Not a popular and trendy thing anymore, but Microsoft launches the Surface 3 and it is powered by a quad-core Atom x7 Z8700 1.6GHz SoC. Staring at 499 USD you'll receive a version with 64GB storage... Microsoft Surface 3 launches with quad-core Atom x7 CPU
Some of the specs are nice, the screen, 10 point touch, pressure sensitive pen, kick stand, but Cherry Trail has not shown any big performance over current Bay Trail SoC's. I just do not agree with the $499 price tag, when you count into the mix only 2gb of ram, 64gb of storage(which will not be 64gb, most likely only be 2/3's of it if lucky), that will be eaten up fast with all of Windows 8.1's background services.
Same as what vbetts said... And knowing Windows it'll pile up more sh!t over time and run out of space soon. I've seen it happen with Terra counterpart, nifty little things
I agree the specs look good. With my 32gb pro dell tablet it had over 6gb free so I can see the 64gb having at least 12gb free. I just watched a review of the original surface pro and the guy said to just purchase the 128gb model Plus to me 2gb really isn't enough for 64bit.
It looks really interesting. I hope that the prices won't be as inflated in EU as in case of Surface Pro.
Interested in seeing how this runs with an Atom quad-core. My experience with Atom processors is not very positive...
Since Bay Trail, Atom performance has jumped up significantly. This one is based of of Cherry Trail, which does not have a huge performance margin over Bay Trail but still should put up a decent enough fight.
If I gave you two systems to use for general purpose tasks, one an i3 and one a modern atom, you would be unable to tell them apart.
One thing that I seriously do not understand is the fact that Microsoft designed a new way to install Windows that leaves the files compressed in a separate partition, and they don't even utilize it in their own devices. As an example, the 64GB Surface 3 has (if I recall) about 35GB of free space. This means that Windows and Microsoft Office is taking over 50% of the space available. Meanswhile, if you use WIMBoot, you would have over 50GB available (No joke, folks). The only issue I can see with using WIMBoot is that factory reset would not include any updates, not that it's any different than a standard factory reset. Perhaps it would be difficult to implement OS upgrades (e.g. Windows 8.1 to Windows 10) without risking the chance of botching the install completely. So, the Surface 3 without WIMBoot has ~35GB of free space. If they were to use WIMBoot, you'd have over 50GB. Makes no sense to me, personally. Here's an example with Windows 10 installed on a 64GB VHD:
