Microsoft announced yesterday their new lineup of Surface 2 and Surface 2 Pro. I’ll give you the highlights of the hardware and then focus on what it means from a cloud standpoint. As you may suspect, they made it faster, lighter, thinner, and generally better. Both have fantastic displays and enough processing power to handle the loads of high definition video and many other things. Hot Hardware has a few things to say as they took a deeper look at both on demo day.
Surface 2
As was previously rumored, NVIDIA’s Tegra 4 platform powers the Surface 2 and its 10.6-inch ClearType display, which now boasts a Full HD 1080p resolution. ARMed with this new foundation, the tablet is supposed to be three to four times faster than than its predecessor, along with providing up to 25 percent longer battery life.
Surface 2 Pro
Moving on, Surface 2 Pro boasts an x86 foundation with Haswell inside (Core i5 dual-core processor). Microsoft views Surface 2 Pro as a “true laptop replacement” that can run pretty much all of your Windows software, including the full Microsoft Office suite.
Other Cool Cloud Related Things
So first off, keep in mind that I’ve summarized a pretty lengthy review so go to Hot Hardware for the in depth view with more images. Now let’s focus on what Microsoft is putting into the mix as a further enticement. Keep in mind that Apple’s iPad includes enticements of everything in the iTunes store and thousands upon thousands of apps. Amazon gives you access to almost any book, magazine, video and other content in a very streamlined experience. What is Microsoft doing? Well, they are taking advantage of their strengths. Here’s the scoop:
- Office RT is included. With kids in high school, I’m beginning to appreciate this.
- Free Skype calling to landlines in more than 60 countries
- Unlimited Skype Wifi on Surface 2
- 200GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage for two years
Except for Office, all of the extras that pull you in require connectivity and depend on services that exist only in the cloud. In some ways, Microsoft’s cloud play here is geared more towards a student or the business but it has a certain appeal.
