News - Microsoft Surface mini 7-inch tablet is in development

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A new Surface lineup, including a “mini” version, will be in mass production this year.

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Read more.

WooHoo!

If they keep the full USB port, and the HDMI out or DisplayPort or whatever, I'll end up buying a whole bunch of these. Well provided outlook makes it to RT like its rumored too.

Release the pro version first please

I want that with a full Windows, not RT.

If this comes to the US before the Pro in the UK i'll be so p*ssed...

Its a joke that the pro version hasnt come out yet. Shocking

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

Its a joke that the pro version hasnt come out yet. Shocking

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Tell me about it. I'm seriously annoyed, I was over in Canada last month and very tempted to buy one there considering that they haven't even mentioned a ballpark date other than Q2/3.

We better get some serious perks for having to wait this long. Either that or i'm jumping ship to the Lenovo Helix and the like...

At this rate they might as well slap on a Haswell CPU on it. then it would be worth the wait

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

At this rate they might as well slap on a Haswell CPU on it. then it would be worth the wait

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If they did I'd imagine it would solve a fair few of their battery issues too... And also please a lot of people who have been waiting quietly...

Has a date been released for the Surface Pro in the UK, last time all I saw Microsoft advertise was coming soon :wallbash:

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Originally Posted by Georigueur

Has a date been released for the Surface Pro in the UK, last time all I saw Microsoft advertise was coming soon :wallbash:

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Still the same thing...

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Originally Posted by TheAnimus

WooHoo!

If they keep the full USB port, and the HDMI out or DisplayPort or whatever, I'll end up buying a whole bunch of these. Well provided outlook makes it to RT like its rumored too.

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I'm curious to what your use for a bunch of these would be. :)

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Originally Posted by Funkstar

I'm curious to what your use for a bunch of these would be. :)

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'Proper style hot desking'.

So for £500 a whack I can equip staff with one of these. They can carry it with them at all times, it has suitable encryption unlike, sat the iPad, and has office.

I can't really always use cloud style semantics, but sync'ing when on WiFi is enough (with MY servers). This is more than enough to plug in to a nice enough 21" monitor, full size USB keyboard and Mouse, and ask someone to work at it for 8 hours a day. Yet get it to Nexus 7 size and we've got something I can ask them to carry with them always. If they are able to get a touch cover useful at that size.

I can easily afford at such a low cost to buy a stack of them, so there is always at least 1 spare per person. Windows RT has one really good advantage, it has practically zero viruses or malware, whilst been useful. It has security concepts which Andriod/iOS don't have yet, granted it lacks group policy but you can do a lot with just a reg script.

So we've got something that does enough for 80% of the office, that will have to be cheap, lightweight and portable, yet 'docks' nicely. From my Surface RT I know it just works with every printer / scanner I've plugged in (exception being wireless scanner, that will only work by wirelessly scanning to the file server or emailing it. Not directly placing it on the filesystem of the target device like it normally does).

I don't like the idea of idiots using a PC, the older I get the more I realise why the iPad is such a success, it's due to how thick everyone is. It makes my security policy much simpler to have a very locked down device, preferably only running signed stuff.

I thought it would be something like that, interesting to read the specifics though.

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Originally Posted by j.o.s.h.1408

Its a joke that the pro version hasnt come out yet. Shocking

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It wouldn't be completely out of character for MS to not bring a product it doesn't have 100% confidence in to market here at all, the Zune got a better reception than Surface and that never made it across the pond.

As far as the 7" surface goes, If the potential sales are not significantly higher than the 10" surface (large tablet and small tablet have a 50/50 split of the market according to the article, so the numbers say no) then I really don't see why they would bother throwing good money after bad and continuing this farce for another chapter. It is going nowhere.

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Originally Posted by MadduckUK

It wouldn't be completely out of character for MS to not bring a product it doesn't have 100% confidence in to market here at all, the Zune got a better reception than Surface and that never made it across the pond.

As far as the 7" surface goes, If the potential sales are not significantly higher than the 10" surface (large tablet and small tablet have a 50/50 split of the market according to the article, so the numbers say no) then I really don't see why they would bother throwing good money after bad and continuing this farce for another chapter. It is going nowhere.

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Have a look at the customer reviews on amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Surf...owViewpoints=1

It really is a fairly solid device, combined with the fact they sold out pretty damn quick I don't think it's fair to write it off as a failure. In fact I use my Surface RT waaaay more than my iPad 2. However I use my ultrabook about five times more than the two put together. Or my Nexus 7 because it fits easily in my overcoat inside pocket. Or my kindle more than The 7.....

I think they stumbled at first with their launch, really rather badly, not including the touch cover as standard is just such nickle and diming too. Also everyone I know with one already owns another tablet, which isn't good for MS, to be the 'oh well Ive got an iPad already so I don't mind the lack of fart apps'. However once they've got outlook RT out, which is rumored to be this summer I think that could change a lot. The fact is the battery life is just excellent and it has hands down the best web browsing of any tablet I've used. Too many sites still depend on MouseOver events for menus and the like, touching fails, with the touch cover surface you've always got the mouse there. Then the elephant in the room that is Flash. Even Mozilla on their new TowTruck thing used a flash video to describe it. Flash is certainly not dead.

Compared to the iPad it has fewer apps, but it has Excel and PowerPoint this is huge advantage. It also browses the web much better and handles updates far more gracefully.

The downside is, as many reviewers found, it will do stuff in the background, such as a 1.5gb install of office, without you really realising it. That half the settings are in Metro the other in Desktop. It is the jarring of the settings that is the only reason I've not switched my mum to one of these.

Depending on what they fix with Blue, I can easily see this being hands down the best platform if MS pull their finger out with AD support on RT, whilst accepting the hit on price point, they would do very well.