Microsoft’s second tablet goes on sale tonight at midnight. The company had planned to hold a launch event for the Surface Pro in New York City tonight, but Neowin reports that plan’s been canceled due to the storm hammering the Northeast US: Many flights to New York have already been canceled due to the blizzard warnings.
If you’re willing to brave the weather though, you can still pick up a Surface Pro tablet at the Best Buy in Union Square tonight at midnight. Or you could just order one online from the Microsoft Store, which says the tablet will be available February 9th.
The Microsoft Surface Pro is a tablet with a 10.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 pixel display, an Intel Core i5 Ivy Bridge processor, Windows 8 Pro software, and 64GB or larger solid state drive.
The tablet weighs about 2 pounds and measures about half an inch thick. It has a kickstand built into the back, which lets you prop it up on a desk or tablet. And if you buy an optional Touch Cover or Type Cover, you can tap away on it as if you were using a notebook (albeit one that’s hard to balance on your lap).
While early reviewers have been pretty impressed with the tablet’s overall performance, they lament that the Surface Pro only gets about 4 hours of battery life – although that could eventually be addressed with an external battery or a new keyboard cover with a built-in battery.
If that doesn’t bother you, the Surface Pro should be available starting at midnight for $899 and up.
Really want Windows to succeed here, I have Window Phone, and Windows 8 pro on both my laptop. Everyone knows that the price is up there with Ultrabook, fine….but the spec isn’t. The hard drive is abysmal, if Windows really want to provide a true hybrid experience the keyboard should be part of the package. Compare Dell XPS 12 with Surface Pro and you’ll see….
For that price, they really should have thrown in a touch cover.
It is 4 hours 58 min that is 5 hours of battery according to PC Mag. It is not 2.5 pounds but only 2 pounds!!
Why do you want to belittle the Surface Pro when it is a better iPad than the iPad and he has at least a USB port and more than 4 MILLIONS WINDOWS PROGRAMS AVAILABLE!!!
I got the Dell Latitude 10 with a the 60 Whr battery and stylus instead of the Surface Pro because the battery life of 4-5 hours isn’t very good for my intended use. I have to say Connected Standby (only on Clover Trail devices for now) and the Atom CPU is actually pretty good. The fanless Atom with Windows 8 has noticeably improved even though the core architecture hasn’t changed.
It’s great to run Windows software where even the iPad’s and Android’s large app store don’t have a comparable app. For example, they don’t have a good Amazon S3 client. Also, you can fall back on a desktop browser for stubborn websites (online banking and shopping usually) that don’t work well on mobile browsers for iOS and Android.
It plays all my videos and even 10-bit/Hi10p 720p MKVs. 8-bit 1080p MKVs play smoothly as well. I’m using MPC-HC with the LAV Filters. Much better than the buggy and slow VLC. Don’t know why VLC is so popular.
Got myself the Latiude 10 with the 60 Whr battery and WWAN. I already have a Wacom stylus. I’m surprised at how much the difference is between a netbook from 2 years ago running Windows XP/7 and this thing running Windows 8.
I got this for mobile artwork but it’s very capable for movies and web browsing. Of course, I’m not using the crappy VLC player.
Maybe I’ll just put Splashtop2 on an Onda V972 and have the ability to choose between Android, Linux, or Windows and save about five hundred bucks….
good luck with those prices,,wow
To be fair the price comparison should be with a Win8 touchscreen Ultrabook but the device should come with the touch cover for $899…