Surface Pro Sold Out; Was It Just Understocked? 413
TechCrunch is one of the many outlets to report that Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet computer sold out on its first day of wide availability. Business Insider points to Reddit threads complaining that "selling out" was largely a product of not having all that many in stock to begin with, in some cases not even enough to cover pre-ordered devices.
Re:Probably longer (Score:2, Informative)
I want this thing running linux before the month is out.
First big hurdle - is there even a Linux that's built for touch input?
Yeah, it's called Android. You living under a rock?
Second hurdle - all sorts of custom drivers, including I'd imagine the driver for the keyboard/trackpad cover. It's not bluetooth and I don't think it's standard USB either.
Maybe you're right, but do you really think they'd reinvent all these wheels just for spite?
Re:Geeks, get to work. (Score:5, Informative)
https://plus.google.com/106631699076927387965/posts/4fcZhWrKyg3 [google.com]
"Linux Mint on the Surface Pro. WiFi and touch don't work out of the box, but pen and Type Cover work great. "
There you are.
CC.
Re:Sold out fast == Understocked? (Score:0, Informative)
Pssst, this is Slashdot, you can't write any logic, common sense posts here. Remember the unwritten commandments of Slashdot "Thou shalt not post anything negative against the herd favorite of the day (Nintendo, Google, and maybe Apple.)" and "Thou shalt not post anything positive about the herd foe of the day. (M$, $ony-1 and ubuntu-1)".
Hypocrisy is a huge sin, that is unless the user is for the herd "favorite of the day" and against the herd "foe of the day." In order to retain your high karma you must go with the herd mentality rather than against. What makes "favorite of the day" good is what makes "foe of the day" evil.
1-The former herd favorite of the day
Re:Isn't this the same for everything apple? (Score:2, Informative)
This happens at every release. Period. Apple just gets better, spinnier press coverage.
Re:Geeks, get to work. (Score:3, Informative)
Number of programs/apps I can run on a Surface Pro outside of the official app store: Lots (i.e. however many Windows 7 can.
Number of programs/apps I can run on an iDevice outside of the official app store: 0
You're not obligated to use the app store at all, and you're not obligated to use the Metro interface any more time than you spend in a start menu.
Re:Is the same true for the Nexus 4? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I find the whole premise laughable (Score:2, Informative)
That's funny, insightful and informative all rolled up into one. Kudos.
Shipping... (Score:5, Informative)
Just thought would mention, normally for new product releases there are at least 2 distinct batches to arrive in stores.
First is air freighted typically not many units(often on pallets), second about a month later for the US, are standard shipping containers with the vast bulk of the supply. Air freighted products quite a bit more expensive (i looked at costs a couple of years ago and it was >5x).
If have just spent large $ on a production run, want to get some return as soon as possible but don't want to wreck quite often tight margins by air shipping too much and have it sit around for the month it takes the bulk to arrive. By selling out early can quite often get publicity and pre-orders to help shift the volume arriving later without having to discount the initial price too much.
Re: Geeks, get to work. (Score:2, Informative)
God damn shills up in our business
Re:Is the same true for the Nexus 4? (Score:4, Informative)
I actually expect it to outsell Surface RT, because even though those apps written in C++ can (allegedly) be cross compiled for RT, not every company has access to the source of the commercial products they use, and not every company wants to jump through Microsoft's hoops to get their software released for RT.
Except that ALL apps on Windows RT have to programmed for the WinRT api (no Win32). To put it simply, that means metro only. Even if you had the source code, you would have a huge amount of work to do rewriting the UI. Its not a recompile. The Surface RT is DOA.
Re:Is the same true for the Nexus 4? (Score:4, Informative)
Even if you had the source code, you would have a huge amount of work to do rewriting the UI.
Ok, my bad. Someone on slashdot said that if you had win32 code (c++ or C# or something) you could just run it thru the compiler, indicate you wanted RT code, and it would run perfectly under RT. (Microsofts compilers would do the api translation).
It sounded plausible, if not a little too good to be true. I personally don't know.
I doubt there'll ever be tools to automate this sort of thing, because WinRT is all-new, and has almost nothing in common with Win32.