Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Thursday May 17 2018, @12:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the Don't-Panic! dept.

Microsoft reportedly working on $400 Surface tablets to compete with the iPad

Microsoft is working on a new line of budget Surface tablets to better compete with Apple's low-cost iPad options, according to a report from Bloomberg.

According to the report, the new Surface tablets won't just be smaller, cheaper Surface Pros. Rather, Microsoft is said to be completely redesigning the devices, with 10-inch screens instead of the 12-inch size currently found on the Surface Pro, rounded corners that more resemble an iPad than the more rectangular Surface design, and USB-C for charging. Most importantly, priced at $400, they will be more in line with Apple's cheaper tablets, too.

Google also recently introduced an education-oriented ChromeOS tablet to compete with Apple's iPad.

Also at Laptop Magazine.

Related: Microsoft to Challenge Education-Oriented Chromebooks With Windows 10 Laptops Priced From $189
Apple Expected to Compete Against Chromebooks With Cheaper Education-Focused iPads
ChromeOS Gains the Ability to Run Linux Applications


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:32PM (6 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:32PM (#680747)

    > And other things that stand out/significantly increase functionality - removable storage, sunlight readable displays, etc.

    Removable storage is a given on surfaces, I am pretty sure they all have SD or at least microSD slots. Most non-MS Windows tablets I have seen have them too.

    Sunlight readable display technology is right up there behind the transparent aluminium windows on the space elevator, free samples with all Mars vacation tickets.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by takyon on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:39PM (3 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:39PM (#680748) Journal

    Sunlight readable display technology is right up there behind the transparent aluminium windows on the space elevator, free samples with all Mars vacation tickets.

    Ironically, given that the solar irradiance on Mars is about 43% of Earth's [nasa.gov], you won't even need your sunlight readable display!

    --
    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:39PM (2 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday May 17 2018, @11:39PM (#680932)

      Nah, you still would. 43% of direct sunlight is still an awful lot.

      Something like 1000W/m^2 of sunlight reaches the Earth's surface, and about 42% of that is in the visible spectrum. That means on Earth, a single 1m^2 window facing directly at the sun allows in around 420W of visible light. Convert that to "incandescent equivalent watts", at an average of 2.2% visible light, and you're talking about a "19,000W equivalent" light source, or 190 100W incandescent bulbs. From a single 1m^2 window. That's INSANELY brighter than your average interior room is lit, which is why turning on the lights in a room with sun shining straight in the windows makes almost no difference. It only seems like less because our eyes brightness response is logarithmic rather than linear. Unfortunately that doesn't help much when looking at a backlit screen that's being front-lit by a far brighter source - the reflected ambient light is so much brighter than the emitted light that you're pushing the limits of detection to see the difference.

      Cut that to 43%, and it will STILL be insanely brighter than any normal electrically-lit interior space. And of course, it's far brighter outside, where even on Mars you're not limited to a single "8,000W equivalent" light source lighting a whole room, but instead get a an effectively infinite-plane light source at 8,000W/m^2 (equivalent).

  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:44PM (1 child)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday May 17 2018, @03:44PM (#680751)

    Sunlight-readable displays are perfectly feasible with e-ink technology. You can go see it on the low-end Kindles today. There's been work on a color version, but I don't think it's been released yet, and may never be. For some odd reason, people don't like refresh times of more than 1 second...

    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday May 17 2018, @09:27PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Thursday May 17 2018, @09:27PM (#680895)

      There was also the Pixel Qi / One Laptop Per Child transflective technology that worked quite well, even if the colors got washed out to greyscale in direct sunlight. I wouldn't mind programming, etc. in greyscale out in the woods, especially since they drew far less power with the backlight off. Sadly that seems to have been abandoned - from the videos the later versions had much more vibrant colors, almost on par with a mediocre standard LCD indoors. It's a shame they never caught on - I had been tempted to buy one of their replacement screens, cost more than my laptop, despite the fact that they were supposed to be affordably mass-producable on a standard LCD production line. Economies of scale and/or trying to stay afloat without enough demand.

      I also saw a video way back, apparently credible (probably on Slashdot), of someone who hacked an early kindle to play video - a bit smudgy perhaps, but e-ink is capable of much faster refresh rates than normally used. What that does to its lifespan I don't know. Certainly it would draw a LOT more power - I think I've heard than an e-ink refresh draws a considerable amount of power, to the point that it can rapidly exceed the power consumption of an LCD at high update frequencies. However, if the controller supports it, it's also possible to refresh only small sections of the display at a time - so you could for example only update the pixels changed as your cursor moves, or you type a character, no need to refresh the whole screen at high speed, just the bits that are currently changing, which is typically not much for 2D productivity software.