Surface Pro 2 Gets Significant Battery Boost 157
SmartAboutThings writes "The original Surface Pro didn't have quite a good battery life and that's why Microsoft tried to fix this with the Surface Pro. After the Surface Pro 2 has hit general availability, Microsoft has silently pushed out a firmware update which, according to some new battery benchmarks run by Anandtech, made significant improvements to the battery life of the Surface Pro 2. After the new web browsing battery life test it was discovered that the Surface Pro 2 now manages better battery life than the ARM Surface 2, which is pretty impressive. With the firmware update, Microsoft was targeting over 8 hours, and AnadTech's benchmarks show Microsoft has succeeded, registering a 25% increase in battery life over the no-firmware version. The unpatched Surface Pro 2 lasted for 6.68 hours while with the firmware update installed, its battery life increased to 8.33 hours. The video playback test involved playing a movie until the battery died, and here, albeit smaller, improvements with the battery life have also been noticed: 7.73 hours compared to 6.65 hours."
Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, Surface. The tablet that "could", but won't.
Not because it can't. No, because the Web 2.0 won't let it. It doesn't matter if it's good. It doesn't matter if its x86 and is able to run your programs. It doesn't matter if it has gobs of RAM and a ton of disk space, and it can do real multitasking. Oh yes, and it's faster than your silly android tablet which is mostly an Angry Birds or Candy Crush machine.
No.
It's microsoft. It's not Android. And it's definitely not Apple.
It's a shame. It's a nice tablet. Too bad its destiny is decided by "geeky" douchebag-hipsters. Just like the Zune, which, regardless of how much the Zune store sucked, it was shot by iFans mostly because it was brown.
How? wheres the downside? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pointless article, no offence.
News = "You now get more chicken in the supermarket for less £££"
Actual Facts (what this needs) = "Chicken now contains added water to make it look bigger"
So whats the downside?:
- Are they lowering the clock rates from advertised?
- Have they actually optimized/fixed the OS code (wishful thinking)
- Are they dropping rendering frames from a video?
Who knows!, clearly not this article lol.
Re:a relevant question: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why the hell would you install Android on x86 hardware? Are you that blinded by fanboyism?
Re:Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Its destiny was not decided by "geeky douchebag hipsters" but by Microsoft. Explain the value proposition in paying US$1000 for an x86 tablet when there are ultrabooks with comparable specs that can be had for almost half the price. Honestly, I'd actually consider buying a Surface Pro, if it were priced at maybe $500-600. Microsoft priced themselves out of the market. They are not and will never be Apple, no matter how much Ballmer wishes otherwise. It's like Toyota marketing a sports car under the Toyota name, with Ferrari prices.
Re:Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the Surface RT. Lots of product line confusion that they didn't see coming.
Re:Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
It probably has something to do with the fact that while other tablets outsell the iPad, far more traffic is seen from iPads than from other tablets. Designing something pleasant to use takes more than +1'ing someone else's spec sheet.
Re:Subjects in comments are stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
I would say that you've restated his exact point. People buy iPads, even if they are more expensive, because Apple's premium is considered worth it (by some). People don't buy the Surface Pro because (almost) nobody thinks Microsoft's premium is worth it.
Still too expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple started it. Android tablets had to be cheaper *and* faster to get a hold of that market. MicroSoft had both the OSes and multiple Android hardware vendors to deal with in an already well established market. They should have positioned their product against the top of Android at a price competing with the mid range of that tablet market.
Also, they shouldn't try and position a pimped up tablet that was too crippled to take on netbooks, notebooks or ultrabooks at a price point higher than these. If you're selling it as an ultrabook with detachable keyboard, make it like that. the notebook/laptop/ultrabook/netbook format machines have hinges for a reason. It means you can position your device on any three-point surface with the base and adjust the screen so that you can look at it semi-comfortably. A kick stand doesn't work that way, because you need a totally flat surface at the correct hight in order to make use of your device with such a contraption.
The sad part here is that the UI and the fact that you could use a lot of your code base for both desktop and portable device applications are lost because of these marketing decisions. If you ignore history and fanatic MicroSoft bashing and just look at the ergonomics of the tile interface and judge it by it's merits on a touch screen device, it's pretty good. The reason why Nokia's entry level phones are actually selling in Europe is not just because of the camera, the UI isn't half bad either and it's quite zippy on the lower spec hardware. For that money, you can't get an iPhone and the Android offerings at the same price point aren't stunning.
I think they would have actually had a chance and may still have if they would get their head unstuck from between their buttocks and would just start competing their devices at whatever point the market puts them. That may mean they'd lose on every device they were selling for a few years. They were willing to take that risk with the Xbox and it looks like they have a solid gaming division set up now. Sell the tablets as tablets, price them so people would buy the one that's "so much better than the ipad/android at the same price" and hook them into xbox live as a unique selling point. By crossing over xbox games onto the tablets, you can make people do parts of the games on their tablets. The dog in GTA5 is a very good example why this sort of thing works and MicroSoft would be stupid not to use their xbox customers to extend their tablet market.
Before you'll be calling me a fanboi, I'd much rather see good things happen to open source. Google has closed off most of Android apps, the kernel is totally forked from Linux and most hardware drivers are closed source. Even CyanogenMod has gone commercial now. I'm hoping one of the other Linux attempts at tablets or some *BSD attempt, will actually kick off and make a difference. The reason I am saying this is that even though I don't like MicroSofts business politics, I think the world would benefit from some good competition on the tablet market. MicroSoft genuinely has done quite a few things right, despite screwing up a lot of other things.