Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has just published his review of the new Surface Pro 3 tablet by Microsoft. It's about an 800 word article, but it can be summed up with one word: "Meh." SJVN concludes, "
Too little hardware, too late, for too much money . " From the article:
Microsoft would argue they're not going after the low-end market. Microsoft's avowed target audience are the people today who buy a MacBook Air and the iPad. Really? Microsoft thinks that the Surface Pro 3 is going to persuade the Apple faithful to move to Windows 8.1? Come on! If there's any tech audience that's more faithful to their brand than Apple true-believers, I don't know who they are - and I spend most of my time hanging out with the Linux crew. For that matter, it seems to me that Microsoft isn't that clear on their target audience. Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Surface Computing Panos Panay told Mary Jo Foley that they're still calling the Surface Pro 3 a tablet even though "tablets have not landed" and not really hitting the productivity sweet spot.
So what's the deal? Any Surface Pros in your future? Does Microsoft have a chance? Or is this just one more data point in the graph that shows
Microsoft has jumped the shark ? Or heck, is the next version of the Surface Pro going to be the one that sweeps consumers off their feet? Grab your ipads and let us know ...
Even the formerly hard core Microsoft people I know think of MS tablets/phones/windows8 as a joke... And these are the folks that have been telling me everything Microsoft does is gold for years... Now they are installing Windows 7 professional(aka Windows XP v2) and can't come up with any defense for any of the windows 8 nonsense.
The only good thing I can say about windows 8.x is it's doing more to damage Microsoft's desktop monopoly than anything a competitor could ever do. As to using it? It's banned from every company I have exposure to so I likely won't have more than a token exposure to it for years to come.