Connected Standby

[lucilgood]

Hello,

I am curious why the team chose not to implement connected standby???

TIA

Lucy

 

[foaf]

I am curious about this as well. It was one of the key reasons I waited for the Haswell version, to be able to turn the Surface on/off in the same way that people use iPads. Pretty gutted it's not been included.

According speculation on the Reddit AMAA it is due to the Surface not being fanless: "a limit from microsoft, One of the 3(IIRC) conditions of contected standby was a fanless / passive cooling design".

 

[pr0phecy]

Bummed about this as well. But that doesn't hold me back from buying a Pro 2 though.

 

[coolqf]

I am curious about this as well. It was one of the key reasons I waited for the Haswell version, to be able to turn the Surface on/off in the same way that people use iPads. Pretty gutted it's not been included.

According speculation on the Reddit AMAA it is due to the Surface not being fanless: "a limit from microsoft, One of the 3(IIRC) conditions of connected standby was a fanless / passive cooling design".

The Connected Standby feature isn't implemented yet in Win 8.1. 64bit. MS says they'll implement it in early 2014. To me that's code for March - June. I'm hoping it's just a software limitation, and not hardware.

Link:
Windows 8.1 tablets with 64-bit Atom chips not coming until Q1 | PCWorld

 

[hcrick]

That's good news, can't wait for connected standby.

 

[Cleavitt76]

I am curious about this as well. It was one of the key reasons I waited for the Haswell version, to be able to turn the Surface on/off in the same way that people use iPads. Pretty gutted it's not been included.

According speculation on the Reddit AMAA it is due to the Surface not being fanless: "a limit from microsoft, One of the 3(IIRC) conditions of contected standby was a fanless / passive cooling design".

The fanless/passive cooling requirement only applies to the device while it's in connected standby mode. It is not a strict requirement that the device not use active cooling while it's active. Therefore, Surface Pro 2 is not disqualified because it has a fan. It might be possible through firmware, OS, and drivers to scale down the CPU clock speed enough when in connected standby mode to make passive cooling feasible. For Example, one CPU core clocked down to 300MHz might allow for passive cooling. It all comes down to the minimum heat the Surface Pro 2's Haswell CPU generates if the performance is scaled down to it's lowest possible settings.

 

[Ray Adams]

I think they won't add it in Pro 2. Because this is more ultrabook than tablet.

Personally I really disappointed with second Surface generation. RT version useless, Pro version more like notebook.
Where is hell good Tablet solution?
I have ASUS VivoTab Smart and I like it because it has Atom inside, full Windows version and Connected standby! I only hate bad display (compared to iPad retina one).
Why MS choose to ignore Atom and again release RT version!?

 

[coolqf]

The fanless/passive cooling requirement only applies to the device while it's in connected standby mode. It is not a strict requirement that the device not use active cooling while it's active. Therefore, Surface Pro 2 is not disqualified because it has a fan. It might be possible through firmware, OS, and drivers to scale down the CPU clock speed enough when in connected standby mode to make passive cooling feasible. For Example, one CPU core clocked down to 300MHz might allow for passive cooling. It all comes down to the minimum heat the Surface Pro 2's Haswell CPU generates if the performance is scaled down to it's lowest possible settings.

My thoughts exactly. You mentioned a lot of requisites though: firmware, OS, and drivers. One could easily argue that without the OS, you can't build the proper drive or firmware. So, hardware release 1st, then firmware and drivers.

If MS delays their update to Win8.1 to allow the firmware/drivers to catch up, then we don't really feel the pinch, I guess.

 

[foaf]

Positive posts from both Cleavitt76 and coolqf. If conected standbye made it into Win 8.1 GD in early 2014 I would be very happy!

I have to say though, if I was MS rolling out yearly iterations of the Surface Pro, I would probably put more effort into making sure the next version (SP3) had it included. So I won't hold my breath.

 

[WG Rowland]

I think they won't add it in Pro 2. Because this is more ultrabook than tablet.

Personally I really disappointed with second Surface generation. RT version useless, Pro version more like notebook.
Where is hell good Tablet solution?
I have ASUS VivoTab Smart and I like it because it has Atom inside, full Windows version and Connected standby! I only hate bad display (compared to iPad retina one).
Why MS choose to ignore Atom and again release RT version!?

I really don't think the Surfaces are meant to be direct competition to OEM solutions. They're not supposed to fill every niche. I think Microsoft is trying to make sure there's a top end, high quality representation of what their products are, and let the OEM's fill in the gaps and scramble towards the bottom. I'm betting the Surface Mini will also be fairly high quality and considered by most overpriced.

It'd be cool if they made a Surface ultrabook, just to get the confusion out of people's minds over what they consider a laptop and what they consider a tablet (Surface Pro 2 is a tablet PC with the power to do PC level work. It's not meant to be a laptop replacement, though, I don't think.)

As long as the OEMs build hardware though that runs Windows, I doubt you'll see MS trying to compete on price. That mindset led to the netbook, which helped destroy the PC market in the first place.