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Microsoft XBox (Games)

Microsoft Is Giving Students a Free Xbox One With Surface Pro 4 Purchases (theverge.com) 52

Posted by msmash from the sweet-deal dept.
Microsoft on Wednesday announced a sweet deal for any student on the fence on purchasing the Surface Pro 4. The company has said that it will be taking $300 off when students purchase a Surface Pro 4 and Xbox One. In a statement to The Verge, Terry Myerson, head of Windows and devices at Microsoft said, "So basically a free Xbox One with the purchase of a Surface Pro 4." The deal is only running at Microsoft's retail stores in the United States. The deal goes live today and will last until August 14.
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Microsoft Is Giving Students a Free Xbox One With Surface Pro 4 Purchases More

Microsoft Is Giving Students a Free Xbox One With Surface Pro 4 Purchases

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  • Still.. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mwvdlee ( 775178 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @12:06PM (#52414181) Homepage

    I guess that gets the price of a surface pro 4 down from "insanely overpriced" to "absurdly overpriced".

    • Re:Still.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @12:25PM (#52414371)

      $899 isn't too expensive...

      Core m3, 4 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD

      Well, you could step up to the i5 version, 8 GB of RAM, and a 256 GB SSD. Incremental upgrades in each category, can't be that much...

      $1299

      Wait, only the i7 has the good (good for Intel) GPU and the i5 has the GPU that barely handles flash video? I guess I'd need to go to the i7, what's another $100-$150, right?

      $1599

      If I'm spending that much I'll need to sell my desktop, monitor, etc. and use it as my main PC. Need to max out the storage. Wait, why is 256 GB the largest option? Let's at least bump the RAM up to the 16 GB my 5.5 year old PC had the day it was built...

      $1799

      Oh, now the larger storage options are available. With 1 TB it costs...

      $2699

      Well, at least the bleeding is over. Oh wait, the keyboard is sold separately?

      $2798

      Oh look! A money-saving bundle!

      $2798 with a free stylus and neoprene sleeve. And I guess now a free Xbone?

      WHAT A DEAL!

      • Re:Still.. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @12:58PM (#52414661)

        Sure, if you buy a Surface Pro like a person buying cocaine at a try before you buy store.

        A more realistic version:
        I need a tablet. Wooo I just bought an m3 tablet with 4GB of RAM. It's crap that they charged extra for the keyboard, but hey this thing is great!

        i5 that doesn't handle flash video? The SP3 with the 4 generation old processor had an i5 that handles flash video, and if you're in a bind runs Photoshop and AfterEffects just fine too.

        Now where's that cocaine! I NEED MORE!!!!!

        • The i5 barely handles flash video. Only the i7 has the "Iris Pro" GPU. The "Iris Pro" has full support for acceleration in media applications and has "good" (still shitty) performance in games. The i5 has "HD Graphics" which is now the shit tier for Intel's parts and has very little support and terrible performance. I'm running a newer i5 and it struggles to render 1080p flash video, takes about 3 seconds to dim the screen and display a Windows 7 UAC prompt. The options for tweaking/overclocking the GP

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Arkh89 ( 2870391 )

            $ lscpu
            Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-4200U CPU @ 1.60GHz

            No problem to render 1080p videos here, or to process high-res images with the GPU... but, I am not using Windows nor Flash.

            • Congrats, you have an older i5. Try a twitch.tv stream in Flash on a newer i5 (may I recommend saltybet?). The "HD Graphics" line is now the shit tier. it used ot be the higher tier. The higher tier has been rebranded. It is called "Iris Pro".

          • Re:Still.. (Score:4, Informative)

            by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @02:50PM (#52415567)

            The i5 barely handles flash video.

            And yet you're still wrong despite how "bad" it's performance is you can play flash media and content just fine on GPU bound systems as we have for the many years withing browsers and plugins which never supported hardware acceleration in the first place.

            . I'm running a newer i5 and it struggles to render 1080p flash video

            I on the other hand am running an ancient i5 with the HD Graphics chipset and have no problem playing a 4k Youtube clip in chrome, both standard Chrome, and with the Disable HTML5 extension which reverts everything to Flash, and the UAC prompts come up without issue. My girlfriend has exactly the machine you're complaining about (i5 SP4) and it's even faster than mine, certainly not slower. As mentioned above the shitty games performance is due to thermal throttling. The i7 doesn't fix that. It has shitty game performance none the less.

            Fix your computer instead of blaming everything on the hardware. Even in the low end models running normal Windows workloads is a very smooth experience on the Surface Pro machines providing you don't max out the RAM or force your CPU to thermally throttle.

            • The older i5s have better support. Read my post or STFU. Try watching twitch.tv in Flash (their default) on a modern i5. Your CPU temps will skyrocket, you won't be able to composite shit on a second monitor, the stream will stutter to shit, etc.

              • I did it on the very Surface Pro 4 you're complaining about idiot. Go give your computer to someone who is capable of using it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DRJlaw ( 946416 )

            That is incorrect. Between the "newer" i5s and i7s [wikipedia.org], the only difference is an increase in the number of EUs and the inclusion of the Crystalwell EDRAM cache.

            The two systems have exactly the same video decoding capabilities [wikipedia.org], which are handled by the uncore, not the EUs themselves.

            • Go read Intel's forums support forums. Performance is shit on the newer i5s. Many have accused them of gimping it via the drivers. They're buggy as hell, too.
              The 5000 and 6000 series processors have TRASH video on the i5s.

              https://communities.intel.com/... [intel.com]

              Go through a few pages and CTRL+F i5.

              I first began digging into this after struggling to get a triple display configuration working. The hardware has the bandwidth to run 3x1920x1080@60, but it's not officially supported on my 5th gen i5 while it was on

      • Then why not skip the SP4/XBox and go for an iPad Pro, and a MacBook Air, with an NAS system for massive data storage.

      • That's... insane. I could build a top of the line gaming computer for that sort of cheese, peripherals included.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

      I guess that gets the price of a surface pro 4 down from "insanely overpriced" to "absurdly overpriced".

      That's still a step down from "ludicrously overpriced".

  • Pretend Sales (Score:4, Insightful)

    by minstrelmike ( 1602771 ) on Wednesday June 29, 2016 @12:09PM (#52414201)
    I suspect that's the only way the're going to get rid of their out-dated Xboxes now.
  • That is one way to get their units sold closer to PS4.
  • This is counter-intuitive AF. Basically you're giving away a leisure tool with the purchase of a (mostly) productivity-bound tool. I like the deal, and the people will too, but education packages are supposed to give people an edge on, take a guess: education. If I was such a parent, I'd consider that deal, give the kid the Surface Pro, and keep the Xbox for me. Or maybe keep them both and tell him to use the facilities tuition pays for, so that he stays longer in the campus where he is not distracted by pr

    • It's rather decent, to the contrary. For that kind of money we used to get a desktop PC that was almost exclusively used for games and entertainment.

    • but education packages are supposed to give people an edge on, take a guess: education.

      I think it's well established that you:
      a) can't focus on studies 100% of the time without unwinding less you do your own head in.
      b) can't play games on a Surface Pro in any kind of comfortable way.

      I personally think this is a great combination as the fact that these "Slate" devices jump straight into thermal throttling when you load their CPU for more than about 20 seconds means about the only thing they can't do is play games or do video editing.

      • As someone who went through college with a gaming itch, an itch that lasts to this day (and it's been some years...), I can tell you the best time to foment gaming withdrawal is as soon as you get to college. The social, entertaining and educational aspects playing games can improve only go so far, and by the time you're applying for higher-ed, the only thing gaming is going to improve is your ability to postpone exercise, reading, studying, outdoor activities and socializing. The "twenty-something gamer" i

  • Well the increasingly bizarre behavior out of Microsoft just keeps on coming. I am certain the cause is perverse incentives for a few high-ranking executives. They are told they need adoption numbers up, up, up and do what it takes to make it happen. Even if you need to make the Windows Update tool into malware. I used to look on the Update notifications as a necessary system freshener - now, I fearfully inspect the updates to make sure they won't screw up my working system. I have a laptop certified t

  • Or, those fucking wankers at Microsoft could just take $300 off the Shitface and admit that the woozy piece of crap is way overpriced.

    At $1,499 to $3,199 it's significantly more than a whiz-bang laptop or a nicely outfitted Android tablet with some add-on goodies.

    And the best part is that you don't have to prance around the office like a hipster with brain damage [youtube.com] to use it, either.

  • Great job of parroting the MS rep, The Verge. The ACTUAL story is "$300 off". Which... who gives a shit.

  • So, the sales of Surface Pro 4s AND XBox 1's are BOTH so shitty that you have to COMBINE their "unit sales"?!?

    Or, the ONLY way you can get anyone to buy that overpriced POS Surface Pro 4 is to GIVE YOU a $300 toy to distract you???

    LOLOL!!!

  • It's fascinating to watch Microsoft become more and more desperate as people start to avoid them wholesale. It looks like Microsoft has finally pissed people off so much that they basically can't do *anything* anymore, because people won't buy what they sell.

    People will continue to buy Windows because they need computers, and those computers will most likely need Windows. Office has become synonymous with word processing and spreadsheets, so people buy that too because they don't really feel they have a c

  • Xbox live support contact number (@@Xbox live support number##) We're here & happy to help with any Xbox support questions! If we haven't responded, Call Us. 1 855 388 0710

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