News - Microsoft to start shipping Surface Power Covers next week

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Pre-orders for the combined keyboard and power expansion pack have now started.

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Read more.

$200 for a keyboard cover? Are they stoned?

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

$200 for a keyboard cover? Are they stoned?

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It isn't just a power cover, its a battery also. The cheapest battery I can get for my laptop (thinkpad t410) is £114, so its actually not that expensive.

Expensive, but not over the top when comparing against their rivals.

It's a shame the RT doesnt support it - but then when i get 8+ hours of real world use from my RT anyway (i.e. it can survive a working day day of emails + onenote on a single charge) I guess it's not really needed there.

Desperately needed for the pro which only lasts 2-3 hours!

I need to get round to buying a type cover soon, been using the touch one for the past few months which is surprisingly good but isn't quite as nice to type on afte ra full day

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Originally Posted by herulach

It isn't just a power cover, its a battery also. The cheapest battery I can get for my laptop (thinkpad t410) is £114, so its actually not that expensive.

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Your laptop battery is a particularly expensive battery, and for a fully fledged laptop. We're still talking about a keyboard cover for a tablet here.

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

Your laptop battery is a particularly expensive battery, and for a fully fledged laptop. We're still talking about a keyboard cover for a tablet here.

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Well, it's more a keyboard cover + Battery for a convertable laptop - the surface pro is a "fully fledged laptop" with a touch screen really. Not that different.
Regardless though a normal Type 2 Keyboard for the Surface is $140 US. So this is an extra $60 US for the battery aspect, which imo is not bad value.

The real issue is that the surface keyboard covers are ludicrously expensive to begin with. If you keep that in mind, it's a good deal to have the battery for $60 more :)

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Originally Posted by Spud1

Well, it's more a keyboard cover + Battery for a convertable laptop - the surface pro is a "fully fledged laptop" with a touch screen really. Not that different.
Regardless though a normal Type 2 Keyboard for the Surface is $140 US. So this is an extra $60 US for the battery aspect, which imo is not bad value.

The real issue is that the surface keyboard covers are ludicrously expensive to begin with. If you keep that in mind, it's a good deal to have the battery for $60 more :)

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This, although looked at on a combined basis, tablet+type cover isn't terrible value for a pretty decently specced ultrabook. With this to put a bit more juice in it it looks viable as a competitor to macbook air/vaio etc type systems. Different true, but not necessarily worse.

Another nail in the coffin for the Surface RT.