Microsoft Surface RT available in Singapore
It is just two more days to April 5th, before the Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet would be available in Singapore at stores islandwide. The 10.6-inch tablet and its accessories will be sold at Challenger stores, and I am sure, soon to follow at other electronics retailers such as Courts or Best Denki.
The 32GB Surface RT is priced at S$668, which is slightly more than the base 16GB Wi-Fi fourth-generation iPad (S$658). The 64GB version is priced at S$798. If you were to purchase it with the snazzy keyboard cover as shown below, that would set you back by approximately another $130, with the bundle prices of the tablet and the Touch Cover keyboard accessory together, at S$798 for the 32GB version and S$938 for the 64GB. While 32gb does come with a lot of space, don’t forget that the Surface RT only has 16gb of free space available, with the rest taken up by the operating system.
Surface houses a 1.3GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU as its brains and comes in both 32GB and 64GB varieties. Its microSD card slot supports up to 128GB cards and the tablet includes 2GB of RAM. It has 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth 4.0, a gyroscope, an accelerometer, and a built-in compass, but no GPS.
The keyboard accessories are available separately at S$168 for the Touch Cover and S$183 for the Type Cover. You can also purchase a VGA adapter or even an additional power supply at S$58 each. As the Surface RT is one of the few tablets that come with full-blown Microsoft Office, it anchors itself well as an enterprise level tool. For them, the Office software built-in is the difference. Unlike the office apps on the iPad and Android tablets, the Office software on this Windows tablet will make sure your Powerpoint files look right without all the screw-ups when opened with third-party apps.
Although Microsoft offers two versions of the Surface tablet–the Pro and the RT model–in some countries, it’s only selling the Windows RT model in Singapore now. There’s no word on the availability of the Pro version, which uses a more powerful Intel Core-i processor, and would be equipped to run full-fledged windows applications (those that end in .exe). ARM-based tablets running Windows RT will only support Windows 8 apps from the Windows Store. With the Windows Store not being as developed as the Android and iOS counterpart, it will take some time before mobile developers flock over to create or migrate their applications across. That is disappointing as I do know of a few people who were keen on the Surface Pro which truly merges the PC and the tablet.