Surface Hub 2: Microsoft's pricey whiteboard gets a sequel Microsoft confirmed a refresh for its Surface Hub line last night, with new hardware likely to ship sometime in 2019. In a video heavy on a dramatic orchestral music and hints of new Windows interfaces, but somewhat light on detail, Microsoft showed off the newest edition of the overpriced whiteboard business collaboration …
"Have you tried turning the whiteboard off and using an erasable marker..."
How long before someone tries writing on it with a (possibly not erasable) marker? or pokes at it with a biro? So many of the screens in a previous job had little blue and black poke marks all over them...
If only that was the case.
Our sales director wants one, for reasons I don't yet fully grasp. They have a screen in there that is larger than this thing, and they have laptops. It's a "no" from me, but I imagine i'll be installing one next quarter.
I think he enjoyed "minority report" and fancies him some of this.
I'd like to see some successful use cases, filmed in the actual environment they were used in, instead of compressing an entire product development into a few minutes of dramatic video.
What was presented is far too simplistic and requires significant C-level corporate vision, rather than a few SharePoint site collections splattered around the company network.
>What was presented is far too simplistic
Agree, from what I read elsewhere, I suspect it was simplistic because the new features are in typical MS fashion largely unusable.
For example, that wall of four screens is supposed to be four Surface Hub 2's tiled together. I expect, that much effort is needed to get the Surface Hub 2's to co-ordinate their displays and processing; as no one at MS would have played with Cube World.
Which brings us to another point, if this is Win10 then why isn;t this functionality in the mainstream Win10 build: I have a Win10 tablet, just touch it to my laptop/desktop/tablet screen and it's automatically shared.
Another example, see that 'flipchart' spun from portrait to landscape, note the camera, not only did it spin, but it was also not integrated into the bezel. For the amount of money MS want, I would expect two cameras in the bezel, with automatic switching based on auto-sensed orientation. But then once again, whilst I like the way they rotated the screen contents, why is this not part of mainstream Win10.
Interestingly (sorta) enough the competing Cisco spark boards do the seamless (sometimes) transfer thing. All spark apps (win, ios etc) emit an ultrasonic tone that when picked up by a Spark board offer to switch or include the meeting and content on the spark board.
When it works its cool (Chromecast for webex) when it doesnt (eg custom audio drivers in Windows BORK it).
The downside is that the Spark app pretty much does exactly the same thing as the Webex app. why 2 are needed I have not a clue.
>The downside is that the Spark app pretty much does exactly the same thing as the Webex app. why 2 are needed I have not a clue.
That's changing - it's a legacy of Cisco buying things in, rather than organically growing a mutually compatible ecosystem.
This, apparently, is happening soon(tm)
Just entering construction phase of a government agency project where we have project management and Intranet on SharePoint, PowerBI dashboards, BIM models and 3D CAD drawings. Tehy've bought into VR to help the residents of the new construction plan their workspace, and they'll buy into these sorts of displays for meetings...because, well there's lots of meetings, and these things are proven to get execs more excited than powerpoint...FACT!
"I'd like to see some successful use cases"
Successful use-case? Sure. Every time the clicker fails a user leaps from their seat to prod a screen with an excited finger ... to advance to the next page of their PowerPoint presentation.
"Microsoft is an innovative, forward-thinking company which understands productivity, you can trust your investment in us and our other products."
Take note the product is tentatively to be released in 2019. Anything can happen between now and that time.
>"you can trust your investment in us and our other products."
Well, I'm specifically targeting Lumia 950 owners with that strapline.
Indeed, during the one day's Surface Hub training I had, I raised this very issue with the MS team. Much sucking of teeth, shuffling of feet, before eventually "yeah, maybe best not pitch this to a customer with a Windows Phone"
We've got 3 of the 84" screens and 11 of the 55" ones, and they're great. You can connect wirelessly, or with cables, when you schedule the meeting, the room is invited to it and the Surface just becomes a medium for the meeting to happen in. It's part of the Skype conference, so everyone can see what's presented, you can see and hear the people who aren't in the room. Used properly, they're actually a really good collaboration tool.
*I'm not paid by Microsoft, but am entirely open to bribery..
>We've got 3 of the 84" screens and 11 of the 55" ones, and they're great.
I'm sorry, but if you actually used one and know what you're talking about, you should be disqualified from posting in this thread. How can other posters feel smug bashing it anymore when you show up with actual facts?
I wonder how this works better than your standard big screen if you're using it to display remote conferences; I've known people to use big TVs and a camera for that, which is cheaper. If the processing directly on the screen does help, what does it provide that using a windows computer connected to a similar screen doesn't do. Finally, does anyone actually touch the screen, because I'm going to go on record and say that I don't want to deal with an 84-inch touch screen.
I wonder how this works better than your standard big screen if you're using it to display remote conferences.
The last company I worked for had some weird video conferencing system (that was probably a competitor to Cisco) that you could dial into from any of the meeting rooms, providing said room had a PC and a screen in it. It mostly worked for conference calls, and sharing a screen worked more or less as you would expect. Where it didn't work was trying to use the whiteboard during a conference call that was invariable located next to one of the screens (or when it wasn't, impossible to read anything that was actually written).
The current company I work for basically uses Google Hangouts for conference calls, which is about as cheap and as shit as you can get. We have the same problems as before with regards to viewing the whiteboard remotely, as well as a raft of new problems with feedback from the screen-shared TV interfering with the audio quality and the terrible UI of Hangouts.
So I can definitely see a use case for a whiteboard/conference call/presentation board in one handy package. Given that half our team like to use Macs as their day to day machines (what weirdos, eh?), I'm not sure whether this would be it.
In our company (well, in our division), we equate a revenue generator's time at $15/minute == $15/minute lost opportunity* at each time solving badly setup AV in meeting rooms. I could predict a direct correlation between 'IT savings' (i.e. reduced overhead) on investment in proper installation and training that then gets passed on to the revenue generating part of the organization as a reduction in margin.
*10 participants waiting 10 minutes to sort out the AV before every meeting can start = $1500 lost opportunity** / compressed project time frame / late delivery / corner cutting to take account of the time / rework because of corner cutting / employee extra work after hours to make up the time / employee burn out ... it can add up**
***8 meetings a month x 12 months = $144,000***
***individual results may vary
We sell them. I've sold a couple.
They're really nice bits of kit, no mistake. They also make sense if you're in the ecosystem.
However, I would suggest the use case is fairly narrow - if you're doing truly collaborative whiteboarding across different sites, and you need an excellent hand drawing capability, then they're bang on the money. Software planning, marketing/advertising, engineering, etc etc.
If your use case is to just webex/teleconf, and batter the snot out of people with slideware, then just get a Cisco Spark board because it's a damn sight cheaper.
>However, I would suggest the use case is fairly narrow - if you're doing truly collaborative whiteboarding across different sites, and you need an excellent hand drawing capability, then they're bang on the money.
The problem is that many of those doing this are small companies who can't justify the large expense. Now if all this functionality was within a normal 'tablet' (I'm thinking of a 19~24" device such as the Dell XPS-18 - no successor product spotted as yet) then things might be different.
Raspberry PiWall is not near interactive etc as Surface Hub ...then again, it is not "$21,999 respectively". Not even close. Beside, modular design of PiWall allows using hundreds of screens in video wall (at least in theory: last news from site is "Working on a large scale wall (300 screens) for a private client").
http://piwall.co.uk/
I do not want to be the tech who gets called in when marketing can't do their presentation on that one.
In related news, over a decade ago I worked at a client that had a setup I called the "War Room" (as in the movie "War Games") with a high wall equipped with a few dozen large screens showing everything from CNN to stock and commodity prices.
It belonged to a grocery supermarket chain.
I have implemented them in a previous role and I plan to do so again.
What I find amusing is organisations that have spent big money on a VC system, with the touch panel, the cables poking out of the middle; the extra microphone & speakers; the mini rack of stuff you need to run it - and then at the other end or the room, or behind the dropdown screen, is the Whiteboard and there are the attendees taking photos and trying to figure out how to use both at once.
I like some of the features of Googles, but the scope is more limited and you cannot present the screen and the room at the same time.
Version 1 comes with 84" (which is apparently no longer being produced), so if I have two ot three side by side, I wonder how using them as a whiteboard will work?
I've seen that somewhere before ...
... Oh right! I've remembered it! It was called the Microsoft Surface (the coffee table)! It was big, cost $$$, had a custom version of (Vista then, 10 now), and was a failure! And folks who have bought these table things are off w/o support!
I thought I heard something about history repeating itself before.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
