Microsoft Surface tablet to launch with Windows 8 on Oct 26

[nsane.forums]

Several weeks after first announcing its new Surface tablets, information has emerged confirming that the first devices will be made available alongside the Windows 8 launch on October 26 this year.

It's been a few weeks since the Los Angeles event at which Microsoft finally dropped its veil of secrecy, and announced its new Surface tablet hardware to a rather surprised world. There remains much that we don't yet know about the Surface tablets - the assembled media were given very little time to see the hardware, and no time at all with fully working units - and the biggest questions of all (those of when Surface will arrive, and how much it will cost) have been met with a wall of silence.

But Microsoft expert and journalist Paul Thurrott has uncovered confirmation that the company plans to make the first Surface devices available to consumers on the same day that Windows 8 launches: October 26 this year. On the Supersite for Windows, Paul highlighted the relevant text in a US SEC filing by Microsoft, which reads:

The next version of our operating system, Windows 8, will be generally available on October 26, 2012. At that time, we will begin selling the Surface, a series of Microsoft-designed and manufactured hardware devices."

As Paul himself points out, this implies that only the Surface Windows RT tablet (based on ARM architecture) will be made available on that date. At the Surface launch event, Microsoft confirmed that the Windows RT version would ship in 32GB and 64GB flavours, but the Intel-based Surface Pro tablets - with full Windows 8 rather than RT, and either 64GB or 128GB of storage - would be made available 90 days later, indicating a launch in late January 2013 for these Pro devices.

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