The work-anywhere Surface Pro with LTE can now be preordered by anyone

Enlarge / Surface Pro with a Cobalt Blue Type Cover.

The Surface Pro with LTE is set to become more widely available. Initially positioned and sold as a business-oriented device, Microsoft today opened the device up to consumers, with preorders starting today.

While business users have been able to buy the systems since last December, anyone preordering today still has a wait in store: the devices won't be shipping until May 1. Microsoft has two versions of the LTE device available to businesses; for $1,149, you get a Core i5 7300U, 4GB RAM, and 128GB storage, and for $1,449 you get the same processor with 8GB RAM and 256GB storage. In both cases, this is a $150 premium over the non-LTE versions. Currently, only the more expensive of the two appears to be available to preorder, though we would expect the other to materialize at some point. As with every Surface Pro, if you want a Type Cover keyboard or a Surface Pen, you'll have to pay extra.

We wouldn't expect to see much variety beyond these two configurations, however. In particular, there won't be an i7 version. The space where the modem would be contains a fan in the i7 units, so there simply isn't any room for LTE. And this means that the processors are still seventh generation-that is, dual-core, four-thread Kaby Lake chips instead of the four-core, eight-thread eighth-generation parts that are now current.

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