Microsoft Reveals Major Price Increase For All Surface PCs (windowscentral.com) 46
Microsoft has sharply raised prices across its Surface lineup as RAM and component costs keep climbing. "Both its midrange and flagship Surface lines are now significantly more expensive than they were just a few weeks ago, with the flagship Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 now starting at $500 more than they launched at in 2024," reports Windows Central. From the report: The Surface Pro 12-inch, which was previously Microsoft's cheapest modern Surface PC at $799, now starts at $1,049. The flagship Surface Pro 13-inch, which originally launched for $999, now starts at an eyewatering $1,499. It's the same story for the Surface Laptop lines, with the entry-level 13-inch model originally priced at $899, now starting at $1,149. The 13.8-inch flagship Surface Laptop launched at $999, but now costs $1,499, with the 15-inch model now starting at $1,599. This means that Microsoft's midrange devices now cost more than the flagships did when they launched in 2024.
[...] Microsoft has raised prices for all SKUs on offer, meaning the high end models are now more expensive too. A top end Surface Laptop 15-inch with Snapdragon X Elite, 64GB RAM and 1TB SSD storage now costs a staggering $3,649. To compare, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro, 64GB RAM, and 1TB SSD is $3,299, and that comes with a significantly better display and much more power under the hood.
[...] Microsoft has raised prices for all SKUs on offer, meaning the high end models are now more expensive too. A top end Surface Laptop 15-inch with Snapdragon X Elite, 64GB RAM and 1TB SSD storage now costs a staggering $3,649. To compare, the 16-inch MacBook Pro with an M5 Pro, 64GB RAM, and 1TB SSD is $3,299, and that comes with a significantly better display and much more power under the hood.
Fools (Score:2)
Pricing their hardware out of existence by chasing the "AI" dragon.
That's not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The price of ram has quadrupled. And it's not going to come back down in price anytime soon. Even after the AI bubble bursts and the winners are decided and demand comes back down you will not see prices come back down probably for 8 to 10 years.
That's because like everything there will be collusion between the manufacturers and eventually there will be enough Democrats in charge of Congress and various attorney general positions that they will go after the ram producers and give them a little slap on the wrist and make them lower prices. But it's America's political system is so fucked up that's going to take a long time and Europe just does not have enough weight to force something like that. If the European Union could act as a United Force they probably could but it's too easy for one corrupt politician in one of the European Union states to screw that up. Although without Victor orban that might be a little bit harder it's still a problem...
You have a double whammy of out of control demand and inelastic pricing caused by zero competition in any markets because we stopped enforcing antitrust law. Like out for the longest time flat panels were stupidly expensive even though the technology had come down in price until the Democrats in America got around to smacking the panel manufacturers around a little bit.
Re:That's not the problem (Score:5, Informative)
It is a supply and demand problem.
Since it requires such a huge amount of capital to ramp up production, manufacturers are loathe to ramp up production too quickly for what might turn out to be a bubble, so meanwhile there is excess demand.
This will eventually correct, and if it does turn out that AI was just a bubble, or even if it turns out to be useful but the rate of growth slows down, there will be an excess of memory and processors and we can enjoy cheap prices for a while.
If you want to help lower prices, invest in chip fabs, or stop using AI.
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or stop using AI
How? Okay no I'm not that helpless. I know how to look for things. Let Me Google That For Myself.... oh look.
AI Overview
Stopping AI usage requires a conscious, phased approach: delete apps, utilize browser extensions to block AI, and return to manual methods for writing, research, and design. Actively choose human alternatives, such as using traditional search engines, sketching on paper, or brainstorming with colleagues to break reliance, suggests Charity Digital.
I'm only being partially facetious here. W
Re: (Score:2)
1: Click on the three dots on the upper right and select Settings.
2: Click on the Search Engine on the left
3: Click on Manage Search Engine and Site Search
4: Click "Add" next to Site Search" and input the following information:
Name: Google - No AI
Shortcut: www.google.com
URL with %s in place of query: https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
5: Click Add
6: Click the 3 vertica
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It is a supply and demand problem.
Since it requires such a huge amount of capital to ramp up production, manufacturers are loathe to ramp up production too quickly for what might turn out to be a bubble, so meanwhile there is excess demand.
This will eventually correct, and if it does turn out that AI was just a bubble, or even if it turns out to be useful but the rate of growth slows down, there will be an excess of memory and processors and we can enjoy cheap prices for a while.
If you want to help lower prices, invest in chip fabs, or stop using AI.
Either that, or if they are too slow in increasing capacity, China might just build a bit and eventually take over the market. If RAM manufacturers are thinking of "if we do nothing, we don't risk money building another factory and we earn money hand over fist as it currently is" they might be in for a rough awakening.
...or they're colluding (Score:2)
It is a supply and demand problem. Since it requires such a huge amount of capital to ramp up production, manufacturers are loathe to ramp up production too quickly for what might turn out to be a bubble, so meanwhile there is excess demand. This will eventually correct, and if it does turn out that AI was just a bubble, or even if it turns out to be useful but the rate of growth slows down, there will be an excess of memory and processors and we can enjoy cheap prices for a while. If you want to help lower prices, invest in chip fabs, or stop using AI.
I call bullshit. Everything you said is logical and SHOULD be true, but I don't believe it. I think the major manufacturers are colluding because it's much more profitable to cooperate with this endless demand than take a risk to crush your competition. We're seeing it across more and more industries. It's the same reason food prices are hiking even higher than the Trump tariffs and never coming down. In my area, Eggs are still literally 2x the price they were 4 years ago, despite the Avian flu issue s
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If "Microsoft didn't do any AI crap whatsoever" we (most likely) WOULDN'T HAVE THIS BUBBLE IN THE FIRST PLACE. They're THE most significant investor in OpenAI (certainly the ones that had to proffit the most, by far) and somewhere in the second place as far as hyperscalers go (usually 2, might be 1 depending what metrics you have, what and where you count, install versus gro
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The price of ram has quadrupled. And it's not going to come back down in price anytime soon.
Really? Can you prove it? Let me show you how to do that.
The Tweakers Pricewatch [tweakers.net] Is a wonderful tool in Dutch of the local market. It makes it easy to evaluate the Dutch market for almost any kind of electronic device, like the WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD. [tweakers.net]
Clicking on the first product link on that page [tweakers.net] lists all the Dutch shops selling the SSD with prices, including shipping. Scroll down, and at the bottom of the list of all the shops is a stock market style historical graph of both the lowest and the average
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From what I'm looking at https://pcpartpicker.com/trend... [pcpartpicker.com] they're close enough.
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My 13 year old FreeBSD box runs just fine. I don't have to throw away my hardware, and buy new, just because Microsoft, or Apple, decides it's time.
I don't care much for the planned obsolescence model that keep people on an upgrade treadmill, for the sake of "features" that nobody wants.
I don't care much for the mountains of e-waste the upgrade treadmill causes either.
ARM PCs can't cost an arm, let alone arm & leg (Score:2)
Pricing their hardware out of existence by chasing the "AI" dragon.
It would be one thing if they just hiked the prices of their Wintel Surfaces, since that one is a good reference platform and is actually valuable
However, hiking prices of their Snapdragon laptops is an asinine move, and that platform seems to be going the way of Surface RT:
blame (Score:3, Informative)
Re: blame (Score:4, Funny)
Hey if it shifts people off Windows... this is a sort of "winning" I could actually get behind!
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Exactly.
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They won't go Linux, the hardware prices are the problem not the Operating System price. Being more memory efficient will only push people so far, most would settle for a slower OS than spend money on more expensive ram or learning an entirely new environment.
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$500-600 for a new entry-level Macintosh laptop (Neo) or desktop (Mini) is quite reasonable, and the hardware on offer is suitable for most people's needs.
Yes, you can get Windows laptop for $300, but the quality and specs of what you're getting at that price is... questionable.
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It is an interesting question what Apple will do. They likely have long-term contracts as well as much better than average negotiating power. Apple might be able to hold the line on pricing and in doing so gain market share. The pricing for Neo was set well after the spike in prices, so they must have some confidence that they can keep the price steady. Maybe the same for their other products.
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The big AI corporations and Trump are complicit.
The corporations are sucking up to Trump, lobbying against regulations for AI safety or against data centre buildouts, and Trump is doing what they want.
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Oh man... are you going to have your mind blown trying to separate AI and Trump when you visit https://www.ai.gov/ [ai.gov]
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Wow, Macs are so expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, Macs are so expensive (Score:4, Informative)
Benchmarks aren't real world performance (Score:5, Informative)
But if you go outside of the stuff Apple made specific optimizations for things get much less Rosy very quick.
To be clear there's nothing wrong with what apple is doing. They made a purpose-built computer for specific tasks and you get very very good performance and very good battery life if you're doing those specific tasks. Think of the old commodore Amiga computers it's like that. They could do all sorts of amazing things in certain spaces but they were kind of pants as general computers.
If you want a general purpose computer you're not going to beat what AMD and Intel has on the desktop right now. You trade a little bit of battery life to performance for that though. Depending on how much money you spend and how well built the laptop you get is sometimes you trade a lot.
Of course the absolute shit show that is Windows 11 isn't helping matters though. But that's another matter entirely and Linux is a viable option for a lot of things.
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"the way Macs get those numbers is by heavily optimizing their CPUs and the software that runs on them."
Intel and AMD also optimize for specific very large customers.
Re:Wow, Macs are so expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
And underpowered [everymac.com].
Precisely zero people buy Surface devices because they are low cost or high performance. They have always positioned themselves on their unique formfactor. In fact they make a pretty damn shitty general purpose laptop. The Surface Laptop is the only WTF in their lineup that truly has never offered any compelling reason to buy - if you were after a normal laptop it was one of the worst value for money devices out there. At least their other devices were unique.
Apple does not have a "slate" formfactor device in its line-up. The comparison is silly. And Lenovo and Dell seem to not have a comparable formfactor under $2k, while hp abandoned it outright.
Re: Wow, Macs are so expensive (Score:2)
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So do I. I've used Surface devices since the Pro 3 precisely because I don't use it enough as a laptop to justifying needing a "work station" laptop, and I don't want to carry around a separate tablet. It's sort of an ideal portable formfactor for those who use an actual normal computer to do their heavy lifting.
I do like it a lot more than 2-in-1 formfactors (where the screen folds back on itself) because they are bloody heavy and make pretty poor tablets.
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And underpowered [everymac.com].
Precisely zero people buy Surface devices because they are low cost or high performance. They have always positioned themselves on their unique formfactor. In fact they make a pretty damn shitty general purpose laptop. The Surface Laptop is the only WTF in their lineup that truly has never offered any compelling reason to buy - if you were after a normal laptop it was one of the worst value for money devices out there. At least their other devices were unique.
Apple does not have a "slate" formfactor device in its line-up. The comparison is silly. And Lenovo and Dell seem to not have a comparable formfactor under $2k, while hp abandoned it outright.
On the contrary, the Surface laptops are more of a reference platform that Microsoft built to show PC makers how to hold their own against Apple. IMO, aside from Windows 11, it does a fine job. It comes w/ a detachable keyboard and a pen, and can be used just like an iPad can, as well as a mac. If one needed to get someone's actual signature for a document, this is what one could use
I bought mine some years ago just around $1.1k, so it's not quite accurate to call them expensive, unless one is comparin
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The Surface Laptops are *NOT* detachable. We have one here (Surface Laptop 6). It's not even a 2-in-1 device, it can't even fold the screen back on itself. It's very much a barebones laptop that works only in a standard clamshell formfactor. You're thinking of the Surface Book, or the Surface Laptop-Studio. Those are the recent "reference" devices.
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Yeah a very different and far more experimental device than a Surface Laptop I was talking about as the only WTF in their lineup.
Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
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I have been an unwilling customer of Microsoft for decades. I started using Slackware linux before the kernel even reached version 1.2. I still avoid Windows if I can.
That said, I actually like Microsoft Surface. Every now and then, Microsoft does something right, and they did with Surface. I'm not ready to buy one at the new prices, but you won't hear me dissing the product.
Arm laptops for Linux (Score:2)
Their iCore based Surfaces are great - I have a Surface Pro 9. However, if one gets one of their Snapdragon based laptops, one is SOL. Due to the chipset or something, one can't even get Linux running on those.
I think that Fydetab or Tuxedo or System 76 is what Linux users should buy, if they want something that runs Linux ootb. Not sure whether those companies will work w/ you in installing one's favorite distro, be it Trisquel or Omarchy or, dare I suggest it, FreeBSD?
Welp (Score:2)
Probably should buy some Apple stock
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You could ask Lieutenant Dan. He invested in it, apparently.
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Yeah... Microsoft just made their laptops so expensive that the Apple Macbook Air suddenly looks like a VALUE option in comparison?
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Supply chain disruption leads to sticky inflation (Score:2)
Apple is like many other companies right now especially tech.
The obvious hits like:
oil (base ingredient in a lot of tech.)
mem and storage chips being reserved for AI buildouts. ( Chip runs years in advance are being purchased already. )
Supplier chains also jacking up prices.
Supplly chains having induced delays. Restricting product volumes.
Tarifs in USA and now around the world.
The problem is that all of these actual hits will be converted into margin once these pressures subside. This is when price godgin
Microslop (Score:1)
How will the NFL survive? (Score:2)
Don't See as Many Suraces in the Wild Anymore (Score:2)