Comments on: Microsoft – Mission Impossible pt. II.

By: windsorr

windsorr — Tue, 31 May 2016 09:45:08 +0000

amen brother! I suspect a Surface phone will be launched with the SP5.

By: Dan

Dan — Thu, 26 May 2016 16:03:30 +0000

I’ve had a surface pro 4 since it came out in October, paid $899 on sale for it at Best buy for 128 gig, and they threw in a 128 gig micro sd card along with the deal. I was able to mess around with the settings to turn the SD card into a real drive, which my dropbox and google drive sit on thus not maxing out the internal memory.

I’m on my second Type Cover however that’s my own fault, I spilled coffee all over the first one. The type cover in general is great though, I can type 65 wpm on it, which is about my average anyway.

Bottom line – it is the best windows experience I’ve ever had. I in fact NEVER use it as a tablet even when I’m taking notes at meetings I use it in full windows mode with the pen. On airplanes I’m still not using it in tablet mode. No need. So I can’t comment on that experience.

My contacts / calendar are still google based, however I did also recently switch over to @outlook.com email address when I began needing to colorcode / categorize emails within the outlook client, which google does not support.

I’m absolutely loving the experience, the screen is bright and magical, the battery lasts about 70% of what my old macbook air did, but that’s not a dealbreaker for me. Being able to touch the screen, scroll up and down webpages and carry around a full PC that weighs almost nothing is highly liberating.

I know it’s far too late in the game for microsoft to get a consumer phone going, but if they put out a version of the “surface phone” with a pen that would sync up to my outlook / word / excel / onenote and could somehow convince the major app developers to migrate their apps to it, it would be a perfect phone for me.

Fortunately I run my life on google calendar and contacts (which sync perfectly with desktop outlook thanks to GSyncit), dropbox, drive and google docs, so they are all accessible and syncable to my Iphone, but hey if MS could get their poop together I’d be all in with them phone wise too. Or at least willing to give it a go.

Cheers!

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Thu, 26 May 2016 14:40:30 +0000

That is why I said sufficiently expensive – most businesses still buy cheap PCs except for managers.

By: windsorr

windsorr — Thu, 26 May 2016 13:27:58 +0000

Actually its not as premium priced as you think. you can pick one up for less than a regular iPad and for productivity, the iPad is a place mat by comparison… I think it could get big volumes to the detriment of the laptop volumes…

By: Tim Nash

Tim Nash — Thu, 26 May 2016 12:04:53 +0000

The Surface Pro too ‘ is unlikely to appeal to the market beyond a small professionally oriented niche’.
It is sufficiently expensive to only be made available by businesses to managers and IT staff, but many of those will also be able to choose what they work on and the convenience of being able to move easily between phone and tablet or laptop will be a deciding factor.
Also Apple’s alliances with IBM, SAP, etc. where it supplies the mobile hardware and the partners supply the software, look to be fairly conflict free – certainly when looking at Microsoft’s history – and their sales and marketing into business is as strong.