assume as win8 pro links quite happily to gmail (pretty much did it all for me) surface wont be much if any harder

ive gone right off android recently v3 on my tab was great v4 not so much browser and chrome often crash, chrome by default thinks you want to use a 10" screen as a mobile rather than a desktop. My phone reboots randomly 3 times in 1 day is the record and the fragmentation is terriblle and even the to 4.0 devices i have look/feel different. Its the exact oposite of the iphone its too open. Used a surface briefly yesterday and was impressed if i could get shu of my android tab id get one

I really like the idea behind the surface as well. The concept of a tablet with a detachable keyboard seems like a win to me but I'm holding out for an x86 based model. RT just seems too limited in what it offers at the moment.

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Originally Posted by flyinghaggis

I really like the idea behind the surface as well. The concept of a tablet with a detachable keyboard seems like a win to me but I'm holding out for an x86 based model. RT just seems too limited in what it offers at the moment.

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depends im not sure if surface pro is missing the point a bit. For me surface rt is about a quick n simple portable device for "entertainment" that can be used for "work" im not sure a surface pro offeres anything you cant get in a cheaper laptop

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Originally Posted by sted

depends im not sure if surface pro is missing the point a bit. For me surface rt is about a quick n simple portable device for "entertainment" that can be used for "work" im not sure a surface pro offeres anything you cant get in a cheaper laptop

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I'm not sure about the surface pro either actually mainly because I think the core i5 in it will make it too expensive for a tablet and will be seriously detrimental to the battery life. There may be heat/fan noise problems as well. I'm keener to see how some of the more power efficient Intel atom SOC CPU's cope as they should be priced close to ARM chips. The main problem I have with RT is the fact it can't run any legacy software/hardware and Metro apps are seriously thin on the ground just now. The thought of a tablet that can be used for entertainment/web surfing but has the flexibility of being able to run potentially any windows app if I add a keyboard/mouse is what really appeals. Why buy a tablet and and laptop when you could potentially buy one device that has all the advantages and functionality of both?

A lawyer is suing Microsoft for false advertising after his 32GB Surface slab turned up with 16GB of free space. What an idiot.

There's an interesting article on Paul Thurrot's website comparing theTegra3 MS surface vs intels x86 clover trail atom SOC.

http://winsupersite.com/windows-8/wi...r-trail-vs-arm

The atom is at least on a par in every benchmark (including battery life) and substantially faster in quite a few.

Maybe the price of the RT stuff will come down once there is a viable x86 compeditor on the market. Doubtful but worth a shot, every company seems to be gouging at the moment.

Rumour is that NVidia's Tegra 4 chipset will be released in Q1 2013. I wonder if MS will refresh the surface with this once it's available next year?

http://www.fudzilla.com/home/item/29...me-at-ces-2013

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Originally Posted by flyinghaggis

The Atom is at least on a par in every benchmark (including battery life) and substantially faster in quite a few.

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That's really interesting because Samsung's Exynos 5 Dual (used in both the Nexus 10 and XE303 Chromebook) is significantly faster than an Atom N570 (which itself isn't that much slower than the new Atom Z2760).

http://i.imgur.com/cFwVJ.png

http://i.imgur.com/CMJlr.png

http://i.imgur.com/pvQuB.png


http://i.imgur.com/PzXfO.png

http://i.imgur.com/KXrRO.png

Pricing for them parallel imported into NZ has just come out through a NZ supplier $899 ex the 15% GST for the 32GB or $1050 ex for the 64GB.

Comparatively the Samsung Ativ is also $1050 but its Atom, has a stylus and a tablet and 64GB, the Acer510 is sitting at $920, also Atom, also 64GB.

So: The Windows 8 version that works with everything is cheaper than the cut down ARM only version.

Result, not touching the epic ripoff that is Surface even for personal use. The more featureful versions are cheaper and better. Just ashame they don't have that nice keyboard cover.

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Originally Posted by unixman_again

A lawyer is suing Microsoft for false advertising after his 32GB Surface slab turned up with 16GB of free space. What an idiot.

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He has a point tho. It's already annoying how iOS devices hug a gb or so of the built in memory. Makes the 8gb versions practically useless for anything other than a few apps.
You could argue that desktop/laptops have been like this for years, i.e Windows & other apps takes up space on the advertised HDD, but you can uninstall all of those (even the OS) and regain that space. You're kinda stuck on the Surface & taking nearly half the advertised space really is taking it a bit too far.

from what I saw of an RT one of the support staff has the other day, it seems to be a nice enough device, though I wouldnt consider one without an x86 processor myself, the keyboard is quite impressive, I just cannot take to windows 8 at all though here, I have given it repeated tries and still find, that I just cannot take to that OS, no matter how hard I try

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Originally Posted by DrCheese

He has a point tho. It's already annoying how iOS devices hug a gb or so of the built in memory. Makes the 8gb versions practically useless for anything other than a few apps.
You could argue that desktop/laptops have been like this for years, i.e Windows & other apps takes up space on the advertised HDD, but you can uninstall all of those (even the OS) and regain that space. You're kinda stuck on the Surface & taking nearly half the advertised space really is taking it a bit too far.

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up to a point but then how many 2tb hard drives have 2tb even blank. If it says in the fine print thats x is used for system files (or hard drives 1000gb = 1tb rather than 1024) then he might have a case but if you dont read the material about it (and apply a bit of common sense then you deserve to be annoyed. I cant remember ever seeing numbers dor phones but id bet the memory on android/win8/yos is also less than the quoted after system partition etc as well

besides technically it does have 32gb od storage you just cant use it all

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Originally Posted by sted

(or hard drives 100gb = 1tb rather than 1024)

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If someone sold me a 100Gb drive as 1Tb I'd be pretty peed off...

I suspect that this, ahem, gentleman is perfectly aware of the situation and indeed, expected it; he is just money-grabbing and deserves to be slapped upside the heid.

I can't see how this lawyer's going to win. The OS and applications need to go somewhere and this is nothing new. OEM desktops and notebooks have come pre-installed with 'stuff' since day one. Plus taking formatting into account, you're never going to get the full 32GB, probably more like 30GB available in Windows.