Health & Fitness
The End of Laptops
The Surface Pro 3 is looking to take over two markets in one fell swoop
I am a fan of some good technology, and boy does the Microsoft Surface 3 have good technology. For the tech nerds out there, its a magnesium tablet with a friction-less kickstand, up to 256 gb of SSD storage, a 2k display, an intel haswell processor with HD graphics, and a a 9 hour battery life. For everybody else: This is a tablet with a display with twice the resolution of HD, and the internal parts of normal computers and ultrabooks.
In all seriousness, Microsoft has really done something quite revolutionary. Every since the inception of the PC, many have long striven to shrink form factor without hampering experience. The Laptop was the first step, connecting a screen to the actual computer directly to enhance portability. Next came the tablet, utilizing a simpler UI and casting away many extra features only a power user would need. Somewhere along the way came netbooks, but they are abominations in my opinion so I won't even explain them. And recently, came the ultrabook/macbook air, super thin laptops with nearly the same power as their full fledged brethren, but much better battery lives to boot. However, the key here is that all these individual product families had their trade-offs in exchange for other advantages. The smaller the product, the weaker it was.
Enter the Surface family. A line of tablet sized computers that had the battery of an ultrabook and the power of a full sized PC. With this product, Microsoft is making a full out assault on the main market it had long been a supporter of: PC hardware. The main difference between their first two iterations and this third one is form factor. Microsoft has now switched the form factor into a 12 inch 3:2 ratio screen. This form allows the screen to be optimized for web viewing and running applications, while the increased size itself allows for easier viewing of movies. Yet the surface is thinner (9.1 mm) and lighter (800 grams) than the Macbook air.
This is the key ingredient Microsoft was missing. Before, it sported an oversized tablet that was not as powerful as a ultrabook. Now, it has a big, tablet sized ultrabook. Microsoft has yet to break even on it's entire hardware division for the Surface products. That will probably change.
