iT Rumors: Surface

Supply pinch dogs Microsoft's Surface tablets

Unknown 0 Microsoft, News, Surface, Tablet 6:46 AM

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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img alt="Surface Pro 2: a dearth of the tablets has impacted sales." class="cnet-image" height="541" src="http://asset0.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2013/12/28/surface-pro-2-ms-store-edit-small.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="593" /></span><div class="image-caption" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased; border: 0px; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.133em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surface Pro 2: a dearth of the tablets has impacted sales.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A dearth of Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 tablets has persisted during the holiday shopping season, though that situation may finally be easing a bit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Are the new Surface <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/tablets/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">tablets</a> flying off the shelves or just not reaching the shelves? That's not clear because Microsoft doesn't provide sales numbers, but limited supply -- not excessive popularity -- of the tablets appears to be a factor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Windows 8.1-based <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/microsoft-surface-pro-2/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Surface Pro 2</a> and <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/microsoft-surface-2/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Surface 2</a> models have been largely "out of stock" at Microsoft Stores -- both the physical stores and online stores. This situation has persisted during much of the holiday season, spanning November and December, according to Microsoft Store sales representatives contacted by CNET.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Take this weekend, for example. The online Microsoft Store, as of Saturday morning, showsonly the 512GB model of the Surface Pro 2 available for $1,799. (Update: the online store later on Saturday showed the 256GB model also available.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Windows RT-based Surface 2 is also out of stock at the online store.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Checks by CNET at physical stores on the East and West Coast also indicate limited availability. For example, Microsoft stores in Los Angeles and Boston had only the 256GB Surface Pro 2, which goes for $1,299, as of Saturday morning.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Microsoft said it's working to address the supply issue. "We're actively working with our manufacturing teams and retail partners to get Surface in customers' hands as soon as possible," a Microsoft spokesperson told CNET in a statement.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are some signs that the supply may be easing, though. More Surface Pro 2s are arriving at Best Buy stores this weekend across the country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Best Buy store representatives contacted by CNET in the Los Angeles area indicated that, until this weekend, supply had slowed to barely a trickle in the last couple of weeks -- indicating it was less of an excessive popularity issue and more of a supply problem.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The public response to Surface has been exciting to see," the Microsoft spokesperson said.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Microsoft is undoubtedly wary of flooding the market with too many units. Back in July, Microsoft announced a $900M Surface RT "inventory adjustment" charge due to a lack of demand for the first-generation Surface RT tablet</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Via:<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57616327-75/supply-pinch-dogs-microsofts-surface-tablets/"> CNET</a></span></div>

Supply pinch dogs Microsoft's Surface tablets

Surface Pro 2: a dearth of the tablets has impacted sales. (Credit: Brooke Crothers) A dearth of Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 tablets ha...

Microsoft pulls faulty Surface Pro 2 firmware update

Unknown 0 Microsoft, News, Surface, Update 6:59 AM

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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Microsoft pulls faulty Surface Pro 2 firmware update</td></tr>
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Following reports by Surface Pro 2 customers of excessively fast battery drain after applying last week's firmware updates, Microsoft has pulled the update.</div>
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"To ensure the best experience for our customers during the holiday season we have taken steps to remove the update for Surface Pro 2 that was previously published through Windows Update on December 10th, 2013. We are working to release an alternative update package after the holidays," confirmed a Microsoft spokesperson.</div>
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Microsoft isn't offering users any kind of workaround or additional advice -- at least not at this point.</div>
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WinBeta.org reported word of the troublesome firmware update for Microsoft's second-generation Intel-based Surface on December 18. Some users also have been reporting that they were unable to install the update that seemingly was at fault, though that may have been due to a false error message, WinBeta noted.</div>
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The problematic update is one of several that Microsoft delivered on December 10, its most recent Patch Tuesday, across its range of Surface devices. The update for Surface Pro 2 included a patch that was designed to improve Surface Cover interaction including power-saving sleep functionality.</div>
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Instead, some users who've applied that update have found the opposite to be true. Their new Surface Pro 2 devices are losing battery power extremely rapidly, rather than hibernating properly. There are <a href="http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro2-surfupdate/system-firmware-update-121013-fails-to-install/b2163f4b-9019-4508-a931-45c44fbbeb9c?page=1&tm=1387397843122" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">a number of reports about the problem</a> on the Microsoft Answers forum.</div>
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As I noted last week, I've heard from some Surface Pro users that they've been having problems with spontaneous reboots after upgrading to Windows 8.1. There are a couple of threads on Microsoft's Answers site about this. This seems to be a separate issue that predating the December firmware updates and were focused on the first-generation Surface Pro. I still have not received any information about what Microsoft is advising users with this issue, but will keep asking.</div>
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I've also seen some users reporting that their ARM-based Surface RT and Surface 2 devices have been sporadically requesting their the Bitlocker Recovery key at boot after they applied recent firmware updates. I also haven't seen any acknowledgement by Microsoft of this issue or suggestions as to what users should do to attempt to circumvent it. I've got a question in to Microsoft on this one, as well. Some of my Microsoft sources have said there is a fix in the works for this one, but no word as to when it will be pushed out.</div>
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In the meantime, in case you haven't seen TechRadar's recent list of 15 fixes for Windows 8.1 "annoyances," it might be worth a look. The first fix is for those who've had problems with SkyDrive syncing since Microsoft integrated SkyDrive into Windows 8.1 -- something I've heard a number of folks have mentioned as having run into with their Surfaces and other Windows 8.1 PCs and devices.</div>
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<i>Via: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-pulls-faulty-surface-pro-2-firmware-update-7000024477/">ZDNet</a></i></div>

Microsoft pulls faulty Surface Pro 2 firmware update

Microsoft pulls faulty Surface Pro 2 firmware update Following reports by Surface Pro 2 customers of excessively fast battery drain...

iPad, Surface, Kindle owners reveal their top gripes

Unknown 0 iPad, iPad Air, News, Surface 8:09 AM

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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img alt="" class="cnet-image" height="251" src="http://asset3.cbsistatic.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim2/2013/12/20/fixya-tablet-report.jpg" style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" width="620" /><span class="image-credit" style="border: 0px; font-size: 0.8em; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: 1.133em; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">(Credit: FixYa)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Got a beef about your iPad, Surface, or Kindle tablet? Join the club.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The new holiday report from Q&A site FixYa sifted through thousands of problems reported by its Web site users to determine the most common grievances. The <a href="http://blog.fixya.com/fixyareport/dec2013/tablet-report.html" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">tablets that faced the firing squad</a> included Apple's <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/apple-ipad-air/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">iPad Air</a> and Retina Display <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/ipad-mini/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">iPad Mini</a>, Microsoft's <a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/microsoft-surface-2/" section="luke_topic" style="border: 0px; color: #2964bf; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-weight: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Surface 2</a>, and Amazon's Kindle HDX. Let's see how they fared.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Microsoft's Surface 2</b><br />The Surface 2 was dinged for its poor app support, speaker quality, and Touch Cover keyboard. Users applauded the Microsoft Office suite that comes free with the tablet but were bummed by the lack of well-rounded apps available through Microsoft, especially when compared with the range and diversity offered by Apple, Google, and Amazon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Surface 2's speakers are too quiet and lack a certain crispness, according to the report. The Touch Cover keyboard also received a thumb's down by people who found it difficult to type on. The paucity of apps and speaker quality are mostly in Microsoft's ballpark. But users who don't like the Touch Cover keyboard should consider the Type Cover, which is more expensive but provides a better response.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Apple's iPad Air</b><br />The Air was faulted for its crashing browser, screen problems, and keyboard response. Users reported that opening certain Web pages via Safari, especially those using Adobe Flash, caused the browser to go kaboom, bringing them back to the home page.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some Air owners said that their devices display a yellow tint or faint gray lines across the screen. These defects don't interfere with the use of the tablet but certainly don't add to its visuals. Users also said the onscreen keyboard doesn't respond quickly enough when you tap a key, resulting in keystrokes that fail to register.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To fix the Safari crashes, FixYa suggested the usual solutions, such as clearing your cookies and browser history. The display problems may go away by turning off sleep mode, turning up the screen brightness, and leaving the Air on until the battery drains, FixYa said. If not, then a trip to your local Apple Store may be in order. Finally, reducing the motion of the keyboard through the accessibility option in Settings may help with the keyboard's response time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Amazon's Kindle HDX 8.9</b><br />Owners of the 8.9-inch Kindle HDX listed the Silk browser, limited app support, and battery issues at the top of their hit list. The browser got poor grades for its slow speed, rough performance, and tendency to crash.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Users complained about the selection of apps available through Amazon. Yes, Amazon's Appstore beat Microsoft's Windows Store for the number and range of apps. But Kindle owners still seemed to want more. Some also faulted the battery for taking too long to charge.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To fix the Silk issues, FixYa advised Kindle users to regularly clear their browser settings. The lack of available apps is an issue that rests on Amazon's ability to lure in more third-party developers. And to speed up the battery charge, FixYa recommends that people use only the charging cable that comes with the tablet and make sure it's seated properly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b style="border: 0px; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Apple's Retina iPad Mini</b><br />Finally, the new Retina-Display iPad Mini suffered the slings and arrows of screen problems, lack of storage space, and browser crashes.</span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Via: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57616177-75/ipad-surface-kindle-owners-reveal-their-top-gripes/">Cnet</a></span></i></div>

iPad, Surface, Kindle owners reveal their top gripes

(Credit: FixYa) Got a beef about your iPad, Surface, or Kindle tablet? Join the club. The new holiday report from Q&A site FixYa si...

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 update after problems of battery and installation

Unknown 0 Microsoft, News, Surface, Update 3:23 PM

<div class="image-container" style="color: #333333; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: -15px; margin-right: -15px; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2013/12/18/microsoft-pulls-surface-pro-2-update-after-reports-of-trouble/" style="color: #3399cc; text-decoration: none;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img alt="Microsoft Surface Pro 2 tablet" data-credit="AOL" data-mep="61672" src="http://hss-prod.hss.aol.com/hss/storage/adam/38ce2e4b9ee9838b148498c8452c67ea/surface-pro-2-new-logo.jpg" style="border: 0px; display: block; height: auto !important; margin: 0px auto !important; max-width: 100%; width: auto;" /></span></a></div><div style="color: #333333; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We hope you weren't quick to leap on the Surface Pro 2 update that popped up last week; if you were, you may be regretting it for a while. The company haspulled the upgrade following reports of both failed installations and battery problems, including a reduced capacity and incomplete charges. A fixed release is coming "after the holidays," but there's no word of an easy way to roll back. Short of resetting the system or a convenient restore point, you may have to live with a buggy tablet for the next few weeks.</span></div><div style="color: #333333; line-height: 24px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Via: <a href="http://www.engadget.com/">Engadget</a></span></i></div>

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 update after problems of battery and installation

We hope you weren't quick to leap on the Surface Pro 2 update that popped up last week; if you were, you may be regretting it for a whil...

Microsoft's Ballmer: Surface a 'tougher' bet than the Xbox

Unknown 0 Microsoft, News, Surface, XBOX 6:05 AM

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5xV9o2j3HQoP-74Ddr_gXlzSw7DazkLqhnHts23gAR0Z9oTPgjxmDtFSgsxWl4X9MpoaAvd5Seeo-H_bg-9khaDdyBTVpjRynIDn2mlPLwkou6ocql66_YRk64m4_FWCdcjOHFkrCf0/s1600/ballmersurface-v1-200x191.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK5xV9o2j3HQoP-74Ddr_gXlzSw7DazkLqhnHts23gAR0Z9oTPgjxmDtFSgsxWl4X9MpoaAvd5Seeo-H_bg-9khaDdyBTVpjRynIDn2mlPLwkou6ocql66_YRk64m4_FWCdcjOHFkrCf0/s1600/ballmersurface-v1-200x191.png" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Microsoft's Ballmer</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Many Microsoft customers, partners and competitors would no doubt agree with this statement. But many also might be surprised to hear this admission comes from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I interviewed Ballmer at the end of November, 2013, in his office in Redmond, a lot of our conversation focused aroundhis role in overseeing Microsoft's software and services, past and present.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But Microsoft is in the hardware business, too, with Xbox, Surface, Windows Phone and <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-finalizes-perceptive-pixel-purchase-7000001811/" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Perceptive Pixe</a>l (plus mice and keyboards). Its executives, from Ballmer on down, are increasingly playing up the reasons they believe Microsoft needs to stay in hardware to remain relevant -- in the face of calls by some company watchers for Microsoft to split off its Xbox and/or its consumer-hardware business.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"One of the things tech companies really do terribly is build new capability," Ballmer told me during our recent sit-down in Building 34. "Unfortunately, when the industry changes, if you haven't built any new capability, you can become less relevant because the thing you were good at becomes less relevant and you didn't built capability in a new area."</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"We've had to do it a couple of times, in fact, from platforms to apps, from now software to services, from OS (operating system) royalties, to OS royalties and devices," he said.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer called <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-xbox-whats-ballmer-got-to-do-with-it-7000024294/" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Xbox  -- in which he played an instrumental role in shepherding</a> -- a "sort of a signature about building new capability in hardware and devices." Because of the Xbox, Microsoft had to build a custom-silicon team. Microsoft had to staff up a supply-chain team. And because of the existence of this body of knowledge, Microsoft was able to make the decision to get into device-manufacturing with its Surface tablet/PC line, Ballmer said.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Microsoft's first-generation Surface devices got mixed marks. The Redmondians ended up having to <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-900-million-surface-rt-write-down-how-did-this-happen-7000018275/" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">write down nearly $1 billion worth of Surface RT devices and component parts</a> in 2013.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"We still need to upgrade and we still need to upgrade and improve, and that's part of the Nokia acquisition," Ballmer conceded.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Microsoft will be adding 30,000 or so Nokia employees, many of whom will bring with them hardware manufacturing and distribution know-how, as part of its <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-to-buy-nokia-devices-services-unit-7000020144/" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">$7.2 billion purchase of Nokia's mobile devices and services business</a>. (Ballmer noted that he was unable to talk specifically about Nokia because Microsoft's purchase still has yet to close. That's expected to happen by early 2014.)</span></div><h3 style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 18px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer: 'We had areas of vulnerability in competing with Apple'</span></h3><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer characterized Microsoft's initial decision to build first-party tablets as "in a way... a tougher bet" than the decision to build the Xbox.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surface "was less different (than Xbox), you could say," Ballmer noted. "But, I also knew that it would not be the simplest discussion to have with our partners, who(m) I wanted to stay our partners."</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As expected, Microsoft's OEMs, some of whom said publicly they felt blind-sided by Microsoft's decision to make its own devices, were <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/acers-ceo-warns-microsoft-to-think-twice-about-releasing-the-surface-tablet-2012-8" style="border: 0px; color: #005399; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">none too happy about the move</a>. But Ballmer insisted Microsoft had no choice.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> "I was concerned that we had areas of vulnerability in competing with Apple and without any (first-party) capability, that we were not transacting that well just through our OEM partners."</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer said management's area of concern was in the high end of the device market.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"High end was an issue. There were just a lot of reasons to think Apple was going to be a tough competitor to deal with, just with our OEM model. It was a higher-end brand," Ballmer acknowledged.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Our OEMs were having a hard time investing in competing with the higher end brand. The (Microsoft retail) stores were (starting) to take off, but they hadn't taken off. It turns out that was also an issue, because now there's a different kind of a presence. And without a product to fit -- a product, a brand, a price point -- to really go head-to-head, it looked like an area of exposure," he continued.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"So I won't say we said 'Let's go do Apple compete.' We wanted to go do our own thing that was uniquely ours," he said.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer said Microsoft didn't set out to build a "classic 13-inch laptop or a $500 desktop." In those categories, "our OEMs do a great job," he maintained.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"On the other hand, there was an area of vulnerability," Ballmer said. "The vulnerability we have is not just on phones, where we're buying Nokia, but it's on tablets. And our OEMs do great work, but there are places their brands and investments don't travel. And so we wanted to supplement the work of our OEMs, hopefully make our OEMs stronger through the process, by making our overall competition with Apple" -- and more recently -- Samsung.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Ballmer portrayed Microsoft's differentiator with its tablets and phones as "tools," specifically "tools that make people more productive, IT people, developers, and end users." (Given Microsoft's heritage as a development-tool maker, "tools" is an interesting word choice.)</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Are we a productivity company or are we a software company? Well, what we are is a company that knows how to create great software for productivity and serious fun, but the expression will be through services, and through devices increasingly. And maybe it always has been. Nobody ever buys Windows. They buy Windows PCs," Ballmer reflected.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; color: #252525; font-size: 12px; line-height: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Via: <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/microsofts-ballmer-surface-a-tougher-bet-than-the-xbox-7000024408/">ZDNet</a></i></span></div>

Microsoft's Ballmer: Surface a 'tougher' bet than the Xbox

Microsoft's Ballmer Many Microsoft customers, partners and competitors would no doubt agree with this statement. But many also might be ...

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 Sold Out

Unknown 0 Business, Microsoft, News, Surface 4:45 AM

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcUwnYcbfniwFrfGhTnUhDcRxB9KX0ZYYJ4IHQ_fyrzTox73SgiyAe3RoWyNr1IeX7E3KB6_2X2GFS-wxd1rWjXy_lj_Q0HX1FeAxOpzpQ5n7Podc-r_8oxeCfokl6woNrYWXhFbRJGjbB/s1600/srfce29807adfas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></a></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With just a week and a half to go before Christmas, shoppers are in full-on spending mode, but those looking to score the new Surface 2 or Surface Pro 2 may be disappointed. As of this writing, Microsoft’s online store shows both models and all configurations of the new tablet as “sold out.”</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcUwnYcbfniwFrfGhTnUhDcRxB9KX0ZYYJ4IHQ_fyrzTox73SgiyAe3RoWyNr1IeX7E3KB6_2X2GFS-wxd1rWjXy_lj_Q0HX1FeAxOpzpQ5n7Podc-r_8oxeCfokl6woNrYWXhFbRJGjbB/s1600/srfce29807adfas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcUwnYcbfniwFrfGhTnUhDcRxB9KX0ZYYJ4IHQ_fyrzTox73SgiyAe3RoWyNr1IeX7E3KB6_2X2GFS-wxd1rWjXy_lj_Q0HX1FeAxOpzpQ5n7Podc-r_8oxeCfokl6woNrYWXhFbRJGjbB/s640/srfce29807adfas.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><i>Microsoft Surface Pro 2</i></span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A check for either version of the device on <a href="http://mashable.com/category/wal-mart/" style="text-decoration: none;">Walmart’s</a> online store also showed the device as “out of stock.” A number of customers are also reporting that the device is sold out at Best Buy. However, a quick check of the Best Buy website shows the device as available.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In order to untangle the conflicting stories between online commenters and Best Buy’s website, I conducted my own unscientific test to see what would happen if I called local stores looking for either the Surface Pro 2 or Surface 2 in any configuration. In a random sampling covering three Best Buy stores in New York City, Portland, Oregon and Austin, Texas each local salesperson told me that neither device, in any configuration, was in stock.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And, for the conspiracy theorists out there thinking that this might be some clever retail stunt to make the new Surface seem more popular than it really is, these didn’t appear to be prepared answers that I received as soon as I asked. Each <a href="http://mashable.com/category/best-buy/" style="text-decoration: none;">Best Buy</a> salesperson put me on hold (in one case, for 20 minutes) while they conducted a local fact finding mission, ultimately coming up with nothing available.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I questioned the salesperson in New York City about the shortage, asking if the device was really <em>that</em> popular, she didn’t hesitate when she said the device is “extremely popular.”</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Consumers around the country have begun to post their frustrations on Twitter, in some cases directly asking Microsoft when the tablets will be available again.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 1.5em; margin-top: 0.75em;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source : <a href="http://mashable.com/2013/12/15/microsoft-surface-pro-2-and-surface-2-sold-out-at-many-locations/">Mashable</a></span></i></div>

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 and Surface 2 Sold Out

With just a week and a half to go before Christmas, shoppers are in full-on spending mode, but those looking to score the new Surface 2 or S...

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 : Microsoft's office tablet

Unknown 0 Microsoft, Office, Surface, Tablet, Windows 11:58 AM

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4HrwjDYGwPaIXOaFJRlR1hxrfneMZ6bBZRUp0Kp0XzYXbw36UhtXyZkQD5Rlv_7SaAV4tsUctY8H8lpD80v46WXxQ-e7f9QdHsy0YV20ojxk49s-yR7eqcPZp2WYsGuOGoVnuQyx_mFg/s1600/microsoft-surface-pro-2-64gb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik4HrwjDYGwPaIXOaFJRlR1hxrfneMZ6bBZRUp0Kp0XzYXbw36UhtXyZkQD5Rlv_7SaAV4tsUctY8H8lpD80v46WXxQ-e7f9QdHsy0YV20ojxk49s-yR7eqcPZp2WYsGuOGoVnuQyx_mFg/s1600/microsoft-surface-pro-2-64gb.jpg" /></span></a></div><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Surface Pro 2 is best described as a tablet with the performance of an Ultrabook. The follow-up to the first Pro looks very similar to the original, but the hardware has been overhauled. The Pro 2 runs on a fourth generation Intel Core i5 processor and comes in a number of different versions.</span></span><br /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; line-height: 20px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 12px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Compared to the new iPad Air or the Surface 2, the Surface Pro 2 feels thicker and heavier. The tablet itself weighs 907 grams and measures 1.3 cm in height. In comparison, the Surface 2 measures 0.94 cm and the iPad Air 0.75 cm. The Surface 2 weighs 680 grams and the iPad Air weighs about 470 grams. </span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 12px; padding: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Pro 2 is really for consumers that want a real PC in tablet form, with the performance of a fast Ultrabook. So while it's bulkier than the products we just mentioned, for actual productivity with more demanding Windows applications, this is the better option. Unlike the Surface 2, the Surface Pro 2 comes with the full version of Windows 8.1 and is compatible with all standard Windows software.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px none; color: #333333; line-height: 1.6; margin-bottom: 12px; margin-top: 12px; padding: 0px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source & Image : <a href="http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/4969/microsoft-surface-pro-2-review-microsofts-office-tablet">Hardware.info</a></span></i></div>

Microsoft Surface Pro 2 : Microsoft's office tablet

The Surface Pro 2 is best described as a tablet with the performance of an Ultrabook. The follow-up to the first Pro looks very similar to t...

Surface 2: Microsoft’s productivity tablet dreams finally come true

Unknown 0 Surface, Tablet, Windows 7:48 AM

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoowYl_qCWgml8FLEnylJslfB3HGJiFA0b9_02x6mGSXelwqpuaTJhScJEwBSRs2QTm5h-dbq9RaiLBFa00-MT5EKbKAmZJg6sOyuVeoVrYfaCZHhEOENXpOkWAC3-wPRRQHFyLvxHSk9/s1600/8-dsc08740.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigoowYl_qCWgml8FLEnylJslfB3HGJiFA0b9_02x6mGSXelwqpuaTJhScJEwBSRs2QTm5h-dbq9RaiLBFa00-MT5EKbKAmZJg6sOyuVeoVrYfaCZHhEOENXpOkWAC3-wPRRQHFyLvxHSk9/s640/8-dsc08740.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Surface 2 is everything the original Surface should have been. It’s fast, versatile (it can finally sit on your lap!), and at $449, it’s priced to compete with other big tablets.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps most intriguing, it shows that Microsoft’s initial bet on hybrid computing devices, one that sits between a laptop and tablet, is beginning to pay off.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But even though the Surface 2 is a great piece of hardware, the lack of killer Windows 8 apps holds it back. Since it runs Windows RT 8.1, a special version of Windows 8 for mobile processors, the Surface 2 can’t run older Windows software like Lotus Notes or your favorite games — just the more modern, tablet-oriented Windows apps sold through the <a href="http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-8/apps#Cat=t1" style="text-decoration: none;">Windows App Store</a>. That means the Surface’s prospects are entirely tied to the health of the Windows 8 ecosystem.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With over 120,000 apps, the Windows 8 ecosystem is certainly much healthier than it was last year, but it’s not out of the recovery room just yet. Until Microsoft brings it to full strength, with better quality apps and popular titles, the Surface 2 going to be an imperfect device.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">That being said, I found the tablet to be a far better when it comes to pure productivity than anything from the Android and Apple camp thanks to the inclusion of full Office apps and decent multitasking. And as more Windows 8 apps appear, it will only get better.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Last year, Microsoft launched both Windows 8 and the first Surface around the same time. Bugs, annoyances, and glaring feature omissions were par for the course. Now, it’s clear that Microsoft has learned from most of its past mistakes.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 25px; margin-bottom: 18px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source : <a href="http://venturebeat.com/2013/11/20/surface-2-microsofts-productivity-tablet-dreams-finally-come-true-review/">VentureBeat</a></span></i></div>

Surface 2: Microsoft’s productivity tablet dreams finally come true

The Surface 2 is everything the original Surface should have been. It’s fast, versatile (it can finally sit on your lap!), and at $449, it’s...

Recent surface warming has probably been underestimated

Unknown 0 News, Surface 12:35 AM

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEOkCMrfI43seeNtDlIkiqJd_N14_RZ-apvU_yenGqs1WfOLhhsMTIKpY12wf0iSf5PquXEfKWAesJ_AE76n2nAJRVwg9G9nUCKeekSaWA1OwGo1QAlRgJp3cd38HAE6yRrBCTV07fFFt/s1600/nasa_arctic_warming-640x360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinEOkCMrfI43seeNtDlIkiqJd_N14_RZ-apvU_yenGqs1WfOLhhsMTIKpY12wf0iSf5PquXEfKWAesJ_AE76n2nAJRVwg9G9nUCKeekSaWA1OwGo1QAlRgJp3cd38HAE6yRrBCTV07fFFt/s640/nasa_arctic_warming-640x360.jpg" width="640" /></span></a></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">f you want to take someone’s temperature to see if they have a fever, you know where to put the thermometer. (Sorry, infants.) But where do you take the temperature of Earth’s climate? Inconveniently, the answer is “everywhere”—you need measurements covering the planet to properly calculate the global average surface temperature. That’s no big deal for Europe, where a local weather station is never far away, but it's much more of a problem for the North and South Poles where records are hard-won. A new analysis shows that how you deal with this problem makes a difference in what temperature you end up reading.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Building a global temperature dataset is a huge undertaking, because that’s only the half of it. Lots of careful corrections need to be made to the raw measurements to account for things like instrument changes, weather station placement, and even the time of day the station is checked.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the most commonly used datasets, dubbed “HadCRUT4” in its current incarnation, is maintained by the UK Met Office and researchers at the University of East Anglia. That dataset lacks temperature records over 16 percent of the globe, mostly parts of the Arctic, Antarctic, and Africa. Each group that manages one of these datasets faces this problem but deals with it a little differently. In HadCRUT4, the gaps are simply dropped out of the calculated average; in NASA’s GISTEMP dataset, these holes are filled in by interpolating from the nearest measurements.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The new study by Kevin Cowtan of the University of York and Robert Way of the University of Ottawa evaluates a few different methods for dealing with these gaps and shows that HadCRUT4 has probably been off by an important amount over the last few years.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Cowtan and Way did what the people behind the big datasets do: left out the holes or filled them in using the nearest data. But they also developed a different technique that took advantage of satellite data. Satellites may seem like the obvious solution to the problem of maintaining thermometers in the middle of Antarctica, but they have their own problems. First, it’s tricky to measure the temperature of a specific, and very thin, layer of the atmosphere from orbit, since your instrument has to look through all of the rest of the atmosphere to do so. Second, the layer the satellites are monitoring extends much higher above the surface than our thermometers do.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Instead of merely copying satellite data and pasting it into the surface thermometer gaps, they used the satellite data to intelligently guide the filling of the holes with the closest surface measurements.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To test these three methods, the researchers artificially removed measurements across regions of the Earth and compared how close each method came to correctly calculating the global mean of the complete dataset. Just filling in with the nearest data (the NASA method) did a little better than leaving the gaps out (the HadCRUT4 method), but the method that used satellite data performed best.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Applying that method to the actual holes in the HadCRUT4 dataset yielded some interesting results, seen in the image below. Most notably, the abnormally warm El Niño year of 1998 becomes a little less extreme, and most of the last decade gets a little warmer. The difference in the last few years comes from the missing data in the Arctic, which is the fastest-warming region on Earth.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Together, those small changes (which are within the HadCRUT4 error bars) have a big impact on the calculated short-term warming trend. The trend for the period from around 1998 to present, which opponents of action on climate change frequently point to when arguing that climate scientists have got it all wrong, more than doubles to 0.12 °C per decade.</span></div><div style="background-color: white; color: #263034; line-height: 20px; margin-bottom: 15px;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Source :<a href="http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/11/recent-surface-warming-has-probably-been-underestimated/"> Ars Technica</a></span></i></div>

Recent surface warming has probably been underestimated

f you want to take someone’s temperature to see if they have a fever, you know where to put the thermometer. (Sorry, infants.) But where do ...