Read more.The tablet hybrid will become available from 8th May, including via UK high street stores.
Read more.The tablet hybrid will become available from 8th May, including via UK high street stores.
Its a beautiful tablet.
at a beautiful price...
Old puter - still good enuff till I save some pennies!
Not interested, at any price. I'm still angry enough at MS over shoving W8 MUI down our throats to leverage these and Windows Phones that I will not consider buying either, regardless of price. MS are on my personal vendor blacklist, at least until (and if) they reverse their attitude over MUI.
McEwin (10-04-2014)
Y U NO ATOM!
Even at £7/800 an atom version of this would fly off the shelves, both to individuals and to corporates. As it is I really can't see this shifting. Full office compatibility is nice, but it won't be able to compete with iPad at those prices simply due to the lack of apps/brand recognition.
So unless you need that 64GB, go for the Nokia 2520 - sure it's only 32GB internal storage but uSD cards are cheap and the Nokia is only £399 with 2 year guarantee from John Lewis. Spec isn't bad either: "Nokia Lumia 2520 Tablet, Qualcomm (quad core) Snapdragon, Windows RT 8.1, 10.1", 32GB, Wi-Fi & 4G LTE, Black".
At £700 that's a fail - can just about buy two laptops for that. And it's not necessary anyway - there's stuff like the Omni 10 which is Atom equipped, but only £249 at the moment, so a good £150 cheaper than an iPad, but it's more capable. That's what Microsoft need to do - get some good "budget" models out there. Oh and at £399 the Nokia 2520 is too expensive unless that includes the Power Keyboard (which it doesn't) - £299 is a more "comfortable" price in my mind. That said, I got my missus' one on discount anyway. And it's an excellent device!
I bought the Nook HD+ for a £180, a 32G MicroSD card (£10) and rooted it backed to normal android. Total price including an app for office documents about £200 and that included a full HD screen.
Admittedly it needs a bit more maintaining that Ipad or MS tablets and does not have 4G. But that is still a lot less money for something that does most of what surface pro 2 does.
Needs to be £150-200 cheaper before interested
I would like to upgrade my v1 RT to this, but sadly not at that price Just too much of a jump in cost really imo.
I hope they keep RT alive though and it's encouraging to see more models being released. I still love my RT v1, and it gets a lot of use..the 8+ hour of real world usage battery life (screen on, wifi on) is awesome, the metro app store is growing and growing, and crucially the Windows 8.1 jailbreak is finally in beta test which will mean I can finally get it working with IPSec Group Authentication, and run apps like Putty/Mirc etc along with lightweight x86 apps.
Price wise it must be really frustrating for Microsoft - they have hardware that is better built/more techie and hard wearing than the iPad or virtually any other tablet and can justify the price..but the software just doesnt have the mass appeal yet
throw new ArgumentException (String, String, Exception)
No, they haven't. The "Start button" farce was a hugely cynical PR exercise, because they restored the button without restoring what it did. Based on the way the return of the start button was hyped, and then what we got when 8.1 shipped, I'll reserve judgement on what a returning start menu does, and looks like, until we actually get it.
But my main objection is that MS tried to force us to adopt MUI because they wanted to leverage the desktop OS community into being familiar with MUi, in order to try to compete with Apple/Android in the phone and tablet market.
In other words, it's not MUI per se that I object to. It's the way MS went about it. Had Win8 offered us, the users, an ability to disable MUI and stick to classic desktop/start menu mode, I wouldn't have a problem with it. Had they let US choose between "classic mode", MUI, or even a hybrid, again, fine. But they tried to force us to adopt MUI entirely for their marketing benefit. And, to date, they're STILL trying to do the absolute minimum they can get away with to dig themselves out of the PR disaster their arrogance has been.
Which brings me neatly back to 'wait and see' over the forthcoming start menu does, when it ships.
But here's an example. I want my damn menu facility back. I don't want stupid live tiles attached to it. If I want 'live' data, I'll, put a widget on it for the desktop .... which, by the way, I rarely do. I don't want it attached to my menu, when all I want is the blasted menu.
So, how do you turn off "live" data in tiles? Well, one by one, tile at a time. How do you simply disable such constant live updates (and the resultant overhead) entirely? By a control panel option? Like hell. it can only be done by mucking about in the group policy editor, if you know how, know it even exists, and can find the relevant pokicy entry, about five levels down in the hierarchy. Most normal users wouldn't know the GPE haystick even exists, never mind how to find the right needle in that needlestack.
For a tablet, I'd agree that MUI makes sense. I'd have no issue with it on MS tablets IF they hadn't tried to force it on desktop PC users to leverage tablet/phone sales. I might or might not have bought an MS tablet but for that. But I'm still fuming at MS over their arrogance, and as a result, will not buy an MS tablet, period. Never mind how good the technology is, never mind the price. I'm not buying one. A while back, someone here offered to give me one. While I appreciated the generosity that implied, I wasn't (and still am not) even interested in such a tablet if it's free.
Like I said, I'm angry at MS over their attitude, and I doubt they will EVER change my mind on that. I'm certainly not parting with a penny in their direction until/unless I'm convinced they "get it" and have been reformed. Not holding my breath on that, because my feeling is that all they've done is dialled back the visible arrogance, and put a better PR gloss on things, not that they're actually at all regretful over anything beyond that their stunt didn't work.
From trying to shove MUI down my throat, all they've managed to do is make me absolutely adamant to not use it. And if that means ditching Windows, Office, etc, and forego buying MS mobile devices, so be it. It's a pain migrating away, but a price worth paying for me.
I've been looking for a decent case/keyboard combo for the Nokia, and unfortunately Nokia only do the "full fat" Transformer-style dock complete with netbook style keyboard, secondary battery and more ports.
Better than the "dead flesh" keyboard, but also a LOT more expensive.
RT isn't a "waste of time", although it probably only exists because Microsoft can't/won't port "proper" Windows to ARM (and I strongly suspect "can't"), or mod Windows Phone to work on tablets. I'm not sure if Microsoft has been pushing RT behind the scenes but there seems to be a lot more apps than there was a year ago. Suspect that the battery life on the RT boxes will be better than on an i5-based powerhouse. And then you get into the arguments about lack of memory, etc.
If you've got Windows Phone 8 and/or are one of those wierdos who's a Windows 8 "fanboy", then RT arguably makes a lot more sense than buying a Tab 10, Note 10 or iPad.
Perhaps the Surface RT vs Surface Pro makes it seem like a viable product. Put it next to tablets (that are pretty much cost comparable) by Dell, HP, Lenovo and the rest that use the newer atom chipsets and it becomes a waste of time IMO. If you don't use desktop apps much then an Atom with 2GB of RAM will work pretty much as well as an RT with the benefit that you CAN use desktop apps if you wish. Once they start putting 64bit windows, 4GB of ram and 4G modems in these little Baytrail tabs... ultimate win! Ok so you lose a couple hours battery life, but when its ~10 Hours vs ~14 Hours, its only really people doing long haul flights that it really makes a difference for
Is it not telling that there s only a small handful of companies still making these devices and two of them are closely linked with the company that makes the software?
Price is the major selling point for me personally (along with the keyboard), which is why this ludicrous £500+ price is just too much.
If you look at a "standard" surface RT 32gb (which is all you need, thanks to the memory card slot + USB port), you can get that for £299 including a keyboard cover. That includes the full Microsoft Office 2013 (word, excel, outlook, powerpoint, onenote) which is currently £220 list price ,or can be had for around £190. Remember its the "Home and business" not "home and student" version that you need to look at for comparison. That makes the RT £80, which is an absolute steal.
The "full fat" windows 8 tablets do not come with office H&B as standard, thats an RT exclusive thing. Granted thats not going to matter to a great many, but for people like me who don't own an office licence already at home it's a huge advantage.
When it comes to running "desktop apps", yes the cheaper windows 8 tablets can just about do it. You can just about run Half Life 2 at 40fps (just), and older games..but you can't do a lot more than an RT can do. trying to do so really kills the battery life too, which is already not great (typically 8 hours at best compared to 14). An RT running Windows 8.0 can run desktop apps anyway via an emulator (performance isn't great, but it can run most basic apps..putty, trillian, mirc etc)
There is of course no argument that a "full" windows tablet is going to be better than RT. Given the choice and budget I would go for a Surface Pro 2 every time..but with a £300 budget? The RT makes a heck of a lot of sense, and thats something I didn't think I would have said a year ago. You simply get a lot more for your money.
If you just want a tablet for a tablet experience though, then you are much better off with an iPad or Android device...
I thought this to be a rip off but fair when compared to 64GB iPad with 4G, still overpriced IMO.
Surface 2 32GB vs Surface 2 64GB price difference is a ripoff though IMO, or is that expected price for an additional 32GB of whatever storage the Surface 2 uses?
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