Microsoft's Surface has been
shipping out to corporate customers for a year now, but we haven't heard much about the backend setup of the $17,000 table -- sure, we know it's fun when it's up and running all those custom apps, but what's it like after the
unboxing? Incredibly frustrating, says FD kinesis's Gordon Miller. Hired to implement a
Surface solution for a client, Miller and his team first spent 30 minutes on the phone with MS phone support trying to locate the power socket, and another lengthy period of time poking at an unresponsive touchscreen before realizing that the Surface doesn't respond to touch out of the box. Yep, you read that right -- Microsoft's $17,000
big-ass touchscreen table requires a keyboard and mouse to set up, something which isn't noted in any of the marketing or manuals. Ouch. Hopefully that'll get fixed before this thing
ships to consumers in 2011, but in the meantime, hit the read link for the entire harrowing tale -- it's a pretty fun read for a Friday afternoon.
P.S.- We actually talked to Gordon on the phone for a quick minute and he said that Microsoft's been in touch about the experience -- he's working on an new post about that which we'll link when it goes up.
Update: As promised, here's the
followup, which includes Microsoft's response.
[Via
Daring Fireball]
posted April 24th 2009 2:48PM
Microsoft? Hardly. More like they made the initial post thinking they were going to be the Heroes of the Internets™ for pointing out some "fatal flaws" in Surface, but as it turns out they are the laughing stock of the Internet because they got thoroughly owned by an instruction manual. They couldn't take the heat, so they took the post down and did some backpedaling.
Nope, he took it down by himself.
From : http://kinesismomentum.wordpress.com/2009/04/25/wither-our-post/
"By 5pm today, the “web-muck” had grown so thick around the original post (”Microsoft Surface is a useless table”, and other hyperbole) that I took it down and replaced it with this second post. It explains the circumstances around how we came by our experience, and why it is unique. And it being unique, how that undermines much of the first post."
OK, I've set up a few of these things and it's really not that hard. Feeling around under the machine for a few seconds was enough to find the power socket.
Neither is it hard to understand that a multi-touch system is not the same as a HID like a mouse so of course you can just start bashing the screen to use windows.
@CT: The power cord plugs in at the same end as the hard-power switch at the bottom. The soft-power switch is at the other end.
show us pictures of how the power cord plugs into the machine. We want to see.
MS crusaders here are acting as if Engadget wrote the article. They're just reporting on something written by someone unrelated to the site. Bunch of you always come out swinging whenever there's even a slightly negative news about MS on this site, screaming bias, why do you all keep coming back then?
The writers here make snide remarks just about every company/product in their posts (and that's what makes the site fun to read), you can take any of those posts apart and claim "OMG!!!! BIASED!!!!" Deep down you crusaders probably know this as well, therefore keep coming back for more.
+1 for Desi
Even I have to agree with you...
Except your name is too frighteningly close to Desu.
Nilay, how about reporting this http://www.electronicpulp.net/2009/04/24/salma-hayeks-apple-mobileme-account-hacked-couldnt-have-been-easier/
It is easier for you to "make up" bad news for microsoft, uh?
Umm...do you really want a blog that covers Apple related security issues AND Windows/MS related security issues?! We'll see an alert every few hours (minutes?) about new Windows exploit/virus, and every few years something about Apple.
To be honest Apple didn't force her to use a weak password, or even weaker password hint. They attacked the weakest part of a computer, The user...no amount of security will make up for that.
Overall, that actually doesn't sound that bad. I've had more trouble trying to mount a disk in Linux.
"He then added that one part of my post that they are looking at addressing is with the initial set-up screen - “We want to add some goodness right there - the user shouldn’t have to wait to be greeted with some of the excitement of the product”."
“We want to add some goodness right there"
wow, that's customer service for some $17k hardware. add some goodness.
come on!
LOLz XD
Why couldn't Microsoft just combine the two UIs for the sake of simplicity? It's surprisingly awkward to push through Windows Vista 2 just to get at the real UI, the Surface, and then to also need to use the keyboard. It seems to me that the whole point of any touchscreen technology is to streamline it away from a keyboard, yes?
Lol @ Saad Labia
Uh yea, who to side with.. guy who cannot find a plug, or people who designed super kick ass kung fu finger magic table? ... maybe the guy should retire, sounds like a tech grandad.
Actually, it makes perfect sense that it does not respond to touch immediately. We have two at the company i work for, and the touch part is a program that runs on the surface computer. That would be a poor development environment if you could never turn it off.
I think the person who had a hard time finding the power plug just didn't RTFM or is clueless - our IT team had no such problem with either of ours.
Has anyone ever noticed that MS surface is just a touchscreen placed horizontally and a simple software addition to go one cursor touch to multi cursors/multi-touch?
After that, then each application (MS/commercial/free/opensource ) will require its one methods to handle interaction.
Funny, my iPod "TOUCH" wouldn't let me load music onto it until I used a "KEYBOARD + MOUSE" to load iTunes.
Why should it be any surprise that any innovation Microsoft painfully poops out would be a load of crap?
We have one of these tables here at work in the employee lounge. It's cool the first 10-20 minutes, like the Wii. It just doesn't have a high, long term or multiple use appeal. That would be OK in a bar, or retail store where you're there for 10-20 minutes then leave I guess. It's just quick and easy to get over the initial wow factor.