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Surface was the single biggest genuine tech surprise of the year so far. Microsoft tantalised us with a tablet that made the iPad look stale. Its snap-on keyboard made all laptops look immediately old fashioned. And it promised The Future of Computers.
We hadn’t looked forward to something this much in a long, long time. Now it’s here. And it’s been just as long a time since a gadget has been so disappointing. Surface is good, but Surface RT sure isn’t the future. Not yet.
The laptop is about as far advanced as one can imagine. The MacBook Air and a horde of ultrabook clones are hitting a brick wall in terms of form and physics. The tablet, likewise, isn’t exactly pushing civilisation forward; it’s still fundamentally a luxury device, a delightful toy for reading email on the couch or watching movies on an airplane. Nobody needs a tablet. It’s a lovely, superfluous thing. But everyone needs a computer, unless you’re planning on living by a lake and trading furs for a living.
Microsoft’s pearly promise for Surface was to pioneer a strange new kind of gadget: all the grace and leisure of a tablet, combined with the ability to actually make stuff that a computer brings. Convenience with input. Type, edit, change. Work. Power! Microsoft claims outright that Surface will bring together the best of everything that exists—the elusive union of laptop and tablet. Or at the very least, with Surface RT, a tablet that you could actually use as your primary computer.
The men who built the Surface from a pile of cardboard prototypes into the thing I’ve been using for the past week stood in front of me at their headquarters and said exactly that. Microsoft is trumpeting a historical change here. And it has a recent track record of building exceptional things. Sure, there’s a Surface Pro version coming up that’ll have full, powerful laptop guts, and run the same software any PC can—Microsoft’s best shot at being your only computer, forever. But even this RT variant is supposed to give us some overdue synthesis. Plop it down on your desk and get things done.
Whether Microsoft can keep this promise matters more than anything else in technology this year. Surface could be the blueprint for the machine you’ll be typing on well into the next decade. No pressure.
Surface is Microsoft’s attempt to out-Apple Apple. The thing is designed to hell and back, and most of the time it shows. This means a lot of attention to detail—attention that sounds silly until you actually hear it—like the kickstand with an extra, custom-designed hinge to guarantee a satisfying chkkk every time it’s snapped shut. Is that superficial? Only if you consider something you’re going to potentially hear and touch multiple times every single day superficial. Otherwise, it’s just damn thoughtful.
And most of the time, Surface is a thoughtful computer. It’s a beautiful computer, in your hand or on a tabletop, its shifting angles clean and secure like a Danish prison. It’s a little too heavy—slightly heftier than the iPad 3—but otherwise comfortable to hold, with an angled bezel that melts into your hand. There’s a convenient USB port that, unlike other tablets, doesn’t look like a gaping open sore on the delicately chamfered side. The screen doesn’t hold up against the crispness of the iPad’s retina resolution, but still manages a lovely colourful pop to suit the colourful, poppy Windows 8. All over the Surface, these little details reflect the meeting of large brains.
But more importantly, Surface is handsome. That ineffable Hey, this thing feels good quality is lacquered all over Surface. You’ll appreciate it every time you pick it up and turn it on. It’s a simple, joyful experience. Open the Touch Cover keyboard/trackpad hybrid, snap out the kickstand, and lay the thing on your desk like a laptop. Start writing an essay. Flip the cover all the way around, hide the keyboard, and give yourself something substantial to grip like a tablet. Start swiping the web. Or prop the kickstand against the folded-back cover to create a stable base while you watch movies on a coffee table. Switching configurations is a cinch, and it’s entirely intuitive. The Touch Cover feels as integral to the Surface as the binding of a book to the sandwiched pages. There’s every reason to believe most computers will look and feel something like this, someday soon.
The Surface is instantly more charming than any Windows device that’s come before it. It’s nearly the perfect size, and the form is almost beyond reproach. If you want a tablet, use it like a tablet. If you want a laptop, use it like a laptop. Both modes seem right, like a genuine sea-change step forward. The Next Kind of Computer can be slipped in a bag, power up a bright display nearly instantly, run an operating system that loves being touched, and equally importantly, have a keyboard you can use to actually get work done.
Tablets aren’t for work. That’s the old refrain. But if they’re going to be more than great toys someday, tablets have to become every bit as viable as a desktop tower as a way to write (and edit) long emails, presentations, and poems. Surface RT is the first evidence we have that this is possible, because you’ll use it like you’ve never used any computer before. Your brain starts to rewire itself, and it’s delightful.
Flip out the keyboard. Hit power. Swipe up to unlock. Type in your password. A dozen super-colourful tiles give you a snappy report of what’s new: Who’s tweeted at you, what’s arrived in your inbox, news headlines, photos of your beautiful face, and incoming Facebook IMs, as they drop. You’ll touch one thing, scroll to the next, swipe another, then begin typing, merging habits you’ve picked up since your parents first let you set hands on something that ran off batteries. Surface presents you the Internet all at once.
Browsing in Internet Explorer is just as easy as flopping into a couch-cushion movie marathon, or working in the full Microsoft Office suite. It all feels seamless, natural, a culmination of useful things. This ease, the effortless transfer between watching stuff and making stuff, reading and writing, listening and talking, it permeates Surface with the mark of The New Computer. This is what netbooks were supposed to be, before we realised they were all completely horrible: small, powerful, flexible, skinny computers that can do a ton of things easily.
You can thank Windows 8′s radicalism for that. Traditional Windows would be absolute hell to use on this—or hey, so would OS X. But Metro is the best foundation for The Next Computer I can imagine, and if you can get over UI squeamishness, you’ll love it. It’ll make you more powerful the more you rub your hands on it. It is that good. Or at least it could be, at some point.
We’re not there yet. Surface is a fantastic promise, and holds fantastic potential. But while potential is worth your attention, it’s not worth your paycheck. Surface RT gets so many things right, and pulls so many good things together into one package. But it is undercooked. For all Microsoft’s claims to hardware perfection and software revolution, Surface RT is undone by too many little annoyances, cracks, and flaws. After the initial delight of an evolved tablet wears off, you’ll groan—because Surface brings the appearance of unity, but it’s really just the worst of both worlds. Instead of trading in your laptop and tablet for Surface, a cocktail of compromises that fracture the whole endeavor, you’ll miss them both urgently.
Want to use Surface RT as a laptop? Sorry, the Touch Cover is a letdown. It’s a phenomenal engineering effort, and the most terrifically-integrated mobile keyboard ever. It doesn’t compare to the junky Bluetooth options you can slap against your iPad. Microsoft’s keyboard cover is perfectly integrated with the device, and touch typing on it is actually possible. You can’t say the same for the iPad’s glass.
But it only approximates a real keyboard—the buttons are pressure activated, barely buttons at all, and spaced in such a way that typos are inevitable and constant. Unlike the first time you pinched an iPhone or gazed at E-ink, there’s zero that’s instantly intuitive about the Touch Cover. And in order for this to be a brave new computer, Touch Cover had to be instantly intuitive, an immediately responsive thing to touch and work with. But rather than feeling like you’ve instantly grown an extra brain lobe just by using it, Surface’s mega-hyped keyboard cover feels like it requires one. You’ll feel clumsy. You’ll write slowly. I tried writing this review on the Surface, but I would’ve missed my deadline by a week. You’ll get better—it will probably take weeks to hit a stride—but this thing was supposed to be a breakthrough. A perfect interface. Instead, it’s just a half-broken death march up the learning curve. The trackpad, sludge-like and jerky, is even worse—particularly galling compared to the super-smooth touchscreen—and unlike the keyboard, will never get better with practice.
The Touch Cover also approximates, dismally, the sturdiness of a laptop: thanks to the cloth-like floppiness of the thing that’s necessary for making it easy to open and close, it can’t support itself on anything but a flat, rigid (apologies) surface. You can’t type on your lap, like a laptop. It’s hard to imagine what a design solution out of this would have been, but that’s Microsoft’s job, not ours.
Perhaps most galling is the Touch Cover’s £79 addition to the Surface’s already-pricey £399base MSRP—akin to selling your windshield wipers separate from the car. Microsoft also offers a Type Cover, which promises actual physical keys instead of the flattened solution, but that will add critical bulk to your Surface experience—along with an extra £99. Another letdown—and a pretty outrageous one.
But it’s Windows on Surface RT that’s the greatest letdown of all, the lethal letdown, because it’s not Windows 8, but Windows RT. You can’t tell the difference by looking at them, but you certainly will once you use it. Windows RT is underpowered (everything opens and syncs slightly too slowly); under-functional (you cannot install a single app that’s not available through the Windows RT app store, which offers a paltry selection), and under-planned (the built-in apps can’t feel like Lite versions of something better). You’d be right to note that many of those limitations apply to the iPad as well, but no one could mistake iOS for OS X the way RT apes Windows 8. And even if it’s a plight common to tablets, Microsoft—for better or worse—has hyped Surface RT as being so much more.
In the end though, this is nothing more than Microsoft’s tablet. And a buggy, at times broken one, at that, whose “ecosystem” feels more like a tundra. There’s no Twitter or Facebook app, and the most popular 3rd party client breaks often. The Kindle app is completely unusable. There’s no image editing software. A People app is supposed to give you all the social media access you’d ever need, but It’s impossible to write on someone’s Facebook wall through the People app, Surface’s social hub; the only workaround is to load Internet Explorer. Blech. Something as simple as loading a video requires a jumbled process of USB importing, dipping in and out of the stripped-down desktop mode, opening a Video app, importing, going back into the Video app, and then playing. What.
The app selection, overall, is worse than the already pathetic Windows Phone app fare, looking like the software equivalent to a barren Soviet grocery store. The difference is that Windows Phone, used in quick, informative bursts, skates by on the strength of its excellent with integrated features. At the moment, there’s just not that much to do with Microsoft’s über-tablet. Surface is weak because Windows RT is weak; a tepid tablet OS pretending to be a computer’s.
You can do work, yes. But productivity is limited to a “preview” (beta) version of Microsoft Office. It also hurts that Office requires plunging into Windows RT’s Desktop mode, where users of actual Windows 8 are able to install a decade’s worth of legacy software. Normally, this would compensate. But RT users can’t install any of this older software. None of it. Desktop mode is entirely worthless in RT, a cruel tease of non-functionality. It’ll only remind you of how much you can’t do with your Surface, and is going to confuse the living hell out of most people who buy one—especially when Surface Pro, built on x86 architecture and perfectly compatible with all of those legacy programs, steps in a few months from now.
No. The Surface, with an obligatory Touch Cover, is £479. That’s a lot of money. Especially given that it’s no laptop replacement, no matter how it looks or what Microsoft says. It’s a tablet-plus, priced right alongside the iPad and in most ways inferior.
That could change. Maybe there will be a new Touch Cover that retains the original’s terrific physical qualities while actually allowing good typing. Maybe the quasi-vaporware Surface Pro, which eschews Windows RT in favor of the real-deal Win 8, will make all the difference, opening itself up to the open seas of PC software (for several hundred quid more). Maybe the app store will look different in a month, or a year, and have anything to offer. Maybe. But remember that Windows Phone—which has swelled from mere hundreds, to tens of thousands, to over a hundred thousand app offerings over the past two years—is still a wasteland compared to iOS and Android. Poor precedent. Maybe Windows RT will be different. Maybe.
But those maybes aren’t worth putting money on. As much as it looked (and even felt) like it for a bit, the future isn’t here quite yet.
Microsoft Surface Stats
Price: £399, £79 extra for Touch Cover
Screen: 10.6-inches, 1366×768 pixels (16:9)
Processor: 1.3 GHz Quad Core Tegra 3
Storage: 32 GB, microSDXC expandable
Wi-Fi: 802.11b/g/n
RAM: 2 GB
Connectivity: 1 USB 2.0 port, HD video out
Weight: 1.5 Pounds
Dimensions: 10.81 x 6.77 x 0.37 inches
Battery: 8 hours reading/7.5 video (advertised)
Gizrank: 2.5
Hands On With Microsoft Surface for Windows RT
Windows RT Takes Up Half of the 32GB Microsoft Surface's Storage
Is Your Microsoft Surface RT Borked a Little Since the Last Update?
Sounds like one to avoid at this stage.
Out of all the reviews I’ve read on the main tech sites, this one is the only negative one. Reading the Engadget review I was ready to get a pre-order done.
I think it’s best to wait and try one before making your mind up.
Most of the negatives seem to be about the touch cover, it’s price and not using it on a lap. Does the base 16GB ipad come with a cover and keyboard for £399? No, so why criticise the surface’s price tag? I personally want the £399 32GB model without cover as it will be for sofa use.
Microsoft themselves say that it will take 4-5 days to get fully up to speed with the touch cover. All the other reviews I’ve read say that even after 10 minutes you can use it well.
I think that Gizmodo didn’t take enough time to get use to the touch cover, as Engadget did write the review using the touch cover.
I do aggree that it’s too expensive, and I also think it should be included in the price.
I do agree the touch cover is expensive but don’t think it should be included, they are only emulating apple that don’t include a cover either. If the cover was included I can imagine a lot (me included) wouldn’t use it. The Microsoft Wedge mobile keyboard would probably be my choice if I needed one.
Ideal price for the cover would be £40 IMO.
I agree, price the keyboard lower and reap the rewards.
Engadget says much the same thing. Nice hardware, hamstrung software. If the full Surface Pro hardware is as slinky (and decently faster) than this, it’ll be the one to have. Surface RT was always going to have trouble gaining acceptance here just because it’s hugely overshadowed by its much bigger brother.
http://i50.tinypic.com/120nsiw.png
Quit it with the shitty gifs, they make the site look like a 90′s throwback!
My computer, it is crying out in pain!
Snap and it’s no slouch on all other sites. Either the gifs are too big, too complex, too shit or google chrome doesn’t like them!
Chrome here too, I reckon it just doesn’t like big gifs.
The gifs aren’t posing a problem for my computer. My eyes are hating me for reading this article though.
Scrap that. Scrolling back up and the issue becomes clear. No more gifs please.
They look awful, and are really distracting when you’re trying to read. Please embed YouTube videos like any normal site would, then I can watch them once, when I want to, rather than having them flashing away at me.
You know that’s why people run adblockers, right? Because big gaudy flashing banners are really distracting, and make it hard to read the content. These images are even worse!
Totally agree about them looking awful, I use an adblocker, used to use a gif blocker too due to people using annoying gifs on twitter but it caused too many other issues.
The gifs load fine on my netbook but I still hate them. The reason being is when I’m at work I use a 3 mobile dongle which I top up with 3gb of data per month. This page alone has 5-6mb of gif on it, and that’s wasted data. Looks like I’ll have to add a a gif blocker to my adblock and flashblock.
Totally agree, its painful reading the article with the gifs in. I’m reading on my ipad using chrome which fortunately (probably not by design) pauses the gif while your fingers are in contact with the screen. Still I shouldn’t have to sit here with a finger on the screen just to be able to read the article without my eyes being drawn to the crappy animated gifs below/above. If I were on my desktop it would be fine I can install extensions or alter the page in developer mode but on a tablet it’s crap! YouTube is the best solution it works on everything and it gives users the choice to play it or not.
Unlike the first time you pinched an iPhone or gazed at E-ink, there’s zero that’s instantly intuitive about the Touch Cover
————————————————————-
I disagree with this, Engadget put it best when they said, remember when you first typed on a Blackberry, or iPhone. You start off slowly but soon it becomes normal.
I certainly don’t expect a full blown keyboard from it, I just want something I can use to type an email, or ammend a Word doc when traveling. I really don’t think anyone expects this to be a full blwon laptop replacement, they are waiting for the Pro version.
If it’s just for quickly typing an email out, why bother with a physical keyboard at all? Touchscreen keyboards should be more than good enough for that kind of thing.
I hate typing on touchscreens unless it uses a swipe mechanic. I will type, at most, a sentence using an iphone or ipad but anything longer makes me weep silent tears.
Really? really…
A quick test of my phone keyboard proves I can type at 51 WPM on an Xperia Arc using SwiftKey, the best Android keyboard IMHO. I’ve actually tapped out quite lengthy emails on the thing, and can type faster on my Nexus 7.
It just took some time to get used to its prediction and correction mechanics, and how best to use them.
I don’t mind typing on a on screen keyboard for little things, but it’s too forced to type a normal email, or adjustments in word etc. I’d much perfer a this type of keyboard.
Also some of my users here really struggle to use an on board keyboard so this type of external keyboard will be a huge deal for them.
All of these reviews have talked about the lack of apps, Can I ask what people expect? How many apps should a device like this have at lauch (or even before lauch in this case)?
It’s supposed to be a mass market device ala iPad but is missing equivalents of the most widely used apps. MS could have approached Facebook ages ago to get an app ready for go live. If a device like this launches with just 2 apps, they need to be Facebook and Twitter.
Using Facebook.com would probably be easier and work better than a native app.
Facebook and Twitter are already integrated at OS level…
As people have pointed out these are integrated at a OS level.
There is 1 huge app that this has and no other system does. MS Office. For people who travel for work, this will be a nice extra.
I have an IPad and the only extra apps I use are an RSS-Reader and Mahjong, so if those 2 are available, it’s fine for me
Why would anyone care about 500.000 applications in the app-store? I can not come up with more than 20 apps that are worth downloading…
In my opinion the app-store is not an argument to buy or not buy a device. Just a fake argument invented by Apple and copied by Android and WP…
Let’s take facebook as an example: integrated in WP7 or an app on the IPad, depends on taste… not all of us want 342 icons on the home screen
Facebook and Twitter is integrated into iOS, you can even update your status from within any iOS app.
I read this review on the american site and I have to say that after reading the comments, Jesus Diaz is my hero for poking holes at this shambles of a “review”.
http://gizmodo.com/5953866/microsoft-surface-rt-review-this-is-technological-heartbreak?post=53797008
This “review” reads like an ignorant person who didn’t know the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro and was acting like a little bitch because his RT doesn’t work like a Pro. Which may be acceptable for the casual layman as Microsoft marketing wasn’t the best, but for a senior tech editor doing a review, he should already know this and reviewed it for what it was.
Surface RT has many faults, hence why I am bypassing it entirely and waiting for the Pro reviews, but please, let a review be a review, not an article full of hyperbole and bitchy nitpicking done by an Apple fanboy.
For crying out loud, Jesus Diaz was the voice of reason, madness I tell you!
That is a very good find.
Oh the irony.
It might be ironic, but the truth is still the truth yes?
I meant your comment “an article full of hyperbole and bitchy nitpicking” yet you yourself write “reads like an ignorant person who didn’t know the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro and was acting like a little bitch”.
While I get the irony in me bitching about the article, it doesn’t really apply to the “ignorant person who didn’t know the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro” as that was exactly how he sounded. He is a senior tech editor, not grandpa luddite. Yet he kept moaning about how RT was not a PRO in terms of OS features.
On an RT machine.
So yes, I do get the irony in my words, but it makes my point no less valid. Ironic yes?
So i have a few questions about this review… which to be frank.. its not its a bash..
1 – Your main gripe is Apps, saying they feel unfinished etc so did you have the latest builds of the Apps? As i heard they were only being released on or around the 26th and would be updated through the market place (not already on the device) which would explain why they would feel unfinished – as they are not.
2 – Did you link your facebook and twitter accounts into the device and how did it work? Because you mention their is no clients so i was just wondering.
3 – “Perhaps most galling is the Touch Cover’s £79 addition to the Surface’s already-pricey £399base MSRP—akin to selling your windshield wipers separate from the car. Microsoft also offers a Type Cover, which promises actual physical keys instead of the flattened solution, but that will add critical bulk to your Surface experience—along with an extra £99. Another letdown—and a pretty outrageous one.”
Where does this pricey base price comment come from? I mean, compared to what? a 7inch tablet? Or 10 inch tablets? As i think everyone agrees compared to 10 inch tablets its priced pretty competatively… Add extra bulk? Its 3mm more than the touch… Did you actually have a type or are you just guessing? Whats more is they are OPTIONAL..
4 – You spent half this ranting about apps… everyone knows the apps will come, and buggy 3rd party apps are just that… 3rd party apps that you cant blame MS for.
5 – your slating of the ktouch keyboard – most over reviews seem to love this thing.
Remember this is the reviewer that brought us this brilliant video that was posted a few articles back:
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-09-04/gizmodo-dot-coms-biddle-on-apples-next-phone
This is meant to be a review… some things i would like to know about
Wifi Signal and reliability
Battery life
video and sound quality
how easy it was to use the office apps and maybe some pictures
what is it like using multiple accounts, is there fast user switching.
Camera is there one? I cant tell from your review…..
here are some more problems with the review
“It’s a little too heavy—slightly heftier than the iPad 3″ but the difference in weight between the surface and an Ipad 3 is almost indistinguishable to a human….
“The screen doesn’t hold up against the crispness of the iPad’s retina resolution, but still manages a lovely colourful pop to suit the colourful, poppy Windows 8″
Some examples please? Maybe a picture or 2, you could even add a stupid gif…
“not worth your paycheck”
yet you think the Ipad is? based on what! Your whole article screams biased, all the negatives are BS, optional keyboard, not being able to install x86 apps, not being a laptop replacement etc etc etc… We all know this already… its a bloody tablet, not a laptop replacement… thats what Surface Pro is for.
Watch that video, looked like hes trying to supress a hard on the whole way through haha!
He doesn’t even mention that the Surface doesn’t have GPS either, which kinda sucks.
Indeed the lack of GPS disappointed me too.
wud b handy for sat nav etc.
It was just such a non-review that irked me the most.
I was actually dreading when I read it, hoping that Gizmodo UK would do their own review and not post this one.
We’re waiting for our own review kit, but unfortunately the Microsoft US has been much more generous with handing them out than the UK team.
Who in the office will be playing about with it?
Send a few of the boys over with cupcakes to sweeten the deal in getting them to you pronto.
add to that
whats xbox music like?
Did you try smart glass?
2 big features of the tablet… completely ignored…..
I don’t understand why some of you appear to be in uproar about that video? What, pray tell, is wrong with it exactly?
which 1? The Apple video? Just his sheer love for Apple and the fact that he states you shouldnt spend money on an RT because its lot a laptop replacement but i can get you he has spent money on an Ipad at least 3 times!
Biasism??? is that a word? Has a place.. but journalism isnt one of them.
I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but I found that it was tittled “Blind Faith” funny. It’s like Bloomberg had an inside joke that Sam was not let in on. Did you see the look in that reporter’s eyes when she uttered Sam’s “Best phone ever” quote?
Sneakiness I tell you!
Kat,
For me the video feels like listening to a fanboy. To predict it will be the “best phone ever” sounds just like “blind faith” to me.
Also the review is not only biased but also sounds like Sam started by the conclusion and then just worked a little bit on the arguments.
Saying that you shouldn’t buy it because, along other things, it’s not a laptop replacement sounds just like “Don’t buy the 64Gb iPad because it’s no MacBook replacement”.
I made my own “meme”
http://i50.tinypic.com/120nsiw.png
Thank you for this review.. you seem to have tested the “little” things that would piss us all off and that makes a good review. I think i will wait on this and pop into a store and try it in detail for a while before i buy.
i am very upset that MS are charging £79 for the cover when all along its been made to look like its part of the system. its meant to be the main limb so why even bother selling it without.. my xbox came with controllers after all!! and i agree that this will price them out of the ipad wars. i have held off the ipad just for this and i will now compare them side by side when i can. i dont need to swap out my laptop, my laptop is great. I simply want a good tablet for sofa browsing and travel internet (and now smartglass on the xbox etc..) i hope MS up the app store quick as we all know that is what has killed other tablets like BB and android. thing is i am not sure the full win8 surface will be enough to kill off the ultrabook or mac air either.. but i guess we will see.
Well, I see the Surface primarily as a tablet which you can also buy a screen cover for that functions as a keyboard.
And that keyboard/screen cover only costs a bit more than double the price of an Apple ipad cover!
You cant use an xbox without a controller…
You can use a surface without a keyboard…
yer fair point about the xbox controller, my point was more that MS have promoted this as an appendage that the surface must have, to then sell that at such a cost seems sill, they really should have included it at £400 so it compares with the ipad direct.
i see the RT as a tablet only device as well and not in any way a laptop swap. i guess it will come down to trying it..
let’s compare oranges to oranges.
need a cover..(£35)
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD306LL/A/ipad-smart-cover-dark-gray?fnode=3b
need a keyboard.. (£57)
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC184LL/B/apple-wireless-keyboard-english?fnode=3e
=£92
Anyway, must stop caring. It’s a piece of metal and glass…
fair point i guess..
Really well written review.
Glossing over the pretty shoddy review, I can’t wait for the Surface Pro! The Surface RT seems like pretty good competition to an iPad, apart from the Apps, which will come. As the app store fills up I think this will turn from a consumption device into something a quite a bit more powerful.
True, once Windows 8 is fully launched the software will come.
As competition to the iPad, price is the most inhibiting factor in my opinion, especially the type covers. They cut that down to £40 and it’s a no brainer.
You realise that:
Surface RT 32GB with Black Touch Cover = £479
Latest iPad 32GB with no keyboard = £479
I know, but doesn’t £439 or even £449 sound so much better?
Haha £200 sounds better too
Let’s not get carried away now! Microsoft execs’ housekeepers still need to feed their pet tigers after all.
but ipad already has an army of hipsters ready to by the next ipad even if it was 2 weeks after the last one.. MS needs to win some followers with this launch.. being a little cheaper would have done this.. i could be wrong here but i think they will lose out to the ipad as its already a proven product.
You are forgetting that Microsoft are in this for the long haul. Even if this doesn’t go as well as they hoped, there will be a Surface 2..
Don’t you mean the… Re-Surface?
i know, they plan on merging their product line to me more streamline from system to system (xbox, suface, win-phone, win8) i just hope they dont deem it a waste of money if it fails so badly.. which im sure it wont. I still plan on picking up the surface RT at somepoint but i would like a hands on play first.
Yeah, I can’t believe this review doesn’t mirror all the other reviews. How dare there be a differing opinion! All reviewers should review products the same way and come to the same conclusions.
That’s the thing, we are all open to differing reviews as it makes for a more informed whole.
But this has the taint of spite in it.
Don’t get me wrong there are a few valid points in there but it’s buried under so much crap that you feel dirty just trying to get to it.
It does have a taint of spite in it…
Just watch the mannerisms of his hand in the video: how he jabs and pokes at the screen with lazy inconsistent gestures and appears to get frustrated when his method of interacting with the screen doesn’t work… it’s almost as if he doesn’t WANT to like it!
I was interested in Surface for a few reasons: slick, smooth interface, the inclusion of USB ports, and the smart integration of a stand and keyboard-cover.
I would never buy one of these without some hands on time anyway, but this review smacks of bias and my knowledge of Surface is no better off having read it.
If Windows 8 was open and it actually had good hardware in it then it would be great, sadly it’s just an iPad wannabe.
Windows 8 != Windows RT
i think only the apps hold it back at the mo.. but the RT is exactly that.. an ipad wannabe.. but there’s not really much difference in the their ability (screen excluded as the ipad one is much much better) I guess we will see what happens when the full surface comes out to compete with the mac book air? still its gunna be an up hill struggle no matter what as ipad is very well dug in and is a good bit of kit.
I’ve never seen a hand express so much disdain.
there’s this clever little thing called HTML5 with elements that completely remove the need for animated GIFs. perhaps in a meme or satirical response, GIFs are cool or even funny – when reporting news, they’re just dire and antiquated.
OT: whilst I think the comments on an optional keyboard are a bit too critical, completely agree on the app store. I find mad that they’ve included desktop mode, too – isn’t this meant to be the more tablet-y version with the Pro being more productive?
Excellent review and, generally, rather enjoyable to read. However, as many people have already comment, please pack it in with the gifs – they don’t really show anything all that informative, make browsers chug and bless the reader with wonderful headaches.
As such, given that this review is well written and there is good attention to detail yet encapsulates all too many elements from the turn of the century and the past, I can only give it a score of 2.5/5.
Really… if this is objective, this is what Gizmodo has come down to. As mentioned in so many other posts here this is really negative as far the Surface is concerned. I have seen, touched and used it and what’s been written in your review is far from the Truth!
I agree on the Apps, and that’s an area MS have to get right, but if this is their first product out the doors, then really the next ought to be something facinating. MS have done an excellent job, any short cummings on the software side can be update, patched and changed in the next few weeks/months so their is lots of room to grow.
Getting the hardware right was key and they deserve more cudos than what’s been written.
cummings… lolz
The lack of apps is definitely a problem at this point. The Windows App Store or whatever it’s called doesn’t need “250’000″ or however many Apple claim to house for the iPad, it just needs the main 20 or so (facebook, twitter, netflix, etc) and a good selection of games that are optimized and designed with the Metro/Modern/Whatever UI MS is plugging.
Them GIF’S!!!! Them bloody gif’s…
loving the gifs /s
Ok, love Gizmodo uk, but er really?
I was looking forward to this review as it was the only negative one I could find so had faith in the critical and host Gizmodo.
But you slate it (no pun intended) because of the keyboard, fair play but the keyboards an accessory.. want to write a long article while at your desk, grab a USB keyboard, a big win over the competition that was omitted?
I agree, the lack of apps is a worry and windows 7 phone marketplace is a worrying precursor, but how many third party apps did the iPhone have when it was first launched?
Desktop mode is rubbish? I agree, but this isn’t supposed to be used in the desktop other than Microsoft desktop applications, and with the introduction of Windows 8 and WinRT will developers be making classic apps when they can make WinRT? Unless its a LOB, I’m hoping no.
(Remember all managed code developed for WinRT can be compiled for x86/x64/arm in one build).
Lack of legacy app support, yep thats the difference in the architecture, it’s not classic windows.
Anyway, I love ya Giz, but you came across as a bit slow with this one.
This is a review by Sam Biddle from the American site. He’s a bit of an Apple fan.
http://www.businessweek.com/videos/2012-09-04/gizmodo-dot-coms-biddle-on-apples-next-phone
Gotcha, please excuse my rambling’s direction. Still love ya Giz UK..
Screw the tech talk. Tell me more about this lake where I can ignore new tech launches and trade furs for a living!
LOL, so £399 is ‘expensive’? Why does that never come up in your iPad reviews?
You complain that you can’t type on it as well as on a laptop. So you are basically pointing out a problem common to all standalone tablets including the iPad. You even admit that the keyboard cover is better than the on-screen keyboard on the iPad.
The price of the keyboard cover is not a big deal because it is OPTIONAL. No doubt there will be hundreds of cases and covers available.
So lack of apps is a problem is it? How many third party apps could you load onto the original iPhone when it first came out? Yet you still praised it as the best product ever.
You also cite the lack of backwards compatibility and complain that you can’t side-load apps. Well how many OS X apps do you have on your iPad then?
Windows RT tablets are going to be crap because they are copying something crap. If your going to make these kind of criticisms then at least play fair. Or just be honest and say that it loses 2 points for not being made by Apple.
Gizmodo (not only Sam Biddle) clearly suffers from a serious “Double Standards Syndrome”…
Maybe if MS/Google ban them from their events they’ll start writing non-Apple posts with more enthusiasm.
http://i50.tinypic.com/120nsiw.png
Not funny in the slightest.
Well that was a crap review.
Didn’t even bother to test the battery, just list the advertised. If I wanted to know the advertised battery life I’d just read Microsofts spec sheet.
For anyone else that wants to know the battery life, it’s 9 hours 36 minutes playing video over WiFi(Thanks Engadget).
Normally Engadget is the site seeming biased against anything not Apple, but they managed a decent review, of a TABLET. It’s not a PC!!
Next week, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gives a less than stellar review of US Foreign Policy & Ebenezer Scrooge reveals dislike of Christmas.
We all know Sam Biddle is an Apple zealot who generally spouts more bile than Regan from ‘The Exorcist’ after a particularly dodgy vindaloo. His hand’s actions in the video alone tell us all we need to know…he’d made up his mind about Surface before he went anywhere near the device.
Like many others, I can’t possibly take seriously the opinions of someone who called the iPhone 5 “The Best Phone Ever” before he’d even seen it. It’s like asking a banana-loving monkey simpleton to review Single Malt Whisky…Sam lacks both the impartiality & the skill of articulation.
Given his bafflingly mature response on Gizmodo.com; perhaps Giz should have given the Surface to a Mr. Jesus Diaz…he sounds like a man with his head screwed on!
Oh dear…
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/10/microsoft-fakes-excitement-its-surface-tablet-launch/58417/#
what a lot of guff! I’m using the surface right now. keyboard is awesome, it’s fast and responsive and winRT is slick fast and way more capable than any other pad I have used to date. The surface is a definite game changer. Do not heed this review.