“Microsoft’s Surface RT is getting price cuts across the world this week as the company looks to boost sales of its first ever tablet hardware.” Great vote of confidence on a platform barely out the door.
“Microsoft’s Surface RT is getting price cuts across the world this week as the company looks to boost sales of its first ever tablet hardware.” Great vote of confidence on a platform barely out the door.
…It’s still not exciting me to actually buy one of those.
I hear the Surface RT has dropped from $500 to $350 (at least in the US). That’s about $349 more than I’d pay for one.
I’ve toyed with one and I’m not a tablet fan, but if I ever buy one, is going to be a Surface, the Price cut are good news.
I gotta agree, I played with the Surface and its much better than the Android or iOS tablets.
Its fast and let you do everything you want.
I know everyone’s boycotting microsoft ‘n stuff, but otherwise, its actually pretty good..
I picked up the Surface for college as my first tablet due to the price cut. I absolutely love it, and the free office doesn’t hurt either. The build quality is impressive, its responsive, I get Xbox enabled games, and my Xbox music.
Sure, it’s not cool, and it won’t earn me up votes since I’m not “b0yc0tting M$”, but at the end of the day I just want to get stuff done and have fun. For all the crap this company receives, I’ve really liked the direction they’ve gone in the last few years. I appreciate the flattened, colorful, content centered design that’s been introduced with Metro and WP7/8.
Given that Windows RT devices have to use PCIe to connect peripherals, it would have been stupendously easy to have a generic “RT device” kernel build for Linux or FreeBSD, compared to the clusterfuck that is the rest of the ARM world.
huh?
Which is why Microsoft locked the bootloader. I can’t disagree with that decision: they’re not in the business of subsidising ARM tablets for Linux users, and it’s their platform so their rules.
At the same time I still don’t care enough to buy one, although I don’t even care enough to buy a £100 Android tablet so that’s not exactly a significant metric.
Neither is Google, but they don’t lock the Nexus devices. Would be nice to dual boot Windows/Android..
Wouldn’t it be the opposite? You’re paying for Windows without using it. I guess you’re assuming they are selling at a loss here?
Well, everyone knows that when you have a bunch of unwanted junk, you hold a garage sale. This is no different. Windows 8 is a mess and Microsoft is doing what it has to to move inventory.
Agreed. I smell desperation. I’d like to see Microsoft succeed in the handheld space, but so far …
Do we really need MORE Microsoft in our daily lives?
One could say the same about MORE Apple or MORE Google in our daily lives.
Garage sales are also occasions to find stuff which can be re-purposed. However, the lock on the Surface RT boot loader even kills any emerging thoughts along these lines.
Of the three, Google is the one who has most opensource products and they usually don’t lock things down as Microsoft and Apple does. So, I don’t mind Google being in my daily life even though they track and sell my personal information(who doesn’t these days?)
However, I would love to see someone like Mozilla eat away a lot of marketshare from Google and others.
Edited 2013-07-16 05:39 UTC
Just wait until they are done with Google+ cleaning.
Edited 2013-07-16 06:24 UTC
Not sure how it affects me or others who simply don’t use that service. If they start shoving it down my throat by not letting me keep it deactivated, then I will switch to another email service.
Edited 2013-07-16 13:44 UTC
It affects the users of all services they are either shutting down or moving into Google+ only accounts.
If you benefit from it, why not? You probably wrote that from a rocks-solid Windows 7 desktop.
I think I’ll wait until I can justify the cost and then buy a Surface Pro as a cheaper alternative to a Wacom Cintiq which I can install Linux on and use on the go.
If you want something to run Linux, then don’t buy a tablet designed for running Windows.
Why not? If the hardware is priced as such that it makes economical sense, and you are able to run Linux on it, I can’t see any reason not to.
Don’t come around complaining that it does not support GNU/Linux properly afterwards.
If people want proper GNU/Linux hardware support from hardware vendors, they should vote with their wallet, instead of buying hardware designed for Windows or Mac OS X and then complaining it does not run GNU/Linux.
They are just clearing the inventory before launch of Surface RT 2.
We will see who is right.
Apple does this, but AFTER they announce a new device.
Yes, but they usually don’t have a problem unloading their old models. Microsoft does.
Agreed, surface 2 is coming. I think the reason they didn’t sell them for cheap before(as speculated) was to avoid pissing off their partners.
They should have made the price this low at the introduction of the device. A lot of people were expecting a better price point when the tablet was announced and were disappointing when the price came out as much higher. Now people now how well the device is received and the drop in price makes it look like another WebOS or Playbook fire sale to clear the inventory. Okay it may well be that it’s part of the reason but most people won’t be expecting to see a Surface RT 2.
Me on a personal note. I’m interested if they drop the price of the Pro.
MS should have made a lower powered Atom tablet instead of the Arm powered Rt. The main strength of MS is their backwards compatibility. By not running normal desktop applications they have put themselves in direct competition with Apple and Google. I would seriously consider a Surface Rt if it could run normal desktop applications. I know the Surface Pro exists, but $1,000 is kind of hard to swallow for something that isn’t a primary machine.
This is still no bargain. MS needs to get the specks up to at least 1080p on all their tablets not just the Pro. The DPI on the Surface RT is poor and the text display is abysmal.
If I were in Balmer’s shoes I’d drop the stillborn RT to cut the losses then lower the base Surface Pro to $500. Only then will MS have a serious tablet rival.
Microsoft cuts Surface RT prices by 30 percent worldwide after world cuts interest by 90 percent.
Nobody is buying them.
Like someone said here, “do we really need more microsoft in our lives?”
Microsoft is wrong on so many cultural, practical, functional and aesthetical points of view.
With the help of new computing devices and OSes we have now the chance to finally let it go with the past. Come on Microsoft, you can now safely shut down.
What you really mean, is we should just shut down all of Forbes’ top 100 companies that doesn’t tailor their products to a specific wants of a random internet user, right? I mean surely there’s a reason why they’re ONLY in the top 50 biggest publicly traded companies in the world after 30 years? And while we’re at it, we should just shut down Intel, IBM, Proctor & Gamble, GE, Chase, and everyone else.
In all seriousness, in the last official reported quarter from Microsoft (Q3, 2013. I haven’t seen info on anything newer that’s official yet), the company earned a net profit of $6.06 Billion. IN THREE MONTHS. Let that sink in for a moment.
But surely, our armchair pundits on the internet know better than our companies. I mean, who wants to earn six billion dollars?
“in all seriousness” you shouldn’t have answered to my post
mine was a useless rant of a useless internet user, more about culture than billions.
Edited 2013-07-17 05:40 UTC
Thanks for inotdrucing a little rationality into this debate.
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