Update: The price was "made up" by the store as discovered by Techie Buzz. We're still no closer to knowing how much these devices actually cost, with the company releasing a statement (below) that the prices are just placeholders. We're glad that's out of the way.
“Our customers are very interested in pre-ordering these products, so we have set a high preliminary pricing for the line-up so that they may be able to pre-order them.
Just to clarify, we have not received any pricing from Microsoft regarding MRSP or purchasing net cost, and any people who have booked the Surface at this high price will of course have their order adjusted before any product is shipped. So we’re not going to overcharge anyone for being an early adopter.”
When the surface was announced there was and still is speculation over what the appropriate retail price will be, and we originally assumed the price of the cheaper Windows RT model would be around £400 ($620), but according to Swedish retail website, Webhallen.com, we seemed to have got that wrong.
The Swedish site has the ARM-based Windows RT tablet with 32GBs of space priced at £648 ($1000) – this model is meant to be the cheaper model. However, there are explanations for the unusually high price point; for one, Sweden’s tax costs are higher for electronic devices, which means that we could be expecting to see the device at £599, which is also the price of the iPad’s higher-end model – but despite that, do you feel the price is right for Microsoft’s new tablet?
The price for the higher-end, non-ARM-based Windows 8 pro tablet is £1,500 ($2,300) for the 128GB model and £1,200 ($1,900) for the 64GB version according to Webhallen. It does feel like we’re spending a lot more just to stay in relevance with the latest applications and features, rather than for hardware and peripherals, so you could say that we could be overpaying for the experience surface will give us.
Sure, Windows 8 and Windows RT are full operating systems and are built for commercial applications which means that it doesn't need to compete with the price points of other devices, but should the Windows RT model be cheaper? We believe that Windows 8 and Windows RT are best enjoyed on touch-enabled devices, but the price may prove to be the game-changer in Microsoft’s Surface success if it matches the Swedish pricing.
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