“When I saw the initial wave of Surface reviews hit, I started pinging some folks to see if I could get my hands on one to review as well,” MG Siegler reports for TechCrunch. “Unfortunately, it proved harder than I imagined to get my hands on a device. While at first, a few people got back to me offering to either give me or show me a Surface immediately, Microsoft quickly laid the hammer down. From my understanding, one such order even came down from a certain recently-departed executive’s office.”
“Now, of course, I had to get one. And luckily, there was a simple option available to me that not even Microsoft could block: I could buy one. And that’s exactly what I did,” Siegler reports. “In hindsight, I now see why Microsoft did not want me to review the Surface. That was probably the right call from a PR perspective. It’s simply not a good product.”
“After using it for over a week now, it’s hard to come up with a lot of nice things to say about the Surface. Don’t get me wrong, there are some solid things here. But by and large, it’s a strange, buggy, and clunky product that I simply can’t imagine many people buying after the initial hype wears off,” Siegler reports. “Put another way: I got one, but I don’t get it.”
Siegler reports, “I just don’t understand who would buy the Surface with Windows RT — let alone who would pay upwards of $600 for it (because it also makes no sense to get it without the Touch Cover). Take that money and get an iPad… So here I am, $650 lighter, hoping Microsoft can somehow improve this thing via several more daily software updates. I’m not holding my breath. Instead, I think it’s time for a robust drop test — right into the garbage can.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Garbage with a kickstand.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Dan K.” and “Sarah” for the heads up.]
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buh, buh, but Orpah loves the Surface!
*Orcah.
Oprah bought 12 of them for gifts. She won’t use them but will give them out to some people instead of lumps of coal.
…who will “regift” them, and in turn generate a long cycle of regifting, similar to the urban legend of the endlessly regifted fruitcake
Does it make that click noise when it goes into the trash, or just a thud?
Love watching those annoying commercials. But I just want to ask them what happens when i want to use it in portrait mode? Or does it not work that way???
Well with Microsoft Word in landscape mode there might be one line of type in your document to edit once the toolbars are up on that 16:9 display.
Buggy, bloated, confusing, does less, costs more… But people will buy it because it’s from “Microsoft” and runs “Windows,” right? Right…?
Apparently not.
Great post.
Was celebrating an early Thanksgiving dinner with some non-techie in-laws over the weekend when that commercial came on.
One of them said, “What the hell is that thing?”
I said, “Exactly.”
People aren’t asking that question in an intrigued manner, either. It’s more like, “What did I just see in those 30 seconds?”
My answer to that would be second-rate choreography and a third-rate computing device.
The focus group for that commercial for Microsoft had to be a zoo cage of chittering, jabbering, jiving primates with prehensile tails and no respect for high build quality.
But it was way more exciting than the “throw a launch party for Windows 7 with your family and friends” drain stopper.
Or throwing a iPhone funeral.
It had to include some pedophiles.
So you’re implying you suspect the focus group was likely composed of Ballmers friends and relatives?
Monkey Boy Ballmer probably has a lot of primates for personal use.
Don’t give me visuals like that—my mind hurts now!
Not implying anything of the sort!
Only suggesting that a room full of suits would never go for something like that, and neither would a group of ordinary, rational people.
Therefore it had to be an audience of non-people, very much into jumping around and throwing stuff. Monkeys!
In their research, the creatives must have realized that the only real excitement at Microsoft was in dynamic Steve Ballmer himself—dancing and frothing, throwing chairs, shouting in some meta language—and brought their insight to life in a brilliant stylistic abstraction of Ballmeritis, that rare variant of Delirium Tremens finding its full expression in executives exposed to toxic dust from corroded battlements.
Whispers indicate that the latest ad team is considering a new, historical approach featuring Steve Ballmer as Roman Emperor Nero with a fiddle.
I was nodding in agreeing with what I first suspected you implied. Who else would agree with him? Any rational user thinks all his stuff sucks. Had to be friends relatives and other primates! : )
click – click – click – click – clickity – click – click
Ouch! That is gonna leave a mark.
No wonder Sluffels, er snuffles (sniffles?), umm err Snuffleupagus became extinct and Microsolth.
It’s the Great Gazoo…..
Wasn’t the dumb@ss CEO of Adobe the Great Gazoo?
They both were/are. Anyone who attacks Apple and possesses a head at least two sizes too big for their body is a Great Gazoo.
Write it off as a business expense.
So I figured out the kickstand. You use it to set up the Surface for target practice.
Target Utility Range Device
T.U.R.D
rofl
You can use Microsoft’s Surface and dismiss it as rubbish if you like, or you can dismiss it as rubbish without using one to save time if you prefer.
Doesn’t he mean to put it into the ‘recycle bin’?
Get your money back. Now.
Ballsmear said its awesome and you can’t wait to get your hands on a Ballsmear product.
Really? I think the trash can is too good a destination for Surface.
I’m reading through the full review with a PROFOUND sense of déja vu. Microsoft NEVER learns from their blunders. This is the same old shitey user-hostility for which Microsoft are ages-old INFAMOUS. No wonder I loathe their crapware. How NOT surprised I am that their modern junk is just as lousy as the old junk I learned on way back when.
Give up Microsoft and SPARE THE WORLD from your garbage.
Did author fail to notice or comment on why the update just keeps on and on. Maybe it is the 16 GB size of the operating system.
WILL IT BLEND ?
The only fun I can see anyone having with Surface is seeing that industrial blunder disintegrate in a good industrial blender.
Microsoft should have made a vaccuum cleaner instead. That’d be a M$ product that doesn’t suck.
Aren’t we all gay, I mean apple was the innovator when it was behind m$, now everyone queues outside apple, like monkeys. Even though they produce shit like Game Center with its awful display and styled like a turd. Also isn’t it great how you have to keep stocks even though the average user barely uses it. Oh and Apple maps.