Anyone watching the MS-BN announcement?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by emellaich

However, this is far from bad news. It may mean that we will see a wide variety of riffs on this from each partners perspective: a serious business device, a consumer version, an ultimate portability version, one that converts easily to a desktop when docked, etcetera.

The ACER founder thinks MS will fold shop once WinRT and Win8 tablets establish themselves. However, in the past, he has shown himself to be an optimist.

Surface *is* a shot across the bow to the OEMs.
But MS has shown in the past that they will not let their partners determine their fate; not IBM, in the spat turned war over Windows and OS/2; not Intel, who are regularly reminded MS can *always* go out and buy AMD; and not HP or the other OEMs.

Surface is not *just* a reference design; you don't run an all-out media hype event like this week's, putting your company's credibility on the line, just to prod partners--you do it when you are really, really serious.

The message so far is that MS sees an uphill fight for their new Tablet platforms and they will do everything necessary to succeed. They will not handicap *this* generation of tablets by coddling their OEMs. So any OEM partners will have to be either way cheaper than Surface (for comparable features) or way better. Or they'll get runover.
Tough love time.
After all, what can the OEMs do that they haven't *already* done to MS? Android tablets? Buy Palm? RIM?

They gave the OEMs *zero* advanced warning. And the press release made it clear there are other surface products coming: the guessing is a Phone might be next. MS is not going to roll over and play dead for Apple and Google and if fighting back means the OEMs get trampled, well, they get trampled.

[CyGuy]

I am hopeful that these new tablets will be worth purchasing. They can't make the same mistake that they made with Windows Phone 7 though: Failing to properly support SD cards. This took WP7 off the table, lets hope they get these new devices and software right. It would be really simple to make a device that is much better than what is currently available, and it looks like they are on the right path. Time will tell...

[heySkippy]

I think MS announced this now so that when Google introduces their own tablet the press will have something other than the iPad to compare it to.

[taosaur]

It looks good. Android and iOS are both 'baby' OSes compared to Windows. For me, it wouldn't be a full PC replacement for me, but it looks like a viable alternative to a laptop. I need a full-powered desktop machine for gaming and heavy multitasking, but a laptop just needs to be touch-typable and not noticeably laggy.

Originally Posted by MovieBird

You should really step up to Notepad++. The pencil in the logo kinda looks like a banana... maybe...

+1

Even if you're not using all the bells and whistles for coding, just the tabbed interface for multiple notes is a huge step up, as is being able to book mark lines to easily jump between sections of larger notes. The session manager plugin also lets you have multiple saved sets of notes you can open in tabs for different tasks.

I mostly rely on Notepad++ for reference and quick jotting, and Jarte (RTF editor) for composition. Evernote is working its way into the former category because of the cross-platform, cross-device syncing, but the Windows client leaves a lot to be desired.

[morantis]

Well, it is about time, without this kind of competition there is no real way for the market to grow and evolve.

[stonetools]

I think that if you think only of hardware and specs, you're going to misswhat's going to decide the issue. I'm bettingthat the hardware and even the core apps are going to be fine, but that's not going to be enough to cut it for the consumer.
What the average consumer thinks about is not SD cards, or USB ports, or other hardware features. Rather, they'll be thinking, "What can I do with this?" . That means apps
The genius of the iPad launch was that Apple made sure that on Day One consumers knew how to use the iPad and what they could do with it.

"If you want a watch a video, there was an app for that"
"If you want to paint a picture, there was an app for that"
"If you want to a book to read to your children, there was even an app for that".

With the ARM Surface, there is at this point no Surface App Store. There is a Windows Phone app store, but we don't know that Windows Phone apps can run gracefully or even at all on the Surface.

Now Microsoft does have its killer app-Microsoft Office. For the average consumer and business user , there is only one real word processor and one real spreadsheet. I'm sure there will be a an MS Offioce suite for both versions of the Surface by launch date-that should be a given. Will that be enough to get the Surface off to a good start? Dunno.

[Sil_liS]

I was searching for stuff on this and I fount the original MS Surface, now MS PixelSense:

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by stonetools

With the ARM Surface, there is at this point no Surface App Store. There is a Windows Phone app store, but we don't know that Windows Phone apps can run gracefully or even at all on the Surface.

ah but we do from the Win Phone 8 Developers conference talk yesterday

WinPhone 8 Win RT and Windows 8 all sharde the same basic kernel. drivers that work in WP8 will work in rt will work on Win 8. well here http://www.engadget.com/2012/06/20/w...ode-nt-kernel/ and here http://www.pcworld.com/businesscente...s_phone_8.html or here http://www.extremetech.com/computing...them-all?print

Yesterday, at the Windows Phone Summit in San Francisco, Microsoft announced that Windows Phone 8 would drop its CE kernel in favor of Windows 8′s NT kernel. For all intents and purposes, Windows Phone 8 will be a version of Windows 8 that has been tailored to fit smaller displays. Windows Phone 8 will gain Windows 8′s resizable-live tile Start Screen. The networking and multimedia code will be the same across both operating systems. Windows 8′s performance, power usage, and memory footprint has been improved significantly so that it works well on tablets and ARM devices — and all of those changes will make the jump to Windows Phone 8.

Most importantly, though, Windows Phone 8 will support native code — and apps programmed for Windows 8 will work on Windows Phone 8. In most cases, porting an app will be as simple as flipping a switch in in Visual Studio. Windows Phone 8 will support the desktop version of DirectX and share common graphics drivers, meaning it will be a lot easier to port games to the phone. In theory, Windows Phone 8 might one day run Crysis. Native code support means it’ll be easier to port complex iOS and Android apps to Windows Phone, too.

With the Windows 8 NT kernel, Windows Phone 8 will support up to 64 cores (though to start with, Microsoft is optimizing WP8 for the dual-core Snapdragon S4 Krait SoC).

A bunch of Windows 8 apps and services will also hop over to Windows Phone 8: BitLocker full disk encryption, UEFI secure boot [2], and full fat Internet Explorer 10 [3] and Microsoft Office will work on WP8. With IE10, WP8 gains malware and phishing protection via SmartScreen. IE10′s Chakra JavaScript engine, running on Windows Phone 8, is 20% faster than the Galaxy S3′s stock browser. Web app developers will be able to write once to target desktop IE10 (on desktops, laptops, and tablets), and be assured that it will run on Windows Phone 8 smartphones.

and the RT Surface devices will come stock with an RT version of Office

[CyGuy]

Originally Posted by stonetools

I think that if you think only of hardware and specs, you're going to misswhat's going to decide the issue. I'm bettingthat the hardware and even the core apps are going to be fine, but that's not going to be enough to cut it for the consumer.
What the average consumer thinks about is not SD cards, or USB ports, or other hardware features. Rather, they'll be thinking, "What can I do with this?" . That means apps
The genius of the iPad launch was that Apple made sure that on Day One consumers knew how to use the iPad and what they could do with it.

"If you want a watch a video, there was an app for that"
"If you want to paint a picture, there was an app for that"
"If you want to a book to read to your children, there was even an app for that".

With the ARM Surface, there is at this point no Surface App Store. There is a Windows Phone app store, but we don't know that Windows Phone apps can run gracefully or even at all on the Surface.

Now Microsoft does have its killer app-Microsoft Office. For the average consumer and business user , there is only one real word processor and one real spreadsheet. I'm sure there will be a an MS Offioce suite for both versions of the Surface by launch date-that should be a given. Will that be enough to get the Surface off to a good start? Dunno.

No, MS should not copy the shortcomings of "other" companies thinking that is the way to go, it isn't. SD and USB are required by everyone. As for apps, there are already a million apps for Windows.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

No, MS should not copy the shortcomings of "other" companies thinking that is the way to go, it isn't. SD and USB are required by everyone.

+1
And HD video out, which both surfaces have. And note that both Surfaces will have a desktop mode for mouse and keyboard support. And Xbox game controllers, too, to go along with te SmartGlass.
Tablets aren't just for the living room any more.

As an ebook reader, I am looking forward to running native Calibre alongside the Kindle, AdobeDE, and Coolreader reader apps, plus full Acrobat and MS Word in reader mode with ink annotation. And the ATT Natural voices in TTS mode.

With all the hoopla over the crippled gadget OSes out there, people have forgotten just how rich and flexible the Windows applications catalog is. If the RT version can bring even a fraction of that to bear it will do fine. But even if it doesn't, the x86 version will bring full the full Windows TabletPC experience along with the desktop catalog. That alone is worth full freight even if the Metro Apps don't pan out. If they do...

[stonetools]

ah but we do from the Win Phone 8 Developers conference talk yesterday

Thanks for the info. All sounds good but that's still well short of a thriving App store with lots of tablet-optimized apps-which is what the Surface will be up against . Having MS Office baked in at the start will be hugely helpful, though.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by CyGuy

No, MS should not copy the shortcomings of "other" companies thinking that is the way to go, it isn't. SD and USB are required by everyone. As for apps, there are already a million apps for Windows.

None of which will run on the ARM version.

And its a FACT that consumers will embrace a tablet without certain hardware specs that power users consider important-and will reject tablets that have those features but which lack a thriving ecosystem. That's beyond debate now.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

+1
And HD video out, which both surfaces have. And note that both Surfaces will have a desktop mode for mouse and keyboard support. And Xbox game controllers, too, to go along with te SmartGlass.
Tablets aren't just for the living room any more.

As an ebook reader, I am looking forward to running native Calibre alongside the Kindle, AdobeDE, and Coolreader reader apps, plus full Acrobat and MS Word in reader mode with ink annotation. And the ATT Natural voices in TTS mode.

With all the hoopla over the crippled gadget OSes out there, people have forgotten just how rich and flexible the Windows applications catalog is. If the RT version can bring even a fraction of that to bear it will do fine. But even if it doesn't, the x86 version will bring full the full Windows TabletPC experience along with the desktop catalog. That alone is worth full freight even if the Metro Apps don't pan out. If they do...

I'm glad someone is providing features you want. But just like PC's, tablets are starting to hit their stride and cover all users - enterprise, power, average, and budget. I categorize these two MS offerings for enterprise and power users. For me, most of these features would go to waste. A 7" Galaxy Tab 2 is more than enough tablet for me.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by stonetools

And its a FACT that consumers will embrace a tablet without certain hardware specs that power users consider important-and will reject tablets that have those features but which lack a thriving ecosystem. That's beyond debate now.

Totally agree

[CyGuy]

The best app store in the world won't make up for poor hardware...