Welcome to my much awaited I hope unboxing and first look at the Surface
from Microsoft. This is a 10.6 in tablet
and recom recommends represents
Microsoft's first foray into their own
branded hardware. So I actually went to the Microsoft store and bought this
today. If you follow me on Twitter, then you already know that um there was a bit
of a lineup, but I had like a reservation thing. I got the kit that
comes with the touch cover and the
Windows RT tablet. I got a 32 gig Surface. Remember, a 32 gig Surface has
a Windows operating system installed on it. So, even though it's 32 gigs, you
don't actually get really that close to 32 gigs of actual storage on your
Surface tablet because the Windows OS is
a little bit bigger than we're used to seeing from something like an Android or
an Apple mobile operating system. So, inside I have the Surface box itself
here and then I've also got a separate box that has the touch cover. So, touch
cover is one of the biggest innovations
that Microsoft has really brought about with Surface and that it's a nice little
kind of suedy cover that's actually yeah
quite quite nice. Wow. It feels really dense like it's a like it's a material
that's not just going to kind of crap out after a little while. And then the
keyboard itself, which is a touch sensitive keyboard. So, they've here Oh,
funny funny. Okay. iPhone size comparison. So the uh so the cover
itself is not much thicker than something like Apple's smart cover. It
feels very durable. It's quite rigid and then they've actually built a keyboard
into it. So the keyboard is touch sensitive which means that you type by
by touching the space bar or touching the keys and uh and it's pressure
sensitive but there's actually no tactile feedback. Now there's a separate
type cover available that does have a lowprofile keyboard. I'll look at that
one later as a separate unboxing. But for now, we're going to focus on the
touch cover. It has again kind of a velvety suedy feel to it, so it won't
scratch up your screen as long as you don't have any sort of rocks or debris
or anything caught in it, which shouldn't be that much of an issue. The
Surface uses a proprietary six pin connector for data and power for the
touch cover itself, and it uses magnets to attach to the Surface. Uh, it
actually has a touchpad as well, and then looks like left and right mouse
click button. So, that's kind of cool. I haven't seen one in person yet, so I'm
very excited about this. You've got proprietary keys up here, and you'll
notice there's no F1 to F uh 12 keys.
However, you can use the function key to enable those buttons. So, if you wanted
to press Alt F4, then you'd go alt function and then F12 34 in order to
press that. Uh, okay. So, included pieces relatively, yeah, okay looking
power brick. It's around the size of the Apple one. and then uses a magnetic
connector here to charge the Surface tablet itself. Um, very, very slick
looking. There you go. Cameraman can have a look at that if he sees fit. Uh,
the There you go. The prongs just fold up like that. Just a Windows RT sticker.
You could even take that off and it'd be completely clean and just black all
along except for the safety notifications and whatnots. Inside here,
once we take out the Surface, don't worry, we'll look at that soon. We've
got Microsoft's included little brochure. Getting around in Windows RT.
So, you swipe from the right to open up the charms menu. Uh, if you This is
French. If you move your, if you're using the trackpad, move your pointer
into any corner. Okay. To access charms, get around Surface. So, they've got
everything kind of labeled there. Hardware setup, software. Okay. So, this is a very, very basic guide. There's
really not a whole lot there. Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT. So, something to
note about Windows RT is that oh, look at this. Environmentally friendly
packaging. They're using u just kind of a paper like a see look you can tell
that it's like a recycled paper because it's well I'm assuming it's a recycled
paper because it's made of sort of bits and pieces of of other kinds of paper.
You know what? Let's not make any assumptions. Let's just say that it's
made of paper and is therefore recyclable if nothing else. And I can't
get that to go back together. So, surface
plastic. Here we go. I'm very excited
about this hinge, the kickstand as they call it. Okay. It's not light. Actually,
it's not light, but Microsoft spent a lot of time optimizing the weight
distribution inside the Surface to make it so that however you're holding it, it
should be comfortable and it should feel similar regardless of which side you're
holding it from. So, the idea is that even though the weight is a little bit
on the heavier side for a tablet, it's not like a Galaxy Tab 10.1 or even the
ASUS Vivo Tab, which is very light, also a Windows RT device. It feels okay to
hold. I also like the squared corners. These are a 22°
um angled edges all around the entire
outside of the tablet. Rounded corners are nice in theory. However, you can
slip off them. And this has a bit of a catch to it. So you can see it's not
quite just rounded and smooth, but you can actually hold on to it. Okay, so I I
like that so far. The kickstand itself, I have not sure how to operate it yet,
but there you go. So you pull it out there, makes that noise, I guess they
they apparently spent a lot of time on the noise of the kickstand. And when you
close it, they're comparing it to a luxury door luxury car door closing. I'm
not quite sure I'd make that comparison, but I do like the way it slows down
before it hits it so that it doesn't close too hard. Very nice. Uh, yes. So,
the reason for the 22° edges here is so that it'll actually sit flush when you
have the kickstand out and when you're using it. It's nice to have this integrated as opposed to being part of
the smart cover. if you guys have a smart cover or a similar type cover for
your iPad. I have a smart cover clone. And what I don't like about it is that
it has over time become far less rigid.
So, it's much harder to prop the device up on the smart cover. Whereas something
like a kickstand I don't think has the potential to ever really become rigid.
You can see the actually you can hear you can see the design that goes into
these hinges. It's got one, two, three
hinges here that are all look very, very robust. I'm just going to angle this
towards the light a little bit more so you can see in there, I hope. Okay. All
right. There's the connector down here.
Okay. Yeah. So, let's do the physical tour. There's your charging spot. USB
port. That is a USB port, like U with an S and a B, and you can plug in pretty
much whatever you want as long as there's driver support. So, things like
printers are going to be quite limited at the beginning. However, any kind of
input devices, keyboards, mice, um
webcams potentially, again, it'll come down to support should work in this USB
port. Uh right there, we've got what appears to be micro HDMI out, speaker
here, and a speaker here. Yes, stereo speakers. Take that, Apple. Um and not
positioned such that they'll be covered when you're operating the tablet. The
tablet is clearly meant to be used in a horizontal uh landscape orientation. So,
there's your light sensor. There's your webcam. There's something. I don't know
what that is. Um, and then the Windows
uh button is right here. So, if you use it like this, it'll be kind of weird if
you're using uh like a Skype video chat or anything like that. Power buttons
here. And I am afraid I don't actually
quite know what these are. So, we'll have to Ha. Oh, it doesn't even say.
Look at that. It doesn't actually point at the speakers on this thing. So, there
you go. Uh, I'm going to assume there more. Check this out, though. So, the uh
the rearfacing camera is actually oriented a little bit strangely. If you
can't see, then sorry, but it's also
oriented 22° off. So, what that means is
if you pull the kickstand out and place the surface down on something, that
camera will be looking out level now, which means that if you're walking
around sort of, you know, using it as a
camera in order to take a picture straight ahead of you, you wouldn't hold
it out like this. Instead, you'd hold it more like this. So, you're looking down
at it so that it'll take a level picture. Okay, moving right along. We've
got another headphone jack, volume rocker, and really nothing nothing
extraordinary in terms of IO other than that USB port. So, the setup process is
doesn't take that long, but I don't know if I'll bring you guys along for the
whole thing. Of course, we're reading the ULA very
carefully. Um, Microsoft spent a lot of time on the screen as well. So, even
though the screen is only 1366 x 768, it
is using a bit of a special technology
that allows the panel itself to be much
closer to the to your eyes than Okay, so
there's a there's a few layers. There's your glass layer, there's your uh there's your touchcreen interface layer,
there's your actual LCD panel layer. And
what they're trying to do is they're trying to minimize the air gaps in between, get them as close as possible
because what that does is it reduces reflectivity. So while the surface is
reflective, it'll be more difficult to make out the details of the cameraman
based on what I'm seeing already in it than it would be with something that had
a bigger air gap. That's where that's where that innovation comes from. So
give me a sec, guys. I'm just going to get the wireless setup and we'll be back. I missed a small detail before.
Actually, a pretty major detail. Um, the micro SDXC port is here under the
kickstand. So, not around the edge. It's something you'll never see once you put
it in there. It'll be completely covered. Just like that. I wonder if you
can pry the kickstand up without Oh, yeah, you can. That's not That's not
actually too difficult. So, I want to show you guys how the touch cover
attaches. So, cameraman actually did this when we were off camera, so I don't
Oh, okay. Wow. Um, okay. Okay. So, it actually
aligns itself pretty easily even though, see, you can see the orientation is not
even close and it just kind of kajjiggers
itself correctly without any difficulty. Now, you've seen people doing this on
the internet, but I'm actually going to do it live here for you guys just to
show that it's not going anywhere. Now, cameraman's take on this form factor,
and we're going to do the iPhone comparison again. That's how thick it is. Um, with the touch cover, is that
it's bulky. To which I would reply, okay, yes, it is bulky compared to your
iPad 2 or your iPad 3 because it is a
slimmer device and this does weigh more. The touch cover, what I didn't realize
about it is I was kind of going, "Yeah, it's really thin. It's really thin." It does weigh more than, you know, most
tablet covers will. But if you compare
this not to a tablet but to a notebook because remember this device is actually
capable of being a productivity tool unlike most notebooks which aren't even
close to that because of the fact that it does have a
notebookable notebook ready resolution of 1366 x 768. You can attach a full
keyboard to it. Um and it does have Microsoft Office. That to me makes a
very big difference. Now, this is my very first time with the Touch Cover.
I'm going to fire up Word. And there's been a lot of talk about how does the
Touch Cover compare to typing on a real
keyboard. So, let's go with Hell. No, that's not what I meant
to say. Hello world. This is me. Wh
Okay, I missed one. This is my first attempt on the touch cover. I think I'm
Okay, missed an M. doing pretty well.
So, is it perfect? No. But there are bumps here. Well, they're not bumps.
They're actually gaps in the letters that will give you some idea. If you
just kind of go like this, it's not going to detect any button presses cuz
it's pressure sensitive. So, the pressure Whoops, that was just a typo.
Sensitive touch cover may take some getting used to.
Very responsive though. Um, so there's no there's no delay. There's no there's
no lag. There's no weirdness that's been associated with some Bluetooth keyboards
uh in the past. The touchpad's not bad. I wish it was a little bit bigger, but
there's only there's only so much you can do. Um, accuracy when you're moving
really really slowly, I'd say, is not as good as I'd like. You can see it kind of
drifting a little bit there. And I I
don't know what they can do about that because of sort of the fuzzy felt kind
of material that they're using. I don't know how you maintain that kind of accuracy without a more um without a
more smooth surface that to use. So,
Metro UI uh start button will do that.
Um oh, in theory, will
it What are we doing here? Start button.
There we go. What does that one
do? Okay. Well, that one does it. Um the
modern UI. So, what apps can you use on
this thing? You will have to shop in the Microsoft store because this is an ARM
architecture device. This is using a Tegra 3 processor which is a quad-core
processor but not like like the fastest mobile processor in the world by any
stretch these days. Um what that means is there's no backwards compatibility
with your normal Windows devices. Surface Pro is coming and Surface Pro
will be an x86 device which means you can install anything you want in this
one. The desktop is Whoops, that's weather. Uh the
desktop is available, but it's almost uh
the only things you can really do are things like accessing your classic task
manager, your per your resource monitor,
your um your office suite, which they haven't
really changed the interface much um compared to what we've seen on desktop
versions. You can use the file explorer and you can actually use that with the
USB port. you have access to where Windows is actually installed. So, you
can see there's 17 gigs free out of our uh 32 gigs total. So, you can, you know,
users and you can browse and you can move files around just the way you would
on a real computer, but you can't go and install like CPUZ to tell you about the
processor in here. It just doesn't work that way. So, the Pro will be x86. So,
you're going to be doing mostly everything from this UI here. And the
animations are very, very smooth. Microsoft's worked very hard on making
sure that they don't have some of those early Android sort of
uh awkwardness things going on where the
animations start to look very jerky if you do certain things. So the store,
everything will be through the store. An app written for the modern UI or the
Metro UI, whatever you want to call it, should be compatible with Windows 8 and
with Windows RT, even though they're really not the same thing, just with a
recompile. It's just older apps where you're going to run into that difficulty
and it'll take time for things to get updated. I mean, you've got your
Netflix, New York Times, it'll take, again, it'll take time, but it's
Microsoft. They'll find a way to get the right things released. Uh, people are
complaining, especially reviewers, about the lack of a Facebook or a Twitter app.
Um, especially from the start. There's a new egg app. Come on, guys. Um, got to
go getting in my video here. And I think that pretty much
covers it for now.
Now, it's possible cameraman and I screwed something up because while it was setting up, we were playing around
with the keyboard. Uh, but now that we've done a quick reboot, everything is
working correctly. So, the Windows button now works. Swiping in from the
right. Aha, charms menu. So, that is where you'll access your search.
Although it's totally unnecessary to do that because you can just
type control panel and you don't even
have to open up the search in order to search for something which I think is
fantastic. Sharing is uh going to be well for sharing things. Nothing can be
shared from the desktop. It's contextual. Um let's go back to the
metro modern UI. Modern UI um settings.
So these are really smart the way they've got this implemented. I love the
way that they've done volume and power where it actually just readjusts where
it is to where you left it off and then you can go up or down from there. Same
thing with screen brightness. So, you can always access settings like screen
brightness without digging through your menus. If you're someone like me who's constantly tinkering with screen
brightness, you're going to appreciate stuff like this as you move from, you
know, darker rooms to brighter rooms or whatever else the case may be. Swiping
from the bottom and from the top are things that are going to be uh specific
to given applications. So here we're in Internet Explorer 10. You can change a
lot of settings in IE10 through the modern UL. Actually, you can't really
change any settings in IE10 through the modern UI. See, there's a few internet
options here, but most of them are going to be changed anything more advanced
from the desktop Internet Explorer. And you
can use this one if you prefer. Remember this is Internet Explorer 10 fully flash
enabled unlike other mobile platforms now. So that's something that may matter
to certain people like me for example. So let's go back to our modern UI. So
let's go ahead and open a couple things in open a new tab. Hold it down. Open a
new Whoops. Copy link. Nope. I pressed the wrong thing. Open link in new tab.
So we've got a few tabs. This is how it's handling tab browsing. You scroll
down from the top and then you navigate to whichever one that you want. You got
a nice little preview there. You can also add tabs this way and then just key
in manually what you want. So, for example, ponies. Uh we could look at
pictures of ponies on the internet very quickly on the Surface uh from
Microsoft. Swiping in from the left hand
side gives you access to a multitasking
sort of menu here. Since we've only got one Oh, yeah. Right. Screen sharing. So,
there's true multitasking on Windows RT. You could have um like Skype running
here with a video preview. You could have a messenger application. You can
have anything you want actually running from either side. Um oh, actually I
don't know. I don't remember how you do it this way. No, that's not right.
Uh wow. How do I do that? Ah, here. Okay.
So, here's task switching. Give me a sec. I'll figure out how that works. Give me one moment. So, let's fire up
the maps app and it'll just use GPS to
zone in on wherever we happen to be. I've seen a lot of complaints about
application loading time for me. I'm still using an iPhone 4, so it doesn't
bother me that much, but that's where we are. If you want to search for something
nearby, then you can just kind of go McDonald's.
And in theory, really, no results were
found for my search. I've never used Bing Maps before, so
um it's possible that I'm doing it wrong
somehow, but uh let's go with NCIX and
see if it manages to find an Ah, yes. So, NCIX is more important to Microsoft
than McDonald's, apparently, which is awesome. So, it shows us a bunch of
different ones. You can browse between them like this. I promised to show you
guys how the how the multitasking or task switching works. So, what you do is
you drag in from the left and then back out and you can easily switch between
any of the apps that you have open. It's extremely fast and feels very smooth.
You can go all the way out to the desktop where we have a word document
that we're working on. And then you can also
um bring any of those applications out to the forefront like this. And then you
can also pin them to the side just like that. So that's how that whole thing
works. So, we're playing back Big Buck Bunny in
1080p. And the realization Oh. Oh, we
figured out how to put tasks over here as well. Is that it is a little bit on
the cho Well, it's not a little bit choppy. It is choppy. It's not quite
It's not quite able to do that yet. This is using the uh Is this using the modern
browser? Yeah, modern browser versus the desktop version browser. However, it's
watchable. It's certainly watchable. I do want to show you guys how to do this
though. So if you wanted to move uh let's say okay so there I think you guys
get the point. So we've got our photos app open and if we wanted our photos app
on the right hand side we open that first. Then we take maps and we don't do
that. We go to our photos app. Sorry I'm still getting used to it. This is
literally my first time sitting down with this. Then we take maps and we
bring it out here. Then we go like this. Now we can see our wonderful photos
which we haven't added any of here while we use the maps app in the foreground.
And you can switch them back and forth like that or even swipe the whole thing away. If you want to close an app, you
just take it and drag it all the way down to the bottom and it will be
closed. So, it's not using up any resources. However, you do have 2 gigs of RAM. So, unless you're running heavy
duty applications, you shouldn't run up against that too often because you'll be
CPU limited in more cases than not
compared to being RAM limited. So, I think that pretty much wraps it up for
my Windows uh Windows RT and Microsoft
Surface first impressions. It's not that warm. It's a touch warm here, but it's
very localized. The edges are still quite cool, which is nice because that
means when you're holding it like this, you're not going to get that sweaty
palms thing going on uh that you do with some with some mobile devices. Uh, the
iPad 3 in particular I have a hard time dealing with, whereas the iPad 2 I find
is just just spectacular.
Um, so what's the point of all this? To
me, this isn't a tablet so much as it is a laptop replacement, and it's not quite
a laptop replacement because you can't do the same kind of serious work on this
that you can on a laptop. So, we're at kind of this um this point of of either
convergence or divergence depending on how you want to look at it where these
kinds of devices where you can use the touchcreen to interact here, you can use
the mouse and the keyboard to interact here are not going away. This is this is
here to stay and I really like the usage model. I'm just not quite sure where it
fits in with this whole RT armpowered thing and I'm really excited to check
out Surface Pro which is coming soon. And thank you for checking out this
unboxing and first look online is tech tips and don't forget to
subscribe. A cameraman sort of put it his way and he's more of an Apple guy,
but his comment is this is for people who don't want the lockdown restriction
of the iPad. They want more productivity than that, but aren't necessarily typing
5,000word essays on a regular basis. So, this is good enough. Also, I realized I
never did show the camera app. The camera app is pretty straightforward. So, you got your 720p camera on the
front. You can switch cameras like that. And like I said, see, it's looking
straight ahead in spite of the fact that the kickstand is out. Motion's pretty
smooth. Uh, camera options are pretty limited. So, you can adjust your
resolution or you can adjust your audio
device. That's about it. And then you can switch from video mode to cam. Oh,
that's fast. Video mode or not video mode. So, let's go ahead and point it.
So, this is this is how I'd use it to point it straight ahead. See? which is
actually kind of nice as long as you're filming at this level. But if you were like trying to see over a crowd at a
concert or something with your tablet and take a video, I mean people who take video on their tablets in public though,
no offense, but um yeah, I mean if you were trying to do that then it'd be kind
of awkward. But here, let's go ahead and we'll look at this plant. Uh not super
not super highlight sort of scenario here, but we can go ahead and uh you
just touch the screen in order to take a picture. And what I meant to do was take
a video so we can capture video of this. This frame rate is not particularly
high, but there's Ooh, the plant. And
there's the bottom of the plant. And we can stop it just like that. There's not
really a delay, though. That's kind of nice. So, let's see how fast the shutter is here. Let's take a picture of some
cars. That's nice. So, I'm going go ahead and go back to the main thing. And
then we can open our Whoopsy daisies. That's not what I was looking for. I
need that. Sorry. Like I said, still getting used to it, guys. Uh, and then
I'm looking for the photos app, which I have now lost. Uh, what? Yeah, there it
is. It's right in right in the middle. Right in the middle of like everything.
Pictures library now has all the pictures I took. There you go. Camera
roll. Just like that. There's the video.
Okay, let's see if what plays like on that. I meant to do was take a video so
capture video of this. Frame rate is not particularly high, but there's Okay,
we're done for real this time. Don't forget to subscribe to Linus Tech Tips
and my luxury car audio. Uh, luxury car
audio. I'm still sick. I'm still a little like, you know, not quite, you
know, uh, car door tablet that I got
going on here.