Microsoft To Start Dumping Surface RT To Schools For $199 251
onyxruby writes "In a move that will remind many of Apple in the '80s, Microsoft is going to start dumping Surface RT computers to educational institutions. In an effort to try to gain mindshare for their struggling Surface RT platform, Microsoft is giving away 10,000 Surface RTs to teachers through the International Society for Technology in Education. They're also preparing to offer $199 Surface RTs to K12 and higher education institutions. The strategy of flooding the educational market was quite successful for Apple. Unfortunately for Microsoft, today's computers require management and the Surface RT presents significant management challenges in terms of the inability to join the computer to a domain or available management tools."
Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
How would this remind people of Apple in the 80s? The Apple II was not a dud product being price dumped to clear inventory.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)
Surface RT is not a dud, it is a great product and millions have been sold.
-Steve
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Surface RT is not a dud, it is a great product and million have been sold.
-Steve
FTFY
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Estimates are at less than 1 million RTs in 10 months. GREAT SUCCESS!!
It would be disingenuous to say you didn't see this coming from the very first day of launch, after the early product reviews.
There needs no ghost, my lord, come from the grave. To tell us this.
BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNN! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNN! (Score:5, Funny)
I have a table that wobbles.
Re:BUUUUUURRRRRNNNNN! (Score:4, Funny)
I have a table that wobbles.
Good plan. You can save that coaster for a cold one. Get one for me, too, while your at it.
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I don't see the point. Is your HP Touchpad not holding a charge anymore?
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Good I was looking to replace my HP Touchpad.
I don't see the point. Is your HP Touchpad not holding a charge anymore?
This, plus Touchpad with Android (Cyanogenmod build) actually has apps....
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How would this remind people of Apple in the 80s? The Apple II was not a dud product being price dumped to clear inventory.
The RT is a stinker. Dump the Pro and maybe we'll talk. <_<
I remember the Apple ][ computers showing up in school and thinking it was going to be real cool, until I found I had to get my own dubious copy of Integer Basic to boot from so I could have some fun with them :D
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Wait a second. I had an Apple ][, and it came with Integer Basic on the ROM. You had to run floating point Basic off a cassette tape (it was a while before I got a floppy disk) but Integer Basic was built in.
Ah, the Red Book... ALL of the monitor code to read. Small enough that you could actually understand what was going on. Those were the days.
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Wait a second. I had an Apple ][, and it came with Integer Basic on the ROM. You had to run floating point Basic off a cassette tape (it was a while before I got a floppy disk) but Integer Basic was built in.
Ah, the Red Book... ALL of the monitor code to read. Small enough that you could actually understand what was going on. Those were the days.
They had the lab ones monkeyed up, so you needed a boot disk so you could launch Integer Basic. I think it was supposed to be some sort of educational software, but not many people used them for it, most we like me and brought in a boot disk to get around it and start in on coding.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)
WindowsRT reminds me of the PCjr. IBM wanted to sell a cheaper version of the PC and so they made a crippled version so it wouldn't compete with the high priced units. It withered and died. Now MS seems to be repeating the idea. Very Ironic. They took IBM's monopoly away from them and now they repeat IBM's early mistakes with hardware. I love it.
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+1 funny. The Apple II a dud? It was sales of the Apple II that made Apple the first personal computer company to reach $1 billion in annual sales in 1982.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
But it does say it wasn't a dud.
Re:Huh? The Microsoft Hamburger (Score:4, Funny)
I can feed it to my dog. ...and when he 'reboots', my other dog will try to eat it.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Funny)
Your argument is like a McDonald's sign: Billions and Billions sold.
Doesn't say anything about quality.
Doesn't say anything about value.
An analogy! Let me try: your argument is like a car: it doesn't understand what words mean.
Dud [merriam-webster.com]
a : one that is ineffectual; also : failure <a box-office dud>
Love it or hate it, the Apple II was a massive success, becoming one of the best-selling computers of its day thanks in large part to VisiCalc, its affordable price, and the wide availability of apps for it, which allowed it to become an important component of the PC revolution of the '80s. Suggesting that the Apple II was overpriced and outdated (as you did in an earlier comment) is preposterous and factually inaccurate, and suggesting it's a dud on the grounds of quality and value (as you did in your last comment) is irrelevant since those are only indirectly related to whether something is a dud (not to mention that those arguments make no sense in historical contexts). The only thing you got correct was that the volume discount being offered by Apple to educational institutions was, while aggressive, still nowhere comparable to the sort of dumping that we're seeing Microsoft do here.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The big thing Apple had going for it compared to Atari and Commodore was expansion. They had slots that you could put cards in that allowed it to do things:
Serial cards (RS-232 serial interface)
Parallel cards (Centronics/IEEE 1284 parallel interface)
Multifunction I/O cards
Internal modems
80 column (or more) text cards (e.g., Videx)
PAL Color graphics cards (required for color graphics in early European Apples)
RGB cards
Floppy disk controllers
Hard disk controllers
Network adapters
Co-processor cards
Memory expansion cards
Accelerators
Realtime clock cards
Music and sound cards
Miscellaneous cards
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Was it affordable? It was vastly out of reach for me though. The TRS80 was more affordable.
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Two words. Tax writeoff. This relates to the machines being given away as well.
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While the Apple II was certainly a dud by that time,
By what time?
1979?
1983?
1986?
1991?
The Apple II line was an extraordinarily long lived computer. Towards the end of its life, it was laughably obsolete. Towards the beginning, it was fairly advanced.
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Many of those Apple computers ended up being unused. It was all part of the hype of "if your child doesn't learn about computers today then they will end up jobless in the future!" Remember that stupid Apple commercial about the kid dropping out of college and returning home dejected to his parents who failed to buy him an Apple II?
My father was an elementary school teacher at the time and said the ones he had didn't do much. No one knew how to use them, they didn't fit into any educational plan, they we
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Wow, that's really too bad. In 1978 our high school computer class heavily lobbied our teacher to acquire an Apple II, since at that point we were programming on DecWriters connected to the public school district's single DecSystem-20. We learned how to program in 6502 assembly in order to access the 4-color high-res mode of the Apple II and write simple interactive games. To us kids this was a huge step up from writing boring FORTRAN and SNOBOL programs on line-mode printing terminals.
It's hard to imagi
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You got lucky is all. Many of these computers were dumped on teachers. Not on just science or math teachers, not even only on high school teachers. So after a 10+ hour day getting the very basics done, how many of those teachers are going to spend more time trying to figure out what to do with the paper weight they were given and how to integrate it into the curriculum? And how many of those are going to be able to do more than just have some simple programs that students can run when they want? If add
perfect (Score:2)
pick up a bunch of Surface tablets, and put Linux or Android on them
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pick up a bunch of Surface tablets, and put Linux or Android on them
"Secure boot" is mandatory on Windows RT(ARM) devices. I think that x86 Win8 devices are required to support it; but OEMs can do whatever key-fill they like, and can, at their option, support turning it off or end-user added keys.
I'm not saying that they didn't make a mistake somewhere, more than a few locked bootloaders have gone down; but it isn't going to be trivial.
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Is it actually required to not allow the Secure Boot configuration and keys to be changed, or just to have it enabled by default?
Re:perfect (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, Surface RT requires that secure boot must not be possible to disable. The only way to get Linux on these things is to install an additional key or an approved boot loader, and that can be very complicated.
Re:perfect (Score:5, Informative)
Especially since Linux drivers for a Windows tablet thats apparently designed be bootloader-locked aren't going to be forthcoming.
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Why should I have to seek out a special "it's made to run Linux" piece of kit when such a notion is completely unnecessary and highly artificial. You can run any code on a general purpose computer. It doesn't matter if it was made by Atari, or Sun, or IBM.
The market is currently dominated by what are essentially DOS clones. It's just that they don't have any special locks to interfere with the end user.
Such locks are an Apple innovation.
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You can run any code on a general purpose computer. It doesn't matter if it was made by Atari, or Sun, or IBM.
Yes, in the worst case, you write a bytecode emulator. The performance sucks when the OS manufacturer is throwing artificial hurdles into your path.
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How exactly is that enforcable? You let the user run code, and they get to run code. How exactly can you prevent them from doing things when they aren't calling system APIs to do it? You can't exactly distinguish between computing the derivative of some engineering problem and compiling bytecode...
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Perhaps you can't stop the compilation - but you can sure as hell stop the execution.
(in Agent Smith voice)
Mr. Anderson, what good is in-process compiled code when you are unable to call it?
Re:perfect (Score:5, Informative)
All executables on Windows 8 RT must be signed before they're allowed to run. You won't even get an "are you sure" dialog box. Thus no software is possible without prior permission from Microsoft. Sure you may have some nice byte code emulator but it's useless if you can't get it signed.
Re:perfect (Score:5, Interesting)
Because you have the make-for-windows tablet for only $199, or your principal buys it and hands it to you and tells you to use it. Thus you need to put a reasonable OS on it to make it usable. Remember these RTs dont come with Windows 8, they come with Windows 8 RT, which means metro-only except for some extremely limited desktop, and all apps must be signed and approved (ie, Microsoft Store ONLY). Thus they ship as unusable devices by default.
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Hey, at least they have got Internet Explorer!
Re:perfect (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a jailbreak already, so it is possible (Score:2)
There is a jailbreak that allows running arbitrary Windows desktop-based programs on a Surface RT - if you recompile for ARM. It even allows kernel-mode drivers. Microsoft still hasn't fixed it, because it's not a security hole in the traditional sense--it requires Administrator privileges.
Because it is possible to make a jailbreak that automatically runs soon after startup, and it is possible to use the jailbreak to load a kernel driver, it is possible to boot up another OS by doing the equivalent of a k
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How long will that last?
DRM always gets cracked. Heck I bet there is a jtag or something on there just waiting to be mucked with.
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I think you are confusing "not possible" for "not permitted."
I think you'll find the two are not equivalent out here in the Real World.
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There's always "impractical". Given how difficult it is to tear down these Surface tablets to get to the electronics, it's impractical to hack the flash or boot loader electronically. Now maybe someone will crack the key signing process (and the root certificate gets published by the NY Times) but that may be a wait. Ultimately though, these tablets are going to schools, and I just do not see schools making it part of their official stance to break the DMCA and root the tablets before use.
Pure economics` (Score:2, Funny)
Better $199.00 from a school than $0.00 from the dumpster.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
So they will abandon one doomed platform for another?
Thin client? (Score:2)
Should have called RT something else... (Score:5, Insightful)
What they did was confuse the hell out of people. At first Microsoft was touting a tablet that could run Windows Apps called the surface. What they meant was the Surface pro. Instead the device that got released first was the RT and it still had the name "windows". Most people looking at them, and I know of one business that bought a couple, did so thinking they could run existing windows programs. They got 'em home and learned they couldn't.
At least Apple makes it clear that while underneath the hood, both MacOS and iOS share many of the same parts, they are entirely different OS's designed for different purposes. Microsoft failed to do that with the Surface.
The next problem is that the Surface Pro is $1000. At that price what is the incentive to buy it? You can buy a convertible ultra book for just a few dollars more.
Re:Should have called RT something else... (Score:4, Funny)
...if they called them "Sad Meals" no one would buy them.
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Best. Comment. Ever.
Never understood the purpose of Windows RT (Score:5, Interesting)
It comes with Office, so it's a business computer that can also play the tablet game, right?
Except that there's no Outlook. Try getting business done without that.
And you can't join a domain. That goes hand-in-hand with the above.
And most critical to anyone who just wants to get work done: it's not x86-compatible, and you're limited to Windows Store apps.
Who the hell came up with this horrible hodgepodge of an OS? And who expected anyone to pay a premium price for it? They'll be lucky if they can get these things to move even for $200!
Re:Never understood the purpose of Windows RT (Score:4, Informative)
Except that there's no Outlook. Try getting business done without that.
Actually, the latest version of Office RT (2013) does include Outlook.
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And thus the RT can be made to suck even more!
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Actually, the latest version of Office RT (2013) does include Outlook.
Yes, the latest version, which doesn't have a formal release date yet, [slashgear.com] which will be "coming out soon", does include Outlook. That's certainly good to know.
If you're one of the lucky teachers or one of the students however, like those in the article, don't count on getting Outlook without being forced to pay full retail for Outlook separately, or pay full retail for Office RT (2013), or pay for full retail for an Office 365 subscription instead. After all even on the more expensive Surface Pro, the Office H
TBOTE: The Beginning of the End (Score:2)
Haven't we seen this movie ending before?
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We use a recording of Windows RT to lure the tablets into Lake Michigan?
Seems feasible.
Funny thing (Score:3)
I was recently running a poll, and I found out that at least 20% of our department faculty own a Surface tablet of one sort or another - and that was before this move was announced. 20% of our faculty, and that's assuming none of the non-responders own a Surface.
I was seriously shocked. Android and iOS tablets are apparently less popular than Surface among our EE faculty. We've got some pretty close ties to Microsoft, but that is still surprising.
Surface, or Surface Pro? (Score:3)
If they're running Win8 then I can kind of understand it. WinRT not so much...
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Yes because as we've seen in business, the higher ups never choose their own personal devices and then expect their IT folks to make them work with the company infrastructure. No, I sure don't read those sorts of stories every week.
I've actually used an RT (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm probably one of the few on here who have used an RT. Picked one up for $99 + keyboard at TechEd, and used it all week at the conference to take notes/surf/do work. Honestly, for your basic user who wants surfing/word docs, it's perfectly fine.
Also - I have an iPad that I love, but I couldn't dream of doing the work I was doing on the surface. The desktop mode is very nice, plus it just seems more workable when I can VPN in just like my PC at home. When comparing iPad to Surface for doing actual work, it's not event close, the Surface wins by a landslide.
Re:I've actually used an RT (Score:4, Insightful)
I think that a $200 tablet for web browsing, email, and remote desktop would be pretty useful despite the limited app store. Maybe it's time to send my Touchpad to ebay and try one of these out...
Re:I've actually used an RT (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that a $200 tablet for web browsing, email, and remote desktop would be pretty useful despite the limited app store. Maybe it's time to send my Touchpad to ebay and try one of these out...
Except the $200 price only applies if you are a school buying for your students... An individual can't get that price.
Make it run Dalvik (Score:2)
MS should create an emulation layer that allows RT to natively run Android apps. That will solve the chicken and egg issue of limited app availability and make their platform a more compelling offering.
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android is out of the MS app store and has 3rd par (Score:2)
android is out of the MS app store and has 3rd party apps so that is out.
Dumping? (Score:2)
Isn't attempting to flood a market with a device being charged at sub-standard pricing to subvert a competitor, like, illegal?
I thought this was covered by anti-dumping laws.
Re: (Score:3)
No, that only applies if the manufacturer in question is trying to gain a competitive advantage. Given Balmer's mishandling of Microsoft over the past decade, it's hard to argue that Microsoft is competing with anyone other than themselves.
Instead of Apple from the 80's, HP from 2 yrs ago. (Score:2)
They should sell the RT for $99, just like the HP tablet, and build a user base. I would buy a Surface RT if it was $99, and I don't even like tablets.
I dunno (Score:4, Funny)
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How did selling the Apple ][ to schools hurt Apple exactly?
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Speaking as someone who had a //e. And not just any //e mine had a Transwarp, a Cider 10M Hard Drive, a Hayes Modem, and an 1M extended 80 col card. My //e was mackin. Further I learned a lot about computers from that system. However that came from my own personal learning and...
Not from my school which had a room full of //e's that were not used really at all. If you are in a room of computers but your teacher/professor does not let you interact with them, or further teach you anything meaningful abou
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[citation needed] You know, actual evidence.
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Michael dell suggesting they wind down the company and pay the money back to the investors does not count?
You don't remember Apple nearly dying when those kids started to become consumers in their own right?
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But now you're talking about the 90's and the Mac. The Apple ][ in the 80's was a completely different story.
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The funny part of this is that you don't even realize or acknowledge the fact that Macs are in fact a product of the 80s.
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Schools are just never going to have up to date computers, they don't even have budget to hire enough teachers.
Personally I think it's all wasted money anyway. Kids to not need to use computers in elementary schools. The Apple ][ was welcomed at the time because there was a lot of fear at the time that no one could learn computers unless they learned it at a very early age and Apple played off of those fears. There was hype about computer based education, and 40 years later it still doesn't exist in any
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Unless it was a IIgs, that one was actually kind of OK.
Not quite an Amiga. Not quite a Macintosh.
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We had Apple ][ computers in elementary school. When I became a consumer, we had whitebox PCs and iMacs.
There's a significant time lag in there that you don't seem to have accounted for. The Apple ][ didn't do the damage, the iMac and lockdown did.
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Re:Because that worked so well for Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did they? Because I went to high school during that time period, and it's my recollection that every geek wanted an Apple.
Most of them ended up with Commodores, or worse.
Re:Because that worked so well for Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remembering the time when Apple was pushing Apple II's in schools, I sure don't recall kids "hating it" because they felt "forced to use something" --- for the majority of kids, it was their first and only opportunity to use a computer at all. Playing those Apple II games was something new and exciting, that they'd be unlikely to have access to at home (without both well-off and technologically cutting-edge parents).
In this case, however, I agree with you --- a lot of kids (pretty much all of them from a middle class socioeconomic background) will already have seen better computers (or even have one in their pocket). Dumping crappy cheap tech on schools for a tax writeoff and some publicity isn't particularly going to be awe-inspiring for the kids. But, it will stall school administrations from considering switching to less Microsoft-centric platforms for at least a few more years; and, even if the kids don't like it, they'll be blocked from learning much about alternatives when they have to do classwork in Microsoft Office instead of [insert superior alternatives here].
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I remember kids hating them because they were outdated and we were forced to use them. This was likely because schools kept them a long time. Also because we were kids, who always hate whatever authority suggests they do.
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Fair enough; I suspect you're right that, once Apple II's were well past their expiration date, playing 'Number Munchers' and 'Oregon Trail' wouldn't seem so cool to kids with access to a Nintendo at home (or at least at a friend's house). Of course, hating what authority tells you to do is sometimes quite an incentive to get interested in what even outdated hardware can do --- once you learn more about operating computers in the school computer lab than your teachers know, you can cause all sorts of amusin
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Perhaps everyone interested in computers with parents willing and (financially) able to support that interest... but, in reality, for the overwhelming majority of kids, the Apple II in school (or other school computer lab device) was their first and only chance to use a computer (to even find out if they were interested). A C64 at $595 in 1982 is equivalent to ~$1400 today (depending on how you inflation adjust) --- a pretty hefty chunk of money for a "kid's toy" in a world before computer use would be wide
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For what it's worth, I managed to get everything done without being forced to use Office to do it. My teachers didn't necessarily love me for it (more work for them), but they supported it by not tossing my work in the trash...
Re:Because that worked so well for Apple? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, Surface may or may not be crappy, but all kids these days have already got their allegiance to ipad/iphone or Android, and dumping Surface at a slight discount is not necessarily going to do much for them. Hey, but if I were them, I'd probably try it too. Worth a shot. But my guess is MS will get bored with this quickly like they do with most of their ideas that don't generate instant cash, and that will be that.
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Casio invented and owned the graphing calculator market until the early 90's before TI stepped in and started heavily promoting their own offerings to teachers. Look where Casio is against TI today.
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This is because there is no market for graphing calculators outside of what the school requires.
This is why a Ti-83 still costs $100 even though it could be replaced by a $50 china tablet or something even cheaper.
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... and that's why I have a TI-84 Silver, 10 years later? That I actually use?
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Show me a graphing calculator with a 10" screen.
My question is just as nonsensical as yours.
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I wish my school had been donated Apple II computers, we got Commodore Pets with tape drives.
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Yep.
At $49, I might buy one. At $199, I still expect to get something for my money. I discovered this recently when I bought a Chromebook on a whim. It was back in the box and returned in a few days. I thought I wouldn't care if it was just a toy at that price but I was wrong. I spent another $105 to get a quad-core 17.3" laptop and installed Chrome on it. Gives me the Chrome experience in addition to being able to do all kinds of other stuff.
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Yep.
At $49, I might buy one. At $199, I still expect to get something for my money. I discovered this recently when I bought a Chromebook on a whim. It was back in the box and returned in a few days. I thought I wouldn't care if it was just a toy at that price but I was wrong. I spent another $105 to get a quad-core 17.3" laptop and installed Chrome on it. Gives me the Chrome experience in addition to being able to do all kinds of other stuff.
Yeah, but this isn't offered to you, it's to schools. Schools will buy them, because they'll think they are getting a big fat deal. Then IT people in schools will point out what a pain they are to do anything with, but with enough tar or mortar could be used to patch holes in the roof.
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Before they can purchase an RT they will have to have a list of programs that they need that run on a surface RT.
No programs.
No purchase.
Recieved wisdom. (Score:2, Insightful)
Dumping 3rd rate technology in schools, in the hopes that children cannot tell the level of substandard they are presented with.
Whether they are "substandard" or not, depends on what the children do with them. I.e. whether they work within the (assumed) confines of the technology, or are inspired to set and achieve their own limits.
There was a time when geeks were defined by taking whatever was at hand and adapting/extending it to whatever their imaginations came up with. Now ./ is overrun with crabby fanbois who define geek as "good at XBox even though M$ is teh suxxor", apparently. Oh well.
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Whether they are "substandard" or not, depends on what the children do with them. I.e. whether they work within the (assumed) confines of the technology, or are inspired to set and achieve their own limits.
RT tablets are specifically designed so you can't "set and achieve [your] own limits". You can only run software officially provided by Microsoft or through the Microsoft Store, and even then, only MS can create apps that use the desktop. And you can't wipe the OS and install something else, either, sin
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Without x86 legacy applications, there just isn't that much reason to bother with Windows.
On the other hand, pretty much anything available for Linux is available as source and can be rebuilt for alternative platforms. If not by the author than by some interested 3rd party.
Windows on ARM is a shadow of it's x86 variant.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Funny)
I would have been glad to have one... if not for the bootloader lockdown bullshit.
Foot, meet bullet.
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Not with the bios-enforced bootloader lockdown, you won't.
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Dumping: selling at below the cost of manufacture.
Dumping to maintain production levels (Score:2)
It is common to estimate sales rates when pricing is impacted by QUANTITY especially in a tightly contested market with thin margins (that is, unless you have a huge quantity discount allowing your margins to be high.)
Such things are the reason why small players don't enter into such markets, they cost more and provide less with lower margins due to low production runs.
Marketing, promotion, and possibly a tax write off - WHILE also maintaining sales levels. For marketing it doubles as PR and provides bette
Re: (Score:3)
Hey, that's unfair: Linux actually has some apps!