Microsoft’s surprise hardware hit: The Surface Hub

[alizaidi2000]

Microsoft has unveiled a new line of Computers, i suppose you could call them an all-in-one, geared towards the Conference room setting, known as the Surface hub. These computers would be quite convenient in a Conference room environment and can have a number uses as the article mentions

Quote

they offered a smart mix of video conferencing, digital whiteboarding and collaborative working.

 This could be useful for presentations, and other use cases such as seminars.

In the average conference room, old technology is still widely used the article even mentions the most notoriously old technology still used in conference rooms today, VGA.

Quote

meeting rooms are where old technology clings on to the bitter end; VGA ports are still abundant, clunky video conferencing systems are the norm, and for many companies a whiteboard is as high-tech as it gets.

However, i am quite skeptical on 2 things, one being that it is running a custom version of Windows 10, the other being the insane price point for the 2 models available. I am skeptical on the custom Version of windows 10 because since it is a custom version maybe certain programs, other than windows store apps(which are trash), may not run well on this device and the new user interface will be something we will have to get used too, i would have liked to see the Surface hub use a regular version of Windows 10 we are all familiar with. 

 

The price for the Surface Hub is.

Quote

$6,999 for the 55-inch version and $19,999 for the 84-inch version.

The reason why I am skeptical on the price is because, as you can see are honestly quite expensive. Yes i realize that the surface hub has a huge screen which could account for a lot of the cost. However, not all of it, which makes me wonder what specs Microsoft is going to use for the surface pro that they think that it will be worth that price point.

 

Source:http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/microsofts-surface-hub-sales-surprisingly-strong-its-a-huge-hardware-hit/

 

[Sakkura]

I'm not entirely surprised. Getting past all the usual technical issues that waste a lot of time in meetings... that's potentially worth a lot to businesses.

Edited December 13, 2016 by GoodBytes

[goodtofufriday]

I considered buying one of these for the company i work for. They are nice but are simply too expensive for what they are. 

[Guest]

Ayy something you might like @GoodBytes

[alizaidi2000]

1 minute ago, GoodBytes said:

Perfect! Moving and cleaning up... please stand by!

Just wanna say to everyone i have no hard feelings, i just with anyone here i just get really defensive at times.

[GoodBytes]

Apologies to those who participated in this thread and their reply was removed. As this entry was fixed by the OP to meet the Tech News guidelines, I decided to remove some of your posts (which was nice of you to try and help the OP in fixing his thread) just to keep the thread clean and understandable to other readers. If I mistakenly removed your post, I would like to express my apologies, feel free to repost what you said, or PM me, and I'll see in recovering your post. Thank you for your understanding.

[Suika]

4 hours ago, alizaidi2000 said:

Microsoft has unveiled a new line of Computers -

 

No they haven't lol, did you read the article? They released this product over a year ago, the article is talking about how surprising of a success this product is, Microsoft has even stated that a single customer purchased 1,500 units.

[Drak3]

These expensive systems are so expensive for the amount of validation they go through, and the aftermarket equivalents to the hardware are also very expensive.

It's also running a custom version of Windows that is specifically coded and optimized for the hub. We're talking OSX levels of optimization for this product.

[SansVarnic]

Umm OP this product is over a year old. It was first announced as a future product 2+ years ago.

Old news.  

[GoodBytes]

7 minutes ago, SansVarnic said:

Umm OP this product is over a year old. It was first announced as a future product 2+ years ago.

Old news.  

No its not. As MS took FOREVER to actually release it.

Like MS just released this video yesterday:

(Also, looks like it is build or at least assembled in the US, from the video)

[Drak3]

12 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

No its not. As MS took FOREVER to actually release it.

Like MS just released this video yesterday:

(Also, looks like it is build or at least assembled in the US, from the video)

It might not have had a long "public" run, but MS has had the system in the hands of some high profile customers for roughly a year.

[GoodBytes]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It might not have had a long "public" run, but MS has had the system in the hands of some high profile customers for roughly a year.

Yes and? It was put to market, and it is selling well. The news says that for such device, it sales very well.

[Drak3]

Just now, GoodBytes said:

Yes and? It was put to market, and it is selling well. The news says that for such device, it sales very well.

The news says it sells well, and that's it. It's possible (and at the cost, probable) that most sales were from before the "public" launch.

[GoodBytes]

30 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

It might not have had a long "public" run, but MS has had the system in the hands of some high profile customers for roughly a year.

No matter how you put it, it is still sales. The product is selling better than what Microsoft expected. Large orders, means that they are companies that are so interested in the product, they have tested and liked it a lot, so they are putting it in many, or all meeting rooms.

 

The key feature of this product, is that the fanciest model is actually cheap compared to other products, and allows sharing a white board, with Skype conversation between 2 or more devices. This allows teams that are all working for the same product, to communicate together and help each other despite being in different office building in different regions of the world. For example, you can have 2 teams working on a complex product act like 1 team despite one being in Canada and the other in US.

 

They are other similar solutions out there, but they are all much more expensive, more difficult to support due to complexity and despite all this, it is limited.

Really, the Surface Hub is just bringing Microsoft already existing solutions (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Skype, OneDrive, and other enterprise focused products), into 1 package (including computer, speakers, conference room web cam/mic, etc.), with a custom Windows 10 GUI shell for ease of use and high security, all with an online connectivity system, and really good display, multi-touch support and multi-pen support.

 

While it sounds crazy, Facebook is actually using TV-like broadcasting system (but closed, of course) to do meetings between offices in different regions of the world. Kinda of an over-kill solution, but they have full tracking and control on the video quality, and can know where exactly there is a failure.

[Misanthrope]

17 hours ago, Sakkura said:

I'm not entirely surprised. Getting past all the usual technical issues that waste a lot of time in meetings... that's potentially worth a lot to businesses.

As someone who has hold office jobs for a reasonable amount of time and currently has one right now pretty much this: Not a single fucking meeting that required screen sharing or presentations (that's like half of them) went without some sort of issue and most of them you end up looking at shit like this:

Spoiler

 

[AlTech]

18 hours ago, alizaidi2000 said:

Microsoft has unveiled a new line of Computers, i suppose you could call them an all-in-one, geared towards the Conference room setting, known as the Surface hub. These computers would be quite convenient in a Conference room environment and can have a number uses as the article mentions

 This could be useful for presentations, and other use cases such as seminars.

In the average conference room, old technology is still widely used the article even mentions the most notoriously old technology still used in conference rooms today, VGA.

However, i am quite skeptical on 2 things, one being that it is running a custom version of Windows 10, the other being the insane price point for the 2 models available. I am skeptical on the custom Version of windows 10 because since it is a custom version maybe certain programs, other than windows store apps(which are trash), may not run well on this device and the new user interface will be something we will have to get used too, i would have liked to see the Surface hub use a regular version of Windows 10 we are all familiar with. 

 

The price for the Surface Hub is.

The reason why I am skeptical on the price is because, as you can see are honestly quite expensive. Yes i realize that the surface hub has a huge screen which could account for a lot of the cost. However, not all of it, which makes me wonder what specs Microsoft is going to use for the surface pro that they think that it will be worth that price point.

 

Source:http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/12/microsofts-surface-hub-sales-surprisingly-strong-its-a-huge-hardware-hit/

 

@GoodBytes

 

Welcome to 2015.

 

Surface Hub original version came out in 2015. This is merely an update to that original lineup.

[potoooooooo]

7k and 20k isn't that expensive.

 

The really crappy smart boards in schools across the country start at 6k each. The ones that went into my school were 10k each, and they're not as capable as the surface hub should be, given that they're full standalone computers

[captain_to_fire]

Did it received the botched update too?