surface

Microsoft is right about touch-screen laptops

Microsoft was touting touch today at its Build conference. And that means for plain old laptops too.

CEO Steve Ballmer addressed this topic during his keynote, which was streamed live.

"You say, do people really want to use touch laptops?" he asked.

Well, if you ask Apple, the answer is no. But for Microsoft it's an important differentiator.

Ballmer continued. "I had a group of leaders of companies over for dinner the other night, and they were saying, 'really, I can just flip [this] through like I would on a tablet?'" he said, as he … Read more

Acer pushes back release of Windows RT devices

Acer is pushing back the release of a Windows RT tablet, according to a report, as it monitors Microsoft's Surface efforts closely.

"Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year but because of Surface...we are much more cautious," Acer President Jim Wong told Reuters today.

Wong said plans originally called for a Q1 launch but "now I don't think it will be earlier than Q2."

The world's fourth largest PC supplier has been sour on the Surface tablet ever since Microsoft first announced it back in … Read more

Episode 20: Unboxing the Microsoft Surface tablet

This week, we got a new production assistant, Nic Henry (welcome, Nic!). And Nic got a pretty fun assignment: go down to San Francisco's Westfield mall at 8 a.m. and find a way to get in line at Microsoft's Surface pop-up store on the second floor. Then, Molly will roll in at 9:30 all cheerful to take your place in line and buy some tablets! It's good to be the talent.

Nic did a great job, though, and interestingly, ended up second in a line that grew to probably about 50 people while we waited … Read more

Surface is 'a quirky cat,' teardown shows

Microsoft's Surface is a little easier to repair than the third-generation iPad, iFixit says, but it's still pretty difficult to take apart.

The site rated Surface's "repairability" a 4 on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 10 being the easiest) following a teardown of the product. By comparison, the iPad has a rating of 2, and the Amazon Kindle Fire rates 8. According to iFixit:

The Microsoft Surface is a quirky cat. Microsoft engineers clearly took a different internal design direction than what we've seen in the iPad and the Nexus/Kindles. But … Read more

Like Apple, Microsoft wants to explain its cool hardware tech

With the Surface, Microsoft has become a purveyor of cool hardware. And, like Apple, Microsoft wants to explain it you.

The newest video (below) illustrates, among other things, how the touch-cover glass and the screen are fused together into one piece; why the integrated kickstand is important; and little things like how the camera in the back matches the tilt of the screen in its kickstand position.

It's the latest in a series of videos Microsoft has been posting to describe the design effort that went into the Surface.

Other videos include the Making of the Touch Cover for Surface … Read more

At the moment, Microsoft Surface is hot

CENTURY CITY, Calif.--As of this weekend, Microsoft has a hot product on its hands.

Reviews notwithstanding (some have been pretty negative), on Friday my local Microsoft store in Century City (in Los Angeles) was buzzing with curious customers keen on trying the Surface RT tablet, as lines snaked outside. Other stores drew crowds too.

(And all three Surface models are back-ordered three weeks on Microsoft's online store.)

I was surprised to see any line at all. After reading some reviews, you would have thought that the thing was DOA.

Fortunately, I had plenty of time to try out … Read more

Life in the Microsoft Surface line

COSTA MESA, Calif. -- I'm no stranger to Apple lines. Come prepared with a chair, and a laptop to keep busy, and settle in among the converted. But a Microsoft line? The last time I was in one was for a midnight release of Windows 98. I didn't know what to expect as I joined the line Friday among the Microsoft faithful to get one of the new Microsoft Surface tablets.

I'd called the previous day to the Microsoft Store in my local shopping center, South Coast Plaza, in the Southern California city of Costa Mesa. A … Read more

Microsoft's Surface and Windows 8: Winners and losers

"All in," Microsoft said today at an event in New York as it launched the latest offerings from the company: the new Windows 8 operating system, and its debut into the tablet market, the Microsoft Surface.

Today's event was a non-event, to be fair. It was more of a recap than anything else. Besides some shiny new numbers and a few demonstrations of the new hardware and software, we saw nothing new.

However, interestingly there wasn't much focus on the Surface during the event, despite it featuring as the software giant's debut into the … Read more

Friday Poll: Will you upgrade to Windows 8?

Microsoft officially launched Windows 8 today, and with it comes a choice for those who use its predecessors: do I stay, or do I go?

My Crave colleague Eric Mack touches on the subject in an opinion piece today titled "The Windows 8 question: To adopt early or not?" Eric owns a perfectly capable Windows 7 laptop and would rather wait for a Surface tablet with Windows 8 Pro to debut before considering new hardware.

Personally, I feel a slight temptation to upgrade to Windows 8. In his review of Microsoft's Surface, CNET Senior Editor Eric Franklin praises Metro -- the primary interface of Windows 8 -- saying it's "innovative, elegant, powerful, and versatile," the last set of words I would use to describe my cluttered Windows 7 desktop. Maybe a new layout would feel like a breath of fresh air. … Read more