Anand pimps out the Surface Pro

[Uncensored2008]

With a 256GB SSD. They strip a 64GB model and put in the large drive.

Very cool.

AnandTech | Microsoft Surface Pro mSATA SSD Upgrade: Dangerous but Successful

 

[Cambo]

Not Sure its worth the effort. We have drop box and an sd slot and a usb port for hard drives

 

[riggi]

I'm not sure I would call it "successful" when the capacitive touch screen no longer works.
There are some tasks that you have to you your finger(s) for and the pen won't suffice (e.g. pinch to zoom, scrolling when inking)

You now need to always have a mouse in order to use your "tablet". You will also always need to have an external keyboard as you won't be able to use the onscreen keyboard for 2 handed typing. Yes, you could tap out letters using the pen, but that would be painfully slow.

They've basically converted into a non-touch windows 8 laptop with a digitizer.

 

[hotphil]

I admire anyone who attempts such upgrades. But I agree, it can hardly be called "successful" if it's that broken now. He might be able to fit twice as many movies/photos/whatever on it, but has less than halved the ease of interacting with the device.

 

[mitchellvii]

Um, I have a 32 GB SDCard and a 500 GB external USB 3.0 hard drive. Can't see why this is necessary.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Um, I have a 32 GB SDCard and a 500 GB external USB 3.0 hard drive. Can't see why this is necessary.

I would never do this to my machine, but it's fun to see what others can pull off - or fail at. One thing this shows is that the home user can't really do any upgrades.

 

[Codevine]

Um, I have a 32 GB SDCard and a 500 GB external USB 3.0 hard drive. Can't see why this is necessary.

'Cause both are rather slow and having to take a external HDD with you can be bugging. I wouldn't need more than 128GB on my Notebook/Tablet/whatever, but there sure are people out there that need them and would rather want to have a 256 GB SSD.

Not being able to switch the SSD or anything else definitely is a drawback (that most tablets/ultrabooks have today).

 

[Ruffles]

Does anyone have experience with designing devices like this? Why would MS (and Apple etc.) design products so that they can't be serviced? I understand you don't want to warranty devices that users mess with but there a simple ways to determine if a device has been tampered with.

This just seems like a fail all the way around to me. You would think it would be a positive to be able to advertise that the battery or drive could be replaced or upgraded (even if you had to send it in). Unless MS has some magic machine that can open these up, they won't be repairing any defective ones so they loose money on everyone unit that it replaced under warranty. They have no chance to recoup money via refurbished sales. Finally, they loose the potential revenue in selling replacement parts.

I just don't understand why companies do this.

 

[mitchellvii]

My usb 3.0 HDD is far from slow. I can play MW3 off it and it loads as fast as my old 7600rpm drive ever did. All your apps load into ram memory anyway so the SSD doesn't help them except for first load.

 

[Wayne Orwig]

Does anyone have experience with designing devices like this? Why would MS (and Apple etc.) design products so that they can't be serviced? I understand you don't want to warranty devices that users mess with but there a simple ways to determine if a device has been tampered with.

This just seems like a fail all the way around to me. You would think it would be a positive to be able to advertise that the battery or drive could be replaced or upgraded (even if you had to send it in). Unless MS has some magic machine that can open these up, they won't be repairing any defective ones so they loose money on everyone unit that it replaced under warranty. They have no chance to recoup money via refurbished sales. Finally, they loose the potential revenue in selling replacement parts.

I just don't understand why companies do this.

I suspect it has a lot to do with the lack of mechanical design experience. You can be sure that those designers are now working on simplifying the design. And if Microsoft sticks with it, they will simplify those bizarre and complex designs.

 

[J515OP]

Much cheaper to manufacture that way and allows smaller design. At least that is why Apple's devices have become less repairable. Cheaper per unit cost over millions of devices may save more than is saved with repair/refurbished costs for the smaller percent that end up with issues. At least in Apple's case that is. For MS probably first time design issues but the overall design effort is pretty amazing for a first product in an entirely new category for them.