Microsoft has its Surface Tablet with Windows RT available for pre-order on their store. In the US, pricing starts at $499 for the 32GB model without a cover going up to $699 for the 64GB model with included Black Touch Cover. Purchased separately the Touch Cover in white is $119.99 and the Black Type Cover is $$129.99, so it looks like you save $20 if you purchase the Tablet/Touch cover combo. Prices include free shipping.
Australian prices are (as usual) not quite as good with the 32GB at $559 inc gst and the 64GB with cover at $789 inc GST and orders arriving by the 6th of November.
US delivery for the combos is expected to be by 26 October with the 32GB tablet alone within 3 weeks.
Who’s going to pre-order one? Check the latest video ad after the jump.
Microsoft has a released a pretty natty advertisement. Ok, it’s no Gangnam Style 🙂 , but it’s got a little bit of everything and shows that Microsoft isn’t just aiming this at the corporate market.
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Pricing is too high…they should have come in at least $100 less per unit.
Windows RT tablets are way to overpriced. They won’t sell much and will have to lower the price for sure. Seriously, if you can’t afford an ipad, you can’t afford an RT tablet as well. Was hoping they would have a competitive price. 500$ for a 720p display, nty
sam, the RT tablets really outdo the iPad in hardware specs, but with their pricing there’s no need to jump on purchases/pre-order. I believe most will take a wait and see.
If Microsoft has dropped the prices to the $300/$400 range at least for pre-order I think they would have generated more excitement.
It’s not like Microsoft hasn’t priced hardware before (XBox). So, we’ll have to wait and see. I guess they believe they can always drop the price…it’s much harder to raise it.
@Ken – I would have thought they would have used the old Gillette Razor/Blade marketing strategy much like Amazon has with the Kindle, sell the hardware cheap and make the money off the Microsoft App store. I haven’t seen a component cost breakdown yet, but I’m assuming they don’t cost that much to manufacture.
I won’t be buying one for a number of reasons but I’ll be interested to see what happens with the pricing as time goes on. Don’t forget they’ve still got the Windows Pro versions to launch as well.
Ken hardware specs don’t matter at all the ipad is more than capable than any tablet in specs. Just Becuase it’s not a quad core nivida doesn’t mean anything. I have the nexus 7 and ipad 3 an oh wait the ipad 3 is twenty times faster everyday loading apps web pictures online apps anything. It’s about how eel the software and tablet specs work together. Dont me wrong i love apple android and windows 8 but as smothness apple wins.
@Mac – You’re assuming comparable usages but the iPad is a more limiting device than the MS Surface will be.
The Snap feature for example allows better multi-tasking than either Android or iOS offer, neither also don’t offer anything really comparable to the desktop mode.
Like you can have two Word documents open at the same time with RT and view them both side by side on the desktop.
Neither Android tablets or the iPad even come with many pre-installed apps. While the value of the regular MS Office Home and Student edition is about $99, even with a more basic version for RT still makes it quite the added value compared to other app options.
RT also gives a desktop browser with IE 10, closes to it is the Chrome browser for Android but that’s a more basic version of Chrome that doesn’t have all the features and functionality of the desktop version.
Driver and peripheral support will be far better with RT and given that it will have a full size USB 2.0 port by default, you can plug virtually any USB device and pretty much expect it to just work but you can’t say the same for Android or iOS tablets, many which require OTG adapters to even enable host mode.
Let alone provide power for USB devices as only the full size USB ports offer that and most ARM tablets don’t offer full size USB ports.
Never mind you’d pay more for a iPad, the 32GB model costs $599 and add the costs of a cover, keyboard, port adapters for USB support and HDMI out, external card reader for microSD card support and you’ll end up with a total a lot higher than what MS is charging for the Surface.
MS is also offering there services, XBox Live, XBox Music, Skydrive, Office 365, etc.
The main thing is both Android and iOS have really well developed app ecosystems and RT is just starting. However, there’s already over 4000 apps, there’s already a Netflix app for example, and a lot more should get started to be developed after launch as part of the problem is most developers don’t yet have a system in order to develop with!
Mind also that the lowest common denominator for both Android and iOS app markets is phone apps, but for RT it is the lowest common denominator and so you’ll see more tablet orientated apps that’ll take advantage of the generally more powerful systems tablets and higher end PC’s offer. So general quality of apps can easily be better as well as all of the above.