Today's Ask Me Anything session on Reddit with the Microsoft Surface team revealed a number of interesting facts about the upcoming Surface Pro tablet, which we reviewed on Tuesday, and will go on sale on Saturday in the US and Canada.
The AMA session included word that the speakers on the Surface Pro have gotten a boost compared to the earlier Surface RT tablet. The team stated:
Yes, the speakers are different in Pro. They are higher powered because there is more space in the Pro. At the same time, we are making updates to RT to improve the speaker performance there too.
The team also said that the Surface Pro could load other operating systems besides Windows 8. The team stated, "Like other Windows 8 machines, you can access BIOS settings and turn off secure boot, enabling you to load other OSes."
One question asked about the included stylus that will be sold with all Surface Pro tablets. The Surface team stated that the pen can "register 210 (1024) levels of pressure.". In another answer, the team said:
... the Cleartype Display tech has a very thin optical stack which gets your pen tip closer to your ink. We also do some secret sauce to maximize the accuracy of the pen.. Basically every Surface Pro on the manufacturing line gets its own unique multipoint non-linear pen calibration.
One issue that has been brought out in the reviews of the Surface Pro is that it its 10.6 inch screen has a high resolution which means that it has to be scaled to 150 percent for the desktop UI. One person wanted to keep this percentage on the Surface Pro but also use scaling at 100 percent on an external display but currently Windows 8 does not allow this to happen. The Surface team stated, "The Windows team is aggressively working on this feature to fix this for all high resolution Windows devices. We don’t have a date yet to share, so sorry."
Yet another question asked about the possibility of the Surface tablets getting some kind of 3G or 4G wireless support. The team's response was that users could connect a wireless modem to the Surface, along with enabling tethering support with a Windows Phone device.
The Surface team made a slight dig at Apple's product lineup with the answer to a question on how the Surface stacks up to competitors, saying, "Surface Pro is perfect for the person that wants a MacBook Air and an iPad, but doesn’t want the weight or hassle of both devices. We didn’t skimp on the performance you need to run a business but gave it to you in a very portable package."
Source: Reddit
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