Microsoft Surface Tablet running Windows 8 announced
Microsoft's mystery event took place yesterday at a time that may have been ideal for journalists and interested users from the U.S., but less than ideal for people from other parts of the world. In it, Microsoft announced the Surface tablet running on Windows 8. According to the demonstration, Surface will ship in two different models. First a regular Intel-powered tablet running Windows 8 Pro, and then an ARM-based tablet running Windows RT.
Lets take a look at the spec sheet for both Surface tablets first before we analyze the device further. Please note that Microsoft did not reveal all of the specs just yet.
Surface Specs
The Windows RT powered surface comes with a 10.6" ClearType HD Display, either 32 Gigabytes or 64 Gigabytes of storage, and a 31-5 W-h battery. It is 676 g light and 9.3 mm thin, and offers microSD, USB 2.0, Micro HD Video ports and a 2x2 MIMI antennae.
The Windows 8 Pro version of the Surface tablet has a full HD display of the same size, weights 903 g and has a width of 13.5 mm. It features a larger battery that is packing 42 W-h, ships with an USB 3.0 and microSDXC port instead, and offers 64 Gigabytes or 128 Gigabytes of storage. It also ships with a pen with palm block that the RT Surface version does not ship with.
Surface, a closer look
As you can see from the specs listing above, Microsoft did not reveal all the hardware specs of its Surface tablets yesterday. The spec sheet is missing information about the processor, the RAM, the actual display resolution, the video card, the type of hard drive (likely SSD, but how fast), how long the devices will run on battery on average, and the price.
As far as price goes, Microsoft mentioned that it will be competitively priced with "comparable ARM tablets or Intel Ultrabook-class PCs". This puts the Windows 8 Pro version of the tablet at least in the $800 range with the possibility that it could even be priced higher considering that some Ultrabooks retail for twice the amount or even more. It is however likely that both tablets will be offered at a price well below the $1000 mark, likely closer to Apple's top of the line iPad that is currently retailing for about than $720 in its 64 Gigabyte edition. The RT version will likely be more in the $600 range though.
What makes the Surface tablet interesting is not that it is a first party tablet running Windows 8, nor the hardware that Microsoft built-into it. The most interesting aspect here is the integration of the qwerty keyboard in the cover of the tablet and the stand that is also integrated in it.
The keyboard should appeal to many professionals and users who often have to use the keyboard when they work with the tablet. And since it is included in the cover, it is far more practical of a solution than a third party keyboard accessory that you have to carry around with you as well. It obviously depends a lot on how well the keyboard is designed. It is likely that it will work quite well, considering Microsoft's experience in the keyboard vertical.
And then there is the pen with digital ink, which we do not know that much about right now. It is magnetic and attaches to the Surface tablet, and could be a great asset for writers and users who work with images and other types of media. Again, it really depends on how fluent and exact it is which no one can say for sure right now.
Surface video
Presentation video
The market
So, who is Microsoft targeting with the Surface tablet? That's a hard question to answer, considering that it can be used for many different purposes. From a device for pure entertainment like Apple's iPad, to professional applications. Journalists for instance could be very interested in this as it could replace the netbook / notebook that they'd carry around with them otherwise. This of course under the premise that the keyboard is as good as Microsoft has made it sound like.
Businesses could also be interested in this, as most will have no troubles integrating Windows devices into the company network or infrastructure.
Closing Words
Microsoft's Surface tablet is more than another tablet, or a tablet that the company tries to position against Apple's iPad. It is also a demonstration of what tablets with Windows 8 can look like. There will be others obviously from companies like Acer, Dell or Samsung, and it will be interesting to see how these tablets compare with the Surface tablet.
It may take a couple of months before we can finally draw a conclusion when Microsoft reveals pricing and detailed spec information.
Have you followed the announcement? Do you think that Microsoft has produced a winner here?
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Are these articles AI generated?
Now the duplicates are more obvious.
This is below AI generated crap. It is copy of Microsoft Help website article without any relevant supporting text. Anyway you can find this information on many pages.
Yes, but why post the exact same article under a different title twice on the same day (19 march 2023), by two different writers?
1.) Excel Keyboard Shortcuts by Trevor Monteiro.
2.) 70+ Excel Keyboard Shortcuts for Windows by Priyanka Monteiro
Why oh why?
Yeah. Tell me more about “Priyanka Monteiro”. I’m dying to know. Indian-Portuguese bot ?
Probably they will announce that the taskbar will be placed at top, right or left, at your will.
Special event by they is a special crap for us.
If it’s Microsoft, don’t buy it.
Better brands at better prices elsewhere.
All new articles have zero count comments. :S
WTF? So, If I add one photo to 5 albums, will it count 5x on my storage?
It does not make any sense… on google photos, we can add photo to multiple albums, and it does not generate any additional space usage
I have O365 until end of this year, mostly for onedrive and probably will jump into google one
Photo storage must be kept free because customers chose gadgets just for photos and photos only.
What a nonsense. Does it mean that albums are de facto folders with copies of our pictures?
Sounds exactly like the poor coding Microsoft is known for in non-critical areas i.e. non Windows Core/Office Core.
I imagine a manager gave an employee the task to create the album feature with hardly any time so they just copied the folder feature with some cosmetic changes.
And now that they discovered what poor management results in do they go back and do the album feature properly?
Nope, just charge the customer twice.
Sounds like a go-getter that needs to be promoted for increasing sales and managing underlings “efficiently”, said the next layer of middle management.
When will those comments get fixed? Was every editor here replaced by AI and no one even works on this site?
Instead of a software company, Microsoft is now a fraud company.
For me this is proof that Microsoft has a back-door option into all accounts in their cloud.
quote “…… as the MSA key allowed the hacker group access to virtually any cloud account at Microsoft…..”
unquote
so this MSA key which is available to MS officers can give access to all accounts in MS cloud.This is the backdoor that MS has into the cloud accounts. Lucky I never got any relevant files of mine in their (MS) cloud.
>”Now You: what is your theory?”
That someone handed an employee a briefcase full of cash and the employee allowed them access to all their accounts and systems.
Anything that requires 5-10 different coincidences to happen is highly unlikely. Occam’s razor.
Good reason to never login to your precious machine with a Microsoft a/c a.k.a. as the cloud.
The GAFAM are always very careless about our software automatically sending to them telemetry and crash dumps in our backs. It’s a reminder not to send them anything when it’s possible to opt out, and not to opt in, considering what they may contain. And there is irony in this carelessness biting them back, even if in that case they show that they are much more cautious when it’s their own data that is at stake.