Ridiculously low pricing on Surface RT for UK Edu this summer

[Arthur]

So I have to carry a Mifi or get a tethering plan!

Or just use your smartphones 3G/4G Internet connection? There's no need for a tethering plan either if you know how to bypass the checks your network does.

[gshaw]

@Arthur multi quote on phone is a pain so used the mention instead

 

Pro work on an 11" tablet or a convoluted mess of docking cables, nahhh I'll pass thanks. At that point a laptop with a decent screen makes more sense and then back to the question of why you want a tablet in the first place... portability.

 

So what about those who want Win8 Pro for their existing apps but don't want to carry around a brick with poor battery life? MS have no offering and Lenovo aside the other manufacturers don't have a quality offering, RT far too limited but lovely form factor, shame.

[sted]

@Arthur multi quote on phone is a pain so used the mention instead

 

Pro work on an 11" tablet or a convoluted mess of docking cables, nahhh I'll pass thanks. At that point a laptop with a decent screen makes more sense and then back to the question of why you want a tablet in the first place... portability.

 

So what about those who want Win8 Pro for their existing apps but don't want to carry around a brick with poor battery life? MS have no offering and Lenovo aside the other manufacturers don't have a quality offering, RT far too limited but lovely form factor, shame.

 

for day in day out stuff my atom based tablet is enough don't need an i5 when i need the grunt for vms and the like i have an xps17. it does depend what you want from a tablet but an atom runs all my legacy stuff windows 8 non rt and has a days use on battery

[Arthur]

Pro work on an 11" tablet or a convoluted mess of docking cables, nahhh I'll pass thanks.

Connecting a single Mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort or HDMI cable to an LCD or projector is hardly what I call a pain. Microsoft are also going to sell a proper dock for it too...

 

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

 

http://i.imgur.com/4d9APoR.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/Qw2TPPY.jpg

 

At that point a laptop with a decent screen makes more sense and then back to the question of why you want a tablet in the first place... portability.

By decent screen, do you mean physically larger, higher resolution (as in 3200x1600) or something else?

 

Regarding portability, it looks alright to me...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJLY4Cgk18U&hd=1

 

The Surface Pro 2 is about the same weight (0.9kg-1.1kg) as the 11" MacBook Air (1.08 kg).

 

So what about those who want Win8 Pro for their existing apps but don't want to carry around a brick with poor battery life?

8-9 hours battery life is not what I would call poor. With the 'Power Cover' you get ~22 hours in total. Is that still not good enough?

 

RT far too limited

It's not that bad...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9somrcpcuF4

 

it does depend what you want from a tablet but an Atom runs all my legacy stuff and has a days use on battery

Indeed. There are some who would prefer more speed over battery life. With the Core i5, I think people will use the Surface Pro 2 more like a laptop than a tablet.

Edited September 23, 2013 by Arthur

[gshaw]

Regarding screen, physically larger, 11" at high resolution isn't comfortable for long term Win8 desktop mode imo

 

Regarding weight, too heavy to use comfortably as a tablet holding it up etc. The RT is no lightweight but is usable, the added bulk of the Pro makes it laptop esque so you may as well have... a laptop?

 

As for power are you quoting Surface2 as reviews never got those stats out the original Pro?

 

I know MS were betting on Pro as a one device to replace tablet, notebook and tablet but seems people aren't buying it (literally). Wouldn't fancy taking a nearly £1000 device around the way you do with a tablet and by the time you add the power cover and eveything else the weight and cost go right up, most of the time wasted on web browsing with the odd burst of desktop mode.

 

The funny thing is on one hand I'm not a typical user as I run more specialised techie apps than say the average iPad buyer but yet as a "Pro" user find it unsuitable. When I want to do VM work, lots of typing or a spot of Photoshop I use a ThinkPad with a proper keyboard and screen, HDD + SSD and so on, not a tablet.

 

Yet at the same time I want a thin / light Windows tablet that can do 80% of the work with Win8 desktop apps (hence no RT) but without the crazy Pro price tag, is that so crazy? Shame MS can't offer a full range as that's where their strength should lie in theory, the ability to offer a device spec and price point that suits every need but with a unified OS across them all.

Edited September 23, 2013 by gshaw

[flyinghaggis]

I really wish Microsoft would just admit that windows RT (ARM) is a waste of time at this point. I can understand that 2-3 years ago they were concerned about the x86 CPU's ability to be competitive in terms of battery life but Intel proved with the last generation clovertrail atoms that their performance and battery life was on a par with ARM chipsets. People complain about fragmentation in Android but if anything the Windows desktop/Metro divide that MS has created with RT is even worse.

 

MS missed a trick by not fitting an Intel Bay Trail chipset to the new Surface tablet in place of the Tegra 4 in my opinion. A full-fat Windows 8.1 tablet with a quad core CPU, 4 Gb of RAM and a £400 price tag could have turned around peoples opinion of Windows 8. As it stands the Tegra-based surface RT is still a waste of time and the haswell Surface Pro (as nice as it is) is too expensive and bulky/heavy.

 

I can't help but feel that Microsoft are holding back on bringing out the perfect tablet to give the OEM's a chance to catch up. There are far better hardware solutions available (bay trail & ULV fanless haswell CPU's) which would be a far better fit for their tablets but they seem reluctant to use them! I'm guessing they shied away from bay trail because they felt it would be too close in terms of pricing to the Tegra 4 Surface. I expect they probably have some kind of special deal with Nvidia or feel the need to keep the trainwreck that is Windows RT rolling on the tracks a bit longer to save face.

 

On the plus side taken in isolation the Surface Pro 2 is substantial improvement on the previous generation. The battery life is now on a par with other ultrabooks and ,whilst expensive for a 'tablet', given the specs and build quality if I were looking to spend £800-900 on a laptop I'd definitely consider it as an alternative.

Edited September 23, 2013 by flyinghaggis

[sted]

while rt has been a commercial flop its not a bad os granted it has limitations bit so do most things and from what ive used of it its not bad. i suspect its kept so that ms can merge windows phone and rt at some point as smartphones become ever bigger and more powerfull

[pcstru]

Yet at the same time I want a thin / light Windows tablet that can do 80% of the work with Win8 desktop apps (hence no RT) but without the crazy Pro price tag, is that so crazy?

 

Probably (crazy that is - at least for a few more years). My experience of tablets (iPad, RT, Nexus7, Galaxy) is they are good for consuming content and absolutely abysmal when it comes to creating anything more than a one line email (and sorry Mrs Structures, but I don't count Draw-It as creating content!). My typical tablet use is reading email, web surfing and TV/Radio/Film catchup. The RT does that very well for me and, the touch keyboard cover makes it a viable alternative to a laptop for short trips. But if I need to do any serious work, or if I will be away for any great length of time, I take a laptop.

 

I think the big failure of Windows 8 as a has been the inconsistencies between the platforms. It should be possible to move from phone to tablet and have the same gestures available (it's not). It should be possible to take your code and compile it to the target processor without having to do extensive re-work for the specific device (it's not). One of Windows huge strengths has been backwards compatibility and compatibility across different hardware. RT and Phone have diluted that.

 

That said, out of the tablets I have played with - and for what I use those devices for, the RT is my preferred device for now. It's not perfect but it does exactly what I want and in a way I think is very usable.

[zag]

Shame MS can't offer a full range as that's where their strength should lie in theory, the ability to offer a device spec and price point that suits every need but with a unified OS across them all.

 

Actually Microsoft's strengths lie in creating software, they are rubbish at building hardware!

 

Personally I think I would much rather have an apple air than a Microsoft surface pro.

[jamin100]

Any idea if the offer is still on?

[fiza]

Any idea if the offer is still on?

 

Doesnt look like it. The Blog page hasnt been updated with any new dates.

 

Academic pricing on Surface RT - Microsoft UK Schools blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

[Phildw]

Any idea if the offer is still on?

 

No it isn't. I spoke to one of their representatives just before the end of september about it as my original order of a test machine had taken so long to come I wanted to see if there would be an extension to the offer so that I would have time to test it in my school, but he said there wouldn't.

 

I finally recieved the one that I ordered in July at the end of September. I placed an order for 30 around that time also, and that order was passed onto Softcat. I recieved the keyboards over a couple of days last week, and am supposed to recieve the tablets today, but we will see!

[FishCustard]

I received a call from Softcat today, informing me that we'd now have to pay a £7.50 delivery charge to get the tablet we've been waiting for since July! Absolute codswallop - why should we have to pay extra to a middleman who has been brought in because Microsoft dropped the ball. I asked to speak to someone at MS, who told me that the order could be passed back to them and I wouldn't have to pay the charge (the person from Softcat who was also on the call didn't sound happy about this!).

 

They did say that it might take a couple of days longer, but that it was 2 weeks either way, so I went for it. I'm curious if anyone else has been asked to pay these charges, because in my opinion it's just plain wrong.

[scadden]

Gotta say I'm using the Surface RT as a replacement for my iPad and Nexus 7. Just found the 7" display too small. The Surface 2 looks a big improvement over the RT, and I hope there will be price reductions in the next six months or so.

We bought about 20 RT's in my place, over different centres.

 

I was talking to a Microsoft Edu Sales guy in Ireland around the end of September, and he was fairly confident that they would continue the educational pricing for the original Surface RT as an ongoing basis.

They got huge orders from all over Europe, for the Surface RT. They were finding it hard to keep up with the orders, giving the fact that MS Edu sales don't have great experience in shipping hardware. So I can see where the problems can be. He told me that they got one order for 30,000 RT's.

 

We are looking at getting 1:1 device for students, hopefully starting next September, maybe on a pilot basis. I don't think that the RT is there yet for this year.

The Surface RT is the front running for us at the moment on price and security, but if MS don't get the O365 as a Microsoft login, this would be a deal breaker.

Edited October 18, 2013 by scadden

[flyinghaggis]

AnandTech | ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook

 

Just been reading the review on Asus's latest transformer laptop/tablet with bay trail and it looks mighty impressive for the $400 price tag. I'd hope there will be an option to upgrade the RAM from 2Gb to 4Gb but other than that it sound just about perfect for the money. Given it's running full windows 8.1 it's a much more flexible device than the SurfaceRT IMO.

[sted]

AnandTech | ASUS Transformer Book T100 Review: Redefining the Entry-Level Windows Notebook

 

Just been reading the review on Asus's latest transformer laptop/tablet with bay trail and it looks mighty impressive for the $400 price tag. I'd hope there will be an option to upgrade the RAM from 2Gb to 4Gb but other than that it sound just about perfect for the money. Given it's running full windows 8.1 it's a much more flexible device than the SurfaceRT IMO.

have a look at http://i.dell.com/sites/doccontent/corporate/secure/en/Documents/dell-venue-11pro-brochure.pdf reported similar base cost

[zag]

Not the biggest shock in the world but I feel sorry for anyone who took up this offer now!

 

Microsoft ready to kill Windows RT | Technology | theguardian.com

 

I'd image they will move towards windows phone on the tablets.

[Arthur]

I'd imagine they will move towards Windows Phone on the tablets.

Or more likely a hybrid of Windows Phone + Windows RT.

 

Microsoft aims to whittle Windows variants on mobile « CNet

 

As I noted back in October, Microsoft seems to be thinking about creating some kind of hybrid OS that will bring closer together Windows RT and the Windows Phone OS. And at least according to one of my sources, it's more likely that the Windows Phone OS core is what Microsoft will use as the starting point, rather than Windows RT. If Microsoft is pursuing this path, there might just be full Windows and the new hybrid ARM-targeted variant of Windows in just over a year.

[gshaw]

Whatever it is the simple fact is Microsoft tablets are too expensive to justify over their rivals. A decent Win8 Pro device is £700+ and RT was still around £400 when quality Android ones can be had at nearly half that price. Still not buying (literally) the idea of tablet being a laptop replacement as they're too clunky and heavy but the smaller and lighter ones hit £1000 which is just silly.

 

MS might have to go down the Google route and give the OS for free if they want to build market share, either that our the hardware to run Win8 is just to expensive in comparison to iOS / Android which I find hard to believe.

[CyberNerd]

MS might have to go down the Google route and give the OS for free if they want to build market share, either that our the hardware to run Win8 is just to expensive in comparison to iOS / Android which I find hard to believe.

 

Google didn't get Android to be the most popular operating system by giving it away free. They did it by giving the source code away free. bare in mind that was in spite of microsoft putting the price of android up by forcing royalties for each android sold.

[rich_tech]

you can see it coming, I feel for people who have bought the RT platform, if it had more features, it could have been better, but £700 for a pro is ridiculous, comparative to any other tablet/and bluetooth keyboard combination

[sted]

Whatever it is the simple fact is Microsoft tablets are too expensive to justify over their rivals. A decent Win8 Pro device is £700+ and RT was still around £400 when quality Android ones can be had at nearly half that price. Still not buying (literally) the idea of tablet being a laptop replacement as they're too clunky and heavy but the smaller and lighter ones hit £1000 which is just silly

 

depends what you call decent my £400 windows 8 std x86 tablet was about £400 ok its atom based but for most of the stuff I do thats fine