back to article If you weren't rich enough to buy a Surface before, you may as well let that dream die

Consumers looking to spread the cost of their Surface fix will have to look elsewhere for their fondleslab financing now Microsoft has brought the axe down on the programme. The deal, which was introduced just over a year ago, aped similar options available to iPhone owners by allowing customers to spread the cost of their …

  1. CAPS LOCK

    My heart is borken, I can't get a Surface on tick...

    ... boo hoo, what will I do?

    1. Korev Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: My heart is borken, I can't get a Surface on tick...

      I'm sure ideas will come to the surface

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: My heart is borken, I can't get a Surface on tick...

        > I'm sure ideas will come to the surface

        I don't knew what that is floating on the Surface, but it looks more like raw sewage to me.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: My heart is borken, I can't get a Surface on tick...

      >boo hoo, what will I do?

      Cut out the side of a cornflakes packet and stare at it, besides it will probably be more reliable and no need for system breaking updates.

    3. Fungus Bob

      Re: My heart is borken, I can't get a Surface on tick...

      " boo hoo, what will I do?"

      Live a frustration-free life....

  2. djstardust

    Who would want one anyway?

    Seriously expensive.

    Not enough ports.

    Major quality issues.

    Poor battery life.

    Insides completely glued together and non-upgradeable.

    Many software glitches because M$ can't even get their own software to work with their own hardware.

    No thanks!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who would want one anyway?

      American gamers?

      no offence, just sayin'

      <:o)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Who would want one anyway?

      Someone reading too many websites wrote :

      From someone that actually owns one (a Surface Book 2)

      'Seriously expensive'.

      Yes, although that is a matter of perspective. It's well made, from high quality materials, and quite powerful. And, compared to a Macbook pro or one of the other high end alloy laptops like the HPs and the Razer you're in the same ballpark.

      'Not enough ports'.

      Seems to be a drawback of the ultra flat designs lately and a small USB C dongle gives you plenty more.

      'Major quality issues.'

      This sounds like hearsay or 'want to hearsay'. Mine has proven quite reliable so far. It is true that if you type 'Surface Book problems' into your favorite search engine a lot of hits come up. Now do the same for 'Macbook Pro problems, 'HP Envy problems', 'ASUS Zenbook problems or whatever comes to mind. See a pattern emerging here ?

      'Poor battery life'.

      Where on earth did yo get that from ? The interwebs again ?

      'Insides completely glued together and non-upgradeable.'

      True, but again the only thing still replaceable on a laptop these days is an SSD/HD and maybe some ram. The SSD in a surface book 2 CAN be replaced, but not easily.

      'Many software glitches because M$ can't even get their own software to work with their own hardware'

      Ah, the argumentum ad populum....I wonder where that'd gone to. Many people are reporting it, so it must be true. Define 'many'. And quantify more or less problems than non-MS hardware.

      Admittedly my last reply is a bit facetious. Or pedantic. Or both.

      But it's getting more and more futile to read comments on websites. Not in the least mine !

      'No thanks!'

      You shoud try one. They're quite useful.

      1. werdsmith Silver badge

        Re: Who would want one anyway?

        I judge them by the number of bosses clamouring and insisting that they must have one a few months back, and now those same surfaces are all back stacked on the shelf because they didn't actually like them after all and they had to replace them with new XPS or similar.

      2. BazzF

        Re: Who would want one anyway?

        Entirely agree. I've no love for the Redmond beast, but I bought a Surface Pro 4 for photo editing when away from home.

        It's ideal for that and half the price and weight of an equivalent MacBook. Battery is OK, screen is wonderful and the lack of ports is easily solved.

        I've not had any issues when upgrading (yet) and it runs Capture One Pro will no issues.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Satya Nadella is The Man With The Golden Gum

        > True, but again the only thing still replaceable on a laptop these days is an SSD/HD and maybe some ram. The SSD in a surface book 2 CAN be replaced, but not easily.

        Sounds like Whataboutery to me. It's okay that it's a piece of disposable crap, because lots of other things are almost-as-disposable pieces of crap these days?

        iFixit described the Surface Laptop as a "glue-filled monstrosity" and gave it a 0 (*zero*) out of 10 rating for repairability, let alone upgradeability. That's got to be a new low.

        It's as if they figured they could compete with Apple by copying what they did- the obnoxious and gratuitous lack of repairability- and turning it up to 11.

        1. dvd

          Re: Satya Nadella is The Man With The Golden Gum

          I upgraded my Dell laptop a few months ago to add an SDD and 3G connectivity to it with very little drama other than finding screws to fit.

          1. Lusty

            Re: Satya Nadella is The Man With The Golden Gum

            @Dvd if there is room for screws you have a shitty big old fashioned laptop. Not a fair comparison. Find another ultra slim or convertible that lets you replace componentsnd maybe there's some discussion to be had but the Surface range hits each niche perfectly well and MS replaces hardware with issue for free so you don't need to repair it. iFixit have a vested interest in bashing this stuff, and getting nerds all worked up about lack of screws is their business model. My department of 30 all had new Surface Book or Pro a year ago - zero issues. I don't even know anyone who has had issues and the business has thousands of these. Personally I swapped my Macbook Pro for a Surface Laptop and it's the best move I've made. Better hardware and better software, and the blue laptop even trumps Apple for style.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    American Idiot

    Microsoft have adopted the Apple model, charge more for something, let braindead cretins assume it must be better.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: American Idiot

      Nah, they have taken it to a new level. Obviously, the world according to Redmond (or should that be India) is the lower 48 states only. At least Apple rips off everyone in the world equally.

    2. Mark 85

      Re: American Idiot

      There's a mental lock-in with many consumers and most businesses. Same lock in that IBM had on a lot of people at one time. When stock price becomes more important the buyers and users, MS will be taking the same fall. There's such a thing as too much hubris and MS proved it with the Win10 update.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: American Idiot

      But Warren Buffet himself called out that an iPhone X at USD 1000+ was "underpriced".

      Gotta pay, gotta PAY!

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        Re: American Idiot

        Warren Buffett says the $1,000 iPhone is 'enormously underpriced' despite famously not owning a smartphone

        I can't even begin to understand the assumptions about economics and technology and marginal utility that underlie this kind of confusion.

        Livining inside one's own bubble isn't good.

  4. ratfox
    Devil

    Why US only?

    I suspect this would be because outside of the US, it is illegal to charge such interest rates.

    1. James 51
      Childcatcher

      Re: Why US only?

      The likes of Wonga show it isn't although it should be.

      1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

        Re: Why US only?

        @James51

        Ah, poor old Wonga. NOT. : -)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why US only?

      0% is a pretty good rate.

      19.99% (if it's APR) is comparable to credit cards. And given that it only applies if you've fallen behind with your payments, pretty generous.

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: Why US only?

        19.9% is what PC World Finance charges if you don't fall behind with your repayments.

        Then there are companies like Brighthouse that charge 99.9% APR on a vastly inflated cash price.

      2. MachDiamond Silver badge

        Re: Why US only?

        While 19.99% is similar to many credit cards, the financing programs usually apply the interest rate retroactively if you don't pay off the balance before the end of the 0% period. One day over the line and you wind up owing interest for the last 24 months.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Why US only?

        0% finance is illegal in some places in Europe, like France where it falls foul of "no selling below cost" rules.

        This deal does remind me on one offered in the US some years ago. A dedicated "thin client"-based service was offered, where the user paid something like $100 up front for the hardware (screen, processor, keyboard, so worth much more than $100 at the time) and then was committed to pay for the service for two years of monthly fees. Unfortunately for the business model, the supplier hadn't noticed that such a deal wasn't valid in California, and the subscribers had the legal right to cancel the service at any time. One enterprising person had discovered that the hardware motherboard had an IDE connector on it, and I know several people who "bought" the hardware, cancelled the service straight away, and with the addition of a laptop HDD had a very nice all-in-one PC for well under $200.

        Strangely the deal didn't run for very long...

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Basically what they're saying is...

    ... an 18-month-old Surface is only worth one quarter of its purchase price?

    (Assuming the "upgrade" requires handing back the original device that you've almost paid for)

  6. Florida1920
    Terminator

    You don't cancel a successful program

    If you have to flog your stuff on credit with 0% APR, you probably know it isn't going to be that popular. And, when a 0% APR program fails, you cancel it. M$ has hit the Trifecta: Software: FAIL. Hardware: FAIL. Marketing Program: FAIL.

    1. a_yank_lurker

      Re: You don't cancel a successful program

      I never quite figured out what value a Surface was when there are other Bloat based devices from many others that had as good or better specs at better prices. This is especially true since Slurp is not primarily a hardware manufacturer. Also, the marketing program smelled too much like Rooms-to-Go furniture sales for mediocre, over-priced furniture.

      1. jabuzz

        Re: You don't cancel a successful program

        The screen is the value proposition. Nothing else gets you a retina display with somethimg other than a 16:9 aspect ratio. Well the Google Pixelbook does, but back when I got my Surface Book laster year it was Chromebook Pixels and they maxed out at 64GB of storage. So I went Surface Book and I am basically happy with it and it rarely boots into Windows either running Linux. I admit to not using the pen even though it works, and the Nvidia GPU does not work, but I don't need it so it is fine by me. Basically I had to get it if I wanted 16GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. The cameras dont work either, but that is actually a plus in my view. The screen however is to die for. If it ain't retina its junk in my view these days. I could never go back.

    2. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      Re: You don't cancel a successful program

      Alternatively, they might now be popular enough not to require the incentive program.

      Haha, I know...

    3. jmch Silver badge

      Re: You don't cancel a successful program

      "You don't cancel a successful program"

      depends what your criteria for 'success' is. Maybe they had a fixed marketing budget for the program, and they got such a large takeup that the budget ran out sooner than expected. Maybe they're selling so many Surfaces without the program that they decided they don't need it any more.

      Of course it's possible that they just aren't selling almost any Surfaces at all, on or off the program, so they cancelled it, as you conjecture, but that's just a conjecture on your part

    4. jfm

      Re: You don't cancel a successful program

      I think it was Simon Slavin, years ago, who said that Microsoft is a cross between the Borg and the Ferengi. Unfortunately they use the Borg to do their marketing and the Ferengi to do their programming.

  7. Chronos
    Windows

    Searching...

    Nope, not a single fornication to give. Right out of excrement quanta, too.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Probably because few consumers are buying Surfaces

    They're being bought by businesses, but people spending their own money have been making other choices.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Probably because few consumers are buying Surfaces

      I wish my business would buy some instead of the unreliable POS iStuff they keep forcing us to use

  9. davenewman

    EVE

    is the answer, if you need that spec and Windows.

  10. DrBed
    Angel

    Ah, Surface.

    What about Zune? Lumia? Could I connect Kinect? Well, then I'll buy HoloLens for $3K, Surface is too much affordable for my niche tech-graveyard.

  11. ecofeco Silver badge
    WTF?

    Ah, but...

    Why would I even want a Surface?

    1. largefile

      Re: Ah, but...

      An avowed Microsoft hater like yourself probably wouldn't want a Surface.

    2. james 68

      Re: Ah, but...

      That's what I thought too, until I started using them for teaching. I still wouldn't want one at home, but in the classroom they're perfect and beat the usually standard iPads (Apple has a major push for iPads in schools) by a huge margin.

      TLDR: they have their place even if that place is limited.

  12. Jeffrey Nonken

    Actually, I've been paying off debts and I can afford one now.

    Reminds me of that old joke...

    Me: I wish I had enough money to buy an elephant.

    You: Why do you want an elephant?

    Me: I don't! I just want the money.

  13. largefile

    Surface Book 2

    I've owned probably a dozen laptops since the late 90's. My Surface Book 2 is hands down the finest laptop hardware I've ever owned or used.

    1. GruntyMcPugh Silver badge

      Re: Surface Book 2

      @largefile

      Er, shouldn't that always be the case,... I mean, you aren't going to chop in a good laptop and buy an inferior one ever, are you?

  14. Milton

    Not rich enough to keep getting it fixed

    "Rich" is relative, but ok, we were "rich" enough to get a Surface for my daughter to use at college. But we weren't rich enough in time and patience to keep sending the blasted thing back for replacement, downloading and creating bootable USB sticks, refreshing and resetting the OS, painstakingly restoring backups or mourning lost data. That long-since-finally-dead Surface now gathers dust and is mistaken, during domestic mining ops, for a tablemat. It is of no greater use.

    So my daughter has been using a little rose-gold Apple laptop without a word of complaint for two years now.

    You don't need to be rich enough to afford a Surface. You need to be rich enough to survive the experience of owning one, paying an excess of blood and tears and then buying something else that you can trust to work reliably.

    (Some will claim that new Surfaces are more reliable—but like any badly-burned customer my answer is "Don't care now. That dodo flew into the sunset long ago.")

    There is now just one Microsoft-branded piece of hardware, an Xbox, in this house, while from Apple (which our family of four all regard as eyewateringly over-priced) three phones, four tablets, three laptops, one bleedin great thing I don't know the name of on my wife's desk, plus an uncountable assortment of watches and ear-bud thingies. I don't use any of 'em (I don't even particularly like Apple), but ... the Family Has Spoken. They bought MS: a shite experience. They buy Apple: stuff just works.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not rich enough to keep getting it fixed

      TL:DR seems you were too dumb to use a proper laptop from MS so bought a dumb laptop from Apple that better suits your competence?

  15. LucreLout

    Somehow....

    .... after Wonga, 19.99% APR just doesn't have the same shock factor it used to.

    Of course, there is always a catch. In this case, any unpaid balance would attract an eye-watering 19.99 per cent after the initial 24-month period.

  16. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    Legal Loan Sharking

    0% APR financing is one of the most successful corporate scams ever devised. It works like this. You agree to pay, by check, the total amount in 24 or fewer payments. The balance must be paid off within 24 months or interest is charged and you must pay the minimum every month.

    The gotcha is that if you fail to meet the 24mo deadline, interest in charged retroactively and all the money you saved is now tacked onto your bill in a lump sum. You're nearly done paying for the toy and GOTCHA you see a nice surprise, all the interest you were trying to avoid and possibly a service fee.

    You review your records and see that one of your checks was "lost in the mail." Good luck proving it. GOTCHA.

  17. EnviableOne

    For those who really want a Surface on Credit

    I belive a certain payments site is offering a similar service now, with intrest free options too

  18. huberddp

    No thanks

    I don't know anyone who has one so I will pass.

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