This article gave me a new perspective on the Surface 2. The author does a side-by-side comparison against the Asus T100, which runs Windows 8.1, something the Surface 2 cannot.
Over the past week, I’ve had the fortune to play with both Microsoft’s Surface 2 and the Asus T100 Transformer Book. These are very similar devices — convertible laptops with detachable keyboards — except for one big and fundamentally life-altering difference: Where the Surface 2 is powered by Nvidia’s ARM-based Tegra 4 SoC, the Transformer Book has Intel’s x86 Bay Trail under the hood. As a result, while the Surface 2 runs Windows RT, the T100 runs full Windows 8.1. Yes, every program and game that you use on your Windows desktop PC also works on the T100. Steam works on the T100. Team Fortress 2 works on the T100. Photoshop works (surprisingly well!) on the T100.
A common selling point of the Surface 2 vs the iPad is the fact that you can have the desktop experience on the go, as opposed to the desktop/tablet model the Microsoft marketing folks assail. This is a bit of a crack in that facade.
The photo at the top of that article has some odd perspective… To my eye it looks like the screens would only cover the keyboard, not the wrist rest / trackpad area. I think it’s a combination of 16:9 aspect tablets and the wide angle lens they must have used for the photo.
Microsoft should have just given up on the non-Pro Surface for the second revision. I hear a lot of people lust after the Surface Pro/Pro 2. I have never ever heard a serious person want or buy a non-Pro Surface.
” I’ve had the fortune to play with both Microsoft’s Surface 2″
“Fortune”.
I’ve said it to everyone who will listen: Microsoft’s constant referral to their clicky keyboard confirms that their target demographic for the Surface is an imaginary group of people who have never seen a laptop.
I am afraid I must call big foul here.
From the article: “In short, the only real thing going for the Surface 2 is its 1920×1080 display. The T100′s 1366×768 display is still just fine for 10-inch tablet[…]”
This is not an insignificant point. We talking about half the total pixel output there (50.6% to be more precise.) For what we can see, MS is trying to compete with the iPad Retina display with that version of the surface. I still think Win RT is garbage (mainly because of the insistence of including desktop versions of office and … well… a desktop that is good only to use Microsoft bundled software) but the comparison between the two products is just not fair. The Asus “is good enough” for many. So were Netbooks.
This not to mention: trying to run native windows apps (non metro ones) these days on a 768 vertical resolution is tortuous, at lest for me.
façade and not facade
The differences between Windows and Windows RT are not exactly new. It must be a slow news day.
Windows RT (and by extension, the Surface RT/Surface 2) does still have some merit, if Microsoft would get around to marketing it the right way.
First of all, they need to get Office Touch released. The desktop mode is jarring and seems to be the only reason RT has a desktop mode at all. Just put a mouse/keyboard UI option into Office Touch and leave programs themselves running within the “Metro” environment.
Afterward, they need to cut the price another $100 for both models and advertise them as ultra-cheap Microsoft Office machines primarily for getting work done without the worry of most viruses and security exploits. It’d be the productivity equivalent of a Chromebook– it would likely not be your primary computer, but it’d be cheap and focus almost exclusively on doing the one thing it’s advertised for.
And Microsoft knows it.
http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-900-million-surface-rt-write-down-how-did-this-happen-7000018275/
How did they “abandon” Intel?
All they did was change their naming convention for the ARM vs. Intel branches of the Surface line.
(I’m with Mr. Blake, really – the problem isn’t that they abandoned Intel, but that they ever shipped Windows on ARM on a consumer product rather than an embedded solution.)