RED EPIC DRAGON Carbon-Fibre in Microsoft Surface Pro 2 event

[Eric Z]

The Surface Pro 2 sure looks good with regard to performance and battery life.

However, there are 3 major problems I see:

1. I don't understand why Microsoft did not implement the 1ms touch responsiveness they were touting for over a year.
As Panos drew on the screen, I could see the line lagging behind his hand, so obviously - they're using the current "slow" 100ms touch technology.


2. There's a Power cover, and a Type Cover 2, and a Wireless adapter for the Type Cover 2. These should have all been rolled into one accessory.

3. Price. Oh, the price! for working conveniently, you'll need:
Surface Pro 2 512GB: $1800
Docking station: $ N/A
Power Cover: $200
Type Cover 2: $130
Wireless adapter for Type Cover 2: $60
Arc Touch Mouse: $70
upgrade to 8GB RAM: $100
Total: Just too damn expensive!!

 

[Daniel Kunz]

Hi Eric,

I'm not sure that you need 2 Covers. the power cover is sufficient i think, since it incorporates a keyboard. and what do you think it would cost for a similar setup on the apple side?
1 Macbook Pro Retina 15" with 512GB SSD = 2799$

 

[Stivan Widick]

For nearly all the configurations I tested on Apple's site, the Surface Pro 2 is cheaper than the Macbook Air at equivalent spec.

A the very high end for both though, a Macbook Air with a 1.7GHz processor, 8GB RAM, and 512GB hard drive comes in $50 cheaper at $1749. The Surface Pro 2 with pen is $1799. Clearly most people will want a touch or type cover so that adds to the cost, but likewise I'd need to add a small Wacom tablet to get the functionality of the included Touch Pen.

 

[John Bellari]

The Surface Pro 2 sure looks good with regard to performance and battery life.

However, there are 3 major problems I see:

...

3. Price. Oh, the price! for working conveniently, you'll need:
Surface Pro 2 512GB: $1800
Docking station: $ N/A
Power Cover: $200
Type Cover 2: $130
Wireless adapter for Type Cover 2: $60
Arc Touch Mouse: $70
upgrade to 8GB RAM: $100
Total: Just too damn expensive!!

When we cut right down to it, I think the main problem here is marketing
STIGMA of anyone having their trendy "tablet" device being called a touchscreen "netbook" ,
for fear of being ridiculed, when in reality that is exactly what most power users want-
a user-upgradeable mini touchscreen laptop running full windows with flipscreen tablet function.

greatly simplifying things:

Surface 2 = short term marketing attempt at creating confusion selling temporary overpriced non-Baytrail tablet people don't realize is really RT version

Surface 2 PRO = Microsoft laptop protecting margin of under $1000 OEM laptops and tablets

On point #3, I think the $1000+ sky high pricing is intentional- Microsoft is leaving the
under $1000 consumer market for laptops and tablets for their OEM partners (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, etc) and is targeting the PRO as a laptop toward business users, as no consumer I know is willing to shell out over $1000 anymore for a touch PC laptop, no matter the size or form factor. Over $1000 for an Apple consumer product- yes, but not for mass-market consumer PC's...

Intel's new Baytrail chipset coming out at year end will make all sorts of $100 and up devices capable of running both Android and full Windows available, so the OEM partners will have tons of options available from $100- $1000 price range then.

Also, I expect new Surface form factors like 7-8" coming out post Baytrail release, so Windows may have a better priced bundled solutions by year end...

Bottom line: Microsoft is not trying to compete with the Apple or Google with these latest devices,
simply protecting the OEM pricing margins under $1000 going forward...

 

[Peter Lyons Collister ASC]

Well I have just seen this and I am a little amazed that they are showing footage of my two little daughters.... Hmmmmmmmm

 

[Mark L. Pederson]

Well I have just seen this and I am a little amazed that they are showing footage of my two little daughters.... Hmmmmmmmm

They better send you a couple Surface Pro 2s

 

[Phil Holland]

They better send you a couple Surface Pro 2s

Truth.

 

[charles lim yi yong]

Well I have just seen this and I am a little amazed that they are showing footage of my two little daughters.... Hmmmmmmmm

They didn't ask for your permission?

 

[Phil Holland]

Finally was able to read all the specs, live blog, and a couple other articles.

I am indeed tempted by this thing. I've been meaning to pickup a tablet and it's sort of peaking my curiousity.

 

[Gavin Greenwalt]

sorry...this is idiotic....i want a tablet that runs all day crunching 6K raws just as much as anyone....and i don't care who makes it or how much....
but this is silly....haswell improves battery life, no question...but it is more a power management then magic...so if you run at full blast, there is little improvement....so the 20% to 75% (which one is it anyway?) better battery life still puts this at a couple of hours at best...
we all know that desktop GPUs with 2 and even 4vram choke with raw 4k, so this demo must have run at much slower resolution....debayer at 1/16 or 1/32 i assume (good enough for the screen anytime)...which brings us to...data....is there even a 512gb version of this? so i can at least dump one 256gb mag...just to show off how well it plays it back...once before the battery dies?

i think the surface pro shows great potential (if it wasn't hindered by a system that still just isn't made for touch) but top of the line laptops across the manufacturer lines can't REALLY do what this demo is kind of hinting at....people in the audience might come back from this thinking that "you can edit 6K on this thing!" and that is just BS and i even wonder why it is necessary?

It's definitely not a gimmick. It's awesome to be able to pull in R3Ds, zoom around, grade 5k -- even load up nuke and throw together some rough comps from the 5k footage to check sharpness and ensure you literally have the shot in the bag. And then pop off of power, walk over to the director and bring the shot to them so that they don't have to come visit video village to see their shot. Directors and DPs are busy. Better to bring information to them than wait for them to come to you.

 

[Corey_O]

You can plug it into 4k monitor/tv and playback also. crazy

 

[Neil Cronin]

Not sure how to read what settings were used for playback on this.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news...Mon Sep 23 17:42:00 GMT 2013_24205051_surface

 

[Lucas Wilson]

Not sure how to read what settings were used for playback on this.

Source: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news...Mon Sep 23 17:42:00 GMT 2013_24205051_surface

From that screen, you cannot tell.

But, look earlier in this thread, and I describe exactly what settings were used for playback on Panos's demo.

Lucas

 

[jorge krausch]

i have the surface pro 2 with 8gb of ram; i can only play 4K R3d files at 1/8 ..at 1/4 it stops every 4 seconds to buffer.. its on my desktop too. What am i doing wrong.. everyone says it can play 5k at 1/4.. i cant even do that at 4k..