Ballmer: Surface "sweet spot" $300-$800, Windows 8 biggest thing since 95

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sat down with technology reporter Janet Tu to discuss the company's future. Surface, Windows 8 and Microsoft's rivalry with Google and Facebook are just a few items which were touched...

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Very Interesting.

If you say so.

$300 for a low-powered laptop with a marginally upgraded Windows 7 that's been mutilated by the ribbon and a worthless, ugly launcher everyone hates and can't get rid of? Yeah, Steve, that'll be huge. /s

Steve Ballmer needs to go ...

put someone in his position that knows what he is doing... LOL


I'm sure he will step down him self when windows 8 fails miserably ... I'm guessing next year ... before summer...

You're hilarious.

Won't be touching Widows 8 with a 100 foot poll. I'm still running XP (thank goodness) and will be having a nice Linux box built in the next couple of months and go all the way with open source. MS and it's software is bloated and not worth half of what they ask for it. Everyone I talk to gets the open source sermon.

$300-800 is a large gap, which does't say anything. I'm sure he knows which price it'll be closer to, weird coming from the CEO.

If he wants this thing to sell at all, the ARM version needs to at least be 199-300, with the Intel version being at least 500-800.

$200-$300 = Surface win.
$300-$500 = Well, there are other alternative for the same price (or even cheaper) but let's try it this new device.
$500-$800 = No way!

Funny how he bashes on the Kindle fire. I've gotta say that device has one of the most readable screens I've ever seen. I was looking at one in best buy the other day and got absolutely NO eye fatigue reading a few pages of a book. That's more than I can say about an iPad or most other tablet devices.

Windows 8 is going to flop. Hard. Stay away if you know what's good for your PC. There is appeal here from a business standpoint for Microsoft' to centralize all OS's into one but I think this first execution, at least, is going to be a dud. With all the new stuff they're trying out with this Windows Vista springs readily to mind and we all know how that went. They'll use this release to test the waters then learn from all the loud and angry screams of consumers to fix it up and make Windows 9 what Windows 8 should have been. Hopefully the hit to their consumers confidence from this won't sink them permanently.

Forget it. They had a chance after XP and failed. Most company's are just
ugrading to win7 now. Win 8 will be years away.
Win phones needed to be top notch and cheap to gain needed market share.
Price point to high on unproven product and technology.
I used microsoft for 30 years but won't be first in line to get a phone or win 8
They are heading down the IBM path 20 years ago before they got beat on the desktop.
Do the numbers 500-600 million Androids, 200 million phones.
They should do a reality show for the next head of Microsoft.
Wish them the best but they have a long uphill battle.

Hope your new box has spellcheck...

The low price will be for the RT version with an arm processor and the higher price will be for Pro model with true Win8, Intel CPU and other better specs. So they'll have it at both specs and price ranges.

Until the end of the year (or was that January?), upgrade prices from xp will only be $40 and from Vista or 7 they'll only be $15. Still not worth half that? I'm not incredibly interested in 8 but for $15 on my new laptop, it'll be hard to pass up.

This shows how out of touch Ballmer is. The days of MS steamrolling the competition are over. They have yet again arrived late to the arty and lacking innovative, creative ideas.

Bing vs google - fail
Win8 (mobile) vs IOS vs Android - fail
Hyper-V SCVMM2012 vs VMware - I'll have my opinion in about a month after I complete Hyper-V training and have more exposure.

The only thing MS has going for themselves are Office suite, Windows Server OS, and XBox - they need to narrow their focus on wat they are actually good at before they lose dominance in those markets too.

"surface" ... really? the same marketing person that came up with "metro" probably came up with this...

MS has been synonomous with "lack of creative innovation" for most consumers (see lack of development for windows mobile, the diff iterations of windows XP), with the exception being in the space of gaming (see success of xbox, xbox 360, etc).

a "me too" device isn't going to get people to swap over to a brand they really have no more loyalty anymore. especially not with a name like "surface."

Microsoft shoots itself in the foot too often anymore. Why would anyone buy a new computer right now knowing that this new operating systems is looming over their heads? So if you were planning on buying a laptop or desktop with a MS operating system you are now in a circling pattern. Do I or don't I buy this now? So if you are a hardware manufacturer where does that leave you? Potential customers have just been told, in all reality, to wait until the new OS comes out.
Then you add to that the fact that Windows operating systems are suspect at best when introduced because of all the bloated crap that comes with it, if you do wait and buy after the new OS is available in your new PC, you may find out it's a turd or you may find out you like it. If it floats in the toilet then MS just lost another customer for life. Why do companies like MS insist on continuously introducing new software that makes no significant advances for the end user? I've never had and SP machine crash except for a virus once. XP is the most stable OS by this company and they should use that as a basis for the new software. Instead they have to be flighty and get every bell and whistle and hope for the best. The attitude that we'll fix the issues as they pop up sickens me. You see it in almost all software introduced just because there is a rush to market. And what sickens me most is the fact that there are *****s that flock to have the newest gimmick and they are the root of all this crappy software. I use XP because it came with the machine, once XP updates are no longer available I will start using linux machines. I've come to a realization that I just need to make the switch, I've put it off too long.

Why even would you? W7 is pretty much 10,000 times better then XP. XP has been overrated, leave the nostalgia.

I was on the "Hate Windows 8 bandwagon" until it gave my laptop a new lease of life (AMD-E450 based) Windows 8 is a tablet OS, no denying, and I will purchase a tablet because of that.

The real issues with WIndows 8, seem to be drivers for me so far, alot of my windows 7 stuff doesn't work correctly. But since its no even released to public yet I cant really complain (I have MSDN account).